City Council - Regular Meeting

Thank you.

Okay, I'm Tom Crosby from Burlington. Lived here all my life. 50 years ago, well, of course, the cars are gone, and there's a lot more people on the street now. And, of course, the different sidewalk stands, the trees. There never were trees on Church Street back 50 years ago. There might have been 100 years ago, but not. Not while I was alive.

I'd like to introduce you to Mr. Stockholder number one. Mr. Stockholder, do you have some plans for what you would like to do once you buy out Ben & Jerry's here? Why, yes, I've got some excellent plans. Well, first of all, I'd like to introduce some new flavors to you all. They're right over here. New flavors? New flavors. Flavors of the month. Flavors of the month. Yes. Did you hear that? Flavors of the month. The first flavor. Stockholder brown nose crunch. Can you hold that please? Thank you, Cal. Oh, don't protest. Don't protest, our union. How about this one? Can't you keep it? Local don't.

There's too much changeable and transformable social misery among ordinary people, among everyday people. And it might have something to do with the fact that their voices are not being heard at the highest levels. And that Martin Luther King Jr. came out of a particular species, a specific version of the democratic tradition.

Racism has got to go, hey, hey, ho, ho. Racism has got to go, hey, hey, ho, ho.

I'm Chief Homer St. Francis of the Abenaki Nation. I want to applaud the support and support the students who have stood up and spoken out against racism at the University of Vermont. You can't redo history. No, we can't do it. And no, we can't go back to harvesting salmon on the Winooski Falls. But we can change the future by acknowledging the past. And this is something we can ask the trustees of the university to do. It doesn't necessarily mean renaming High Island Chapel after Greylock, although that's not a bad idea, but simply acknowledging that racism goes back a long way.

You are watching television, and you are growing sleepily. You are about to descend into a hypnotic state. Let me start again.

Because too often, we're perceived as just being the fair housing organization that's hammering the banks for discrimination issues. And frankly, empowerment zones, investment strategies, we just have a whole lot. We made a list yesterday after I left my office.

John's bank has been good at working. Just walk on down this way and talk to him.

I just don't want to miss his play.

What I'm here to say might not sound good to the authorities. It's time for us to change our national priorities. Let's give the people more of a say about how we invest our taxes in the USA. Now here's one thing I'd really like to know. Where do you want your money to go? For nuclear weapons and Star Wars toys? Or to educate and motivate our girls and boys? I'm telling you, honey, we just gotta move our money. Just gotta move our money.

And the thing that aggravates me about this is that 72 other nations, not two, but 72, have found a way to provide family leave. Now, what this guy is saying is that America can't do what 72 other nations can do. I always thought this was a can-do country, and I'm going to give you a can-do administration on November 3rd if you will stay with me.

How do you think you're helping your husband so much will affect the possibility of a female president sometime in the near future?

Well, I hope that somewhere right now in the United States is a young woman or even a not-so-young woman anymore who will become president sometime in the next 20 years. And I think that it will only happen because the woman who decides to do that will be brave enough to take the risks associated with being in public life and will be willing to really stand up and work as hard as she can to be judged on who she is and not be discouraged by some of the obstacles that still stand in the way of women doing work like that.

It's no longer a problem of us just talking about program. We're talking about food and clothing and shelter. We're talking about the richest society in the world letting children go to bed hungry at night. This is not a battle that we're involved. We're involved in a war. And we need to take a look at this very seriously.

I don't know what's going to happen right now. I'm very concerned that from the low intensity psychological covert war, we may go into an overt war down there. Right now, the Mexican military has 200,000 troops. Over 60,000 of their elite are in the state of Chiapas.

This is not Nicaragua. This is not Angola. This is not some small and distant country. This is our neighbor on the North American continent, a nation whose history, whose people, whose culture is deeply intertwined with our own. It's a nation of 100 million people, one river away.

I'm Fred Tuttle. I'm Soren Smith. Nice to meet you. What are you doing down here? I've come to talk to you about this little campaign you're running here.

Oh, that's a great campaign. Yeah? I hope I win.

What are you going to do if you win?

Go to Washington.

Oh, yeah? So if you beat Senator Leahy, what are your...

Senator Leahy, I can't beat him. I don't believe it. I'm going to try it.

What happens if you win the primary? Are you going to run against Senator Leahy?

I might be a little afraid, but I don't know. Really, at this moment, I'm not really sure if I'll run against Leahy or not.

Okay. So tell me how this all got started. I mean, why did you decide to do this?

Oh, I've been home here all my life and never been anywhere other than World War II. I just wanted to go somewhere. I'd get out and go to Washington maybe.

Why Washington? Why would you want to go to Washington? It's all a bunch of politicians down there.

No, it's Western politicians. I'd want to change it a little bit down there.

I remember, I don't know what you guys do or not, but it seems to me that they sat in the balcony and then they would jiggle, the kids would jiggle the backboards that were up on the balcony. So you'd come down, you'd take a shot, you'd go up for a shot, and the rim of the basket would be moving like this.

That was part of the home court advantage.

That was part of the home court advantage.

On behalf of all our delegation, thank you for your hospitality and the hospitality of the people of Puerto Cabello. It's been absolutely wonderful. You could not have done more for us.

There were a lot of things that needed to be fixed. We had one of the most liberal criminal justice systems in the country. that ignored the rights of crime victims and really trampled on them. And it was as a result of going to the legislature as a citizen advocate, using up all my vacation time to be in the legislature to try to get changes passed, and then having so little happen as a result of all of the time and effort that I put in. And I decided that maybe I would be better off being in the Senate with a vote than being outside just with my voice. And that's why I ran.

And during that 18 years, I followed Andy through four radio stations and a TV station. And I'll follow Andy Porter anywhere. He's the best, most sensible, soundest person on state and local politics there is. He's got a quick mind. He's got an instant grasp of the issues, understands numbers, and is consummately fair.

The truth of the matter is that huge numbers of people do not come out to city council meetings or zoning board meetings or planning commission meetings, not in Burlington, not in Essex Junction, not anywhere. But the fact that these programs are now televised gives local people all over the county an opportunity to learn what their local government is doing. And that is a major, major, major step forward over what used to be the case. So in a sense, you're opening up government to far more people than used to be the case.

Our forefathers did stand on Christian moral values and asked for you to do the same thing. America was founded on these moral values and America thrived back then. But today, just over a matter of a small period of time when they've taken prayer out of schools, They've done just these little minor things, but it's brought disease and famine to America now, such as AIDS.

