Montpelier City Council - August 12, 2026 [MCC]

Today is Wednesday, August 12th, uh, 2026. Mute myself here. It is 6:30 and this meeting of the Montier City Council is called to order. Um, before we get down to business, I'd like to offer everybody a chance to come fully into the room. If you'd like to join me, I'm going to put both of my feet flat on the floor, take a few deep breaths in and out, and then I'm going to read a little something. The passage tonight is from the measure of our success, a letter to my children and yours from 1993 by Marian Wright Adelman. I was brought to this because yesterday we just had primary elections. Uh tonight we have four people who have raised their hand um willing to volunteer their time and their service to fill the seat that Adrien Gil has uh left vacant between now and town meeting day. And I just felt really grateful and inspired by people's willingness to serve, willingness to step up and spend their energy for the good of the greater community. And so this passage seemed appropriate. I was taught that the world had a lot of problems, that I could struggle and change them, that intellectual and material gifts brought the privilege and responsibility of sharing with others less fortunate, and that service is the rent each of us pays for our living. The very purpose of life and not something you do in your spare time or after you have reached your personal goals. At 6:33, we're going to move on to item two, the meeting logistics and remote introductions. Please display your first and last name if you are joining us remotely. When you're speaking, either here or on Zoom, please state your name and where you live. Please keep your comments to the allotted time so that others have the opportunity to speak. If you have several questions, please ask them all together. Please focus your comments on the agenda item under discussion. Please direct your remarks towards policies, decisions, and ideas and not individuals. Avoid comments about a person's character or intent. Please wait to be recognized by the mayor before speaking. That's me. And please follow the rules of procedure included in the agenda packet which guide how the meeting is conducted and may be applied as needed to maintain orderly discussion. And with that at 6:34 we're moving on to approving the agenda. Does anyone have any um changes? Oh, I'm sorry. Before we we have a another piece of business. We have two people joining us um two counselors joining us from not online. Uh, councelor Doyle, will you just say your name? And >> Ben Doyle, District 1. >> Thank you. And councelor Brown. >> Harry Brown, District Three. >> All right. Thanks. And John, do you have a sense of where that that piece of business should fall? Is this the right spot? >> The remote introduction. >> You your remote introductions >> should be Yeah. Like first thing before you do >> Okay. All right. Thanks. Anyway, it's done now. All right. So, um, does anyone wish to change the agenda or modify it in any way? Okay, seeing no objection, the agenda is approved by unanimous consent. It is and now it's 6:35, we're going to move on to recognizing downtown business achievements. Um, just want to remind us that I think it was the last meeting when we we just sort of gave a shout out to a national award that was granted to the Quirky Pet, which is one of our businesses. And we're proud of our businesses and we're grateful for everyone's contributions towards make maintaining a vibrant and uh and alive downtown. And so um in a similar fashion, the Seven Daisies Awards have just come out. And uh for those of you who don't know, Seven Days awards these sort of statewide best of category awards each year. And this year um Hunger Mountain Co-op, Red Hen Baking, Barhill, Capitol Grounds, Artisans Hand Craft Gallery, Capital Cannabis, Onion River Outdoors, and East Rise Credit Union all uh garnered seven daisies. So we just want to applaud them and thank them for their continued work. And while we're at it, I want to recognize that we had two new businesses open this week. That's Vulcan Gym. And tomorrow, I think there's a ribbon cutting for Cornerstone Caregiving. And it just reminds me that whatever else is happening in our town is continuing to grow. People are investing their energy and their time in our downtown. And thank you to all of those businesses for your ongoing work in keeping our downtown vibrant and healthy. Okay. Um, any comment or discussion on that item? Wow, we are cooking along. At 6:36, rules of procedure. Um, there may be a decision available to us tonight. Um, at this time, do you want to tee this up for us, Manager Curry? Thank you. >> Yeah, council has had several conversations related to finalizing um your rules of procedure. These rules are required under uh Vermont's open meetings law as well as the city charter which set forth your meeting norms and expectations around agendas, public participation, conduct at meetings, etc. Um you made some changes in June relative to shifting how public comment would be uh managed at these meetings and that opened up a discussion about the greater rules and aligning them with the practices that you have had in place but have not formalized. And so this has had several renditions of drafts. Um and now in front of you is is another round of proposed edits. each time we get fewer and fewer edits and fewer and fewer elements of discussion. And so, um, what is in the packet tonight is, um, some an addition of a line calling out that, uh, council is able to go into executive session, um, you know, as allowable by law at any time without prior notice on the agenda if necessary. and also um giving the mayor some additional discretion around um orders of items, lengths of public comment times built into the agenda as well. And um Councelor Brown submitted the last round of uh edits. So I will turn it over to her to see if there's anything specific she would like to call out and then turn it back to the mayor for discussion. >> Go ahead, Councelor Brown. >> Right. Thank you very much. Um, the edits that I made were primarily focused on um allowing the expanding the opportunities for the mayor to have some discretion over timing and um when things happen, how long they take, that kind of thing. Uh since we it we can only predict so much how a meeting will go and there may be times when we need to allow public comment on things that we haven't necessarily specified ahead of time we would or times when public comment needs to be curtailed or rearranged or rescheduled or something like that. So, it's just to it's not to give the the um the chair the power to do away with public comment, but just to have a little bit of discretion about how to manage it throughout the meeting based on how the meeting is going. >> Thank you. Um any clarifying questions from council on this? No. Okay. Um, then we will open this for public comment. I'd remind everyone that on agenda items, we're allowing for two minutes of public comment. Uh, general business and appearances, which will be roughly 8:30, we hope, um, that everyone will have five minutes to speak on any any topic they choose. Um, is there anyone who wishes to speak on this topic at this time? Mr. Whitaker. Uh Steve Whitaker Mont I'll again correct the mayor that the last vote of the council made the timing on agenda topics three minutes and you've been notified of that numerous times and you continue to attempt to shrink it to two minutes and that's not your prerogative at least not yet. So it's it's uh indicative of the problem we're going here. We we've been shutting down our city offices. We're shutting down our public comment time. We're we're basically going into a fortress mode of quelling disscent and there and the rampant dishonesty that's going on which I will address at the general businesses and appearance. But my point is that you're going in the wrong direction and you're doing it with ill motives and to I I'm still quite upset that you put the tasers on the consent agenda so there could be no discussion even after I shared with some of you the whole history of 2011 where we convened a committee and spent six months and decided those are not for us and then to without acting with without a steady police chief without uh a resigning council person. Y'all put that on the agenda so that there could be no public comment on it. And that's sleazy. That's just really sleazy. So, I don't think I'm going to convince anybody here not to adopt these tightening rules or to create a you might convince you to create a subcommittee and look at uh other examples and how this is being uh subtly manipulated by a new city manager and mayor to close down and constrain uh democracy and transparency. That's probably the right thing to do, but I hold little faith. >> Thank you for your comments. Um I uh reject that characterization. Nevertheless, it is your right to express it. Um I would ask everyone to rem remember, please, if you can at all, avoid comments about a person's character or intent. Those are things that none of us knows about each other. Mr. Casey, >> mayor, council, thanks very much for having us today. Uh I'm Connor Casey, state rep from Montpilliar. I I think it's relevant to this agenda item. I'd like to address uh there was an allegation against me in today's council packet. Uh an email from Peter Kelman to the mayor and the council uh which is unmistakably referencing me. Um it does say that unfortunately this is referring to the responsible contract ordinance which we'll discuss later. Unfortunately, the proposal was pushed through without adequate study by a brand new city councelor with very strong ties to construction unions and in exchange for their support for him when he later ran for higher office. >> I'm sorry, Mr. Casey. Is this is this relevant to the rules of procedure agenda item or >> it's related to it because just as you were saying, Mayor, you know, when you try to slander somebody in public, um I I think we could be better than that. And you know, I' I'd like to just take a minute if you don't mind and >> um I I will allow it, but I would ask you first, is this maybe better suited for general business and appearances during which you would have more? >> I think I think it does queue up for the discussion later on responsible contractor. I' I'd like to have it beforehand if you don't mind. >> If if that's okay, I would ask you to just wait till general business and appearances. We'll we should be getting there relatively soon. I No problem. I do appreciate your patience and understanding. Thank you. Um, I hate to ask you to wait, but we have to apply the rules evenly. Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak on this agenda item, which is the rules of procedure that we are attempting to adopt? Is there anyone on Zoom that would like to speak to this topic? Okay. Um, with that, and with all due respect, I will close public comment on this agenda item. We will revisit the others um coming up very soon. Um, is there a motion to either adopt this or punt it down the road? Councelor Brown. >> Yeah, I'm I'm um just noticing by Representative Casey's action right now that this is a reminder that sometimes the timing of general businesses and appearances based on when other things happen in the agenda might not line up particularly well. If someone was to make a comment on something on the agenda that happens before the break, before we do general businesses and appearances, then um it seems kind of moot at that point. So that is part of why um one of the suggestions I made was that the chair will have discretion to move the break. Although that's actually doesn't really address my my concern, come to think of it. Um, I didn't want to lock us into a break at 8:30 because we might start earlier or later. We might need to take a break earlier or later. But, but I'm just I'm not I'm not super thrilled with having the general comment at general business and appearances happen only at the break. And so, that's why I put in having giving the chair the discretion to make adjustments to that timing. That's it. >> Okay. Thank you for that. Um, I'll say that that I was what I said last time, which was that having a set of rules that we all agree upon to me feels like the the main priority here. If it is not a perfect set of rules, it can be amended at any time in the future. Um, but it gives us something a common understanding from which to work. And the idea of moving general business and appearances to later is a somewhat experimental move. We're trying it out for a number of meetings to see how it goes and we may find that we don't love it and we may find that we do love it. Um so what we have before us at this time is to either adopt the language as presented or to um to to to amend it which would bring it back in the future unless someone has specific amendment language to propose right now. Councelor Doyle. >> Uh I make a motion that we approve the rules of procedure as proposed. >> Okay. Is there a second to that? >> A second. >> Okay, we have a second. Council Brown, your hand was still up. Was that just a >> Okay. Is there Okay. Is there discussion or debate on the motion? The motion is to accept the rules of procedure as presented. >> No discussion. And at that time, we'll So, we'll we'll take a vote. All in favor of of adopting these rules as presented, say I. >> I. >> I. Okay, it is unanimous. Um, that's five eyes. Um, any any opposed? Any abstensions? Okay, it's unanimous. The five eyes. That carries. Thank you very much. We'll move now on to item number six, which is the responsible employer ordinance and we will take public comment on this. Before we do this, uh, manager Curry, would you tee it up for us? We'll then take clarifying questions and then we'll open up for public comments. Yes. So, we brought um and I'll invite um Kurt Modica, our public works director, to come up in case there are any questions for him. We brought this forward to you for discussion at the July 22nd meeting because um two years ago, this this ordinance had been adopted in 2019. Two years ago, it was put on a pause. that um suspension was set to expire in October of this year. And so we brought the item back to council for discussion about whether you wanted to enforce, amend um repeal um this ordinance. And so at that discussion, we presented information about uh the administrative nature and requirements of the ordinance, compared uh wages for the um the wage standard that the ordinance set with staff who do similar jobs in our public works department, as well as some information about uh costs for projects above $200,000 and how this ordinance um was expected to affect them. At that time, you directed us to bring this back for a repeal. Because this is a held as an ordinance in the city code, we um treat it with two readings and two public hearings in order to enact the repeal of that ordinance. And that is what's brought before you today. So, it is noticed for a first reading and public hearing. Um, if you wish to move it forward, it would go to a second reading and public hearing at the next council meeting in on August 26th. Okay. Are there any clarifying questions from council members before we open for public comment? Seeing none, um, uh, M. Monica, do you have anything to add to that before we open up? >> No. I think that's a great summary. >> Okay, great. Thank you. Um, is there anyone in the room that would like to speak to this? >> Oh, we will we'll open the public hearing at this time. Thank you, John. >> Um, Mr. Casey, would you like to go first? >> Yeah, sure. I'll get to the other issue later, I guess, but um, yeah, I would I wouldn't mind saying a few words about this. Um, again, thanks so much for having me, everybody. Connor Casey, state representative from Montpillar. I was also the counselor who introduced this ordinance a few years ago. So probably no surprise that I'm speaking on it today. Uh but I'd also like to speak as a member of the House Institutions Committee which oversees the 200 million uh capital construction budget for the state which does include uh prevailing wage and you know as part of my committee we spend a great deal of time overseeing the state construction projects. So I want to start with something pretty simple. You know, I think requiring responsible um wages and responsible employment practices on taxpayer payer funded projects, it's not a radical concept. Like it really isn't. Um it's a it's a standard practice in state government and something that's occurred for a long time with an arrangement between labor and the associated general contractors who agree on these prevailing wages. So I think we need to ask why should someone building a state facility in Montpillar be protected by one standard while someone doing essentially the exact same work on a city project be protected by another. To me it's absurd. You could have two sites side by side with completely different standards, completely different wages being paid. And I like to think as a capital city, we should be the standard bearer for responsible contracting, treating employees well, and not do the bare minimum, not go below the state standard. Um, and I get it. You know, the argument for the repeal seems to be largely focused on cost from what I heard from the last hearing there. And that's a concern. You know, we're all stewards of taxpayer money, and we need to take that seriously. But labor, you know, labor a cost to be driven. It shouldn't be a cost that's driven as low as possible. It's people building our roads, you know, it's people laying our water lines and rebuilding our public buildings after the flood. And they should be able to afford to live in the communities that they work in. You know, like a few years ago when we had this hearing, you had a lot of frontline workers come in and they said, "You know what? Jesus, I love coming to Montpillar every day. I love working in Montpillar, but the sad thing is I'm never going to make enough money to afford to live here. So whether it be service workers or the people who are literally building the city that we live in, we shouldn't send them home at the end of a workday and say, you know what, like you'll never afford to live here. And this ordinance isn't just about wages. It's workers compensation coverage. It requires contractors to follow the law. And we need to be diligent about this because there's a myriad of abuses going on in this industry right now. It requires workers to be properly classified as employees rather than independent contractors and mclassification is a huge problem in the industry. And I'm sure it's happening in the shadows here that we don't see but could see with this ordinance. So it's not fair to workers. It's not fair to like it's not fair to taxpayers honestly. So I think AFL is going to talk about this a little bit. I, you know, I could ramble on forever on it. Um, but I I really think like if you could pivot from a repeal to an amendment on this, reasonable people could work together to work out the logistics of the burdensome paperwork that I I heard was mentioned there and try to find something that works for everybody. But just repealing this, this sends a terrible message to everybody. Burlington's passed this, Barry's passed it. We were the first ones and we were proud of that. We should we should follow suit too. >> Okay. Thank you very much, Mr. Casey. >> Um Mr. Bellini, go ahead. And uh Mr. Casey was afforded three minutes just now, so I'll extend that evenly to everyone on this topic. Um Mr. Bellini, go ahead. You have three minutes. >> Hey everybody, I'm Dave Bellini. Good to see everybody. I do not know the language of what you are talking about. I did get the gist of it before and I do understand the basic concept of it. I'm been in unions my whole life. Uh, I'd like to offer what I think would be a good compromise for everybody, which is the cost before implementation. I mean, $200,000. I mean, you can't even buy coffee for a crew from Starbucks for $200,000. Maybe go with what Connor says, whatever the gist of that is, but $200,000 is nothing in 2026. Maybe raise, you know, $200,000, I don't know if that does one street. I mean, if you're paving Interstate 90, that's one thing, but $200,000 for a triggering mechanism, maybe the compromise is to make that a little higher. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you, Mr. Fin. Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak? Mr. Whitaker, >> I won't need all my three minutes. >> Uh, Steve Whitaker again. Um, I'm going to honor uh a change of mind like to try to set an example for some of y'all that I spoke last time for repealing this because it needs work, but I'd like you to consider not repealing it and start doing the work that needs to be done to find the solution for the smaller contractors. If it means finding an app for a tablet that makes it easy to do the accounting of what task order or wage scale certain functions are done at, there are solutions to the problems that I raised. But with I've been I'm persuaded by both Connor and Car's uh concern here and especially the parody with the state capital bill expenditures. Why would we want to have two different wage scales in the capital city where much of the capital complex is? Most of the entire capital complex is and much work is going to be done up there. And then we'll be losing the the level playing field for contractors if if we're allowing uh a disperate if we could be cannibalizing to the at the expense of the workers cannibalizing the available contractors to work on the state house addition or renovation that they're about to do. So, I'm g I'm changing my point of view and my advice from last time I spoke on this to say that we should just maybe suspend the ordinance for another six months and do the work to find the solution that that brings everybody up to the same parody level of costs of wages and benefits. this idea that we're giving away Country Club Road to a developer to as the only our only hope of getting housing that's affordable to the wage earners here in town is is damn near criminal. And uh I'll pursue every angle on that. But if we want to look for the money that we need to pay the wages, prevailing wage, let's look at the sidewalk projects we just wasted doing entirely properly by letting the parks department instead of our new approved con sidewalk vendor that's in the packet tonight. Uh letting the parks department ruin a whole section of sidewalk. They had no idea what they were doing and it's a huge mess. It needs to be redone. It also wasn't packed properly so that next settling flood uh paving not pitched on school street towards two of the storm drains. Uh a survey that needs to get redone for East State Street. >> Thank you, Mr. Whitaker. You're you're at time >> at three minutes or two. >> At three minutes. >> Thank you. >> Glad you wanted to be here. >> Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak? >> I don't know if I can hand this to you. There's one for all of you. >> You may. Yes. Thank you. Thank you for asking, too. I appreciate that. >> Start with your name. >> Uh, good evening. Uh, Mr. Mayor, counselors. My name is Larry Moin. I am the president of the Vermont AFL CIO. I serve as the vice president of the building and construction trades council in Vermont and I'm business manager for my local union which is the laborers. I was uh part of this ordinance when it was passed in 2019 and I think it um I sent you guys some stuff this today that you probably were able to look at, but I think that repealing it outright would be a disservice to your taxpayers. Um, you guys set the example in 2019 and we don't want you to set an example. Um, I read through the the report done by the city manager and for for some things like the wages of what you start your employees may be less, but the crews that will be doing this work may have 10, 15, 20 years experience. So you're not it's not apples to apples when you think about things like this. Providing benefits uh you know according to most towns is important for your personal employees for so to do it for your contracted employees seems a little also counterintuitive. you you know you guys say that you want to the priority of the council is to invest in infrastructure but when is human infrastructure taken into consideration? Um the people that make this town go besides your highway works department management parks are all these workers that work for the owners. And I'd like to know how many projects this was actually used on. It would be interesting to see cuz we we have one example of a 10% increase on one project. How many biders the AGC supports these wages and benefits which is the largest contractor base in the state. My union wages are probably close to $20 an hour different and we're the base laborer. So this this ordinance was not at all to help union contractors. This ordinance was strictly to help the workers in the state because without the unions there would be no uplifting for any workers. So, I just would love to be able to work with you all on amending this and understanding where this came from, aside from just the cost savings off the workers because those are the people who spend money in the community which gives you those tax dollars to fund these projects. So, the more money put into those workers par uh pockets is the more money that's going to be spent locally to make the city thrive. Um, I thank you for your time and if you guys have any questions, please let me know. >> Thank you very much, Mr. McQuinn. Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak on this topic? Is there anyone on Zoom that would like to speak on this topic? Uh, Mr. Kelman, you'll have three minutes. Go ahead, please. >> Uh, Peter Kelman, Montilier. Uh, let me just be clear on the outset that I'm neither anti-UN nor am I opposed to Montpielar adopting a carefully considered, datadriven, appropriately designed, and clearly worded responsible employer ordinance. That said, the currently suspended ordinance does not, nor has it ever met these criteria. Let me cite just a few of the major failings. It addresses only city construction contractors and their employees. Whereas, if it's going to be equitable, it should probably also address all or most city contractors and subcontractors as well as the city itself and its employees. If this isn't done, I won't go into it, but this creates a real uneven uh uh playing field. Number two, its extensive compliance reporting requirements are cumbersome, costly, and don't allow for waiverss. This is in marked contrast to the only other such ordinances in Vermont, Burlington, and Barry. Barry has in every case waved the uh the requirement for their projects. The result is as we've heard some contractors are discouraing discouraged from applying and others raise the costs and the co and the raising costs do not go to the workers. Believe me. Third, the goals of this ordinance and I think you could already hear this from what both Connor said and what the uh union rep just said. These this ordinance from the outset was meant really to be more symbolic than real. Um, and as most full-time skilled construction workers already make this amount, as uh the union guy pointed out, the point was actually for Montielar to lead the way to encourage other cities and towns to follow its example. Not only has that not happened, but that is really uh I think arrogance. We don't lead the way. That's not what we really do. Finally, the ordinance was not a quote collaborative effort between the city and Vermont's labor community as claimed by JP Isabelle, the executive director of the Vermont AFL CIO in his memo to uh Kelly. Rather, it was written by a single city council member working very closely with AFL CIO staff. No other stakeholders were involved or even consulted. So, it's beyond ironic that Mr. Isabel now complains that the union wasn't consulted before considering repeal. For all these reasons and more, I strongly urge the city council to repeal the current ordinance and then direct the city manager convene an ad hoc committee of stakeholders, including the unions, of course, but also including others who might be inadvertently harmed by it to explore the entire topic and return to the city council with its recommendations for a truly responsible responsible employer ordinance. um as a co as the co- um chair of the um of C siege act the social and economic justice advisory committee back when this was originally proposed to us um brought to us by Connor. We expressed >> we expressed a a whole number of concerns about this and proposed to him that this be worked out in this way, but instead he went ahead and did it and brought in >> dozens of union reps. >> Thank you, Mr. Kelman. Um, is is there anyone else online that would like to speak? So, we have someone else here in the room would like to speak. Please come forth and state your name. >> I would introduce you, but I don't know your name. >> All right. Uh, my name's JP Isabelle. Uh, Mr. Kelman just uh took my name in vain, which is, I guess, his prerogative, but I'm not sure why. Um, yes, I did write a letter. I asked, uh, this council to consider working with us for that letter was actually before I sent before the previous meeting when this first discussion came up. Maybe Mr. Kelman didn't know that. And maybe Mr. Kelman should perhaps read the rules of engagement and perhaps think about making arguments without attacking people. Uh it seems to me that seems to be an issue that he has and I would hope that he can address that um with some work on himself. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you for your comments. Is there anyone else who would like to make a comment at this time? Okay. I would just like to bring us back into the room. Let's all take a breath for a moment. The conversation tonight is a first hearing on whether to repeal a a document. We are not, as far as I see, currently debating for the soul of Montpielar and whether or not we are proworker, pro- union, anti-worker, anti-UN, whether we're fiscally conservative or and I I don't believe that all of those things are on the table here tonight. Really what we as a council want to do tonight is either move this to a second hearing, take the opportunity to learn more, or not move it to a second hearing. I believe that those are the options that we have just to keep it kind of technical and narrow. Um, having said that, are there other questions or comments from council now that we've heard some comments from the public? And I do want to thank everybody who came to speak. Um, know that you were heard. None of this is the council trying to screw workers, right? That that that's not the conversation we're having, but it's a very passionate topic for a lot of us. I myself have been a union member most of my life as well. And anyway, I'll stop talking now. Is there anything else from council that >> Oh, at this time we've officially closed this first hearing on this topic, the public hearing. Is there comment, questions from councel before we entertain a motion to advance this to a second hearing or something else? Wow, this is everybody's so quiet tonight. Jim, sorry. Councelor Sheridan, >> I'll advance it to the second hearing. >> Okay, we have a motion to advance it to the second hearing. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Councelor Con seconds. Councelor Brown. Oh, at this time we'll have discussion and debate on the topic. >> Yeah. >> Yes. Thank you. Um, >> sorry, just just before you begin. Um, of course, counselors, say whatever you like. The the motion is to advance to a second hearing, but go ahead. Say whatever you like. >> That is what I intended to speak on. Yes. >> Go ahead. Yeah. No, thank you. I'm not trying to control what you say. You're a counselor. Go ahead. >> I I am not in favor of advancing this to a second hearing. I am not in favor of repealing this ordinance. I I want to keep it and I want to try to work on it and fix it and make it workable for both uh the city and the city's budget and workers and general justice and fairness and support of working people in our community. So I I wanted to make a couple of points in response to some of the things that I've heard in this discussion so far. Um the idea that Montpelier is some kind of an outlier by being the first to do this and only Barry and Burlington do this. Well, the state actually does this as well. So does the federal government. We are not outliers. We are just trying to bring ourselves into alignment with the other two major uh employers of contracts on construction work. The reason why this is construction and not everything else, it would be great if it were everything else, but it's construction because that aligns with what the state is already doing and with what the federal government is already doing. So, it's just a nice kind of clean alignment with what's already required. So, contractors that are coming to us to submitting submitting bids, many of them have experience with working for the state where they have had to comply with these requirements. Although at the state it's not a $200,000 contract that triggers the need to pay prevailing wage. It's a $100,000 contract. So we're we're much laxer than the state is on this currently. And the idea that this was um somehow symbolic if because the contractors are already paying prevailing wage. If that were the case, we wouldn't even be here now. We wouldn't be having this conversation. It would never have come to us. But the fact is that the problem that Melier is facing is that we're trying to solicit bids and from contractors and the prices that they're coming back with if they were to comply with this ordinance are higher than the city budget allows to be paid. So this is a problem with our overall budgeting and our overall planning for how to pay to get the work done. And this really ties in with the fact that we're not always paying our own employees the prevailing wage for this work because again we haven't really committed as a city to pay the prevailing wage which I said before and I'm going to say it again is the average wage. We're not talking about livable wage. We're not talking about a high wage. We're just talking about average. So, it it does feel to me a bit hypocritical to demand from our contractors that that they pay the average wage if we're not paying our own employees for the same kinds of work and average wage. I also recognize that the administrative burden of having to report every single hour is I I believe it if contractors tell us that it's too high. If you look at the comparable state statute, the state requirement isn't they don't ask for that. The state just says, "Promise us, sign an affid, you know, pledge in your in your in your bid for or doing this work that you will abide by these requirements. The state doesn't demand that people, the contractors fill out weekly time sheets and account for every single hour." So, I don't think we need to either. I think that we could simplify this ordinance so that it looked a lot more like the states. The state law is very simple and clear compared to what we have, we could really shrink ours down to match theirs with the exception that instead of $100,000 that the state that triggers the state um requirement that it's $200,000 for us. So, it's a little easier for us to meet. And so I would much rather see a um an amendment of this ordinance that brings us makes us consistent where we're um we're we're matching kind of what the state is requiring and then we're also saying that we need to pay our own employees this much. And I really what I'd love to see is that we continue this pause for another year or for another two years and then we come back and we re-evaluate. And if we are able if we can if we're paying our own employees the prevailing wage at that point, then we can without any hypocrisy demand that of our contractors. Uh but just repealing it right now says we don't really think it's that important to even pay average wages that we just Yeah. And I'm so I'm pretty uncomfortable with that. >> Thank you, Councelor Brown. Uh councelor Conn. >> So I have a question and Kelly. Uh what does it stop us to follow the state law if it is already there? Why do we need an ordinance? Why we cannot just follow the state law do the same thing? >> Thank you. It's not currently part of our procurement policy which drives decisions about how we enter in you know go out and request um proposals and enter into contracts. So that would be avoid when this is repealed. We would rely solely on what the procurement policy currently says. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> And of course when we have grants that place requirements on us, we follow those grant requirements which in the case of federal monies is sometimes um directs how you know we can purchase things, contractors that we can work with, those sorts of standards as well. Mr. Monica, anything to add to that? >> Um, yeah, like Kelly said, the our grants are primarily through the federal government and those um require us to follow Davis Bacon rates as opposed to state prevailing wage rates which are different. Um, so one of the issues with the ordinance is is that there's no provisions written in there for when grant requirements require Davis Bacon rates. um that we're able to revert to those. We have been just in order to comply with the grants, but it's not necessarily consistent with the way the ordinance is written. Um so, you know, that's just one of the one of the changes that would really would be important to make in this and that so that we don't jeopardize our fally fun federal funding opportunities. Um, are you are you suggesting that sometimes the federal requirements would require us to um would would require people to be paid less than if we followed the state guidelines or if we followed our own ordinance. Is that what I'm understanding? >> Um, not necessarily less. Maybe in some cases under some certain classifications of work. Um, so the way these wage rates work is that, um, you get paid depending on the type of work you're doing. So if you're paving, you get one rate. If you're doing concrete work, you get paid a different rate. Um, and they're different. Some are higher in federal rates, some are higher in state rates. It's not all consistently higher or lower. Um, so that it's just we just under the way the ordinance is written, um, we're not it's not explicit that we're able to use federal rates when the grant requirements require that. Um but but it's not necessarily higher or lower. It changes and it changes every year. There's a new rates published every year um that are adopted for both state and federal rates. >> Okay. Thank you, Mr. Councelor Alfano. >> Just want to make sure I understand what you just said. So we might have a federal uh project that requires Davis Bacon and because the rates change, our ordinance may may require us to pay a lower rate than Davis Bacon. Is that what you're saying? >> I mean, that's possible in some cases, but if we were not using Davis Bacon rates under a federal grant project that required Davis Bacon, we followed our ordinance, which says just state prevailing wage rates, we'd lose our funding. So that's the bigger issue um for me is that um is that the ordinance doesn't allow for and like I said in practice we have had to do um Davis Bacon rates on projects over $200,000 in order to maintain our funding. >> So Davis Bacon would have to override the ordinance and the ordinance doesn't allow for that. >> That's correct. Yeah. And it's not really a matter of higher or lower because right >> it depends on the classification of labor and what >> you know what that average is. um you know for for federal versus state wages and and it changes every year so it's a moving target. >> I have another question just about timing. Uh what's the status of the ordinance now? Currently it's still paused or is it >> Yes, it's suspended until October. Currently >> suspended until October. So, if we uh extend this to a second hearing to to get more more input, >> we we can we can still make a decision to not repeal, to postpone, to pause again. I mean, >> yes. Okay. >> So, really tonight is because it's repealing of an ordinance and I have I have questions about whether this should be an ordinance or a policy and that's wonky, but I I have my own questions about that. But narrowly what we're doing tonight is either moving it to a second hearing. It will give us another two weeks to learn more about all of the the varying opinions on the subject and then we as a council would either repeal, which is the motion that that we're having a hearing about, or not repeal and choose to do something else. Those options are still available to us. In any case, the the cliff, so to speak, if there is one for this, is that in October, if we do nothing at all, then this policy will go into in force in October. And so as uh we we had the options at the last meeting to either um uh renew the postponement, repeal the thing, amend the thing, or do nothing, which in effect allows it to go into effect in October. Right? So those were the four choices. There was a motion made to repeal. We're here at our first hearing. Um if there are other if if there are no other discussion or debate top points to be made here then we'll call the question. Um we're right at about that we're a little bit past the time that we' had aotted for this. Is there anyone else that