City Council

Winooski City Council Meeting Monday, September 16, 2019 6:00 PM Claire Burke Council Chambers 27 West Allen Street Winooski, VT 05404 Mayor Kristine Lott - klott@winooskivt.gov Councilor Hal Colston - hcolston@winooskivt.gov Councilor Jim Duncan - jduncan@winooskivt.gov Councilor Amy Lafayette - alafayette@winooskivt.gov Councilor Mike Myers - mmyers@winooskivt.gov Jessie Baker, City Manager - jbaker@winooskivt.gov I. Call to Order II. Pledge of Allegiance III. Agenda Review IV. Public Comment V. Consent Agenda a. Approval: City Council Minutes of September 3, 2019 and Joint City/School Minutes of August 21, 2019 b. Approval: Payroll Warrant period 8/25/19-9/07/19, Warrant ending 9/13/19 and Special Warrant ending 9/4/19 VI. City Update VII. Council Reports VIII. Regular Items a. Approval: Resolution: Love My City Campaign and Winooski School District Student Video – P Sarne b. Approval: Charter Commission Appointments – J Baker c. Approval: Housing Commission Appointments – H Carrington d. Approval: Safe, Healthy, Connected People Commission Appointments - R Coffey, J Audy, R Hebert e. Approval: Finance Commission Appointments – J Baker f. Approval: CCTV Appointment – K Lott g. Discussion: Winooski Community Mural (Riverwalk) – R Coffey h. Discussion: Equity and Inclusion Recommendations – K Lott i. Discussion/Approval: FY21 Budget Schedule – A Aldieri j. Discussion: Goal Update: Safe, Healthy, Connected People – R Coffey, J Audy, R Hebert k. Approval: VLCT Voting Delegate for Town Fair – J Baker IX. Adjourn MINUTES The Deputy Mayor called the meeting to order at 6:00 pm and the Pledge of Allegiance was led by Councilor Myers. Members Present: Mayor Kristine Lott was via skype Council Members: Amy Lafayette, Mike Myers, Hal Colston, James Duncan. Officers Present: Jessie Baker, City Manager; Carol Barrett, City Clerk; Angela Aldieri, Finance Director; Jon Rauscher, Public Works Director; Eric Vorwald, Planning & Zoning Director: Ray Coffey, Community Services Director; John Audy, Fire Chief, Richard Hebert, Police Chief; Paul Sarne, Communications Director. Others Present: Olivia Miller, AmeriCorps; Josee Compton, Samuel Myers, Michele Palardy, Jean Szilva, Bridget Ahrens, Adam Dubroff, Russ Barr, Robert Millar, Elizabeth Emmett, Margaret Bass, K R Decarreau, Eric Covey, Alana Shaw, Bruce Wilson. III. Agenda Review – None IV. Public Comment Ms. Silva said she is here tonight to discuss the new charter commission concerning some of the responses she heard at previous meetings. She gave a timeline of eligible voters. The voting thing since inception has been a struggle and has changed overtime. Non-Immigrant voting in post-revolutionary war America, and until the early 1900’s it was more the norm than not to allow non-citizen voting. It was already here to let a wave of immigration in the early 1900’s and in 1926 the laws changed and immigrant voting was no longer. Those federal laws did not apply to local municipalities, San Francisco, Chicago, parts of Maryland all allow non-citizen voting. I don’t understand since inception and all the goings on that candle is just as bright. Josee Compton – said she just moved to Winooski in January with her husband who are both retired. We really enjoy living here, but we have an issue with the F35’s coming in here. We are renting from Redstone and asked them why they didn’t tell us that this issue was coming in. She believes buying a house in Winooski with all the paperwork you have to sign, they should also tell us that the jets are coming. She would like us to pass a law that tenants or homeowners are notified of the jets. She would also like Redstone to put pressure on the Mayor of Burlington. V. Consent Agenda Deputy Mayor Colston said we would vote on the minutes and warrants separately because he was not here for the September 3, 2019 meeting.  MOTION by Councilor Myers seconded by Councilor Duncan to approve the minutes of September 3, 2019 as presented. Voted and passed 4-0-1. Deputy Mayor Colston abstained. MOTION by Councilor Lafayette seconded by Councilor Myers to approve the joint City/School minutes of August 21, 2019 as presented. Voted and passed 5-0. MOTION by Councilor Duncan seconded by Councilor Lafayette to approve the Warrants as presented. Voted and passed 5-0. VI. City Update The City Manager said she wants to remind you as a group per our bylaws if we have votes tonight that are not unanimous we will need to do a roll call vote because the Mayor is on the phone, just to be clear.  We are hearing from local news outlets that the F-35s will arrive this week. o The next/”final” Noise Compatibly Program meeting will be held Thursday night at the Airport at 5:00 pm. I will be in attendance and all others are welcome. o I sent the materials to the Council today for review. The Airport should post the documents to BTVsound.com tomorrow morning. o Tentative Final Public Hearing is scheduled for October 24, 2019.  