City Council

27 WEST ALLEN STREET WINOOSKI, VERMONT 05404 (802) 655-6410 CITY OF WINOOSKI (802) 655-6414 (fax) JESSIE BAKER CITY MANAGER MAYOR SETH LEONARD COUNCILOR ERIC COVEY sleonard@winooskivt.org DEPUTY MAYOR BRIAN CORRIGAN CITY COUNCIL COUNCILOR NICOLE MACE COUNCILOR BRIAN SWEENEY bcorrigan@winooskivt.org Agenda Monday, October 2, 2017 6:00 P.M. CLAIRE BURKE COUNCIL CHAMBER I. Call to Order II. Pledge of Allegiance III. Agenda Review IV. Public Comment V. Consent Agenda a. Approval: City Council Minutes of September 18, 2017 b. Approval: Payroll Warrants as of 9/10/17-9/23/17; Accounts Payable Warrant as of 09/29/2017 VI. City Update VII. Council Reports VIII. Regular Items a. Approval: Resolution: Small Business Saturday – H Carrington b. Approval: Event Permit Application- Festival of Pumpkins/City Halloween Event – H Carrington c. Discussion: Consideration of Engineering and Planning in Advance of a Potential Spring Bond Vote for Main Street Streetscape Project and a Pool Facility – J Baker d. Approval: FY19 Goal Setting – J Baker e. Approval: VLCT Policy Positions – J Baker IX. Executive Session a. City Manager – Six Month Review to take place in Executive Session per 1 V.S.A. §313(a)(3) X. Adjourn MINUTES The Mayor called the meeting to order at 6:00 p.m. The meeting began with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Brian Corrigan. III. Agenda Review - No changes were made IV. Public Comment – No public was made V. Consent Agenda MOTION by Councilor Mace seconded by Councilor Covey to approve the consent agenda as presented. Voted and passed 4-0. VI. City Update The City Manager gave the following update: October 2, 2017 Winooski City Council  The City is pleased to welcome Januka Acharya (a-char-r-ia) as an accounting intern for the fall semester. She is a senior at Champlain College working toward her accounting degree. Previously she was a high school intern and the garden manager. - Events Winooski Wednesday, with the Devon McGarry Band, is this Wednesday in Rotary Park from 6 – 8 PM. Weather looks AWESOME drinks by Monkey, free meals for kids. Halloween: FOURTH ANNUAL HALLOWEEN IN WINOOSKI on Sat. Oct. 28, 2017. Hosted by the City of Winooski, Season’s Greetings, the Winooski Community Partnership, and the Haunted Mill VT. -The festival of pumpkins in Rotary Park - “The Haunted Mill” ($5 donation, teens and adults 13+) -Downtown trick-or-treating -Family Friendly fund @ VSAC - Gamelin Court Accident After repairing a water leak on Gamelin Court, a backhoe fell into a hole being filled. Staff went to the ER and has returned to work today Self-reported to VOSHA. Working with them to provide follow-up info. After Action this week to focus on system improvements VII. Council Reports Councilor Mace – Nothing to report Councilor Corrigan - Nothing to report Mayor Leonard said there was a Peace Rally in the middle of the Circle last week. Approximately 75 people attended and Sister Pat drove this. Winooski Coalition for Safe and Peaceful Community is now Winooski Partnership for Prevention. Winooski Community Partnership hosted a dog show yesterday and it was very well attended. He also said the Planning & Housing Commission are discussing the delivering of goals, table of contents and what looks like the municipal plan. VIII. Regular Items a. Approval: Resolution: Small Business Saturday Ms. Carrington said the City of Winooski has been invited to participate again this year in demonstrating our commitment to our small, local businesses by establishing November 25, 2017 as Small Business Saturday. Small Business Saturday draws national attention to the important role that small businesses play in boosting our economy, creating jobs, and maintaining our neighborhood character. The Mayor read the following Resolution. See attached. MOTION by Councilor Corrigan seconded by Councilor Sweeney to approve the Resolution Establishing November 25, 2017 as Small Business Saturday as presented. Voted and passed 4-0. b. Approval: Event Permit Application – Festival of pumpkins/City Halloween Event Ms. Carrington said staff has received an even permit application for the annual Festival of Pumpkins and City Halloween event. Last year the Festival of Pumpkins was held in Rotary Park for the first time. The display of approximately 1,000 jack-o-lanterns lit in Rotary Park drew community members and visitors to our downtown. October 2, 2017 Winooski City Council  This year the City sponsored portion of the event will be co-located downtown at VSAC to further consolidate the event and our partnership. Staff recommends approval of the permit. Because the event is co-sponsored by the City, staff also recommends waiving the $200 Rotary Park use Fee. Mrs. Tipson said this is our 15th year. She said they have a good supply of pumpkins but we have to pick this weekend because the deer are feasting on them. She said it requires many volunteers. She will be posting a list on front porch forum. We will be carving on October 21 and October 22 from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. on Saturday and 9:00 a.m. until all pumpkins are carved. We will be placing the pumpkins on Saturday October 28, 2017 starting at noon. MOTION by Councilor Mace seconded by Councilor Covey to approve the Event Permit Application for the Festival of Pumpkins/City Halloween event as presented. Voted and passed 4-0. Mrs. Tipson also said in addition to the festival MWG would be hosting a Haunted Mill on