I am a mother of five. It would not be my choice to personally have an abortion. It doesn't belong in the platform of any party. It is in your heart and in your personal feelings that a woman's reproductive freedom comes into play. We don't legislate any type of moral or non-moral or whatever you want to call it values. I do not support people who say women do not choose. It's a hard choice that women have chosen when they have a termination of a pregnancy. Keep them in your minds and keep them in your hearts, but not in legislative involvement. It doesn't belong there. Women have the right to decide when to bear a child.

I'm Peter Vrain and welcome to Point Counterpoint. Tonight's debate It comes to you from Room 11 at the State House in Montpelier. The topic of tonight's debate is something that's been very much in the news this year and very much of a surprise. Industrial hemp.

So when women's liberation and gay liberation hit the streets in the 60s, we were all astounded. We welcomed the movement then and now, which is a movement for human rights and for basic freedoms. We welcome it today, we'll welcome it in the future, and continue the struggle.

I think if it wasn't the Vermont Women's Celebration, we wouldn't be getting the support from the community that we are getting from the women's community. And from not just the women's community either.

Buzz, crook, and warble is our new exhibit here at the center. Be sure you don't miss the frogs and snakes. Here you have to take chances and have fun to discover new ways to think about the basin. For example, here you have to smell things. Yuck!

Three and four years old, my father was dragging me.

with him to the various clubs he was playing at around New York City. The Village Vanguard, Blue Note Bitter and places like that and my mother at the same time was taking me to films.

I looked at the statistics where we are in this country and the level of fitness and I found out that although the adults have been doing really well, the senior citizens and the youth of this country have been really falling behind.

Where was Marca's hardware store before they built that building?

across the road.

You got it. Way to go. Way to get him. We didn't want to be... Give him a hat, Herb. He's got a hat.

I got so many hats.

Another bottle of Banal. Oh, my God. Right on the floor.

You don't know. Don't call me.

Well, they're looking for some... Go ahead.

You did great. Recording in progress.

Additions or changes? We have video in the room. Working on it here. Okay.

Okay. Um, uh, agenda additions and changes removal of the executive session for tonight. Um, cuz we do have, I think we might have a second applicant for community advisory board. So we've got one interview tonight. We may have another interview and then we can, uh, have the executive session at the next meeting.

Okay. Any other additions or changes? Okay. Uh, can I get a motion to approve the amended agenda?

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

I'm gonna guess that Bethany voted yes. Yep, okay, got it. All right, so next we'll move to public to be heard. I'm just gonna check online first and see if there's anyone online. If you would like to be heard, please raise your hand online. Elena?

Hi, thank you. I am Elena Bourne and I am the director at First Roots Wild Roots in Essex. And we are a nature-based early education program serving children six weeks to five years old. And we just moved from our Jericho location to our new home on Maple Street in Essex and opened last week to families. We wanted to hop on tonight real quick to say thank you to everyone from the community who helped us to open on time, especially the town office employees, Terry Haas and Tammy Getchell, who assisted us with zoning so that we could get our license. We also wanted to thank the Essex Police Department who stopped by yesterday when they saw a group outside playing and brought stickers and a really warm welcome to the community. One of our top values at First Roots is community, and we're really looking forward to building new relationships here in Essex now that we're settling in, especially with the library, the local shops, and the local food shelf. So we just wanted to introduce ourselves and say how excited we are to be here at our new home and really looking forward to continuing to grow our program with the families in Essex and the children. Thank you. Thanks, Elena. Good luck. Welcome.

And welcome to the community. All right. Anybody else online? All right. I'm not seeing any other hands. Anyone in the room? All right. We are gonna move on to business item A, which is interview and consideration of appointment to the Police Community Advisory Board. And Tim, wanna come up to the mic? We've had a lot of interviews over the last month or so. So just to be consistent, I'm gonna give you the same speech that I gave everyone who sat in the same seat as you. So we have your application. There's two questions that we would ask you. One is, is there anything on the application or anything that you didn't tell us on the application that you want us to know. And then the second question is, if you're not chosen for the Police Community Advisory Board, is there another committee that you would be interested in sitting on? Take it away whenever you're ready.

To the first question, no. I mean, on there you see that I have quite a career. I'm retired now, but I have 34 years in public safety law enforcement. I did 24 in the city of Burlington, retired as a lieutenant there. And then I did almost 11 with the state of Vermont, DMV Enforcement and Safety. I live over on Corduroy Road. I get a beautiful wife and two daughters who own businesses in the community. I retired about four years ago, started messing with wood in my basement. My daughters opened up two stores. One is Charlotte Case Boutique over in the marketplace, and they just opened up a second one, so I get the... test my wood products out in their women's boutique, if you can imagine, which has been pretty successful. But I miss a little bit of public service now that I'm retired. And I think back on my career, you know, when I saw this posted on Facebook, I thought it would be a good opportunity to maybe get back a little bit again to the community, get back involved in a little bit of public service. help foster and build the trust and relationships with the Essex Police Department based on my experiences in my vast past with law enforcement. So your second question was?

Other committees.

No, I think this is primarily the committee I would be interested in.

That's totally fine. Anybody on the council have any questions for Tim? Appreciate you stepping up.

No problem. Brian?

No, thank you very much. Bethany? No, thank you. Short and sweet.

And that was it.

Go enjoy the rest of the beautiful evening. Thank you very much. And as Regina said earlier, we might have another applicant. Even if we don't have another applicant, we'll make a decision at our next meeting. And so we'll be in touch.

I'll watch my emails. Thank you very much. Have a good night, Tim. Thank you.

All right, so next we're moving to Public Works Department Head Brief to City Council.

We got Ricky Jones on line. The man of many words.

Hit us, brother. Hit us. I'll try to make this short and sweet. No. Not really.

Maybe it's good. It's no bad.