Public Works Updates o To accommodate some water main excavation work as part of the Hickok Street water project, on Tuesday, September 17, 2019 between 7-3, a DPW contractor will be excavating in the intersection of Malletts Bay Avenue, Union Street and West Lane. West Lane will be closed to through-traffic during this work; West Lane will remain accessible to local traffic via Hickok Street. Traffic from Malletts Bay Avenue and Union Street will be maintained through the intersection, but brief delays may be experienced due to the construction; please plan accordingly. o Paving of Leclair, Richard and Burling: The paving contractor is targeting the end of this week to mobilize to begin milling operations. o The Main Street concrete joint repair work is targeted to start next week (9/23) o East Allen  Week of 9/23 – the Right of Way work will start  With the FPF and other questions, we will focus on a comprehensive update on East Allen Street at the 10/7 meeting when CCRPC presents the Scoping Study work.  Fire at Courtyard last night (9/15): o Determined to be accidental, likely started by inattention while smoking. o 2nd large scale event to happen at the same building, 120 East Spring Street (Courtyard). o Both events led to people being transported by ambulance for smoke inhalation and last night’s event led to one of our emergency responders being evaluated but not transported. o Given these events the residents of this building are understandably shaken and in some cases very anxious. We will (along with WHA) be hosting a resident meeting this week (TBD) in an effort to answer questions and reassure residents of their safety. Additionally this will be a chance to explain to them how/why some of our operations happen the way they do and what our priorities are when responding.  Asst. Fire Marshal/Capt. Liam Keating started today!  Website: Please be advised that the City's website (winooskivt.gov) will be down for scheduled maintenance on Friday, 9/20/19. It is likely, much like the disruption in service we experienced earlier this month, that our email functionality will also be temporarily out of service. It may be possible to email each other internally, but emails sent to or by external addresses may fail. o In short, we are consolidating our DNS services from one company to another (CivicPlus). This process will take place first thing on Friday morning and although sometimes takes as little as four hours to complete, it may take up to 72 hours to propagate. Please plan accordingly - a notice will be posted the to the City's website, social, and FPF channels this Wednesday, encouraging people to call us with their questions or requests for services.  Events and Programs o River Clean Up was a great success on Saturday. Many thanks to the fabulous volunteers who came out to join staff in beautifying our stretch of the Winooski River! o International Day of Peace will be celebrated this Saturday at the Senior Center at 5:30. The whole community is welcome! Thanks to St. Stephens Church and the Winooski Peace Initiative. o The last Winooski Wednesday of the season is coming up on Wednesday, October 2 from 6 - 8 PM at Rotary Park and will be featuring the band "Honeytwist". o The Library has several programs starting up, including a Pokemon Club, Dungeons and Dragons Club, and the kick off of our revamped Academic and Career Support Program (formerly "Homework Help"). Visit our website for more information and to sign up! o The Festival Pumpkins will be held on Friday, October 25 and Saturday, October 26 in Rotary Park! Downtown Winooski is launching and "adopt a pumpkin" fundraiser on their website, and we'll be promoting the many volunteer opportunities (including carving pumpkins on October 19-20) starting this week. Stay tuned, and please mark your calendars to be part of this special Winooski event! VII. Council Reports Councilor Duncan - said he met with the Housing Committee members addressing feedback around Housing Trust Fund discussion. Councilor Colston - said he served on two interview committees, one was Charter Change Committee and second was Safe Healthy Connected People. We will be approving these groups under regular items. Mayor Lott - said the Planning Commission continued discussions on form base code. I also heard some public comment from staff, Partnership for Prevention about advertising alcohol and tobacco. The commission is interested in that issue and is going to hear more research from the partnership. Next Tuesday I will be recording the monthly World in Winooski on Channel 17. I will be hosting Mike Lacroix from VTRANS to present the diverging diamond interchange that we had discussed at our last meeting and we will also have Jason Charest CCRPC to present the E. Allen St. coping study. Councilor Lafayette – No updates. Councilor Myers – said the Municipal Infrastructure Commission met and thank you Jessie for updating the group. We do have our candidates set up and interviews will be this week and the following week due to people on vacation. At our next meeting in October we are going to develop the work plan. VIII. Regular Items a. Approval: Resolution: Love My City Campaign and Winooski School District Student Video Mr. Sarne gave a brief overview of the Campaign. VLCT is also join this campaign and are encouraging other towns to join. Councilor Colston read the following Resolution. See attached. David Klinker, WHS Student created this video and owns and operates his own video business. He said he is working on creating another video to help improve the safety on the River. He lost a cousin and a friend near the river. MOTION by Councilor Duncan seconded by Councilor Lafayette to approve the Resolution “Love My City” as presented. Voted and passed 5-0. b. Approval: Charter Commission Appointments The City Manager said at our July 15, 2019 meeting the council