would like to make a statement about this specific motion or this topic generally before we call the question? >> Yes, manager Curry. I just would request if there is specific information that you would like brought back before second reading, you don't have to know that right now, but please give me a heads up in the next week and so we can otherwise prepare answers for you. >> Okay, councelor, just one more follow-up question. If we um next if we have a second hearing and next meeting decide to pause to uh to establish a working group to work on this to iron out the issues that we've um addressed where you identified. Um is is that a uh I mean that's a legitimate choice that we can make at the next >> Yep. None of your options are foreclosed at this point. >> If we should theoretically at the next meeting say we're not going to repeal, we're going to uh amend or we're going to do something else. Do we then are we then required to hold two hearings on that motion? >> That was my next follow. Yeah. >> Trying to get a sense of our timeline. >> Sure. So, the clerk and I have had conversations about this. Um there's nothing that requires you to have a two reading hearing on an ordinance either in our charter or in Vermont statute. It has been the practice of Montpillar City Council to do so. So because this has you know held as an ordinance in the city code. We are following that practice here. Now my recommendation would be if you are substantially amend changing your decision from one hearing to another you would do another hearing. So you would have two public hearings on the decision that you are moving forward. Right now that is a repeal. If you decide to substantially change that at the next then you would do a third public hearing on that would be my recommendation in alignment with your practice. Again, this is um this is not required. It is your norm over many decades as I understand it. It also in the future would be brought forward as an internally focused policy perhaps as an addendum to the procurement policy as opposed to its own standalone ordinance would be an additional recommendation on process for this type of item. >> Is that questions? Cos. Thank you. Okay. So then my question about ordinance versus policy or I mean an ordinance is enforcable by some type of punishment, fines, imprisonment, whatever. Correct. Um is there a situation in which because this is written as an ordinance that this would be enforceable through those means or would the intent of this ordinance be better served as being policy? That's a question to I mean >> I would actually invite Mr. Casey to answer that question Mike since he was part of the original office. >> Had this conversation with our city attorney about how to treat this and you know again his comment was this isn't really even an ordinance doesn't meet the standards for an ordinance. Um so you know if there were any amendment to this or any future um conversation about this topic my recommendation would be bring it back as an amendment to the procurement policy not as a standalone. >> Okay thank you for that. Um what I would like to to did you have another question counselor? >> Can I counselor Cohen go ahead. So in in the last meeting when we were discussing I mentioned that I want to see uh us keeping the curve idea of this ordinance and maybe we can have something we we can create but I was told that it's a repeal and we will stop it so we cannot do this now we are talking about the policy so it I think it is the same thing I was trying to ask Uh so now I'm hearing that we can do that if you want. So it is not the end of the discussion right because yeah because it's oh we are repealing it done nothing can we do >> well the the motion before us is to repeal but we do have the options to do all of those things but we have to first vote on one motion and if it if it doesn't succeed we can move to do something different. No. Yeah, I understand. I just want to understand that if we can do this, maybe it will be better in the last meeting we could have have this discussion and maybe this time we were hearing like some all the things amendments or other things we are discussing right now. That's that's all I'm saying. I feel like we already lost two weeks because we couldn't somehow understand each other in the last meeting. That's all. Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. Um counselors, anything else? All right, then we're Let's Let's vote on this. And before we do, um we've had a request from the manager that if there are clarifying questions, please get those questions in, I guess, as soon as possible to allow them as much time. I would also assume that union reps and perhaps Mr. Casey would also be willing to field questions from us if we have them following up following this meeting. >> Yes. I mean, one thing I would just say, Mayor, is I don't believe the second hearing has to be in two weeks, right? Might it make sense to postpone that second hearing so that the council can get all the information they need to make an informed decision on this at a later date, but before the October repeal? >> That that I think that that would be a possibility. First, let's let's take a vote on the motion before us, which is to advance to a second hearing. I think I'm just going to go straight to a roll call on this because I don't think we're going to have So, let's start with you uh online, councelor Doyle. >> Oh, sorry, Councelor Alfano, before we go. Go ahead. >> I'm just wondering if we um it sounds like there are enough problems. I mean, if we have an ordinance that may not even qualify as an ordinance, yes, repeal is a solution, one solution, but um what's what's Kurt, from your point of view, the difference between pausing what's what's the issue with pausing for for another year while we while we figure it out and either make it work or decide that it it's just not not going to work? and repealing it outright. >> I mean, that's certainly up to the council. Um, and I think some of the considerations are around legal advice as to the best area to implement this um sort of requirement, whether it's policy or ordinance. Um, but yeah, from a management perspective of projects for public works, whether it's suspended or repealed doesn't um doesn't really change for us. >> Okay. Well, thanks. Okay. Other Okay. So, I I will say if counselors, I don't have to say this. You know this, but if you are if you would rather not repeal, but would rather take some other action, then you should not vote yes to to repeal, right? Oh, Councelor Doyle. >> Yeah, thanks. I I appreciate the conversation and the views that have been expressed. I I am going to vote for I just want to express my own opinion that I'm going to vote to move it forward towards a repeal. Um not because I think that that's the ultimate solution. I just think that we really I think that there there are other ways maybe to achieve these goals and I think there's some other steps that we need to take to make sure that this this is actually serving the city well. I think the current the current ordinance doesn't seem to be doing that. And so I think we really need to at a minimum significantly tweak it. And that's why I'm moving forward. I would I would vote to move it forward to the second hearing and maybe there's some kind of solution we can come up with in the interimm of you know uh either a working group or something like that to try to achieve the same goals but I do think what we have right now isn't working and we need to change it. That's just my opinion. >> Okay. Thank you. We'll keep your microphone on. We'll move we'll move to the to the vote. The motion before us is to advance this to a second hearing. Councelor Doyle would say you >> I >> Okay. Councelor Brown. >> No. >> Okay. Uh, councelor Conn, >> yes. >> Councelor Sheridan, >> I >> and councelor Alfano, >> yes. >> Uh, so that's four eyes, one no. The motion does pass. Um, this conversation is not over. I would encourage everyone to learn as much as you can from as many different voices as you can and we will move forward to a second hearing. >> We didn't actually set when it's the next meeting. >> Oh. Um, all right. So, we we do have to do that. Okay. Um, is there any reason it should not be the second meeting? Well, let's let's open that up to counselors after hearing Mr. Casey's comments. Does it make sense to do it at the next meeting or does it make sense to give us an give ourselves an extra two weeks? Um, thoughts, councelor Doyle, >> I I would give it an extra two weeks. >> Okay. Do you want to just make that motion? We'll take a second and then vote on it to keep it clean. I >> see manager Curry's got her hand up. Maybe she Manager Curry, go ahead. I just would need some clear direction on what you would hope for in the intervening month to bring back around this conversation because if it's not headed to a repeal then it's headed somewhere else and I'm not sure where that somewhere else is or what goals you wish to achieve and the options that I can propose to you on how to get to those goals. though I'm I'm not clear on on what you are hoping for if it's not headed towards repeal right now. >> Wait, >> I I can >> go ahead counc >> I can explain my um thinking. Uh I personally I want to see resolution says that we want to establish or succeed the core idea of this ordinance and uh we can discuss to repeal it. If you decided to repeal it then we can create a um another one. It doesn't have to be ordinance. It could be a policy or other thing. Uh but before doing that it is good that as a council saying that okay we are stopping this ordinance but we are behind this idea to make it more fair environment for workers. So resolution maybe repealing stopping but definitely having something else instead of this which fulfill our promise to our community. >> So that's that's my idea. I think what I'm hearing from you and what I'm also hearing from others is that we like the idea of maintaining the spirit of this ordinance, but that this particular instrument itself may be problematic and might need to be repealed in order to achieve that. That's what I think I'm hearing. Councelor Brown, >> yeah, I think it does need to be repealed. I mean, it does not need to be repealed so that we can then decide if we want something different instead. But if we repeal it, it's just gone and that's it. and the the proposal is not to repeal it with the caveat that we will do X Y and Z. The proposal is just to repeal it. So that's why I'm voting against moving ahead with repeal. And I am I really respect the city manager asking us for what it is that we need if we're going to delay this by a month, what we need from staff to be able to make a clear decision. And I don't think that um that's at all clear. Uh I don't and and I'm the only one who voted no. Okay. But I'm I don't really I have a lot of ideas for how this could be better or what could be in its place, but I'm not um in a position to ask that of staff. So if there are other folks in the council that agree with the idea that the concept of this ordinance is good and some principles in it are good that we want to maintain then you need to bring that forward and direct the staff to do that. If not then we can just do it on our own and bring it forward on our own. We don't need the staff to do this for us. >> Measure Curry. And I I guess where it's opaque is, you know, I'm hearing a a a principled political commitment to, you know, the goals of equity, which I totally understand and get and how they resonate with you all as a board and your broader goals. What we're talking about is an operational direction. And so if any future ID thing that you want us to bring back continues to be an operational direction, some detail around that would be very helpful. Um so we can you know like what I'm hearing from Palin is we could repeal this ordinance and the operational direction that it currently includes and make a statement of commitment which is a political resolution committed to the principles of equity. And if that's sufficient, you know, I'm happy to to draft something or work with with you all to draft something um to bring back as as your own statement to the public. But if there is further items around we want staff to behave a certain way in regards to certain categories of contracts, then that's what I need clarity around. >> Councelor Doyle. Um thank you. I think you know uh maybe I can just speak uh in more detail about my thinking around this is number one like I I want to learn more about you know uh the distinction between the ordinance and the policy right like why does this why is this going to be an or why is this an ordinance as opposed to just being an amendment to the procurement policy the second thing that I really think a lot about this and I appreciate Carrie and Connor what you both said about look the feds are doing this the state is doing this we're just trying to extend the same level of uh you know equity uh that those two institutions are doing. I have just concerns about the city's ability to to meet that challenge given what what we what we're facing, you know, in terms of our financial picture. And specifically, I'm thinking about things like the fund reserve, you know, where we have a policy that says we're supposed to have 15% in the fund and I think we have like six or seven in our reserves, right? Or I think about the pavement condition index, you know, we've set a priority of infrastructure and we need to, you know, commit to achieving that. And I think what I'm what I have heard from staff and from others is that you know this policy while well-intentioned is, you know, uh impacting our ability to meet those goals. And so I really do believe in the spirit of it and want to see it. But I think what I'm really interested in is are there kind of benchmarks that we could put into place that say when we achieve these things, for example, paying our own staff the prevailing wage, then yes, let's um implement a policy that allows us to pro um provide contractors with prevailing wage, right? So it's like I I I do appreciate there are times when Montpielar needs to lead right as a city but at this particular moment with all the challenges that we're facing I think we just need to be really um sure-footed about when we decide to lead and that's why you know Kelly if you're ask excuse me manager Curry if you're asking like what I would like to see to move the conversation forward I think it's just more education about the distinction between the policy and the ordinance and also and I'm happy to work with others on this if if people want to do this to draft some kind of policy amendment that has specific benchmarks that we could, you know, move forward in this direction when we've achieved um these goals and we're best positioned to to move forward. That's the direction I can provide. >> Okay. Councelor Alfano. Um I I would just add that um given what the council has on its plate in the next two months, I I don't see this advancing very far in terms of amending amending the current policy or um even I mean we could certainly establish a working group to to work on a new policy or ordinance, but I don't think we're going to fix this one before the before we have to decide before this oto October deadline. Um, so I I mean I I see no reason to extend the the time for the second hearing. Let's let's hear what people have to say based on what they've heard tonight and come prepared next meeting to decide what, you know, which way we're going to go. Um, city manager asks a very good question and we we ought to give you that answer, but I I don't think it's going to happen tonight. I think it it could very well happen next meeting. >> Councelor C. >> Yeah. And um based on the uh staff recommendation um I see this ordinance as a tool to do a better things and as of now this tool is not working well for the staff to do their jobs or to do um to have projects. So that's why I think yeah repealing this then start a new chapter which I listed couple of the ideas just all brainstorming. So uh I will be voting accordingly. >> Thank you councelor Brown. Hopefully last comment here. Go ahead. >> Okay. Thanks. Um I also think there's no need to delay this. I think we can do this two weeks from now. Um I I do want to just be really clear. I think Ben really summed it up that the reason why this is not current has not currently been working or theoretically would not work is because it's too expensive and the city feels like it can't afford to pay this amount of money for contractors. So, let's just be really clear about that. Um, I also am not sure that we've ever actually used this policy, this this ordinance. Um, I my impression, maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think that it was more seeing what the bids might come in at if we were to enforce the ordinance, they were so high that we felt like this is too much for us. So, I'm not sure we've ever even actually done this. Um, just just to be clear on that. So, I think yeah, we should go ahead and move ahead in two weeks and then if it gets repealed, I'm happy uh I will be thrilled to work with anybody who's interested in working on something to replace it, whether it's a policy or a different version of the ordinance or anything. I think we can definitely do better. >> Micah, would you like to respond to what the the the whole idea of has it been used? I think is what you're >> Yeah. Yes. Um so, there's been two projects where we implemented this ordinance. Um, one was the the paving contract and the other one was the school street water man. Um, so that's been enacted twice that I'm aware of. >> And the school street project was the one where I think you had said it basically resulted up roughly 10% increase. >> Right. We asked both of those contractors um for estimate on the cost implications and we only received the one from the school street contractor and yes it was approximately 10%. >> Okay. Councelor Sheridan, last comment. I haven't made a comment, so thank you for that. >> Y >> um I'd like to just set my position very clear. I don't care if we repeal it and go on to something else. I don't care. My loyalty is to the people of this city who put me here. Not the state, not the federal, not the unions. The people who put me here is where my loyalty is, and I want to do the best thing for them. >> All right. Thank you for that. So, I've I've heard one person say, "Let's kick it out two extra weeks." Um, and then I've heard two folks say, "Let's just do it for next week." Do we have to do this through a motion or can I just say we're doing this? >> Um, well, historically the motion is all in one. So, splitting them up like this, um, maybe you better do it as a >> Okay, we'll do it as a motion. Councelor Alfano, could you offer something to the >> I I will move that we will set that we set a second reading um for the uh repeal of the responsible employer ordinance for uh August 26th council meeting. >> Okay. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Okay, we have a second. Any discussion or debate on this topic? Oh, thank you. All in favor of uh moving this forward to a second hearing on August 26, say I. >> I. I >> I >> Okay, any opposed? Any abstensions? The eyes have it. Thank you very much. And now, and thank you for everybody for coming and listening and for the insight and perspectives you will continue to offer between now and when we come back. Um, we're now at 7:41. Moving on to item number seven, which is the district one vacancy. We are only 26 minutes behind schedule. We were doing so great for a while here, but this this is important. So, okay. So, uh, Major Curry, would you like to tee this up for us, please? >> Yes. And then I will sit back and let you drive. >> Oh, thank you. The so Adrienne Gail resigned from her council um district 1 seat last month and per the city charter when a vacancy in the office of council member is created in a time that is out beyond outside of 90 days within an election. this body uh has the authority to appoint the replacement um which is an eligible candidate to represent um the member the constituents of district 1. So you have all received four applicant applications for this position um Paul Costello, Sean Linhan, Keith Schumacher, and Megan Smith. Thank you all for applying. Um, so it is your course tonight to decide how you would like to vet those candidates. Um, if you wish to interview them. Um, if you wish to have discussion first, I'll leave that all to you. You are also able to go into executive session um under 1 VSA 13 um three which allows you to have executive session conversation of an appointment and then you would come out in the public session and desri make your selection and describe your reasons for that if you so wish. >> Okay, >> stop there. Um, oh, >> this appointment will serve until the next town meeting day, which um will then have an election for candidates to then serve out the remaining year of uh councelor Gills 2-year appointment. >> Great. So, that means at the next town meeting day, there will be two open spots uh for folks to run for for district one. one for the remaining term of councelor Gil's term and one for um the seat that is currently occupied by councelor Doyle for two years. Um so first just out of curiosity who I don't know everyone by face who is here in the room that has put their hand forward. Uh Mr. Costello is here. Um Megan Smith is online I see. Uh Miss Smith, would you raise your hand or just let us know that you're here? Hello. >> Hi there. Thank you for coming. Uh, hi. >> I see Mr. Lahan there right next to Miss Smith. Uh, welcome to say hello as well. And then Keith Schumacher is here in the room with us as well. Great. So, um, first before we go into that, are there any clarifying questions about what we're doing, how this works from council, not questions directly for the applicants? Are there any questions from council? Seeing none, what I'd like to do is to invite the folks um to say a word if you would like and then if council has questions for them, I would like to encourage council to ask the same questions of all applicants just to keep things fair and even. Um we could go in any number of orders, but if I'm not mistaken, the order that the applications came in were first Mr. Schumacher, then Miss Smith, then Mr. Lahan, and then Mr. Castello. Is that correct? >> I think that's correct. >> Okay. So, I I'd like to proceed chronologically if no one has any uh has any uh issues with that. Seeing none, let's do that. Mr. Schumacher, I'd welcome you to come and speak if you'd like. >> Yes. Please, please approach and sit in the seat with the microphone. The folks on Zoom can only hear us if we're using microphones. So, yeah. And first of all, thank you and thank everyone very much for putting your putting your hand forward or your hat forward, whatever the phrase is, for being willing to serve. It's it's a lot of work and we really appreciate it. >> Well, you're welcome. >> Please have a seat and uh say anything you'd like and then be ready for some questions. >> Well, I the day I decided to um apply, I didn't wake up that morning thinking I'm going to apply for this this role. I just found out that there was an opening and I'm at a place in my career um and in my long-term life here in Montpielar where I might be able to make a difference and I might be able to um help and it's partly based on my life and the career that I've chosen and how things have evolved and I find myself with time And I thought I would just put my hat in the ring and see what I could do if uh clearly we need help. And you know, maybe I can maybe I can help. And you should all know that um I'm not um someone that is um practiced at being a council member. I haven't done it before. So I would be filling in this position for this previous person in the spirit hopefully that they served and um I it would be a learning a real learn it would be actually would be an honor for me to to work here with you all and that's kind of where I'm at right now. >> Great. Thank you so much. >> Welcome. Um, I'm going to ask you a few questions that I'm think or are predicting are on the minds of more than one's count one counselor. So that in the just for efficiency and then I'll open up for counselors to ask anything that I may have missed. I really only have two questions. One um uh well I guess it's three. Um if if seated now at this time would you intend to seek election in March in town meeting day? >> No. Uh right now my my thought process is I'm um provisional. I'll be here. I'll fill in the role. I'll do what I can until a candidate comes along who may be better than me and may be more capable or someone that runs and wins and that's fine. So I wasn't planning on it. However, if I really love it here, I might want to stay. So I I I sh I you know originally no but potentially yes if I'm feeling like I'm making um good use of my time and I'm being effective. >> Great >> and I'm helping. >> Similar question. If not seated would you would you consider running in March? If we seat someone else and we don't see you at this time >> I would consider it. >> Okay. Um, and then, uh, I think we've all had a chance to, to look over your resume and see your sort of work experience and that type of thing. Can you think of any reason that you might have that there would be a conflict of interest between your role serving as a counselor and your professional or personal life? >> Well, I don't think there's anything uh obvious that would prevent me from working here. Um, I'm my career is uh changing a bit. You know, I'm evolving from one thing to another. And so I have this construction company and that's I'm moving on from that. I had a partnership and that all dissolved and now I'm kind of more independent sole proprietor and um I would hope that if we we would u forestall any obvious conflicts before they took place we would make sure that didn't happen. >> Sure. Great. >> For sure. >> Other counselors, do you have questions for Mr. Schumacher? Okay, seeing none, thank you so much for your time and for your willingness to serve. Um, we're going to have a similar conversation with everybody else before we deliberate and make a decision. >> Thank you. >> All right. Um, Miss Smith, I believe you're chronologically next. So, um, let me just pin you so I could see you here. Um, please go ahead and say anything you'd like to introduce yourself or tell us why this is uh why this is something you're willing to do. >> Okay. Hi, my name is Megan Smith. Um, I want to participate with this is because I'm looking to be part of the community. Um, I grew up here and I've always been an active member of any specifically student council um, programs at my colleges and and growing up. Um, and I have some things that I am have been thinking about for quite some time that I think would be really helpful for this town. Um, and so there are things that I want to address and also continue the conversations and the meetings that you guys are having. Great. Thank you very much. Um I'm going to ask you the same questions and then open it up to counselors if they'd like to. If you are seated during this round, um would is it your intention to run for the seat in or one of the seats in March? >> Um that would depend on my proficiency and if I was the right person, if I truly believed I was the right person. >> Okay. >> And I was getting positive positivity from >> Okay. Okay. And absent that opportunity to test drive the the the role, if you're not seated now, what are your feelings about running um in March? >> Um that would depend on how things are. Um seeing the the meetings and seeing if I am the right person for the position. Um and also because I have specific things that I want to address if those would be appropriate. So >> Okay. Would you like to say anything more about those specific things you like? >> So, the the biggest thing I want to move forward with is or or show up is that the um dorms up at the college area. I want to bring those to the community. I want people to be able to live in there just like they're living in I think it's Dewey Hall. Um >> Yes. >> Yeah. That's the biggest thing that I want to work on. >> Okay. All right. Thank you for that. And is there anything in your personal or professional life that might create a conflict of interest with serving as a city counselor? >> Um, if there's anything addressed with people with disabilities, I have epilepsy and I am an SSDI, so I don't know if there's any conflict there. >> Okay. I'm nothing comes to my mind but um councilors are would anyone like to ask questions of Miss Smith? Councelor Con? >> No question just an appreciation. Uh I really want to thank everyone all four of you um show interest in this position but especially I want to thank Megan because we need more women. So like four candidates only one is uh woman. So, I really appreciate you having that um interest and courage. So, thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you for that, Councelor Conn. And thank you, Miss Smith. Um as I just mentioned, we'll have a similar conversation with the other applicants and then we'll make a decision hopefully tonight. Thank you very much. >> Thank you, >> Mr. Lahan. You are chronologically next. Um you have the floor to say whatever you like at this time. >> Thank you. Uh yes, I'm Sean Lahan. Uh live on Crest View Drive. I currently serve as a planning commissioner. Uh I've been on the planning commissioner for the past two years. And I just am really invested in seeing the city um moving forward right now um post pandemic and post flood. um and seeing uh Adrien Gil's replacement be somebody who kind of carries forward uh her um her legacy and attitude that she brought to the council uh of being forwardlooking and um moving forward with a a a Montillar that uh it will work for everybody and be stronger tomorrow. >> Great. Thank you. Um so same questions. Uh if seated during this uh process, would you do you have would you intend to run in March? >> I think at this point I would intend to run. >> Okay. And if not seated uh during this process, is your answer the same? >> I believe so. Yes. >> Okay. Um, and is there anything in your personal or professional life that would create a conflict of of interest with you being able to serve? >> I don't believe so. Um, I currently the primary caregiver of three children, which allows me the time to serve on the planning commission and potentially the time to serve on city council. >> Great. Thank you so much for that and uh thank you for all of your work on the planning commission. That's very important work and we really appreciate that. Uh, any counselors have additional questions or comments for Mr. Lahan? >> I see none. Uh, Mr. Lahan, thank you so much for coming tonight and for again for your service to the to the city and your willingness to serve on council. Uh, we'll have a conversation with Mr. Castello and then we'll deliberate and we'll make a decision. Um, thank you. Mr. Castello, would you please come forward? Paul Castello. Thank you, mayor. >> Thank you. >> And counselors. >> Uh I believe Montpillar is at a point of building momentum that it's a that it's a city on the rise and that we've come through tough times. We've come through floods. We've come through a devastated downtown and it's time for us to pull together. I'm I'm uh I spent my career as a neutral facilitator of public process in a 100 towns and cities across the state of Vermont, engaging thousands of people, building over 500 local initiatives and then serving as a public policy facilitator um for everything from COVID response at the state level to uh looking at our future in an age of climate change in a bipartisan way that looks at our economic foundations and opportunities. ities rather than condemning uh different people. Um so I'm I feel like I'm an expert at trying to bring people together, move things forward that are for the common good and particularly to celebrate the leadership of all the good people who are doing work in our community. I'm really proud of this city. I love Montpielar and I think we need to step up and raise the bar in terms of our pride and our uh our optimism for a strong future. That's what I would want to speak to in the six months or so that I would be on council. In answer to the first question, I'm not interested in running for a long-term position. I'm retired. I'm very very busy with a number of activities, but I feel like I have skills and um a disposition to listen and to be useful to people um rather than to put myself forward um in in any kind of way of thinking that I know better than other folks. And in fact, though I have a fair policy background, I don't know uh the the the work that you're doing in the kind of detail that any of you know. And I would want to be useful first as a learner and a listener, but ultimately as someone who could be another balance point with all of you in the hard decisions that you make. >> Sorry to go so long. >> Well, you've answered I think you've answered the first two questions, but it sounds sounds like correct me if I'm wrong. Whether seated during this process or not, you have no intention to run in March. No. >> Okay. And is there anything in your personal professional life that would create a conflict of interest? >> I don't believe so. Uh I'm very engaged uh both at the national level on on the Heron Foundation um in in philanthropy um around the state a bit um I'm I'm on the Vermont Land Trust Board, the Vermont Natural Resources Council board. Um, and I'm also on the foundation for the resilient uh Montpillaria board. Um, which I think is u a good balance point and and useful. Um, I I don't see the the municipality and the nonprofit working for community development and trying to answer the long-term resilience challenges in any way ever in conflict. And I think that um having information go back and forth between those entities is really useful for us right now. So I don't see any conflicts with any of it. >> Okay. Thank you. Uh other counselors you have councelor con. >> Uh thank you again uh for having an inred. It's a general question. So sometimes uh because uh Ben is on the same uh board, he re uh recuse himself from voting. Uh and if uh Paul does the same thing, then we will have like four counselors voting. Would it be any problem with the voting process? Just came to my mind. You mean if if two counselors recuse themselves from the same thing, we would still have enough to take action. We require four votes. >> So that will be no no >> there would be enough there would be five of us including me to that that would be allowed to vote. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> That is true. Y >> um any other questions for Mr. Costello? >> Um thank you so much for coming. Thanks for your willingness to serve and thanks for all of your other work that you do elsewhere. Thank you. Um, so at this time, can we just have open discussion amongst the counselors or until someone until such time as someone is ready to make a motion that we seat one of these folks? Um, if when you're ready to do that, go ahead and do that. Um, does anyone have other questions for each other around these counselors around these sorry applicants or any um questions for each other about these councilor Sheridan? Go ahead. >> Probably should have done this when he spoke, but I guess I'd have a question for Sean whether if he was appointed would he stay on the planning commission or not. >> I think he's still in the room. Uh, Mr. Lahan, if you'd like to answer that. He's shaking his head. But you know, >> I I don't think that I could do both. And I don't think that uh I'm not sure what the rules are in regards to that, but I anticipated uh leaving the planning commission because that I've that would have conflicts. >> Question. Who is the current council liaison to the planning commission? >> I think we have one. >> No, not staff. But is there not a count? We don't have one. >> No, we don't put one on boards like planning. >> Oh, that's right. Yes. Sorry. >> Or development. >> Right. Okay. Thank you. >> Regulatory, right? >> Thank you for answering that, Sean. >> Yeah. Thank you, Sean. Of course. Um, okay. Any other questions or >> uh councelor Con? >> Uh, so uh I develop some kind of rubric for myself when I am uh checking all the resumes and cover letters. I'm happy to share it if anyone is um interested. I don't know if we are all using so I have some ideas so I want to see at this seat but I prefer having executive sessions so I can hear other people's reasons why they have a specific person to fill the position. So, in order to go into executive session, we'd need to have a finding that um is this help me out here, John. >> Pretty sure this one is what you don't need to have. >> We don't need a finding. Okay. >> Going to be a personel. >> Yeah. So, if you'd like to just make a motion to go into executive session, we can >> I'll double check. >> Yeah. Just double check it for us. I'm going to make sure we get it right. >> Just go. >> Yeah. We did this for years. be the top line and then you know the lines and then numbers. >> Okay, let's try. I move that we enter executive sess uh session to discuss appointment district one vacancy to councelor appointment. Um I don't know what sorry I'm like is that it is there anything else >> that's probably >> I think that's it right because the others in the >> read um you have to read number three >> yeah didn't I say okay let me start again I move that we enter executive session to discuss uh The appointment of district one vacancy to counselor >> person 21 vs. Uh 313A >> 313 >> three. >> Okay. The motion >> the motion before us uh well is there a second? >> Second. >> All right. Councelor Sheridan seconds. The motion before us is to enter executive session to discuss the appointment of district 1 vacancy to council pursuant VSA 313A3 >> three. >> Uh all in favor say I. >> I >> I. Any opposed? Any uh abstensions? I think I think it's that's that's five. Um is that right? One, two, three, four, five. Um, Miss Smith, do you have a question before we go into executive session? >> Uh, you're muted. >> Oh, there we go. Um, I wanted to ask you about uh district 1. So, I am in district 2, but I wanted to be an atlarge council. So, I was wondering if that was something that you have the ability to vote on that. >> Um, I don't believe that is the case. Um, >> okay. >> But we'll address it when we come out of executive session if that's okay. >> Okay. Thank you. >> All right. Thank you. >> All right. So, with that, um, we're entering executive session. Right. >> Ben and Carrie, I emailed you a meeting link. >> Thank you. a online meeting link so that the participants of council and those who are joining remotely are able to go into executive session for purposes of their discussion. And with any luck, we'll be able to enter executive session, come back, deliberate publicly, make a decision publicly, and still be on track for general business and appearances around 8:30. That's that's the goal. Okay. All right. Okay. I got it. Thank you. All right. So, councilors, we'll go to the city manager conference room. Ladies and gentlemen, it's 8:15 and uh we're back. I would entertain a motion to exe executive session. I think that's what we do first. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Okay. >> Okay. We have two moved. So I'll count uh councelor Sheridan moved and councelor Alfano seconded that. All in favor of exiting executive session say I. >> I. >> Okay. And it looks like we do have counselors Brown and Doyle. I think I should have checked in on them first, but that was unanimous. Any for the record? Any uh abstensions? Any nays? All right, we're out of executive session. All right, at this time I'd entertain a Well, does anyone want to make any comments before we take a motion? Seeing none, is there a motion to seat one of these applicants to replace councelor Gil for the remainder of her? Yes. Uh councelor Doyle, go ahead. >> Well, actually, Mark, I just wanted to thank all the candidates, right? I think it's really um challenging to put yourself out there. I'm really grateful to all of them for doing that and appreciate all the skills and passion that they bring for Montpelier and so I hope that even if you're not seated tonight that you'll continue to um pursue serving city of Montpielar because we could use your help. >> Well said. Thank you. >> Is there >> and with that I would I would make a motion to um see uh Paul Castello to fill out the remainder of Adrien Gill's um term in district one. Uh, is there a second? >> I'll second it. And I would just like to say to the two that are interested in running, I hope you do. Uh, that would give us a race. We haven't had one for quite a while. So, I hope Sean and um Keith run next time. Um, Megan, you have to live in the district that you run for, just to let you know. >> And a second. >> Okay, that's a second. Is there any further >> discussion or debate on this topic before we take a vote? >> Uh, seeing none, all in favor of seating Paul Costello to fill out Adrien Gill's spot until town meeting day. >> Me say I >> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Um, I'm sorry to say, Mr. Castello, we would love to have you serve uh in councelor Gill's spot in district 1 until town meeting day. Thank you very much for your willingness. Um Mr. Schumacher and Mr. Lahan, thank you again for being willing to step forward. We do need people to to run to to serve with us. Um so thank you for your willingness and we'd like to encourage that. Uh M councelor Sheridan, you want to say something? >> Yeah, I think Paul should go over there and sit down. Uh Paul, would you care to join us? Were you planning to stay the rest of the night? >> Does that is that how it works? I think they have to be sworn in, right? >> Yes, he has to be sworn. >> He has to be sworn in, but he can start right after that. >> I don't I can sit here first. >> Well, the next item on our agenda is a break. So before we formally close this agenda item, um is there any are there any other uh words, questions, comments, emotional outbursts from council before we before we break for recess. Okay, just once again, I know we said it too many times already. Uh Miss Smith, thank you for your willingness. Uh Mr. Lahan, Mr. Schumacher, thank you for your willingness and thank you for your potential willingness to run in March. With that, uh, it is 8:19. We are in recess until 8:30. >> Ladies and gentlemen, it is 8:31 >> on behind. >> We are behind. It is 8:31 on Wednesday, August 12th, 2026. The meeting of Montpillar City Council is called back to order. Before we go to general business and appearances, we're going to swear in our, uh, newest counselor, uh, Paul Costello. Uh, Mr. ODM, you want to >> Sure. >> take the reigns here. >> Should I stay up? Want me to I can come down there? You can come up here. Wherever you like. It says districtly directly. Do you affirm that you will faithfully ask me right >> if you'd like to join us? Yes, there's you could take your you could take your pick really. Carrie's not here today. We could remove her name plate if need be. That is the seat that Adrian occupied and uh I guess that'll be your seat. >> Well, it's a great honor being with all of you and thank you so much for the opportunity to be of use. >> Thank you. We're glad to have you. Uh grateful to have you serve. And then we also understand that you may not have prepared yourself to be a fully participating member. So, you know, be in the seat, do as you will, abstain as needed, >> use your judgment. Thank you. That's why you're here. Thank you. All right. Um, we are now on to item number eight, general businesses. General business and appearances. This is where any member of the public may speak on any agenda item. Um, if you have already spoken on a previous agenda item, we'd ask you not to use this time to speak further on that agenda item. If you choose to speak on a future agenda item during general business appearances, you will not be recognized again for that agenda item. We're just trying to uh cut down on duplication. Otherwise, you'll have five minutes. Is there anyone in the room that would like to speak on any item for five minutes? Mr. Whitaker. >> Thank you. There's the board's message. This can't do this one in five minutes, but you can read it later than I >> Okay, good. >> Mr. Whitaker, I you know, I I hesitate to to call you out publicly, but the manner in which you strut past and throw documents at us is rude and disrespectful. Um, so I object to that. >> Disagree. >> Uh, you have five minutes. Go ahead. what this city gets right because it does occasionally happen. After I flagged the new bike path, missing markings, Kelly acted in public works moves fast. Cone signage, complete streets committee worked last week to spec every driveway crossing signage. I walked it today and the last several days. All of it's gone but a few cones. It's more dangerous now than before I ever said anything. I have the given you the 10-page comment in front of you with copies for others. I have I'm going to give you the through line and let the citations document carry the rest. The through line is truthfulness. The gap between the government we say we are and the one we actually are. A barricaded park with false electrical hazard and a new sensitive area sign. Another park with a sensitive area, no camping sign. Equally false. A river we market for kayaking while we dump raw sewage into it almost every large storm event. a department director who told the council that the sewer gas problem was solved. It wasn't. It still blows up 24 hours a day right next to the bench where someone sleeps every night. And this city won't say whether a dispatching error contributed to the death on Spring Street Bridge in 2019. More than 30 public records appeals have gone to the city manager since February. Not a denial, not one word back. Three examples are in the memo. The capital improvement plan requests answered with only an equipment sheet, a severance memorandum the city now says doesn't exist despite releasing it under an exemption in 2022 and a federal urgent need certification whose own attached justification doesn't support what it certifies. Country Club Road gets a full section in the memo and it deserves one. The required environmental assessment is over four years stale. I said so the city denied it needed replacing. soil was disturbed before delineation without the stale permission, the state permission the rule requires. The city intends to sign a binding developer agreement before environmental clearance, which its own federal award letter says it cannot lawfully do. It will forfeit the $5 million if you sign a binding agreement before environmental clearance. The garden feeding the senior center has not been adequately tested for food safety. The environmental review RFP went out to three firms the day before the federal deadline. Two of the three have disqualifying conflicts of interests, never publicly posted as required on the city and the state website. And on the city's own numbers, both the $3 million northern border grant and the $5 million CDBGDR grant are on track to lapse before the site is ready to build them. But here's what actually deserves to be called a different league, not a mistake. Seven years ago, this council created a homelessness task force and identified at its first meeting exactly what was needed. Showers, camping, toilets, lockers. Almost none of it exists today. A $425,000 ARPA earmarked by the city council for this sat unspent and was quietly reallocated before it left. Up to a hundred people are sleeping outside in the city tonight. The number of dignified shelter beds available to them is zero. And instead of meeting that obligation, we run people off public land where they have a right to be, aggravating the very mental health crisis we claim and care about. And we lean on the church community unfunded to do the job this city's own adopted plan assigns to the city manager. We don't get to profess dignity and integrity and fail this badly for this long on the people who actually need us to mean it. There's more in the memo. A taser purchase revived 15 years after a citizen committee recommended against it, buried it on a consent agenda, no comment allowed with no mention of that history and no real find, no real funding source and no sole source justification even though it was stated it was required. That's sleazy. Here's what I want you to take from tonight. This isn't about whether I win any of this in court. We say we want economic development housing. What we don't reckon with is what dishonesty costs us. residents willing to serve on committees, credibility with developers, honesty with ourselves. Every hour spent managing a false story instead of fixing what's underneath it is trust we don't get back. That's not solved by better signs or lower fees. It's solved by this council deciding that restoring trust matter more matters more than protecting whoever's inconvenience by the truth this week. Everything I've said is documented in what you've got in your hands. I ask that the full document be entered into the record. Can you give me a copy? >> You can have my copy here. John, thank you, Mr. Whitaker. Is there anyone else in the room that would like to speak on any topic? >> Would you like another copy? >> I would not. Thank you. Um, >> is that just a >> that your your time is up? We're moving on. Is there anyone else in on Zoom that would like to speak? Mr. Whitaker, that is unnecessary, rude, disrespectful. Is there anyone online that would like to speak on any topic? I would like to point out that Mr. Whitaker is entitled to his opinion. He is entitled to his five minutes to say whatever he would like. Many of the things that he states are factually inaccurate. I would urge anyone before believing everything that he says wholesale to please find other opinions and other sources of information. Um that is true of everything we say and of everything that everyone says. No one should be taken completely at their word as truth. Okay. Uh having said that, seeing no one else wanting to speak under general business and appearances, we are Wow. Um 8:40 right on schedule. Uh we are here to talk about number nine, the district heat rates. For that, I'd like to turn it over to Manager Kelly to tee it up for us, please. Thanks. our director Heather Graves and public works director. >> I'll turn it the right way. Is that better? >> Um, thank you to our finance director, Heather Graves, and our public works director, Kurt Modica, for preparing this presentation. Annually, you are required to adopt new district heat rates for the fourthcoming year. Uh these are based on information and rate setting that comes down from the state. Um which is why it sort of operates on a different calendar than other budgets that you adopt operate on. The state does not send these numbers to us until about mid June. And so we were following forward on that. Um and once they get set up I will turn it over. All right. While they do that, I will just give a bit of an update. As you know, you know, the district heat system has um has been in the red for a number of years. Um it also has not had new clients that have been added to the system, which when it was first um brought online, it was expected that we would have more clients added by this point. We are pursuing opportunities to add additional clients. We have been in active conversations with um the state the public services commission. Um I'm going to forget the energy the formal name of the energy office as well to help um they're helping us identify if there are additional grants that could help subsidize the costs to bring new customers on. They have taken great interest in looking at the finances of the system and encouraging the city to get back on track to investigate and build out a plan for um a viable district heat utility. We are working on that. This is these are long-term projects still. Um I can leave it at that. You know, there is there's been collaborative effort. We definitely are giving this attention. We're on a clock, you know, in a number of years when the system um bonds will be paid off. And I'll stop there, >> but just to give you an update on how we're actively working around this concern. >> Thank you. >> Just trying to figure out why it's showing in the my notes section and it's not anywhere else. Apologies for that. Um, you want to want to try rolling with it? >> It looks great on my Zoom. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Okay. Hi everyone. Heather Graves, the finance director. Kurt Monica's with me, the DPW director. Um, we're here this evening to talk about the budget for district heat for FY27 and setting the new rates for the customers. Uh so this is an overview of our debt service at the end of FY26. Um you can see from the beginning it's we've paid off just over a million dollars uh 12 years into the system. This is an overview of the budget I've prepared for this evening. Um it's a 10% increase from FY26's budget. The state estim um the state's estimated energy costs increased by 12% from FY26. Um between FY25 and FY26, the increase was only half a percent. Um which is why we're seeing a much bigger change in our budget for this year. Um, we're needing to up our revenue to cover the cost of the heating fuel as well as cost of replacing some of the items within the plant because they're starting to age and we're finding that we need to spend more on the maintenance of the plant. This sheet shows the capacity charge allocation among all customers. Um you'll see the very last column, the increase or decrease in monthly costs is unchanged. The capacity rate remains the same as FY26. Uh we try not to change anything with the capacity rate because the customers don't have much control over um what that ends up costing them. Um we try to only adjust the energy rate to cover additional costs because they have the opportunity to dial down their heat or up however they feel. So, what I'm proposing is to keep the capacity rate the same as prior years at $6.90 and increase our energy rate by $1 to $17.65. Uh, that's a the same increase that we did for prior year. So, for FY26, we also increased by $1. Any clarifying questions from council? Mr. Sheridan. >> Um, last year we lost approximately 200,000 on this. Is that right? >> Say that one more time. >> Last year we lost approximately 200,000 on this. Um I think it was more 150 range 140. >> Okay. >> 140,000. >> So is it going to be about the same this year? >> I'm expecting the similar outcome. >> Thank you. I would just note that the approach here is the same that has been in place in past years where you know normally in a fund like this we would budget for depreciation. Um we're not collecting that revenue to cover depreciation and so that is part of the reason why you end up with a negative at the end of the year. And so the question before council is to accept the recommendation and set the rate at at at the proposed rate. Is that correct? >> That is correct. And just to note, um the city's required to hold a customer meeting on this. They did that earlier this week and notified the customers that this is forthcoming. Um the district heat calendar, it doesn't run all year. It runs I think I'm going to look September to May. I think it's how many months? >> October 1st to May 1st. >> May 1st. Um just so you know. So that will kick in um starting October 1st when the system gets turned back on. >> Councelor Sheridan. >> Um do we have any prospective new customers at the moment? >> Good question. Oops. Uh so yes through the grant opportunity and NRBC grant which um will pay um it's basically a onetoone grant match. Um we have a tenative agreement with a new customer on School Street, the owner of Mangis Bread. Um we don't have a signed agreement at this point. We don't have a signed grant agreement. Um so once the grant agreement is finalized then um we'll propose aou with that customer and then um follow with a customer agreement and the plan would be to match the term um the length of time or the same end date as all of the other existing customers. So it'll be a shorter time frame for this new customer because the system's already been running since 2014. Um so they would all have the same end date. It does look very promising um that this would this will come through. Um so I have a sort of a verbal agreement at this point. So not 100% set, but we I do expect um once the once everything is um approved, we'll be able to uh get them connected. Um but it probably will not be this heating season because we only have two months um and the the grant um administrators have indicated it's unlikely they'd be able to approve the grant before the heating season starts. Thank >> Thank you. And we're kind of stuck between um the solution to bringing the rate down to something attractive to all of the users is to get more users, but the barrier to getting more users is the rate is very unattractive, right? Does that does that sound right? So what if anything is is there a long-term path towards making this thing work for us? I think these are old questions, but I'm asking them for the first time. And so yes, we have um two sort of um methods in which we could make a district heat a competitive financially competitive heating source. Um one is to add uh a group of customers all through a single project. Um one of the areas we're looking at right now is uh along Elm Street. Um it currently ends at Langden, but if we were able to continue that um out all the way to the Down Street buildings potentially, um there's an opportunity to pick up buildings along that path as well as down street. And um the managers been in discussions with Down Street about potential grant opportunities to connect them and extend the district heat line. And when you add a group of customers all at the same time, that will collectively bring the rate down for all the users and make it competitive um to oil. Um the other approach that we're looking at is a a snow melting system. So right now all of our snow from downtown snow removal is trucked out to the stump dump on Outer Elm Street, basically the town line. And um you know it's a a fair amount of um staff time and um and fuel use and things like that operationally. Uh there's costs associated with doing that trucking and um also environmental impacts. There's trash and salt mixed in with the snow. Um so there are uh benefits to um constructing a snow melting system where we could stockpile the snow in a in a parking lot and load it into a melter fueled by the district heat system. Now the challenges with that is that we would need more capacity allocated from the state from the department of buildings and general services because the energy use from a snow melting system has a very high peak and we are only all currently allocated um about 9.7 million BTUs and that's enough to do customers and grow the system but not enough to heat all our customers and run a snow melter at the same time. Um so the be idea would be to um do snow removal time it with not cold nights and a lower use. Um but we would still need capacity from the state and we've not yet been able to get a commitment from the state um for that additional allocation but we're still working on it. >> Is that because it's not advantageous to them or do we feel like they would that that they would love to sell us the extra capacity? Um so the their position has been that they would like to maintain 100% redundant capacity so that they have um if half of their their plant the biomass plant were um went down for service they would still be able to provide all of the demand including the snow melt. Um but you know we proposed that you know if that were to happen we wouldn't do snow removal at those times or we would go back to trucking or something like that. But um at this point that's their position and um you know I think we're going to well I know we're going to continue to have discussions with the state and see if we can come to a compromise on that but um so far that um we just don't have that commitment and then that would allow us to then apply for grants once we have a commitment from the state for that capacity. Okay. >> Councelor Sheridan >> is the fire department's front on that? >> Yes it is. >> Okay. Um, other questions from council. I guess we have to take public comment on this item. Um, is there any member of the public before we take a motion and debate? Any member of the public that would like to speak on this topic? Oh, Mr. Whitaker, >> does this one work? I don't mean to I guess you want to >> uh I just want to flag an example of this d this function that this was we hired we created the sustainability coordinator position to get the district heat running in the black several many years ago. three or four years ago and our building inspector jumped and took a very large raise, tens of thousands of dollars and I've talked to the engineers that designed this system. They never had a call saying we need to restructure the rates. Here's how we would go about doing it. You know, so this has been the ball has been dropped dramatically. And another example, I just went to the development review board last week and Lucky was proposing a new 20 to 40 unit apartment building where the old Baptist church is on Elm Street just beyond the down street buildings. And I asked could we condition this on maybe that he hook up to the district heat and he had already decided to go electric with heat pumps. And that's just that's an example of the dysfunction of our marketing if we're not coordinating the remaining uh congressionally directed spending to get the steam pipe down Elm not just to the downstream properties but all the way to the where Ly's planning to build that large building. You know where I'm talking about. So I'm just a gasast at how mismanaged this has been but I'm not surprised. Thank you, Mr. Whitaker. Um, any other members of the public like to speak on this topic? Not seeing any. Uh, Mr. Monica, is there anything else that you would like to add? Okay. Um, >> no. >> Okay. Council, um, the the task before us is to approve or not. Oh, Mr. Doyle. Councelor Doyle, go ahead. >> Yeah. No, I just want to say like I think it's really encouraging to hear about the new potential customers. Kurt, I really appreciate your conversations with those folks and manager Curry for your work there. I mean, I think uh we really do need just to get more people on this system if it's going to be sustainable. I think the price of oil might also be a motivator for that. So, I think it's a good time to have those conversations. Um I don't want to I'm sorry, Mark, if you have other things you want to do, but I'm happy to make the motion that we approve these rates uh as proposed. >> Okay. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Thank you. Is there any further discussion or debate on this topic? The motion before us is to approve the rates as proposed. Uh all in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? >> Abstain. >> Okay, we have one abstension. Thank you all. That that is one, two, three, four, five. Five eyes, one abstension. >> I think you need to do a roll call. >> Oh. Oh, because Okay. Yes, we do. Thank you. So, we'll do a roll call. Roll call because it's not unanimous. We'll start uh in the room. Councelor Conn. >> We have to do a roll call because it's not a unanimous >> I said yes. >> Okay. Councelor Sheridan. >> Yes. >> Councelor Alfano. >> Yes. >> Uh councelor Costello, >> I abstain. >> Okay. Uh councelor Brown, >> yes. >> Councelor Doyle, >> yes. >> Five yeses, one abstension. The motion passes. Thank you, everyone. All right. We are now moving on to and uh thank you Miss Graves and Mr. Monica for your presentation. Um item number 10, the Charlie O's noise variance. Um sounds like a band name. Um but we would Manager Curry, will you please tee this up for us? Thank you. >> I will. So before you today is a request from Great American Enterprises LLC doing business as Charlie O's for a variance from the city of Montpillier's noise ordinance which is found in section 11 article 10 of um the city code and this variance request is specific to the event schedule that was that is proposed in your packet. Um, this came to our attention when we had a neighbor complaint in in reaction to one specific evening of live music on the patio and led us to learn a lot about Charlie O's and noise variance ordinances and other things. So, we've confirmed Charlie's has all the right permitting in place, all the right zoning approvals for their outdoor space. live bands play above what the commercially allowable decibel reading would be um which is 65 dB which is not very high and so they're coming before you today requesting a variance um which is at your discretion to lay louder than that um until the periods of time on the dates that they have requested. You are able to put conditions on this if you wish. Um, you know, I welcome I invite you to ask questions of the applicant if you have them about what they anticipate for this event schedule. Um, our and I'm happy to answer further questions and I want to thank city clerk John ODM for working through this with all of the interested parties. Thanks, John. >> Great. At this point, um, first, are there any clarifying questions from council on what it is we're trying to decide here and how we got here? Okay. Then I I I think that what we will eventually entertain is probably a motion to grant this variance or something else. Right. But that seems the the obvious choice. At this time, Miss Jenny, would you would you care to say anything about how we got here or your story? You're not required to at all. We will hold public comment, but first I'll invite you to speak. You're not limited to two minutes. >> I'm Abby Jenny. I live in Berlin, Vermont. I um have worked at Charlie's for 20 years and I do all the booking there and I would like to publicly apologize to the neighbors that were disturbed. The one night we had a punk band out there. Normally we have acoustic acts, but my staff member is leaving for Europe and wanted her band to play on the veranda. It was a great night full of joy for everybody except for the neighbors that were disturbed. And again, I apologize. >> We like to be good neighbors. >> Sure. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. Um any anyone else from the public would that would like to speak on this topic? Anyone online seeing uh well >> Margot >> Margot applauded but is not raising her hand. Marggo, would you like to say something? >> Yes. Sorry, I used my reactions wrong. Um yeah, I just want to say that I'm a constituent of Montilier and I really enjoyed the live music um that Charlie's has. It's one of the few like outdoor settings that we have for live music and that I would hope that that continues and that the decibel um like variance is passed tonight. >> Great. All right. Thank you for for that. Anyone else that would like to speak to this? Um all right. At this point, the next thing would would be to entertain a motion to grant the variance. Is there such a motion? >> Sure. I I would be um first I'd just like to give a little history on them that I know from way back way back uh at one time when Charlie's was said to be a problem area. I said, "I go around all the bars and just sit in as a liquor inspector." We are all liquor inspectors. >> And they she knows it. I did that. And um I said at that time, Charlie was the best run bar in the city. And chief of police at that time was Tony and he said, "I totally agree with you." So thank and you were having something to do with it then. So, thank you for running an excellent bar. >> Thank you, Jim. >> And I would be happy to make the motion to grant that. >> Okay. So, the is there a second to that? >> Second. >> Okay. We have two seconds. So, uh the motion before us is to grant the noise variance to Charlie's. Is there any discussion or debate on this topic? All right. With that, all in favor of granting the noise variance, I'm gonna actually go straight to um I'm going to go All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? >> We have uh our first unanimous vote, including Paul Castello. Uh the unanimous unanimously passes. >> Welcome to the council, Paul. >> Thank you so much, >> Jenny. Thank you for coming and staying all of this time. Um, it's been an honor. >> Um, all right. And with that, I would just like to point out that I have a decibel meter on my phone. It is not terribly accurate, but right now I am speaking at a decibel level of 75 dB. >> Tone it down, man. Tone it down. >> 65 at the property line is So the this brings I mean there's another question about what the noise ordinance maybe should be. That is not on the agenda for tonight, right? But it's I'm guessing a perennial question in every town. Do you want to say something about that? >> Yes. This has just piqued my I think there's an opportunity to close a gap here so that Charlie's or other venues don't have to come back every year to request a noise variance because there is language in the code that if you are a bar in a restaurant, you can have live entertainment. their zoning approval is to be a bar and a restaurant. The noise or the noise variance ordinance or the noise ordinance says you are exempt if you have an entertainment permit, but it's not totally clear that an entertainment permit is their zoning permit. So, I think we have an opportunity to kind of link those two to then create an automatic exemption for the purposes that are already approved in their zoning. I don't know that I have the voice to speak for the whole council, but I think it would be worth worth having you come back to us at some point in the future with cleaned up language for us to adopt. >> I'm sure there will be like a code cleanup at some point and this can like fall under that umbrella. >> Great. All right. Thank you. So, we're we're now going to move forward to item number 11, the country club road planning path. Uh, thanks again Abby for coming. Thank you everybody for the unanimous vote. On this on this next item, it is 9:05. On this next item, there's no decision point for us. We're just learning and receiving a presentation. >> I would just like to check in. Um, Ben and Carrie, I emailed you this PowerPoint. Um, it it might be just as easy for you to watch it on Zoom, but you should have that in your email. Thank you. >> Down arrow to move it down. Right. >> Good evening. Mike Miller, planning director for the city and uh resident on Berlin Street, so district three. Um so tonight we're just going to go over um at the last meeting we were able to celebrate kind of uh getting DEW authorized to move forward into negotiations which was a great milestone but we wanted to kind of reset the path. Um, and we found a few glitches on the if you look at the details or a few bars that haven't exactly lined up, but we were trying to kind of get everything in so we could start to lay out what are all the pieces that are going into Country Club Road to actually get us to our housing units that we've been talking about for a couple of years now. So, um, in the first blue section, the blue bar at the top, we talk about the things that we mentioned last week, the letters of intent, the development agreement. Um, these are all going to be in this year, September, October. Um, at some point, and some of these we flagged. We don't have an exact date. We'll have to figure them out. Um, we have to subdivide the property for sale, and we'll have to transfer the property. So, there'll be some decision points in there which we'll have to go through. Some of these will come through the negotiation of the development agreement because we're going to have to agree on what's the border that'll be in the development agreement and then we can go through and subdivide to match that border and do a transfer. Um but those are things that we will be working on um you will be working on as council. Um and then another element of this which you know of is the infrastructure grants. So, the $8 million in grants that we have to bring the utilities up to Country Club Road and to uh improve the intersections and the road themselves. So, we have these grants. Um some of the pre-awward we have in green. So, these are the things we need to do in order to reach a point where we're allowed to qualify for spending money. So, we've got to check a bunch of boxes. One of which is we've got to have anou with vrans. So, um, Manager Curry and I are working on that. That's going to be coming up, um, next week. We'll be having our first meeting with them to really start to go through and lay out what are what are their flags and what are our flags and what our needs and so that way we can develop anou that will allow us to move forward with um, designing the project to meet their needs and our needs. Uh, a second piece that's required before we can access any of those grant money is the environmental assessments. So, we put out uh an uh a first RFP uh and the RFPs came back very different. We submitted those up to the state, talked to the state, they recommended going back and reposting it with clarifications in it so that way we would have more similar um responses. Uh we thought things would be fairly straightforward. Most people use a pretty stock RFP request for proposals. Um, but people interpreted it slightly differently. We have reposted it. Um, and we will have that for you at your next council meeting. So, um, that will hire somebody to do the environmental assessment, which we hope would be done um, in December. Um, we won't know till we get timelines back, but this is just laying out some times for you to kind of have an idea of what might be coming up. We'll have to amend the grant agreement to remove the pump station and adjust the cost projection. So, that's something um the manager and I will work on, but just give you make you aware. You may remember this project was always talked about as an 11 million project that included all the infrastructure plus a $3 million pump station. It's was in there because that was going to be the match if we got the build grant. We did not get the build grant. We still have to do that. And you'll see it's on the bottom, the very bottom line for long-term says pump station. We still have to do the pump station. It's just not going to be part of the grant. Uh but we've got to go back to the grant. Our agents are when we applied for the grants had these things in here. We've got to make these adjustments. It's a standard correction that um we do these types of adjustments all the time to match grant funds to the projects. And then we have some other grant conditions which we will continue to work on throughout this summer. Our hope is to have this all wrapped up so we are through for 2027 where we can move into the purple section which is the infrastructure implementation where you do what you'd expect designing and permitting. These are all the things Kirk does. Designing and permitting the sewer and water pipes. Do the right ofway um adjustments that need to be done. Put it out to bid and do construction. Construction for the infrastructure. We are proposing at this time for 2028. So we're 2026 right now. between now and through 2027 is going to be a lot of work to do those designs and get everything ready to go and put out the bids so that way we are ready to go for 2028 construction. So that's we now have DW agreement and we have infrastructure in the ground. But again, we're we're moving a lot of moving parts and trying to keep everything going in the right place up on Country Club Road. You'll hear a lot about the brownfield. We're working on that supplemental phase two. We're gonna uh once we have that, we'll have a development agreement with DEW. And the way you implement a corrective action plan is by working with the developer. You can't do a corrective action plan without a project. So, we will now have a project and a corrective action plan. And we can work with DEW to overlap their work with cleaning the the uh remediating the brownfield conditions. that will take care of some of the brownfield. There are other pieces of brownfield that will remain in city property. We will have to negotiate with or sign contracts separately to clean up those other sites. And I'm going to have a really quick presentation after this to talk about more a little bit more about the brownfield. Um but this gives you an idea. We we've you can see how things start to stack up. We get this done then we can hand it to this. Um once we've got these pieces, you can see how they can kind of walk along. Um we can't do the cleanup till we have a a um a development agreement and we can't move to the next step till we have this one. So we have these. We will also be pursuing brownfield implementation money. Um specifically that'll probably go to some of the um cleanup of the city portion. Um, and then the CAP implementation will be 2029. And we'll get to why that's 2029 in a second. Um, because in the last section we have is the teal section talking about um tier 1A application. So part of our obligation to this whole process was for us to help to get this project uh out of act 250 um because it'll reduce costs. It's an expensive process. It's a timing time-consuming process. Um the CVRPC plan, which you've heard a lot about, that is going to be approved at the end of 2026 and uh that will allow us in 2027 to apply for tier 1A application. So you can start to see how things are starting to stack up for DEW housing project. So in 2026 and 27, they'll be doing additional studies, market studies, traffic studies, a bunch of other things that they're going to have to refresh on their side to make sure they're ready to go to design. Um they would then work in 27 and 28 on design and permitting and these are some dates that are kind of pulled out of their application. Um we would put in an application in 27 or 28. they need to have enough of their project done or or or designed for us to be able to put in that application. So in that window, we would put in that chip application and they would be ready to go to construction in 2029. So you can start to see a little bit of a picture. If you can put all this in your head, you can see how all these little pieces are going so that way we can get the water and sewer up there in 2028. Um, the brownfield assessments are done. The tier 1A is done. Their design, they have done their design, they've done their permitting, they're ready to go. They can put shovels in the ground in 2029. Um, and that gives them 2029 and 2030, two years to complete phase one or at least to get the down street housing project that they proposed, which is the requirement for the grant. So, you can see how all the pieces kind of fit together. Um, we still have we're still working through to make sure there's something we've missed, something else that they're going to ask for in their development agreement that we have to build in. But we wanted to kind of give a sense of all the moving parts that the planning department and the manager's office will be working with you and with DEW on to make sure that we we keep checking the boxes as this is kind of clicking along. And along the long-term at the bottom, we still need to secure the rights for a second access to the site. So, this talks about we've talked about maybe going through Sabin's pasture. Um, that would be something we would have to be building in installing the traffic signal at Country Club Road in Route 2 if and when it's warranted. Um right now looking at what is in um the phase one, so the construction through 2030, it doesn't look like it would warrant a traffic light yet. We are going to do the engineering and prep the site for it. Whenever it's warranted, it will be done because it's going to be required to, but we just wanted to point out at some point in the long term that could come into play. Um and the the pump station. So, um, and I think I'll just jump really quick if you want into the brownfield discussion, then we could come back to the path if you want to. Um, so I just wanted to put out for the public and for you on the council. Um, just to see we we hear a lot about the mismanagement of the the brownfield pieces and so I just wanted to go through and show a number of maps. These are the test sites. All those yellow dots and red dots are all the sites that were tested. In this case, this was for arsenic. And you'll notice there are only a handful of little red circles that are in there. Those red circles are uh the greens of the former golf course. And that's arsenic. This is lead. You notice a lot of the same areas. This is mercury. And this is heptacchlor epoxide. So you'll notice they're all the same areas. And so what we wanted to make sure you understand when when you hear a lot about the brown fields um like uh we have these areas in there that are squares. Those are areas that were for the feast farm and were tested. And so you can see the feast farm has been tested. um and they did not test positive. They had special testing that was done in those areas and those were also came back. Okay. When we talk about um or when you hear about we're exposing the public to stuff because we're burning the Christmas trees up there because we're burning Christmas trees on brownfields. These are the clean parts of the brown fields. Our work with the state says we can't do anything on those on those areas that are the greens. Um we need to wait until we can get a corrective action plan for those these other places. We have uh approval for soil what's called soil management plan. We still have to report to the brownfield division. We still have to go and contact them before we do any work and we get approval. But it's a it's an a faster approval process because these areas have already been cleared. So a number of things that we do burning Christmas trees, we put in the water lines. There are a number of things that have happened. I just want to make sure it was clear to you that this is why we say it's on the greens because you can see how many places were tested and came back clean and only the places that were in the green um have those contamination issues. And so we are in the planning department. We are working with CBRPC. They have experience in brownfields. I have experience in brownfields. And Stone really has experience in brownfields. The the folks we're working with right now are very very experienced. And uh yeah, we are in conformance with the requirements um for the brownfield cleanup. So we just wanted to take a moment to kind of make sure we this this comes up a lot. You hear a lot about it. I just wanted to at least come back and say this is these are the areas. Once you see on the map and you see how many testings were done and how many are clean, you