So you got my memo. A couple of the things, you know, to look back at was the fair amount of snow we had last year. And we had a hard time getting the salt. We were able to make it through and made the roads pretty safe, I would say. And we had a fair amount of equipment repairs, which was challenging too. The crescent connector, I said finished up, but there is a couple record drawings that needs to be done, but pretty much we can almost put that one away. The water meter change out program we're doing. We're plugging away at the last. We got a little over 300 to do and just keep plugging away at them. We're just having a hard time getting into places to get these changed out. But we're scheduling some appointments and trying to get that going. Six months look ahead. I put the railroad avenue water line. That basically is wrapped up. They did a quick job with that. Got that installed. So that is pretty much, I want to say done. The main street sidewalk replacement, that's going good. I don't know if you folks had a chance to get out there and walk that new sidewalk. One side's almost done. They're almost wrapping that up. And people have been walking on it. And we're getting some good feedback. And you can just go look at it compared to what it was before. It's just, what a huge difference. That's going to be great when that project is done. The two new dump trucks hopefully before winter. Looks like I went down to the shop yesterday and looked at one of them and the other ones out at the paint shop. So those are getting real close. So I wouldn't be surprised in another month or so we get at least one if not two of those at the shop. So that would be a huge plus. And the sidewalk machine we're working on trying to get that. We're probably going to put a bid out here shortly to try to get that. bid it out and get that awarded so we can get that on order and hopefully have it before this season, this snow season. And we were fortunate enough to be the department spotlight last month. So we figured we'd throw this in. Who are we at Public Works? We're a department that holds five and a half employees. The half is Patrice down at Wastewater. She does Wastewater and Public Works. and our effort to keep the city infrastructure maintained, the water in, water out. So when you turn your faucet on, water comes out nice and clean. And then you flush anything or put anything down the drain, that goes out and it goes good. Make sure the residents, Passer buyers, you know, the daily, the daily everyday needs, the running water, flushing toilets, ease of transportation through the city and all weather conditions, roads and sidewalks. Again, this is some of the stuff we do every year. The street sweeping, the paving, the pruning of the trees, hydrant flushing, and we flush about 50,000 feet of sewer lines each year to try to keep up. We're on like a four year cycle. So we get everything done in the city within four years. We got the catch basin cleaning we got to do. We got the water meter change out program. And of course, road painting and sidewalks repair. And one of the questions on there was, what do we do best? And I want to say the folks at Public Works, I think, do snow removal pretty darn good. So that's definitely up there on the list. Again, there's a constant battle with the equipment. But we got some, again, we got some stuff on order. Things are coming in slow. So hopefully that's going to improve for us. And then the fun fact, one of our workers there, Ron, just got a, we call it a class two safety colored green Ford Mustang. And it's available for ride alongs. So if you want, you can email Ron. You can find him on the website. And then the road.

That's a private vehicle, just to be sure.

Yes, it's a private, yes. It's not a city-owned vehicle.

And Ricky, does he know that the Mustang color kind of clashes with the Vermont plate a little bit?

Well, I don't think he cares because his wife picked the color out, so he can't say anything about it.

Yeah.

So I don't think that's going to be a thing.

Yeah. Love it. Yeah.

And we're looking forward to the road painting. That's our... That's a paving, I'm sorry. That should be coming in hopefully this week, if not next week. They're going to start their work, so I'm going to need that completed before the fair time hits.

Where are they doing that this time?

You got Church Street, a section of E Street from Maple to Pleasant, and then on Main Street coming in, we're going to be jumping, skipping around on that, trying to get some of those bad spots leveled out.

Cool. Cool. Any other questions or comments, Ricky? Just one more.

Go ahead. I know it was because of a problem, but I would say that the reduced salt application was nice, actually, in our very flat neighborhood. So if you want to sort of like brainstorm areas where that could continue, both from a really nice to not be over-salted and financial point of view, I think folks were like, oh, it makes sense. It looks like you guys opened it up sort of at the intersections and then just sort of tapered it off on the straights.

Yes. There were certain times we had to do just stop bars, corners, hills, and class ones. But, yeah, just so you know, Raj, Regina's been after me on that for the last, how long has she worked here now?

Almost four years.

there you go so yes and we are going to look at some some different different ways to do things too to try to cut back on that salt usage i didn't mean to get you in trouble i was just trying to give you some positive reinforcement no no no and say hey great job and you know yes so sorry

No, no. No, you didn't get in trouble.

Not at all. We've had this conversation several times.

It's just that every time there's an apartment head brief, there's talk about salt. Which is great, because you guys did manage the salt shortage very, very well this year. I feel like there were a lot of municipalities that were saying, oh, we're out of salt. Although, I feel like we came close a couple of times. I live on, they call it Nama Hill, which is a huge incline, right? But the roads were really well taken care of all the way through. So tip of the cap to you guys for that, for sure. And I'm sure the new equipment coming in will only stand to help with that. Yes. And then I just have one question because you mentioned machinery breakdown and repair. Is that still a struggle? These trucks that are coming in have been coming in for a while now and we're at that finish line. So you feel like that'll eat some of it? Or is that other machinery that still needs to be addressed that is in need of repair constantly?

Yeah, we've got the two trucks coming in say this fall we should have those we have two other dump trucks that are probably probably a two-year wait now so those two definitely the two new ones are going to help a ton um you get the two other dump trucks that are coming in two years so hopefully we can keep those other ones going without minimal cost and um i believe our loader is up and next june next july and we're starting to have some pretty good problems with that so we're trying our best with what we got and just trying to keep this stuff going but yeah i think we're gaining like i say this get this new equipment in here that's going to help a ton great thanks appreciate it rick bethany

Yes, I wanted to ask if the salt problem, we anticipate that being a problem this winter, or we think that the different strategies we used this past winter and whatever, there won't be a problem.

We never know. You know, they were saying last year that it was going to be fine because of certain scenarios, and it was not.

Unpredictable, got it.

Yes, it's very unpredictable. But yes, I think we kind of proved that we can kind of back off a little bit on some of that. We can probably be that tight. And then also with this new public works facility coming up, we're going to add two more bays to the salt shed, and that's going to give us another 800-ton on-site facility So hopefully, you know, we'd almost have enough stuff, enough salt onsite to go on a typical year. So that's when, once we get that installed, get that put up.

Thank you guys.

I don't want to repeat what, um, what Tim said as much to say is to tip my hat on mid the management of the salt issues for, um, um, compared to some of our China communities. Nice job. No, appreciate it.

Thanks Ricky.

You're welcome. Have a good night, guys.

You guys, you as well.

Thanks. Oh, Mark has got his hand up. Should I wait?

I wasn't going to do a public comment during a brief to counsel. We never do that, so.

I'm sure he just wants to say kudos, Ricky. Okay.

You're good. All right, we're moving on to 5C, discussion and consideration of setting the FY27 tax rate.

Amber, just I'm sorry to interrupt. Let me just quickly say because I did have a non public works thing. If you the people in the room could lean forward toward their microphones, that would help. Because if you're leaning back in your seat, you're a little far away. So the the audio volume just goes up and down. It's harder to hear.

Okay, thank you for that. Regina.