approved the Charter document for the Winooski Charter Commission. The staff advertised for membership. Deputy Mayor Colston and I interviewed all of the candidates who applied. We recommend the following slate of candidates for appointment. Deputy Mayor Colston said we are looking for participants to have an open mind and to consider whats best. We will be spending a lot of time on this Charter and hoping to have it on the November ballot in 2020. We are looking for people who will support the process. The City Manager announced the following slate of candidates. Commission Members Term Expiration  Hussein Amuri June 2020  Eric Covey June 2021  Liz Edsell June 2021  Gerry Myers June 2020  Prashant Singh June 2021 Commission Alternates  Doug Johnson June 2020  Sam Myers June 2021 Liz Edsell thanked the council for participation to the commission. Eric Covey is very excited about the renewed effort to see this commission moving forward. MOTION by Councilor Duncan seconded by Councilor Lafayette to approve the slate of Charter Commission members as presented. Voted and passed 5-0. c. Approval: Housing commission Appointments The City Manager said staff has reached out to current Housing commissioners to confirm whether they are interested in reappointment. Jessica Bridge will continue a currently unexpired term. Five remaining Commissioners have requested apoointment. The terms will each be two year terms from the expiration of the originally staggered previous terms. Those who wish to be reappointed include: Commissioner Term Expiration  Robert Millar June 2021  Anna Wageling June 2020  Leslie Black-Plumeau June 2020  Sean McMannon June 2021  Chris Melnyk June 2021 Staff recommends the reappointment of this slate of currently serving commissioners. The Commission has also had a member step down upon the expiration of his term. This creates one available seat on the Commission. The retiring commissioner was the sole representative fo the Winooski Housing Authority, Winooski’s largest provider of affordable housing in the city. Given the importance of maintaining representation of such a key affordable housing partner, staff directly contacted the new Executive Director of the organization to iinvite her participation on the Commission. “Deac” graciously accepted the invitation to apply, with the caveat that she would step down in favor of any WHA board member who expresses interest in serving. Staff recommends the appointment of Katherine “Deac” Decarreau to the Housing commission for a two year term. MOTION by Councilor Lafayette seconded by Councilor Myers to approve the reappointments as presented and to appoint “Deac” Decarreau as a new full member of the Winooski Housing Commissioner for a two year term expiring in June 2021. Voted and passed 5-0. d. Approval: Safe, Healthy, Connected People Commission Appointments Mr. Coffey said Councilor Hal Colston, along with Police Chief Rick Hebert, Fire Chief John Audy, and myself interviewed all six of the candidates listed, and recommend appointment of the slate as presented.  Commissioner Term Expiration  Mary Hussmann June 30, 2021  Paul Rabidoux June 30, 2021  Courtney Blasius June 30, 2020  Erin Barnaby June 30, 2021  Kimberly Jordan June 30, 2020  Bruce Wilson ( Alternate) June 30, 2020 Mr. Coffey said if approved this would leave one “alternate” seat empty, which the group would work to fill in the coming months. MOTION by Councilor Myers seconded by Councilor Duncan to approve the slate of Safe, Healthy, Connected People Commission members as presented. Voted and passed 5-0. Kim Jordan – I’m honored for this opportunity. I love the idea about exploring how our many different communities in this tiny town can be connected, innovative and creative in a non-threatening way. Bruce Wilson- I’m honored to be on the commission as an alternate. I lived in Winooski for 11 years and I work around the state doing non-profit work, basically working with communities and I was also on the Rec. Board for 6 years. e. Approval Finance Commission Appointments The City Manager said this is a commission that was constituted in the past and took a couple year hiatus and we are reconstituting. The Mayor, Finance Direct and I interviewed candidates from this commission and I’m recommending for a 1 year term Maurice Matte and Jean Szilva and a 2 year term, Susan Eddy and Shelden Goodwin. The City Manager said this is a commission where there is still a vacancy and two vacant alternates. Commission Members Term Expiration  Susan Eddy June 2021  Shelden Goodwin June 2021  Maurice Matte June 2020  Jean Szilva June 2020 Shelden Goodwin said she is very excited to be part of this commission. I studied municipal policy in school and got to know Winooski over the year and a half that I lived here. I’m excited to apply my love for Winooski and also my knowledge and background in order to make our city great and move forward. MOTION by Councilor Lafayette seconded by Councilor Myers to approve the slate of Finance Commission members as presented. Voted and passed 5-0. f. Approval: CCTV Appointment Mayor Lott said the former Town Meeting Television Trustee stepped down over the summer. The City posted an advertisement for a Trustee. The Executive Director and I interviewed the candidate and recommend the appointment of Kevin Lumpkin to represent Winooski. Mayor Lott said Mr. Lumpkin is an Attorney and Vice-Chair on the