Friday, Saturday and Sunday for teens 13 +. c. Discussion: Consideration of engineering and Planning in Advance of a Potential Spring Bond Vote for Main Street Streetscape Project and a Pool Facility. The City Manager said tonight is solely a discussion. We are not asking for decision points about anything. We feel as a team, we have two pressing emerging things happening that we felt an obligation to you. 1 We are being encouraged by multiply funders to put together what they are calling a transformational Main St. project. We are thinking about how we improve the total streetscape of Main St. as you enter the City down to the Rotary. It has seen a lot of development since form base code. The developers are seeing some conflict with the way the utilities lines currently are and there is a real need to improve the streetscape to signal the people coming in and out of the City. We are getting a lot of encouragement to move forward quickly with preliminary engineering to try applying for some grant deadlines that are coming up early in the spring. Concurrently we are hearing from the Pool committee a few meetings ago and we are hearing more from the commission and from others that we need to figure out how to move that conversation forward. To move that conversation forward we need preliminary engineering plans. Right now we have mapping, scoping plans which we cannot do true cost estimates. In order to move both of these projects forward, we have been having conversations on how we plan for that over the next couple of months. How much staff time do we have to dedicate to those efforts and how do we move forward bringing engineers on to do 30% design documents for both of those efforts and try and get to accurate cost picture and therefore recommend finance mechanism to you all either through grants, bond votes or both. We wanted to bring this to you tonight as a discussion item, and get your thoughts before we brought anything else to you for either actual vote for appropriation for funding for preliminary engineering. The Mayor said it is clear that we have a number of needs pressing before us. What I see is a real attempt to try to balance those expenditures to both support the growth and development. We need to be financially sustainable to continue the environment community feel and keep up with some of the growth that right now is proving to be a little more of a new challenge then we figured. At the same time there could not have been a clearer message sent from the community that the pool is an important priority as a community facility. This is a really an important part of Winooski’s future in terms of the overall community benefit. I think we have before us something that has budget implications for us to understand the fact that once we really send this down this road it is really an intensive project. It is a timeline that’ fair to say, aggressive. He said this involves a lot of communication from the five of us that we can communicate to the public. The City Manager added one more thing that is important to remember that we are not asking for any votes tonight, this is to get your thoughts and request for more information. We as a staff team heard a lot of interest in moving things forward, getting decision points, getting thing going and getting to construct and getting to funding options and we cannot do that without true cost estimates. Moving forward quickly with preliminary engineering does not necessarily obligate us to apply for any grant or take any bond vote or do anything like that. If we had preliminary engineering plans those can sit on a shelf and be ready when that grant opportunity presents itself. Those necessarily will not go out of date in the next 2 to 5 years. Even if we feel like as a community, we are ready to make that financial equipment. I still think there is a moment October 2, 2017 Winooski City Council  of opportunity to get to real recommendations about what these projects could look like and then potentially wait for a funding opportunity to present itself. The City Manager said to the Mayor’s point there is a lot of sequent here and many opportunities here for people to weigh in and for you all to make decisions. This is not just, will come to you next meeting with a vote and this it has done. Councilor Sweeney said he is definitely moving on to the pool engineering and rather get a pulse on the cost and with the Main St. transformation. My concern is the scoping and funding services. I do not want to put a lot of our money in and waste staff time and 2 to 3 months down the road they decide to go somewhere else. If we can get some preliminary commitments and some show of support around it and I am absolutely for it. Mr. Dreher said the power lines are a tiny portion of it. I think every time excavation happens along Main St. of any sort whether it be digging, trenching or new power line across, you are going to run into aging infrastructure cost. There is a lot of untouched sewer, water infrastructure. The buried surprises will be addressed, in the larger project; we would addressed in an efficient way and not piece meal. The City Manager said our team is conscious of this and if we can pull this off and get to preliminary engineering that lays out a financial path leveraging to us the State and Federal funds to offset the local cost to this. We end up doing this project that is signaling to developers that we are invested in this gateway corridor and also