Okay, so Jess is on. She's going to take this to start.

All right, so we are working this year right now with a preliminary grand list that was set as of June 24th. Due to the reappraisal process, we don't have a finalized grand list at this time. I consulted with Regina, the town, the assessor's office, NEMRC, all of our partners in this process, and decided the town and the city are moving forward with the same plan to go ahead and set the tax rate now on the preliminary grand list. And then we will, once we have the finalized grand list at some point this winter, we will reevaluate, see if there is a change needed to the tax rate or if there are just certain properties after the grievance and appeal processes that need to be adjusted individually. So as of right now, you'll see that we've had about a 75% increase in the grand list total. So last year's total value was just over 11.3 million. This year's is just over 19.8 million. Um, as you will recall for the budget, um, vote on annual meet at annual meeting, the budget passed raising 11,000 11 million, sorry, $891,682 for property tax revenue in FY 27. Um, And this memo, basically the same as every other year, just kind of talks about the tax stabilization agreements that we have. Right now we have just one with the Whitcomb Farm property. And then also have veterans exemptions that are the city allows for more of an exemption than the state requirement. So the city is responsible for making up that education tax portion of that additional exemption. So those are both factored into the tax rate setting. With the preliminary grant list and the amount to be raised in revenue, this means that we have a tax rate right now that will be set at 0.6007 per $100 of assessed value on a property. This is a 40% decrease over last year, which is quite surprising. It's a big number. In addition to that, I'm sure folks have seen that the education tax rates for the city have also decreased pretty significantly. We will be including an insert in the tax bills this year to kind of go over this whole preliminary rate setting process and where we go from here. Karen Lemna, our assessor, has also provided a tax bill insert that talks about the education tax rates. specifically tied to the reappraisal as well. So if you look at the table for comparing the tax rates year over year, again, you'll see that we have the general fund tax rate, which is the amount to raise for property tax revenue. The tax agreement rate is to cover that tax stabilization agreement and the, sorry, the veterans exemptions. We have the penny for economic development. And then we also have the penny for social services this year, which was approved at the annual meeting in April as well. So as part of this process with the new values, we did take a look, our new average value of a residential property in the city is that 470,000 was previously at 280,000. So the table that's in the memo has been updated to reflect that $470,000 value. So for the total city tax that will be assessed for a $470,000 property that is just over $2,900 for the year. That does not include the education rates or any state credits that might be applied to certain properties. So like I said, we'll have a lot more information as we move through the final stages of the reappraisal process. Tax bills will be prepared in a couple weeks and we plan on trying to pack as much information as we can into the inserts with those tax bills as well.

So I just want to add, it is a charter requirement for the City of Essex Junction that we get our tax bills produced and in the mail by August 15th. The first installment of the tax bills in the city are due September 15th. We have no wheel room around that process. It's in the charter, those are the dates, we have to work with them. We originally thought that perhaps if we wait until early August, we would have a better handle on another round of the grand list, but as Jess mentioned at the start, in thinking through the details and the parameters around all of that, we really won't. June 24th is the best list that we can use in order to get the tax bills out in the time that we are required to do by charter. So that's why we are suggesting that we move forward now with this. Questions?

Do we have any sense of how much the grant list is shrinking as grievances are being processed?

I don't have that information right now. I know collectively there are about 400 grievance requests.

And how many of those, the unprocessed requests, is that total and they're working their way through those 400?

My understanding is that's the total amount of the request.

Okay, so I mean.

And I don't have that breakdown between the city and the town.

Oh, that's Greater Essex, not just the city?

Yeah.

Okay.

Fair enough. I'm just trying to get a handle on what percentage of those would be accomplished by the special meeting in August. Do we have any information to that question?

So I don't know that. Technically, the next step in the process would be filing the next grand list. It's not the official grand list still. I don't know the exact term. Jess might know it better. But by July 29th. We are currently in a process where we might be asking for an extension of that deadline so that we can give the proper time and process to managing those grievances as best as possible as opposed to just doing the best we can to hit the deadline so those conversations are happening at the town right now for our end we may need to also request that extension because we each have individual grand lists even though our assessing is shared with the town so we may need a special meeting for the council next week in order to request that extension if that's what we're going to do Either way, whether we request the extension or not, we won't have a more accurate list to set the tax rate before our deadline.

Okay, so then is there a way to, sounds like you're proposing that this is sort of a temporary tax rate based on if the grant list changes materially and then can someone walk me through what the process would be to do that if we've already sent out tax notices and et cetera in order to meet the charter requirements?

Um, I think just, you haven't, you know? Yeah.

Yep. Um, so what will happen, and this is a process that we normally follow every year anyway, is, um, we will file or we will prepare revised bills, um, whether that be for everyone in the city or just certain properties who are affected, um, I would say there would need to be a pretty significant change in the total grand list value to change the tax rate by any amount. So again, no idea what that looks like, just putting that out there as additional information. Whether we have to recalculate the tax rate as a whole or produce revised bills for specific properties, the process is basically the same. And like I said, we've worked with an Emmerich and this is something that we are familiar with doing on an annual basis anyway.

Okay, thank you.

Yeah, sure. And the reason that's important just for folks is if the grand list does change, it will likely go down, and if it goes down significantly enough, the tax rate goes up. It's never going to go up. Right, right. People only grievance if it's too high. People understand why we're talking about that being an important thing, but it does have to be significant. I guess my only comment is that, you know, the penny on the tax rate for economic development went up, from 112, 113 to 198,000, which is 50 some odd percent. But I understand that's due up again in March for a re-up and we'll be asking, I'm gonna say, we hopefully will be asking for a significant amount less than that. And I would hope that we would also revisit the social services fund, especially considering the tax increase everybody is about to, realize I think 200,000 for each one is probably not what folks intended but we will ask I hope we're gonna say sorry just that for the economic rate that has traditionally been done for a three-year time period for the social services we were very clear last year that will be an annual ask and so that will be 198 ish thousand for this current year for its first year, it sounds like, right?

Yeah.

And then, okay.

Yeah, because the question is already there. Right, right.

Yeah. And what was my second thing? It'll come, sorry.

Bethany, anything?

No, I don't think so. Okay.

Yeah, sorry. The breakdown, the pie chart, different types of properties and how that played out in the, is it possible since we're operating on a preliminary grand list at this point, Jess, I'm wondering how much effort would go into producing a preliminary breakdown of the new commercial versus residential versus the new pie chart for the breakdown for the grand list.

Yep, we can definitely do that. That was one of the things that I was planning on putting into the tax bill insert as well this year.