kind of get a sense of oh, okay, there actually was quite a lot of work done to make sure that people were going to be safe. And I'll leave it to uh turn it back over to you, Mr. Mayor. >> Yeah, thank you for that. That's that's a lot of clarification, and I know I' I've had these questions. I'm sure many others have, too. Are there other questions from council? Um, >> uh, councelor Doyle. >> Yeah, Mike, thanks a lot for doing this. I really appreciate the communication on it and the clarity that you're providing. You know, another thing that we kind of hear a lot about and that I don't really understand is there, you know, the CBDG DR funding is HUD money and the idea of a choice limiting action and I I there's just so many things here that have to get done. How do you how do you avoid choice limiting actions or what is a choice limiting action in this context and how are you kind of navigating that situation? >> I mean a lot of these we we have to follow through with um the folks at commerce and community development ACCD to make sure that they're everything is following the right process. Uh it is a complicated process because we have it's very clear the rules for the infrastructure project. Putting those utilities underground under the under route two and under country club road is really clear because that's where the money is being spent. Where the rules get gray is we have to build these units to meet the housing requirement for those funding which is on a different site but they're not getting any money from the federal government for that. So there's this large gray area um that we just have to keep going back and checking with. Um we applied with a very clear description of our project. we're going to do this infrastructure and we're going to build this housing and um they are very aware of our process. They pay attention to what's going on. Um so we rely a lot on their legal advice and legal uh opinions. So we check in with them quite a bit to make sure that when something comes up um like signing a development agreement with DEW, we will go back and check with them to go through and say is this an issue, is it not? you they've known about it and they haven't raised it as an issue, but sometimes it's important to go and put it right on their plate and say, "We want you to say it's not an issue. Uh it doesn't look like it should be an issue because what matters is this expenditure. You can't expend federal dollars." Well, we're not expending any federal dollars to build that housing. So, it shouldn't, but again, we double check with them. Same with the environmental assessment. um with the environmental assessment that we put out the RFP for um we had two very different proposals that came back and we just put that up and say all right these should have been very similar. We're asking for the exact same product with the exact same federal requirements. They should be very similar. They're not. We send them to the federal we send them up to the state. They review it. They come back to us and say this one's correct on this one. This one's correct on this one. you should republish this to make sure that every all the parties have the same information and can have a fair, you know, process. So, we work a lot very closely with the with the with our partners. >> Councor, >> thanks. Thanks, Mike. >> Oh, >> no, he's he's done. He said thank you. Go ahead. >> Okay. Uh so we talk about um the demand from community to be involved um this process. So some people were talking about maybe having some kind of forming a community group. Is there any plan about this >> for which part? uh for the development agreement process especially they wanna be include um they want to be included with the what types of housing they want to see there. So the development agreement process is your council's um process and you had appointed a committee to work on that and I think >> yeah I mean I'm happy I'm happy to jump in there there will be a number of public touch points throughout all of these steps maybe not >> maybe not design and permitting but most of these steps will have public touch points on them for example the development agreement will come back to you all for adoption to which it will be in the you know available to the public for public review for them to weigh in and provide you all with comments on. Similarly, um there are steps in this process that have to go to the development review board which I imagine will have a number of public hearings not these projects are much bigger than just a single hearing in front of that board for them to participate in. Similarly, you know, people are weighing in on the tier 1A process and how that's affecting Country Club Road at the state land use review board um as well. And then, you know, all these little things about even who we choose in in bids, um which firms we go with construction, like those are all publicly available for members of the public to weigh in and provide input um to you all on. And so there will be touch points with you and what's what are not um decision points will be conversations in like work session um presentations like this where we're bringing you back the design elements and saying does this make sense um for this project. So that's where I think a lot of the clarity on all this for the public and their opportunities to help iterate the process come in. >> Yeah, thank you. So I was asked this question that's that's why I'm asking as my said oh you know you appointed a um committee or whatever people to do this uh and some of the residents were asking why like not we are being included. So maybe it will be good um to put in your weekly um report uh Kelly just like this is the steps and in this steps we want to hear from you something like that. >> So some clarification will be great to provide to the community members who will be interested in and um approach to me and um ask um what can they do? Thanks. And I'll just also say, I mean, there's um there's a lot of interest in the success of this project. You know, Mike and I participated in a um kickoff meeting with various agencies of the state who wanted to hear, you know, essentially this like where are you at in these processes? What are you meeting these standards required for the grant? Please explain how and when. Um, you know, so there's there's a lot of collaboration on making sure that we are getting all of the boxes correctly checked, making sure that we're vetting any clarifying questions with them. So, it's um, you know, just just to sort of let you know that those conversations are also happening as this process is ongoing and there's really a lot of broad interest at the state level in seeing that this is a success. >> Thank you. Thank you. Other questions or comments from councel? Is there anyone in the public that would like to comment on this agenda item? >> Mr. Whitaker, you have two minutes. >> You have two minutes. So, it's clear that you want to stick your head in the sand and uh not untangle the misrepresentations you just heard and you've been hearing. Uh the FEMA the NEPA trigger was the 500,000 we received from FEMA back in 2024 for not putting the trailers up there. So since then, every soil disturbance that we've allowed to happen, uh, we've let Alex run rough shot over that property with excavators and he dug in a greenhouse recently after explicit warning that would derail. So Mike just represented that the other areas were clean. No area of this has been deemed clean. Those were the areas that were tested in the testing methodology they did was take 30 samples, blend them together and then measure the contaminants in that. That's not how you are able to define any area where you can grow food. So the phase 2 report came back. It didn't say any area was clean. It said you need to do more testing before you do anything. And we ignored that. We we've been growing food and feeding it to the seniors. And I think that's unconscionable. Uh ACD explicitly put in the grant agreement that no developer agreement can be signed until environmental clearance is gained, which is so Stone Environmental wrote to Mike Miller and said, "We're not going to get this brownfield cleaned up until 2030." But that was based on testing going on this past spring. And we there is no work plan yet for Stone's next phase of work. Once the work plan is done, it takes another 30 days with EPA and another 60 days with environmental conservation before that work can even continue. So that work is now in 20 27. And if Stone's prior schedule said 2030, that logically says that we're not getting clearance till 2031. So the whole barcode graph is a bunch of either madeup mis intentionally misrepresenting or just misunderstandings. >> Thank you for your comments, Mr. Whitaker. >> The dot. >> Thank you. Thank you. Your your time is expired. >> And you really don't want to know. >> Thank you. >> All right. Is there any other member of the public that would like to speak on this topic? Anyone on Zoom? All right, public comment is closed at this time. There's no motion to be made. There's no decision to be made. Any final questions from councel. >> Okay. Thank you, Mr. Miller, for your presentation. Thank you, Mr. Whitaker, for your counter presentation. Uh, Mr. Doyle, councelor Doyle, did you have your hand up? Go ahead before we move on. >> I did. I just want I just wanted to really briefly just kind of echo something that Kelly was talking about. you know that a project like this that has multiple federal streams uh of funding in it is going to have like numerous checks and balances right it's a complicated project there's going to be lots of pivot points and turns along the way but you know I think with you know when I worked at USDA we used to say you know people used to say oh federal funding comes with so much red red tape I I preferred to call it robust robust federal oversight right and that provides assurance to the public that a job's going to get done and it's going done right um because of those folks at either at ACCD or at the agencies that they're working with at the federal level that are providing that level of oversight. And so I I think just for the public that has concerns about this, they should recognize the fact that it is a complicated project, there's definitely going to be changes, but I also think we can have a degree of confidence in our in our staff that are clearly experienced in this in this realm and in the partners that we're going to be working with that are going to be holding us accountable. >> All right. Thank you for that. All right. And with that, we'll wrap up this this item. We'll move on to item number 12, which we did not pull from the agenda. So, uh, Councelor Sheridan, do you want to tee this up for us? >> Sure. Um, I am going to pull this from the agenda. Um, what happened was two members of the advisory board approached me to put this on a council agenda. So I do that when citizens do approach me and when the rest of the board found out they said we have not voted on this as a board and they asked that it be discussed in their next meeting and they can vote on it as a board. So their next meeting will not be till like September 11th or something like that. >> All right. The board you mean the advisory board at the senior center. >> Yeah. Thank you. of which I'm your council representative. And um so I'm going to pull this at this point. It probably will be back sometime in late September depending on what they vote. So at this time I'm they they didn't show up so we're not ready to move forward on this. So >> okay, >> we can save some time. >> Great. Thank you. And in any case, I don't think there was a decision point for us to be able to make tonight in any any rate. So, we've held that that item. We're moving on now to item number 13, committee appointments. It's 9:33. Um, and um there we have two committee appointments. There are two vacancies and two applicants. Um, I wish that their names were a little bit easier for me to pronounce. So, I'm going to apologize in advance if I say these names incorrectly, but first up, and we'll take these one at a time. Um, does do you need to add anything to this, manager Curry? We just move right into it. Okay, great. So, um, we for the public art commission, which if we recall from the I think it was the last meeting, there were there are seven spots, six were filled, one was vacant. And so, um, if we were to appoint Jenny Bellakovski, hopefully I got that right, Jenny B, to the public art commission, then we would have a full roster. Um I don't see her in Zoom. Um if you are there, you know, give us some indication, but we've also reviewed the application. Does council have any clarifying questions? Okay. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak on this topic? >> What is the term? >> What's that? >> The term. >> Oh, what is the term? >> Is it in there? >> Two years. If there's no discussion and no public comment, um I would entertain a motion. >> The appointment of Jenny B. >> Okay. >> The public arts. >> Okay. So, we have an appointment and a second is second. >> Is there uh any discussion or debate on this topic? >> Sorry, I'm flipping between windows to try and keep my eyes on everyone. Um all right. All in favor of appointing Jenny Berlotsski to the public arts commission say I >> I I >> any opposed any abstensions >> I'm sorry I >> okay uh councelor Castell is going to abstain for understandable reasons we'll take a roll call uh councelor con >> yes >> councelor Sheridan yes >> councelor Alfano yes councelor Brown >> yes >> councelor Doyle >> yes >> sorry I skipped right over you Paul councelor Castello >> abstain all right we have five yeses and one abstension Thank you, Jenny, for your willingness to serve. Um, we also have for the complete streets committee, uh, Mary D. Do you do you know how to say this? Again, I apologize for not knowing how to pronounce these names, but um, again, we have there are nine seats and there's currently one vacant seat like the public arts commission. This would round out the the roster. Is are there any clarifying questions or concerns from council? Is there anyone from the public that would like to comment on this agenda item? Is there a motion to appoint? >> So moved. >> Okay. Uh councelor Sheridan moves to appoint uh Mary. Okay. Councelor Alfano um seconds. Any discussion or debate on this topic? We'll go straight to roll call vote. I'll start with you. Councelor Castello, >> abstain. >> Abstain. Councelor Alfano, >> yes. >> Councelor Sheridan, >> yes. >> Councelor Conn, >> yes. >> Councelor Doyle, >> yes. >> Councelor Brown, >> yes. >> We have five yeses and one abstension. Thank you very much, Mary, for your willingness to serve on the complete streets committee. Thank you everyone. Um, any other comments before we move on? See twitching. No. Okay, we are moving on to item number 14, the homelessness update. It is currently 9:37. Manager Curry. >> Yeah. >> Um, okay. So, I am actually relying on some of Matt Jac's work on this. Um, in the intervening week, I was on vacation, but there are two things I just would like to bring an update on. And um one you know was reported in the paper recently at Jesse Jacobs building that is on the corner of um state in Bailey that he is looking to lease. Uh Capstone has taken in a potential interest in investigating and exploring whether that could be a viable location for a um 247 uh shelter space. And there's a lot of moving pieces with this because it was damaged in the flood and um Capstone is investigating kind of what the upgrade costs would be and remediation costs would be relative to that. Um they have concerns just about their funding model and so what they've they're asking the city to explore or consider which is very premature at this point. and I don't have um a presentation for you to think through at this time, but is whether the city would participate by holding a master lease that they would then sublet from in order to account for the fact that their funding is um generally comes through for one-year periods for a part portion of the year. So, the way that we're kind of starting to talk about that is, you know, could their funding be enough to stretch out over the 12-month period, um, even though they only get paid out for it in um, seven months out of the year to then cover, you know, the expense of a master of of a sub lease from us as a master lessor. So, there's there's just a lot happening there, but it's, you know, it could potentially be a good spot if we can overcome some of these hurdles. We're trying to figure out what would the sort of critical failure paths be if there are things we just can't can't overcome. Um Matt has identified that there is $100,000 potentially in our housing revolving loan fund which is a fund that's separate from the housing trust fund that has been you know repaid from projects that we have supported over the years and is potentially sitting there to support something like this. Um, so again, we're exploring this right now. We'll come back with a a baked um plan and proposal for you um to start considering should the pieces start to fall more appropriately into place. Um, additionally, you know, as as you know, we have created conditions for operation of the e an emergency winter shelter downstairs again this year, but have not received any requests to do that at this point yet. There are still conversations going on with um the churches on whether they will be able to host that again. So, I'm, you know, we're coming up on fall. I'm I'm, you know, Matt and I are very interested in not having this take everybody by surprise. And so, we continue to um press on and probe those conversations as well. Um so, that's about it for my update at this point. >> Any questions from council? Any comments from the Oh, councelor Cohen, go ahead. >> Just a general question. Have you or the city staff uh observed any change improvement after doing all this work and we are having updates almost every two weeks. >> Yeah. Um I do think that there is a stronger um collaboration among partners than there was previously in the past. You know, we're having regular conversations. It's not things are not falling off for a month or months at a time and then trying to pick back up and reconvene groups. So I think that that has been a strength. I think the situation table continues to be um a meaningful collaboration where you know folks can get referred for support and assistance. Um you know we have not had as many encampments reported um this summer than I think we did last summer or maybe that were expected this summer. Um I think that we are hearing that there are some new folks to town that are becoming on the radar. Um if you read the you know the police um press releases that come out like they are definitely dealing with kind of a heightened level of violent interactions with um some of the unhoused with some serious assaults that have happened. Um so I I think maybe in some ways yes but not in total probably. >> Can I add one more thing? So uh if it doesn't take too much time maybe quarterly uh checking like every three or four months checking with uh homeless uh community and also >> downtown businesses >> if they see or feel or observe any changes good or bad. So we can just like go back and check our updates or all the work you've been doing. >> Um I think it is important to hear from them. >> Yeah. >> And not like we are doing all the things then a year later oh but actually if you could do this like it will no like every three or four months how is it going do you need anything different? I think it will be great if you if you could. >> Yeah. No I appreciate that. Thank you. >> Councelor Sheridan. >> Uh I'd like to address. >> Yes. Go ahead, please. >> Um, first of all, we did have a um homeless committee meeting and um I did bring up the violent episodes. Um in a span of less than a month, we had I think seven pretty violent episodes. Uh one did not involve homeless. Um five involved homeless on both sides. to involve either a homeless person administering the violence or getting it. So, and I brought this up and I want to say that I don't think most of the committee stands behind a comment that was made by one of the committee members that well, this is to be expected. And personally, I don't expect violence just because you're homeless or just because you're drunk or just because you're high. I don't think those are excuses for violence. And so, um, I would just like to say that I don't think the majority of the people felt that way in the committee. I mean, we don't like violence. It happens, but it was a bad month. And so, I wanted us to talk about it. And that, you know, it was sad that that was a comment. The other thing is I