DRB. Mr. Lumpkin said this is a great way to advocate for the City of Winooski. MOTION by Councilor Myers seconded by Councilor Duncan to appoint Kevin Lumpkin as trustee to CCTV as presented. Vote and passed 5-0. g. Discussion: Winooski Community Mural (Riverwalk) Ms. Miller, Community Engagement & Volunteer Coordinator. We are here to present a Winooski Community Mural under the Main St. Bridge. Ms. Emmett said her role here is to coordinate the artwork to come up with a design and also when we start making the piece of art with the youth in town to really engage them in their relationships as we create the art work together. Mr. Wilson Executive Director from services Rendered Inc. and a local artist and teacher. Ms. Miller said Bruce came to Ray and me a couple months ago to suggest putting a mural under the bridge. We are proposing this project and Liz had this wonderful idea to be a community engagement opportunity. She is going to sketch it on the wall to be a paint by numbers so we can encourage the community to come down. We would like to plan 3 open community days to paint the wall. I have plans for specific targeted outreach to do smaller groups to supplement more painting because it’s a really large space. The Winooski High School Cultural and Community Course is interested, I’m hoping to partner with the Senior Center and potentially Sr. Pat’s Coffee group. Ms. Miller said Bruce has secured in-kind donations from Loew’s and VT Pain Company to supply paint and necessary painting materials and Liz is donating her time volunteering with the City to be able to hopefully make this happen. Ms. Emmett said the design would look like a timeline. The City Manager said we don’t need a vote tonight on this. This will go through our regular permitting process but because it is on municipal infrastructure, we wanted to put it in front of you to make sure that there were no concerns that you had or you had concerns that you were integrating them into the project planning process. The approval will go through our Zoning approval process. Councilor Myers said that they should reach out to Dan Higgins, he would be a good resources. Councilor Duncan is very excited about this project. h. Discussion: Equity and Inclusion Recommendations The Mayor stated we are continuing on with the discussion that we have been having as a council since last year. How do we bring more equity into our city and policy processes? We had a joint meeting with school board and had some recommendations coming out of a series of dialogues. There was a small group of folks participating in an equity series including City, School and Community leaders. I wanted us to follow up on this discussion and what our next steps are. The initial goals of this work are: #1 Form meaningful relationships among community leaders and build shared understanding on racism, power, and privilege #2 Identify best practices and processes to make services, resources and policies more inclusive and equitable I want us to be thinking about those 2 goals as discussion. #3 Prioritize action ideas and make recommendations about how to leverage $5,000 set aside by the City of Winooski to support community connection and diverse participation. I want to propose to you for this discussion is; how does recommendations support and build on each other? How do they align to what we already do as a city? How can we insure that whatever our next step is to move towards some kind of pilot and were insuring our participants are really seeing our outcomes? Like, we are being thoughtful and how we are engaging folks on this work and to make sure we are not setting something up that doesn’t show them anything on their efforts. Discussion ensued concerning the equity council and the multilingual liaisons. Councilor Colston wants to clarify from his perspective that there might be some overlap between two concepts. The multilingual liaisons expanding their scope of work and this equity council. I do see some distinct differences in terms of the ultimate purpose of an equity council. Councilor Duncan thinks it’s fairly distinct in terms of how these group functions and where they would be coming into contact with city process between the equity council and the multilingual liaisons. The Mayor said it sounds to me the equity council is focused on our work as policy makers and the multilingual liaisons potentially more of a city staff. Councilor Lafayette thinks we should start with the equity council right away and investing all in that and for me I would love to see the cultural liaisons maybe try to establish some of that work for us. They are already a successful model. Councilor Myers asked if there is room to have a sub-committee. I think that it would be a good start for a pilot to see how this would all transform The Mayor said she would like to test this before we move forward. She also is suggesting Jessie and Superintendent to talk about what it would mean to run a pilot with a single cultural liaison. The City Manager gave an update; she said Sean and I and the community liaison supervisor have a meeting next week to start talking about of the operational things. I think just to flag a couple of things one, is those employees are union employees, so there will be some process to pilot or expand those roles, or change them at all. Two, if this is something the council would like to move forward as a pilot or full