That'd be awesome. I think having it sooner than later would be great so folks can get their heads around why they're seeing these weird swings. Thank you.

Yep. Sorry, I have one question. Have we determined how,

the economic development fund and the social services fund are going to be used not yet okay well sorry you asked for both the economic development fund um there is a spreadsheet for that in the budget files and it explains what the what that is projected to be used for for fy27 the last couple of years and the next uh years ahead of the ahead of us That is partially to pay for the Amtrak match that we are required to match that federal funding amount. And then it's also used for matching the state grant for the main street park.

Thank you. Anything else from the council?

All right, I'm gonna open up to public comment. Anyone in the room? All right, I don't see any hands in the room. Anyone online? Not seeing any hands online, so yes, I will take that.

Sure move the City Council approve the FY27 general tax rate at .6007 cents and the tax agreement rate at .0007 cents. And I move the City Council cancel the special meeting for tax rate setting.

Do you want me to do that?

Yeah. On Monday, August 3rd, 2026. Sorry. I'll second.

All in favor? Aye. That's unanimous. Thank you.

We had you do a motion to set it, so that's why I just want you to do a motion to unset it.

He's talking about if we need the other special meeting for the grand list, but we would just set a different meeting for that.

We will, and that will be next week, not two weeks.

Okay, gotcha.

Okay, thanks, Jess. Thank you. Okay. So moving on to five D which is discussion and consideration on the west street force main project, et cetera. I'm not reading the whole thing. We had a, we had a pretty extensive conversation on this at the last meeting. Um, Chelsea is with us again. Yep. Hello. Hey.

Yes, so as Amber just said, we did talk for a while about this issue. Just to summarize it really briefly for those that weren't there, but West Street Pump Station is currently under design, and it was found that the force main, which takes the wastewater from the station to the facility to be treated is undersized for future growth. And so we need to upsize that. In order to do that, we will need to have a bond vote because the sanitation fund cannot support that cost of a project, which is $2 million. I know at the last meeting, there was concern about, we were talking about a 10-inch-sized pipe, where right now we're at an 8-inch-sized pipe. And I checked in with project engineers, and the size of the pipe, if we wanted to go even larger, is not going to substantially change the cost of the project, and there's still time to double-check numbers and decide 10 versus 12-inch. It's really the biggest cost for this project is putting the pipe in the ground, and that's where you're going to see a price difference. And then I know you also wanted to hear about the bonding capacity. So Jess can touch on that. Now, I guess I don't, I don't go far on these meetings.

Um, so I had, um, if you, for those that were around, um, back in 2024, The Ken from the bond bank prepared a debt analysis that was covered all funds and was a pretty big presentation. So what I had, I asked him to do is just to kind of like use that same format and mock it up for today's numbers. So the entire packet is included with this memo, but we inserted just the sanitation fund related information in the memo itself. So all of the ratios are in here. Everything is based on the FY25 audited financial statements. But he did factor in the additional debt, the 3.8 and the 2 million for this pump station and force main project combined. So that is factored into these ratios in the projected column. to the right of the FY25, and then the Vermont Bond Bank median are sort of the, that's where they like to see things. So, essentially, there's not necessarily capacity to take on additional debt payments this point where we're at, but we will have increased revenue that is not reflected in this analysis, increased expenses as well. So we can update these numbers. He's put these into a spreadsheet format so that I can actually update them myself going forward. So the plan is, through the budgeting process, we'll continue to use this as a tool going forward. And as a side note, he's also willing to come back and give a presentation at some point during the audit or the budget prep time so that everyone has the same information from him. So long story short, this would mean an increase to the user fees. So I just factored in based on today's rates, the FY27 rates that people are paying. would result in a total, so for the bonding for the 3.8 plus the 2 million total would be about a $73 annual increase on a utility bill for the average user. $48 of that is associated with the pump stations and about $25 of that is related just to the force main project.

Is that our share? Because we're not paying that full amount, right?

Correct.

I mean, we're bonding that full amount, but your rate payers are not paying that full amount.

Right, right. So, this, the $73 per year is on the full amount. So, once we have, I guess we can, 70% of this right now is what the town will be covering. So the full impact won't be $73 on a bill. That's incorrect. Okay. It will be less than that.

You get that?

Is that? That doesn't sound right because only one of the pump stations, two of the pump stations are being shared. That's not, anyway, that's not how I read it, but. One. One is being shared? One. Yeah. The West Street one.

West Street. Yeah, so we are responsible for 100% of the Maple and River Street pump stations. West Street is 70% town, 30% city. Forest Main is 70% town, 30% city. To start. To start, yes.

Right.

That to start is clarifying that that's before that we don't have actual measurements of output but that's part of this project and then we'll be able to adjust based on flows, right? Correct. Correct. I was sure that that was true. I've just taken the record. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah.

And to clarify, the pump stations were doing largely because of age, right? All because of age. They're all 40 plus years. Okay, and the force main is primarily because of capacity, maybe some age.

Yeah, mainly capacity.

Okay. So I just hope that, you know, I'm going to beat this annoying drum again. The capacity is due to increased development. It would be nice, instead of spreading that amongst the community, that we figure out how to apply these costs to the developers, bringing in that extra capacity need, one way or the other. Because we've already added a 70 to $80 stormwater fee on the average bill last year, plus the increases, plus this. And it's starting to get, it's, it's adding up and that's not directed at you Chelsea. I'm just saying this out loud. So people understand that we, we know this and it's frustrating. And, um, I'm going to reiterate, we need to find a way to stop spreading these out when some of the increased costs are due to development that's new. Um, and figure out where that's appropriate and where it's not because, um, Yeah. I mean, it doesn't sound like a big dollar amount, even if the force main turns out to be 20 or 25 or 15. But when we add all of the other things that have come in the last four or five years in these utility rates, they've gone up quite a bit. And, um, so just throwing that out there, Bethany.

Yeah, sorry, I was about to try to do 30% of 2 million in my . I'll look that up in a second. 600,000.

600,000.

Thank you. I'm terrible at math, or basic math anyway. I was wondering, and this is a scary question because I am, you know, but is there a plan if the bond vote fails? No. No. In a sentence, no. That's what I suspected the answer would be.

Not currently. If it fails, we obviously will figure out if there is any other way to make it happen. But we don't have a backup plan at this current moment.

But the bond for the actual worrisome component has passed.

The 3.8's already passed.

The pump station's passed.

The pump station could get installed. We would just be spending more on pumps that, like $150,000 more on pumps than we need to.