taking some of the cost that they could incur some of those risky cost off of their plate and on to the subsidize plates which means they can maximize the development on each parcel. One of the things we are seeing through what is coming in right now for permitting is that they are saying there is a big cost in moving the power line so we are only going to build two stories not three. I think right now we have a belief, but we want to go through these steps to test the assumption that some public commitment putting together that transformational project will maximize the development potential of that mile of road. Councilor Sweeney said if this development process moves forward I want to make sure as these things are coming back to us that we are getting the kind of options and has it affects the taxpayers either all run together or separately. I want to make sure we can get these options as we are going through this process as early as possible. I do not want to get to the end and feel like we are stuck on one channel. I also want to make sure we have it all together but also separate. The City Manager said if we bond together, there are a lot less overhead cost associated with that joint bond. There are also in this particular case advantages to other funding sources leveraging each other against each other, that is what we are hearing from the funding source partner that they have had proven success from the last couple of years doing this project and there are given credit. Councilor Sweeney asked if there would be upgrades done at the same time to support future buildings. Mr. Dreher said he is working on conceptual drawings and for example will account for power cabinets at regular intervals that would have capacity to hold all of the overhead structure. He said he has done projects like this before where we build to the capacity of the code. So the code has its maximum build out scenarios, the infrastructure would be able to handle that and then some. That would be the preliminary engineering study would put into a scope of work. Councilor Mace is having a hard time understanding the connection with the pool. Is there funding available for the engineering on the pool or is the new information about funding opportunities real about this Main St. project. The City Manager said the new information about funding opportunities is about the Main St. project. We have not heard the same kind of funding opportunities for straight up pool municipal infrastructure. Although, we will explore those as we have real cost estimates. Why we see these linked; 1- we think they are at similar places in their need to move forward and both of them need to get from conceptual ideas to preliminary engineering and then they are both needs that would require significant municipal match or payment and therefore a bond vote. Right now, they are moving at the same track and we need to think about them comprehensively and their impact to the City as Brian was suggesting. Instead of moving one without the other we thought it was important to move them at the same time so the council can make that political policy call about do we do them together, do we sequence them. What are the financial advantage points that we have at our disposal? We need to put that information before you at the October 2, 2017 Winooski City Council  same time. The funding opportunities to leverage local dollars with other dollars is really about the Main St project. Councilor Mace is worried about the potential competition for the pool or a nice Main St and the people have been talking about the pool for a year in a half. This is very new and I do not know if the community has weighed in on this vision for Main St. Mayor Leonard said he strongly believes that the community did participate in discussion about form base code. This is the vision that we set up and put in place. I think the streetscape has been well vetted more so than at this juncture than even parking or city hall project. The form base code process, we spent two years plus on prior to that you had a planning commission going back 6 years that were taking groups on walking tours and talking. These are all the components and years of work, that has gone into this and created that vision. It is our job to figure out how to execute it and how to make it happen. The City Manager said we have been having conversations publicly and you have not heard me talk about Main St. I think the other side of that though is that if we are a growing city going to support infrastructure like a new pool, community center etc. we have to have the strategic grand list growth we can possibly have to support that. One of the ways we try to do that is through these kind of street transformational projects. What we are hearing from our State and Federal partners is that again, they had proven success specifically in St. Albans and St. Johnsbury in the last couple of years doing these joint projects. They are getting a lot of praise from the State and Federal Funders for doing these by leveraging projects. The State funds are more secure and will likely continue; specifically these funds are allocated to the water, wastewater infrastructure. At the Federal level, they are talking about funds that are currently allocated so in the existing federal budget where there is some uncertainty that they will be there in the future. We have this moment of opportunity right now to go after funds that are already