went to the MBA meeting where half of their topic was on this and they definitely said that you know there are issues with hurting their businesses and their their thoughts were we need more police officers. They were proposing at least five more to stretch it out to 22. So I went to Tanya just to kind of get some feel for that and I said it's got to be at least half a million dollars. >> Tanya Chambers the HR director you're talking. >> Yes. And um sorry and she said oh no you're talking much more than half a million. So you know it's it's an expensive fix if we go that. I mean but that's kind of what they're looking for. just to let you know it it doesn't mean that that's what we have to do or anything like that but they're seeing the violence and um it is you know it was a I mean yes it was a hot month and heat like that that we had can tend to make tempers rise and everything but again I do not feel like homelessness is an excuse for violence >> I'll just had without disputing anything that you've just said also being at the MBA meeting for sure um the things that you said were voiced by businesses were voiced by some businesses but the business community themselves like the community at large doesn't all line up behind a single view. So there are definitely folks that were the one thing that I did hear that was expressed and I'm not trying to speak for the business community but the one thing that I did hear that I felt like was not disputed was that um the behaviors that we see on the streets do have an economic impact on our businesses and that is their livelihood and that is their their reason for being there and so sometimes that is challenging. They didn't all agree on what was the root cause or what were the solutions, but um for sure some of the folks did did um suggest that more policing would be desirable in their eyes for whatever that's worth. Um other counselors or manager >> I just might comment you know some sometimes those opinions that form really take hold. You know, like I have I continue to hear about concern of using the bike path and you know, we we had a camp on the bike path very far down, but we have otherwise, you know, for the majority of this summer not received a lot of complaints about um impactful activity happening on the bike path. So, I I think that sometimes when an experience really takes root, it's hard to overcome that. Um, and it just maybe has to be part of the larger like part of how we move beyond this or how we demonstrate successful strategies is getting people back on the bike path, you know, and showing that it is a viable place to go and feel safe to use. >> Yeah, I'm there every day. Um, just manager Curry, while you're talking about what's recently been going on, we also hear some, you know, that people are being told to move along. Are are there what has been the situation with encampments being being taken down in the in the recent weeks and months? We have had one recently where um an encampment was under the Granite Street Bridge and you know had made connection with Street Outreach and there was a lot of trash like flowing over and into the bridge and so um those folks did move along and we had to go clean up what was left behind. >> And what was the cost to clean that up? >> I don't know. I think it's I think it's $800 a visit. Okay. All right. So, it's it's not as though people by the hundreds are being moved along. Okay. Um, any other questions from council? Any member of the public like to speak on this topic? Mr. Whitaker. >> Steve Whitaker. Again, I I marvel at some of the comments that I hear because from the homeless folks perspective, the behaviors in this room have added to their hopelessness and desperation that the impactfulness, you know, buzzwords that the absolute would neglect. For three years, we've done nothing to restore these two basement bathrooms. A portaotty doesn't cut it out back for people who have to wash themselves so they don't get diseased or or chafed. And this and no one wants to discuss how many people have we displaced and on what authority did we do that? What ordinance supports displacing people off of public land? You don't have one. You just are lying about it. Okay. What do you Why don't you want to talk about requiring Kelly to write that plan that says the city plan she will write? Okay, read the city plan. She will write a plan that provides safe places to camp and public hygiene. How How do we just keep not talking about that? You know, it's you're watching the clock. You just want to Yeah, >> that's part of my job. >> I look forward to your departure from the council because we'll start to get things done. >> Thank you for your comments, Mr. Twitter. Anyone else from the public like to speak on this topic? Okay. Um, anything else from council? All right. We're going to close this topic. We're going to move on to item number 15, the consent agenda. It is 9:50. If anyone's wondering why I keep saying that is because a lot of folks are watching this on on playback, there may be transcriptions or AI. So, I just say those words into the record to make it easier for everybody to find data that they're looking for. So, on to the consent agenda. Um, no one requested to pull anything off of the consent agenda. I would like it if we would take it formally as a motion to to adopt a consent agenda and do it that way rather than by unanimous consent especially because uh councelor Costello is brand new and has unlikely had a chance to review all of these items in the details. Um do we have such a motion? >> I'll move the consent agenda. >> Okay. Councelor Sheridan moves to accept the consent agenda. Is there a second? >> Second. >> Okay. Is there any debate or discussion on any of these items? Seeing none, do we take public comment on the consent agenda? We haven't been. Is there any a member of the public that would like to comment on the consent agenda? >> It has happened. >> Seeing none, um we're opening and closing the opportunity for that. Uh all in well, we'll go straight to a we'll go to a roll call. I'll start with you, Councelor Con. Um how do you vote on accepting the consent agenda as proposed? Yes. >> Councelor Sheran. >> Yes. >> Alfano. >> Yes. >> Uh Castello. >> Abstain. Um Councelor Brown. >> Yes. >> Councelor Doyle. >> Yes. >> All right. Five yeses, one abstension, no nos. The consent agenda passes. >> Can you please bring that to me? >> Um thanks everyone. And now we're on to item number 16. It is 952. Item number 16 is the city manager performance review. Um, it was proposed that we enter executive session if there u we're does anyone need to tee this thing up? Kelly, do you want to say anything about it? Probably not. This is where Adrian would have said things. So >> so it's part of the um performance evaluation process that you all adopted in July um which included you know the metrics that you would like to be tracking and the timelines of which to have a review. Um this is the sixmonth review I started on February 17th and so few days shy of that. Um so that is the point of this today. We look forward to your feedback. >> Great. Is there is there a motion to enter executive session for this? It is a personnel matter. We do not need a finding on this. This would be very similar to the executive session that we um entered to discuss the appointment for council one seat. If anyone would like, I believe it I would entertain a motion to enter executive session to discuss the city manager performance review pursuant to VSA 313A3. Is there such a motion? >> So moved. >> All right. Is there a second? >> I'll repeat it all. So I I think that'll work. >> Second. >> All right. Second. So the motion is to enter executive session to discuss the city manager's performance review pursuant to 1 VSA 313A3. Um all in favor say I. >> I. >> I. Any opposed? >> Any abstensions? Unanimously passes. At 9:54 we are in executive session. Should we use the same Teams meeting link as before or I was I'm curious about this. Using Zoom, are we unable to just make a breakout room and only invite the participants? Oh, and we Sorry. Do we need to say that we're inviting the city manager into this meeting? >> We do. >> Um, sorry, it's getting late. Somebody refreshed me on how we need to do this. >> Uh, you I guess if you want to be technical, you >> we need to redo it. >> You could move to amend after the fact. That's allowed under Robert's rules. Okay. You could move to amend the previous motion to >> So I will move to amend the previous motion to include city manager Curry. >> Okay. Um, is there do we need we need seconds and votes on this, right? So, is there a second to accept this amendment? >> Second. >> All right. All in favor say I. >> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstain? All right. So, amended. Um, and all right. Now, at 9:55, we're going into executive session. All right. Right, it's 10:37. We're back in the room. Um, we need a motion to exit executive session if we're to do so. >> Move. >> All right, we have a motion. Is there a second? >> Second. >> All right, we have a second. Um, all in favor of exiting executive session, say I. >> I. >> I. I. Um, did we lose Ben? Uh, councelor Doyle, are you still here? I know he's out of town. We We may have lost him for this. So, any opposed? Any abstain? Okay. So, with five votes, four and one person absent, we're out of executive session. And I think I might have said this, it's 10:38. All right. We're moving on to other business. Is there any other business? Great. City Council reports. Uh we'll start with you, Councelor Con, if that's okay. >> Yeah. Um so I just want to share a couple of things. Um first thing uh when there was a water um incident at M Street and Evelyn uh announced it on forum, I receive very positive feedback. People really like it because she explained what happened, what is the next thing and when uh more public uh information is coming. So they really like and they told me uh they are really grateful and I'm thanking to Evelyn for that was very nice to um hear that. And the second thing I was uh at the city hall um yesterday and I know we have our ADA report and it shows lots of things we are doing but I observed that uh people who were using wheel wheelchair which one of them was the lieutenant governor candidate they couldn't really um use their wheelchairs because of the cement structure there are I don't know what's happened maybe because of the weather or other things there are gaps so it was really difficult for them and they want to go to behind to use the accessible like door and everything but they have to come to the um sidewalk to do that and it was so difficult and I was a couple of time I thought should I help them but you know they are strangers so I don't know what to do and I was um recommended one of the uh people who use a wheelchair, they want me walk down with them and record. So if I do this make I can invite you and we can see like which is working which sidewalls are not working like because when we look at in a bigger picture we see that everything is going well which is great and we do a lot to do things better but when you are using your wheelchair it really it changes everything for you. So if I decided to do that little video thing, I will invite and whoever is interested in you can join me and then we can just like see how we can improve more. So that's all from me. Thank you. >> Thank you, Councelor Sheridan. Well, I'll just mention I you know the C Center Vermont Regional Planning Commission had their had their kind of dinner and talk that you were at Mark and Carrie was at for a while. I stayed for the whole thing. I found it interesting to hear what the problems are in the small communities compared to us. Big difference. Uh they did a nice job and there was talk for them to do that semi in I enjoyed it for the second straight year. >> Great. Thank you, Councelor Alfano. >> No, no report. >> No report. All right. Uh councelor Brown. >> Yeah. Thanks. Um I um a little while ago, Mayor, you sent out an email about uh VLCT was looking for people to serve on their policy committee. and I responded to you and I said that I that'd be interesting. And so, um, I ended up following through on that and I am now on the policy committee for the Vermont League of Cities and Towns. And what that entails is spending the next like six weeks or so um, looking at h the past legislative agendas and the drafts that the staff have come up with and giving input and helping to refine those. So, this it's um and they're we're just going one section at a time. I would love to hear from folks if anybody has any input or any thoughts they want to share about what should be in there. We had one meeting where we talked about I forget what they call it, but it's basically like sort of operational stuff and um making adjustments to public records laws was uh very important to everybody there as I know it is to folks here. And then uh and uh so I'd be happy to share what the the drafts are that are coming up, the sections that are coming up if anyone is interested and um just you know pass on any of your thoughts to the rest of the committee. >> Thank you. Um councelor Doyle. >> Um thanks Kerry. I just want to say I think that's awesome. Like thank you so much for doing that work. It's um super important. Just also really want to welcome Paul. Paul, thanks for your leadership here. appreciate you stepping up to serve. Um the only other report item that I have is just um people might have heard about it if they were interested that um the 87 State Street Local Development Corporation did place a winning bid on the federal building at 87 State. Um we are still waiting for GSA uh Government Service Administration to accept that bid, but we don't have any reason to believe that they won't. And um you know what that means is that this local development corporation, which is a nonprofit that Kelly and I both serve on, um will really just have an opportunity to kind of shape what happens to that site. Uh starting with doing a real assessment of the environmental contamination that we know is in the building and um trying to understand what the cleanup costs would be and what a path forward could be that could really benefit the community and get that property uh operating in its highest and best use for the community. So, it's a really long road ahead, but um really exciting uh step that uh you know, I think we have an opportunity to do something great in the city. >> Right. Thank you, Councelor Doyle. Um clerk's report. >> Yeah, I just want to thank the election volunteers. That was one of the smoothest elections, our yesterday election that I have been involved in in a long time. I even got to I mean I'm running around like a chicken with my head cut off, but I I I got to do so and have fun at the same time. So that doesn't usually happened. It was It was terrific. Um yeah, that's it. >> Okay. Thank you. City manager report. >> Try to quick. Um so as you know we are in the throws of construction season with public works with a number of paving projects and um we're waiting for the final project calendar for the launch of the lower state street project. And so this is the one where we're um attempting the pipe bursting um to replace those pipes down there. And so we will keep you all informed. We definitely have some lessons learned about building in communication. I think as part in further ahead from DPW as part of the project planning um because today the water boil or the water shutdown notice was did not give a lot of heads up time and so I think we can build in better timing for that. Um and what else we are um moving forward on kind of the city hall um rebuild project. So, we have received our RFPs for the consultants that are going to help us shepherd through that grant management and um design process. And so, we've narrowed it down to the one that we're going to offer the contract to. That will come back to you all obviously for approval. Um we are having a check-in with our design team who have done the initial design phases um Bob Stevens and Associates um tomorrow to kind of continue moving that forward. So that's exciting and there will definitely we'll come back with something similar to what Mike presented with the city hall project with kind of the calendar ahead of the different milestones that we will be moving towards and tracking. um you know the actively working with the um recruitment team for the police chief and so I just want to heads up if you haven't heard from them yet they are reaching out to counselors to get input um to help develop the position profile for that and I hope you all have the chance to speak it's it will probably be Julie Scribner that calls you Paul I will add your contact to that list if you don't mind. Um they're seeking as much input as possible. So that's that is great. And then as you know we have had a resignation at the senior center. Um and so we are figuring out strategies right now to fill in for coverage for that director position. And um a lot of staff have put their heads together with the advisory council to come up with a plan in the immediate interm um keep the building staffed and functioning and launch the registration for fall programs. And then one thing I just wanted to sort of put in to get the wheels spinning with each of you all um is I I want to propose potentially finding time to do a separate meeting for a mini retreat around strategic plan check-in um to you know you did a multi-year plan. I think it would be good to check in on that and where we're at with the goals. if there's any additional goals that we want to add into that or amend or edit for the next fourth coming year in advance of budget. And then also spend some of that time talking about the local options tax and um policy that this board um wants to create around how those revenues will be dedicated. So, I will follow up in our one-on-one meetings with each of you all, but to get input on that so we can help shaping shape a productive conversation around those things. Um, and then actively trying to fill all of our vacant positions. And there's some great opportunity there. So, I will leave it at that unless there's questions on anything I didn't raise from anyone. >> I'd just point out that there are five Wednesdays in September. So, if we're looking for a place to add an extra that September may be a good opportunity. >> Okay. You >> um I So, to sort of pull back to sort of where we started from at the top, um thanking people for their abil for their willingness to step up and also just sort of celebrating our town. Um, there is a ribbon cutting for Cornerstone Caregiving tomorrow at 4 and I was planning to be there, but I have a conflict and cannot. So, if there's anyone available to go, I know that they would appreciate any council, you know, or city presence just to just to be there in in support of new businesses opening. Um, I missed the Vulcan Gym one, which was this past Saturday. But as I'm learning, you know, council doesn't have a lot of power. The mayor has even less. The one thing we can do with no permission necessary is to just cheerlead and find reasons to celebrate in town. So, that's that's been a good part of my job. I we uh Mr. Whitaker told us that Mr. Bellini took a fall the back steps. So Dave, if you're listening, wish you a wish you a get well soon, a speedy recovery. Thinking of you. I also want to thank uh Paul Castello for stepping up and filling in this role. But I also especially want to thank Keith and Megan and Shawn who we did not see it at this time, but just that that willingness to serve, give of their time and their energy for no personal gain and just benefit to the community at large is something that we really need. So I really appreciate the three of you stepping up. Um, also want to say uh congratulations to everyone who came out on top in yesterday's uh primaries, but also say again a special thank you for the folks who put in all of the energy that it takes to run a campaign um that were not successful in this bid. Your efforts are also very much appreciated. And I am talking to you Palin. I'm talking to Alli Richards. I'm talking to Ryan Mccclure. talking to Gabe Lachines. These are the folks that were on various tickets here that did not prevail but we know did put in a lot of effort and so thank you for your willingness again. Um and thank you Kelly for doing such a great job and um and leading our city. We've just had a review. We won't go into it much but I just want to say thank you again. All right. And um with that, unless there is an objection, we are going to adjourn this meeting. Seeing no objections, this meeting of city council is adjourned at 10:51 p.m. on Wednesday, August, what is it? 12th, 2026.