So we just need to make that point.

And then it won't allow for a lot of future growth before it becomes a problem again.

So I think my comment here is that there's just going to be a need for education. And this isn't directed at you, Chelsea. I'm directing this at us. Education about why it's needed now, what happens if we delay, and that our portion will be $600,000 of the full $2 million.

Yep. Any other questions in the room?

But just to clarify, as Pearl Street between Susie Wilson and West Street gets built up, that is much more likely to build up faster than the town's portion coming in from an area that's largely built up already. So over the course of the next 10 years, the course of this bond, that ratio is likely, but not guaranteed, to go up for village or city residents on this bond. And it will probably, I'm going to assume, be reconciled annually. So we're starting at 30, but we could end up at well over 50 over the life of the bond. if I'm thinking about it correctly, right? Right. Yep. All right.

Yeah. I mean, the town definitely has some growth plans for Susie Wilson Corridor, and it also is a portion of Colchester actually in the fort. So it's hard to know.

It's hard to know. I would say.

Yeah.

Well, and also if we have all that housing built, then those folks are going to be paying $79 a year on top as well. So there's going to be, that's additional revenue on top, right? While our percentage will go higher, we'll have higher revenue as well.

Yeah, I just wonder if that's going to be a one-to-one.

Yeah, that is the question, and I want to make sure that that is actually the question. Yeah.

Yep. Anything else? Okay, I'll open up to public comment.

Marcus.

Thanks. So as I recall in this, I think this addresses or goes to the question that that Raj and Bethany brought up. But as I recall, again, we're talking for the most part about capacity for development along that Pearl Street, and then again, to support the town. But as I recall, Chelsea, and again, sorry, Amber, I know Chelsea's probably gonna have to answer this, so my apologies. My recollection, though, is that we are at capacity. And as a matter of fact, during certain circumstances, The pump station is above, it is not, that pipe does not serve the current need because we end up in a situation where we just can't move it out fast enough. That's why the the mention of the dental office at the last meeting, for instance. So I just want to be clear and ask the question about to understand the need. We're not just talking about we have to do this for development. We also need to do this to give ourselves a little bit of breathing room on our current need.

The force main is okay. At the moment it's more the station is not okay. They're tied together, but the station, the size of the pumps right now is part of the problem. We need a second wet well to take in, it's surging, the Susie Wilson pump station is surging the station, so if that kicks on and we have a lot of gravity flow that comes in, one pump can't keep up because they're old, and so two pumps have to come on. It's getting to the max of that pipe, yes, but it's not at a point if it's all the time. If it's all the time, we would be having significant problems and this would probably become an emergency situation. But it's not there yet. Another question I have is... We're trying to be proactive for now that this is becoming more of a problem.

I appreciate that. Another question I have is, has the town agreed to do their portion of this? Or is there still a possibility the town could go, no, we don't have the financial capacity to do this and we're not going to?

They are 100% on board that it has to get done.

But that, they're in, but they're financially in or they're just in in spirit? I guess there's some clarity in the language.

They are in.

Okay.

Thank you.

All right.

Let me just make sure. Is there anybody else online for public comment? Anyone in the room? I thought Chris was raising his hand from there. Okay. Yes, I do.

I make a motion to authorize the city manager to sign the amendment to the engineering, to the engineer services agreement to include the west street forest main replacement project. I make a motion to have the city council sign the application to the clean water state revolving fund. for the West Street Forest Main Replacement Project. I also make a motion to amend the fiscal year 2027 Sanitation Capital Fund to include the West Street Forest Main Replacement Project. I move that the City Council approve the resolution of necessity for the West Street Forest Main Replacement Project as presented in the attached resolution for an amount of $2 million.

I need a second. Second. All in favor?

Thank you.

Yeah, it's okay. I figured you're unanimous. Thank you, Jess. Thank you, Chelsea. All right, we are moving on to 5E, which is discussion and consideration of the comprehensive plan update on community engagement and input. Hello, Darren.

Hey, Amber. Thank you, City Council. Good to see you all. Apologies, I did not think about having to join the Zoom meeting ahead of time so I could run the presentation, but I am very good at stalling, so it's great to be here tonight and to see you all. It's also been, we're probably about a third of the way through this project, so it's nice to... give you an update on where we've been, where we're going, but also to say, hey, we're doing this project with Essex Junction and we're excited about that and we're happy to share what we've been up to with you folks. This is an update to the comprehensive plan. So this is going to be the first comprehensive plan that Essex Junction will do as a new city. So it's a really exciting opportunity for us to work with you and to have the city really set course for the future and of what it wants to do. For context, Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission was hired as the consultant to help the city do this update. So we are not only your friendly neighborhood regional planning commission helping support all the normal efforts that you do, but we are specifically tasked with making sure this project gets done for you. We have a contract that lays out a whole set of tasks that we're going to be doing and how we're going to be going about doing that. I'm going to try to give you the brief highlights of what that looks like and happy to answer any questions after we go through that presentation. But I'll also give you a sense of where we're at and where we're headed next. And there will be opportunities for the city council potentially to participate. So we'll talk about what that might look like. And at the very least, we will be doing general community outreach on the plan in addition to what we've already done. We'll bring it back to the community in the fall or probably around the November vote, maybe a little after that, maybe a little ahead of town meeting day. to get feedback on here's the draft plan and here's what we're looking for. So I just wanted to give you that heads up that that's our timeline. We'll talk about that in a second. But there might be opportunity to connect with some of the other topics you're talking about and things like infrastructure funding, things like how do we use our funds and what do we want our development context to look like. So be prepared for that. and we are paying attention to all the things that are going on for the city outside of the scope of the comprehensive plan update so with all of that uh stonewalling here is the presentation making sure that's going to show up online before i get rolling that working for you folks not yet it might

be a while. It took a while for you to join. Just keep talking, Darren.