identified. Winooski has proven success in big project in the last decade. Ms. Carrington said in terms of the pressing needs for this it is not only about maximizing the grand list growth and we have the density and the vision the community was looking at. She also heard from a couple of developers talking about coming up with odd configurations and things like that to avoid utility lines so there is a lot of aesthetics that could happen if we do it piece meal as to proposed to providing the infrastructure. Councilor Covey has significant concerns with the Presidents soon to arrive infrastructure bill and much speculations has been put into the fact that it will actually result into a significant cutback to infrastructure funding potentially for municipalities, which would drastically affect our availability to leverage outside funding potentially in the future if we did. I think it is very important to be sensitive to the fact that this would have a significant impact on the tax base, but the grand list growth that would result in the infrastructure improvements along with it and that gateway. I do think that off sets that I do think it fits into that vision of moving forward with from base code. It has been said repeatedly that the community has been voiced around the pool and I do see there being a connection to the two of them as well outside of the administrative cost that we are avoiding by bundling. There is also the concept that both of these thing fit into this vision. Councilor Mace asked about the City Hall needs. The study they did seems to indicate this building was not updated and needed upgrading and we needed to be investing more or improving the Police Dept. Where do you see City Hall in terms of the needs this facility though that would be impacted by this in some way. Is that less of a priority if for you as you assess emerging priorities? The City Manager said there are some huge challenges with this building and space for the City. It is a reality of trying to pull off multiply big capital projects in the same time both from a financial standpoint. Being able to pull those off financially and with a tax base to support it, from a staffing project management standpoint is a reality and is a concern and a conversation. We had as a staff team abut are we okay pressing pause on a city hall discussion for a couple of years to advocate to move forward with a pool, Main St. discussion. What we came to was yes, we think from a staffing perspective is that if we could solve this Main Street utility challenge and really improve this gateway, this entry way and create a new space and put the pool back on the options for our October 2, 2017 Winooski City Council  community, this is more important immediately than solving our space needs in the next 2 to 3 years. Having said that I think if we are successful with this I think we would be coming back very quickly to the Council and the Community in year 2 to 3 of that project to start picking up that City Hall conversation again. Another challenge that we will be thinking about as we outline financial options for you all, is the impact to the O’Brien Community Center if we press pause on that conversation the challenge of the OCC continues and there will be a financial impact to that. That would be somewhat mitigated if we can successfully locate a childcare center there. We could have a better comprehensive use of the building, but there would be a cost impact to that and that would be in part what we would hope to layout for you as you make financial decisions about moving forward with either of these project or both of them. Yes to your point, the two projects deprioritize City Hall for us immediately. Councilor Covey said the amount of additional outside funding that we can leverage for the Main Street project is incentivizing to me. I think it would be a much different conversation if there were not that potential funding on the table. Councilor Corrigan’s concern is about changing Main St. How far do you think these funds are going to go? Does it get you to the circle, are we going to be able to reconstruct from top to bottom or are we going to end up piece meal it anyway and put ourselves in a bigger financial situation. The City Manager said the two big funders they spoke with are not interested in piece meal projects. She said if it is not 10 million dollars, we do not want to talk about it. They are really looking for a 10 to 15 million-dollar project from the City line down to the railroad bridge. Our hope is to be far away from piece meal. Councilor Corrigan asked how much of that one-mile stretch of road have we already done on the infrastructure stuff or slip lining and all the other things we allotted money for over the last few years. How much of this would be compromised and have to be replaced? The City Manager said she does not have the answer to that. Mr. Dreher said he is guessing not a whole lot; every piece of the surface is aging. Councilor Covey asked what our thoughts about sidewalk, transportation, bike lanes etc. are. The City Manager said we would be looking to hand the engineer who would do the preliminary engineering we would hand the transportation master plan, which speaks to the Main Street corridor in a number of different ways. Obviously pedestrian improvements, cross walks, bump outs narrowing the travel lane, bicycle lanes going downhill on Main St. and bicycle lanes going uphill on Weaver St. We have a lot of the