implementation, I think it has to be built into the FY21 budget process. In a long term plan, even if we do a short term plan in FY20, Sean and I will be figuring out some options for that in the next couple of weeks and that has much more to do with the fact that these are employees that are unionized that have salaries. i. Discussion/Approval: FY21 Budget Schedule Ms. Aldieri presented the FY21 budget process that will follow the methods established in prior years. The City Manager will present a proposed budget with all budgets presented simultaneously (general, enterprise, and special revenue funds, and capital plans). This will provide the most complete picture of the City’s financial position and operations. There was a five minutes recess at 7:35 p.m. and meeting reconvened at 7:40 p.m. The City Manager said we would be adding a council meeting on December 9, 2019. Ms. Aldieri said included would be a leverage fund report. Mayor Lott said this structure works quite well. MOTION Councilor Myers seconded by Councilor Duncan to approve the FY21 Budget Schedule as presented. Voted and passed 5-0. j. Discussion: Goal Update: Safe, Healthy, Connected People Mr. Coffey updated the Mayor and Council and feels really good about Quarter 1. Mayor Lott asked about the summer staff pilot at the OCC, how that turned out considering any action next year based on that. Mr. Coffey feels it was a good experiment, it’s good that we recognized the issue and got some resources pulled together and appreciated the willingness of the council to take a stab at a different strategy. He said having some extra adult presence around the building for the rest of staff there was positive. Overall I would be interested to look at next summer carrying somethings forward, I’m not sure coming back and adding staff is necessarily where we need to be. What worked well were the structured activities that we put together. The City Manager said what helped us was I think Community Services staff and programing next summer specifically will be significantly different with opening of the pool. This helped us start thinking about what levels of staffing we need to support the pool. Mr. Colston said the only area in the report that has started but not proceeded is the implementation of the K-9 program. Chief Hebert said we made a commitment to a new leadership team down at the Police Dept. That would involve a lot of overtime to go to that training. Our detective with 30 plus year is retiring in 23 months. We are also talking about identifying and start to train the next person before he is gone. We don’t think we could manage in the same year with all that’s going on. The City Manager said most of you are aware that the entire leadership structure of the Police Dept. has shifted over. Councilor Lafayette said seeing the community risk reductions efforts are in yellow, proceeding not as quickly as anticipated given the recent fires, doe we anticipate that kind of ramping up and getting to green. Chief Audy said we were going to do some pre-planning for early next year, but given the fires, two large scale events at that one property we will be putting that front and center. We will be going there on Friday at 10:30 a.m. with WHA staff and residents and start initial outreach. The City Manager said we need to note that both of these items that we just talked about are not proceeding at the same level because of staffing changes. Councilor Duncan asked if there are other reasons that the community risk reductions efforts have been delayed because of Courtney leaving, is there other factors. Chief Audy said this is new to us and its resources is a different mindset. It’s taking some long tenured employees and changing the culture and looking at things differently. Councilor Duncan asked if it was to challenging. Chief Audy said he loves this format, I love the strategic planning the council does. The work that the commission did previously, it helps us create a work flow. We would love all the areas to be green but I think we inform you why they are not and plan together and be transparent why they’re not. Mr. Coffey said it is user friendly. I think the format is really good and ambitious. Chief Audy feels the same. We use the City’s strategic vision into our Police Dept. strategic plan - a blue print for us to go forward, it keeps you honest and you’re committed to the work that you are supposed to be doing. k. Approval: VLCT Voting Delegate for Town Fair The City Manager said as part of Town Fair, the Vermont League of Cities and Towns holds its annual business meeting. This meeting will take place at 1; 00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 2nd in Killington, VT. As a member community, we need to designate one official as the voting delegate to ensure that our voice is heard. This can be an elected official or the City Manager. I will be at the meeting as I serve on the Board of Directors for VLCT. Councilor Myers is interested in being a voting delegate at the VLCT fair representing the City of Winooski. MOTION by Councilor Duncan seconded by Councilor Lafayette to appoint Councilor Myers as voting delegate at the VLCT fair held on Wednesday, October 2, 2019. Voted and passed 5-0. IX. Adjourn MOTION by Councilor Duncan seconded by Councilor Lafayette to adjourn the City Council meeting at 8:07 p.m. Voted and passed 5-0. ATTEST:____________________ City Clerk