All right, I'll just keep talking. So I don't want to skip too far ahead, but there we go. Great. Here we are. Now... Okay, so today we're gonna talk about the project timeline, what we've done for public engagement, and then we'll get in a little bit to what we're doing right now with the Planning Commission, which is drafting the actual plan, and then we'll have time for council discussion and questions. so this is a snapshot of where we are we are giving these um sort of uh tables as project updates to chris and the city or the planning commission every month so if you're ever interested in where things stand let us know and we can share that with you but it looks like a lot of in progress and yellow stuff but we have made substantial progress and that's only because there's still more to do so Project management's ongoing, regular weekly meetings with Chris and Scott McCormick, who is the Planning Commission's main designee for working on the comprehensive plan. Sometimes that includes other members of staff, other folks from CCRPC. We're trying to make sure we've included as many people as possible in how we approach this. We've done a lot of review of the existing plans, efforts, planning, work, and public engagement that the city has done over the last few years. So that includes the community vision and strategic action plan. It includes some of the rebranding stuff that you did early on. It includes some of the budget work sessions that you did a year or two ago in terms of formulating the annual budget the operating budget and doing the community engagement around that so we're trying to make sure we're aware of what's going on we are doing mapping and analysis including you know updating all of the data in the plan like census data and all of the maps that you need to have from a statutory perspective as we go through the plan drafting so been happening in the background. But the big thing that we spent a lot of our effort on so far was public engagement. We brought a public engagement plan to the Planning Commission and said, here's what we want to do. We have now implemented most of that by doing some outreach on specific topics in the Community Vision and Strategic Action Plan. and trying to make sure that we're reaching as wide a range of people as possible, but really getting some focused input on particular things that had not already been done in that prior engagement. So we're trying to not ask the same questions over and over, but get a little deeper into some of those topics. As I mentioned, we're in the process of drafting the plan with the Planning Commission, meeting with them every month, and bringing new chapters to them for review. And that's part of those PC work sessions. So in addition to actually talking about these topics, we're doing a lot of work behind the scenes. Something that the council will need to be aware of is, March to August of next year, we will be bringing this plan to you for a formal adoption. We want to make sure you're aware of what's in that plan and some of the topics we're talking about well ahead of that so that you don't have big questions at the point of, we need to get this adopted to keep the timeline going, but we'll talk about what that might look like. But just so you know, that's our anticipated schedule for moving that through the formal process and trying to thread the needle around town meeting day and elections and city council turnover so that you're not overwhelmed with too many things at once. Any questions on where we've been, where we're headed on the big picture? Great. So I'll talk a little bit about what we've done with public engagement. And I'll keep it high level. There's so much we could go into. We will talk a little bit about what we've heard. But in terms of the approach we took, as I mentioned, we looked at what you've done already. We came up with these key themes and questions that we wanted to bring to the community so that we weren't just saying, tell us what you'd like Essex Junction to look like in eight years or in 20 years. We wanted to say, what is it really you know, mean to say this is our vision, like let's get some specific actions, some specific pen to paper what's gonna happen in the next five years, the next eight years, beyond the scope of this plan update. So we focused on three of the pillars in the Community Vision Strategic Action Plan, housing and urban design, energy and climate, or sustainability, and last one is business and economic development. IT SEEMED LIKE THE OTHER THREE PILLARS IN THE PLAN WERE PRETTY WELL FLESHED OUT OR WOULD BE THROUGH OTHER WORK THAT THE CITY IS DOING. SO THINGS LIKE PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT, YOU'RE WORKING ON A PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT PLAN AND YOU'RE WORKING ON OUTREACH TO THE COMMUNITY. There's a pretty good handle on transportation through Connect the Junction. You always are in the middle of thinking about infrastructure, as we've seen tonight. So we wanted to leave those in your arena and just take the lead from you. But these other topics that I mentioned, we're not as totally fleshed out in the community vision strategic action plan as we wanted to get to in order to put something straight into the comprehensive plan. We needed to get a little more detail as to what that looked like. So that's why we brought that to the community. Does that make sense? Great. The way we did that was a little bit of online surveys, but we know Essex Junction has been very heavily surveyed, so we really wanted to get people in the room by doing these focus groups on those specific topics, bringing people together to say, here's what's in the Community Vision Strategic Action Plan, here's where we've been as a community before, and here's where we'd like to go, but what does it look like to have housing that is diverse and affordable. What are the topics that really are on your mind and how do we make things better for the community for energy and climate? We've got these goals, but what does it mean for, you know, what's the city's role in helping achieve those in terms of getting more EV registrations, getting more people to use renewable energy as opposed to fossil fuels? How do we actually make that happen, especially considering the city is a public sector and a lot of this is private sector action? And then with the economic and business development, we know that there's been a little feeling in the business community that they want more from the city, they want more partnership, they want more support, especially now that there is a city and that there's a potential for there to be a lot of growth and development. So we tried to get a sense of what that would look like for the city to support businesses and economic development beyond just saying, yeah, we'd love to have businesses here and we want to create space for them. Are there programs such as business accelerators? Are there tax stabilization agreements? Is there a potential of forming some sort of downtown organization or affiliation of business owners who get together and SHARE THEIR NEEDS AND ISSUES AND HOW DOES THAT INTERFACE WITH THE CITY. WE DID A LOT OF DOOR-TO-DOOR OUTREACH FOR BUSINESSES SPECIFICALLY KNOWING THAT WE CAN GET FOLKS TO SHOW UP TO A FOCUS GROUP, RESIDENTS TO SHOW UP TO A FOCUS GROUP ABOUT HOUSING ENERGY AND CLIMATE RELATIVELY EASILY BUT IT'S REALLY HARD TO GET BUSINESS OWNERS TO TAKE TIME OUT OF THEIR DAY TO GIVE US FEEDBACK SO WE TRIED TO BRING THAT TO THEM AS MUCH AS WE COULD. So every brick and mortar business on Pearl Street and in Five Corners, and as far as we could go on Main Street, Maple Street, and 2A, we tried to walk in, say, here's who we are, here's what we're doing, we'd love to have your feedback, we'd love to talk with you more, and that, I think, was pretty well appreciated. Some people are busy, some people don't have time, but they did, I think, appreciate that we were asking and doing that outreach. And we got some interesting feedback from a lot of them, but I think, again, there was relief that the city was interested in what they're up to. As I mentioned, we did do some web surveys. We're trying to collate all of that feedback into a digestible summary, but we'll be doing that as we go with plan drafting and also providing a full document saying here's what we did for engagement and what we heard and how that factors into the comprehensive plan. I will talk about what we heard in a sec, but any questions on how we're doing it and why? Okay. Okay. As I mentioned with the focus groups, we tried to get people to give us specifics about what the comprehensive plan should include using the SMART framework, that acronym that talks about plan actions being specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. This is because a lot of the language in the current comprehensive plan is very broad, very vague, very aspirational, which it should be. But it's also helpful to have what's the action plan, what's the implementation going to look like when you actually adopt that plan and say, now what? So we're really trying to make sure that that is a handbook for the city, for the council, for staff, for the boards and commissions, and anybody who wants to work with the city as here's what's happening and when and how. So we tried to get that feedback from people in those focus groups. It's not always easy to get everybody to coalesce around everything in those groups, but we got a good starting point and we can fill in the blanks as staff and with the planning commission. So in terms of what we heard, In housing, drum roll please. I'll keep talking. There is a general support for housing development in the city. I think folks, residents in particular understand there's gonna be a lot of growth in the coming years. They're supportive of that and in fact they're excited about the opportunities that we'll bring. That was part of the community vision and strategic action plan as well. But there's definitely a desire to say, let's control how that happens in a way that benefits the city and isn't just development for development's sake. So trying to make sure that there's affordability and diversity of housing types, trying to make sure that there's more green spaces as new development happens, and also thinking about what's already in the city and what's already existing. So trying to do better landlord-tenant education and support and improve relations between them Particularly, I think, in the larger buildings, the larger apartment buildings. We've heard a lot of feedback in all of the work that we've done that things are not always great in that regard. And it's a hard nut to crack and a hard thing for the city to have to be involved in because it is ultimately private sector. But there has been a call from the community through this outreach for the city to have a stronger role in landlord-tenant relations, both for residential and for commercial. We'll talk about that in a minute. And some of that is maintenance and code compliance issues. In fact, I'd say a majority of it is. It's not necessarily about evictions and fair housing necessarily. It's just is the building being maintained to the way that I think it should be. And from the landlord's side, recognizing that there's a high cost to doing that and that being able to work cooperatively with tenants is important and finding a way forward with some of the challenges that come up, particularly in older buildings. So that's something that I think the Planning Commission and City Council have heard before through things like the rental registry discussions. And so we tried to pick up that thread a little bit and say, How do we address those issues without moving straight to a rental registry? So we'll have more in the summaries of what that looks like. But moving on to energy and climate, there's again this big question of how do we achieve these very ambitious energy and climate goals? And I think the biggest theme around that was balancing a regulatory versus an incentive-based approach. knowing when to use which tool for the result that we're trying to achieve and what's going to be most effective. For instance, in a situation on Pearl Street where there's going to be a lot of redevelopment and a lot of opportunity for new buildings, let's take a regulatory approach and make sure that new buildings comply with the high standards of energy efficiency because those buildings are going to be there for at least 50 to 100 years. And they're large enough in scale that just requiring that is feasible for that developer to make that work. Even if it costs a little more now, it'll help the residents of those buildings save money in the long term through operational costs. But for someone in a single unit home or even a fourplex, the efficiencies and the economies of scale just aren't there to say, let's just require that. They need a little assistance to do retrofits to make their buildings more efficient. So recognizing which approach is going to work where. I mentioned the oversight of large buildings during construction to ensure codes are met, both in terms of there's an opportunity going forward, but there's a recognition that that hasn't always gone well for some of the buildings that even were built in the last 10 years. And being able to step up the enforcement of that in some way, whether that's city action directly or better partnerships with the current enforcement system was something that residents and businesses were interested in seeing. And again, trying to connect to existing resources and incentives rather than having the city do all of this. Something Scott has been kind of harping on rightly is that there's a lot of things that people want, but it all costs money and it all takes time and effort. So one of the things we'll be doing with the Planning Commission at the end of the drafting process and the getting everything on the table is deciding what's the priority and how do we allocate resources. And we actually do want to take that out to the community a little bit once we get to that stage of saying, here are the competing interests. What is your priority for the next short term and the long term? I can go through some of the other bullet points, but I feel like I should keep moving. So feel free to revisit this if you still have questions. I think the biggest win for us in engagement for this project was the business owner outreach. Again, lots of good feedback about that and lots of really good insights. So one of the things is that Businesses appreciate how walkable the city is. That's important to them. It brings the customer base. But a lot of them said, I still need people to be able to park close to me so that I can keep my business running. It doesn't have to be fully car-oriented, but there needs to be a balance. And I think that was particularly true in the Five Horners area. That's been something that's on people's minds. Just because at the current point, parking feels a little limited given the construction that's happening and the ways that people can navigate around five corners. So maybe a little more education around where people can park and a different expectation for people when they come into five corners that you're not necessarily going to be able to park in the building or in the parking lot of the building that you want to use. But there are other options. I know that's an ongoing discussion. Visibility of businesses through signage was a pretty common theme, both on Pearl Street and sort of the further end and along Railroad Street. So folks just wanting to make sure that they can advertise effectively and having some conflict around the sign ordinances and regulations and looking for opportunities to have a little more collaboration with the city and flexibility on that. We talked about relationships with landlords and larger buildings. We talked a little bit about having the city take a stronger role in promoting and supporting businesses. But something that everyone really appreciated was the relationship with the police department. Really having that support from law enforcement has been something that folks appreciated and feel like is valuable for this community. And I will mention briefly that some of the businesses on Pearl Street mentioned that they have some physical constraints on their lot that are making it difficult for them to expand or do more with their business just because the lots are not as deep. And for certain types of businesses, that's giving them thoughts of like, well, how am I going to expand? I might not be able to stay in this exact location. So just a heads up around that.