initial thinking done through the transportation master plan. Mr. Dreher said any new infrastructure would mitigate storm water runoff concerns. Winooski would be the cutting edge in terms of that if Main St. would be transformed in to a storm water solving issue rather than promoting issue. It would be transformational in many ways. The Mayor said what has been laid out is the proposal to come forward next time to look a funding, some of the background work that needs to be done. Councilor Mace said she wants to make sure we do not lose site of the pool in the whole conversation. The City Manager said they would likely be separate engineering firms. She said Weston Sampson has already done a lot of work on the pool, so there is some interest in keeping them on board so they do not repeat work they have already done. We would bring on another firm to focus on Main St. project that would require engineers who can design water systems, paving systems and streetscape systems but they would run in parallel. The City Manager said very often bond votes are collections of projects. It would touch, water, wastewater and general funds but it is the same mortgage essentially that you are taking out against the money. She also said this is a very useful conversation to us. . d. Approval: FY19 Goal Setting The City Manager said at the last meeting you approved the FY19 budget schedule as presented by the Leadership Team. As we work to build the proposed budget over the next two months, there are key questions we would like you to consider: See attached. The City Manager said this is about what your ideas are. High level ideas for adds or cuts and what your guidance is to us and what kind of budget you would like to see delivered on December 4, 2017. The Mayor October 2, 2017 Winooski City Council  said he highly encourages this item will be a discussion and not an approval for a tax rate. The City Manager said the first step of the staff process is to provide to Angela, myself is a level services budget, and as a team, we get down to a net zero impact to the taxpayers. Councilor Mace said the process that we use to date works. It forces very difficult conversations, and potentially if it does not work, we need to know that. It does cause us to lay out what our priorities are. The Mayor said this is a chance for the Council to weigh in a lot earlier than typical. Typically, staff takes marching orders and comes back with a net zero impact budget. They make hard decisions themselves at the cutting board. There has already been so much thought and stress put into it. I think this is an opportunity for the Council to weigh in a little earlier in the process. The City Manager said these are hard conversations and we are building a budget 3months into a fiscal year with very little information. We will not have the rates for next fall. COLA does change significantly. I think what happens is when you don’t have this council conversation about where there is tolerance for adds reductions. Is that you get our priorities, and we will try an interpret those priorities based on share strategies and goals but its’ helpful to us to know where your deal breakers or what are your absolute haves, or there might be some room to talk. This guidance is useful to us as we go through those difficult conversations. Councilor Sweeney said he really wants to shoot for no increase to the tax rate. This should be the ultimate goal. I am going to keep on this and have very hard conversation; it will be a good exercise. Keep in mind there are other factors that are out of our control that are a burden on the same taxpayer, as the school and I do not know what is going to happen there as far as my priorities. The conversations that I’m willing to have are adds that contribute to the grand list growth, economic development things that are going to drive more money in to offset the money spent. I think we need to strategically look at any adds that may come to us is a monetary benefit to those extra expenses. Councilor Mace asked what index you use on the COLA, is that CPI. The City Manager said its CPI and it is August to August. Councilor Mace said this is the benchmark that makes a lot of sense to me. I think we are trying to become more competitive in terms of our compensation packages for our employees. I think we have made some phenomenal hires and I think that is the key to really getting a lot accomplished. I am definitely in agreement with Brian and appreciate the conversation we just had. I think we need to be strategic and the investments we make and they ought to be pointed toward growth and I think it needs to be both for everyone. My message is, I would like to see evidence of real strategic thinking both in terms of how were managing the resources we have aligned with the goals that we set for this year. The people that were hiring and asking to do specific pieces of the work and looking for identification of areas in which we have been making these investments and were not clear at what they are. I want to make sure that we continue to focus on the pool. The Mayor explained the CPI. Councilor Covey said he wants to make sure those area that need to be evaluated with that lens is incredibly important where as there are some areas that do not. Ex. Looking at an expense is this going to bring the City more economic value than that what we are spending. Is there a significant impact are there some problematic areas? Councilor Corrigan said his perspective is to look at our strategies and what are future entails here in the City. We want to try to hone in on its needs that are going to be developing that we are not quite aware of right now. I agree with everything that was said at this table. We are at that stage of the tipping point and what are we going to do as a community and can we in fact Police it, protect it and can we serve it. The Mayor said he is impressed with how much outreach we have done and how much we know the community desires are. It is because we spend many time asking people what they want and frankly, I think they answered us. I was proud we brought forward the low increase. We are also doing this because we understand there are capital projects and large items that we have outstanding. We have taken the time to incrementally build the staff back up to a level that I understand is not ideal. There will never be enough October 2, 2017 Winooski City Council  people here to do all the work that could be done. It is just not possible. My priority coming into this is to see some of the big project we just talked about the pool and Main Street. To see investment in those areas I feel we have worked so hard to get to a place where we can actually achieve and look at some of those projects realistically and be able to pay for them in a way that does not totally bankrupt the City. I think we have done a good job at building the staff backup. We are taking many positive steps to try to put the people in place and they have done a great job leveraging their talents and skills but with also using consultants and outside expertise when necessary. It will be interesting to understand these capital projects, what they look like in terms of cost even if it is very rough sketches. I think it frames the entire conversation especially if we are going to go forward with the pool and Main St. project. e. Approval: VLCT Policy Positions The City Manager said at our last meeting we had a conversation about the VLCT Policy Position for Town Fair. You had some questions and I pushed them back to the league and received the answers that are in your memo. I heard the conversations around non-profit requirements following open meeting law, marijuana legislation specifically, and if there are other areas where you want me to vote on behalf of you all and Winooski and if there is anything specific I’m open to those as well. Councilor Covey said that policy recommendation is for a lot of municipality’s who have non-profit Libraries and Fire Departments where they are getting constant funding allocations and they don’t feel that there is tangible path of where that money is being spent. I think that is the basis behind it. He said he would oppose any state level requirement for non-profit who receive any moneys that could be $25.00 for instance of government funding to be subject to open meeting law and public records act that is something that they can go through their own charter or funding mechanism that their utilizing to grant that money out. We brought up some points last time. It is our obligation as the Council to set the metrics for returns; we want to see on investments. We want to make collecting those deliverables and showing taxpayers that we are spending responsibly. That is our responsibility. I oppose that particular part of their platform. The Mayor stated it is our job to follow up on the money we put out there. If we cannot do that this is on us. The Mayor commented on the marijuana approach, he said it was refreshing and positive that they are at least finding a way to being proactive around policy development and where potential funding will go. Councilor Covey had one recommendation that he would like to add allowing legal notices to be posted on web base media exclusively. That is something I oppose as well. I think many of our own residents might not have access to those platforms due to either, they do not have internet or computers or tech literacy. I think it is still important to maintain having a place or places to put legal notices that were putting out as the City of Winooski and are available in written from fro people to be able to access. He also said he thinks voting rights are important and I think our State has taken a proactive leadership roll nationally with the expansion of voter rights. There is a recommendation to create a gap day for voter registration on the Monday before the election. We have made voting for eligible voters so accessible it is such a proactive measure that I do not want to necessarily move backwards from that. MOTION by Councilor Mace seconded by Councilor Corrigan to approve the statement on VLCT Policy positions with the amendment that we also add to that list the addition of the voter item as discussed here and the opposition to the non- profit requirements as presented. Voted and passed 4-0. IX. Executive Session a. City Manager – Six Month Review to take place in Executive Session per 1 V.S.A. §313(a)(3). MOTION by Councilor Corrigan seconded by Councilor Covey to go into executive session at 7:55 to discuss City Manager’s six-month review and to invite the City Manager into executive session as presented. Voted and passed 4-0. October 2, 2017 Winooski City Council  MOTION by Councilor Sweeney seconded by Councilor Mace to adjourn executive session at 8:52 p.m. Voted and passed 4-0. ATTEST:______________________________ City Clerk October 2, 2017 Winooski City Council