Thank you. I know this is not Q&A time, but I'm just curious about an example of that because I will forget to ask you.

Yeah. One was an auto-oriented use that part of it was what the current regulations say about existing automotive uses and saying, you know, I want to be able to expand a little bit further in the back and also go up a little bit. But it was specifically how the regulations say this is an existing kind of non-conforming use. Another example was a warehouse showroom that needed to be able to have in order to have more space. They really need more first floor space. They can't go up because it's large material that can't be supported on a second floor. And just being able to move things upstairs, downstairs would not work for that scenario. Not necessarily something that the city can always solve that problem exactly the way that business owner might want, but just something to know that there's some limitations and some changeover that might happen as things progress for those businesses and in terms of how the redevelopment in Pearl Street might happen. Cool.

Thanks.

Yeah. Good question.

I appreciate that.

That's all we have for engagement results at a high level. There's a lot more detail. Happy to share that. Any other questions on housing, energy and climate, or business?

Do you have some sort of data on the participation vis-a-vis homeowners versus renters?

Good question. I'd say probably skewed a little more towards homeowners. I'd have to check the data. But I do know that we had a few renters specifically attend the housing focus group. And I know there's been some folks who talked about that in the surveys. I think it's hard to reach renters, and we knew that was going to be a challenge, but we tried to offer stipends for participation in these focus groups. I think a lot of folks misunderstood that they had to actually show up in person and not just participate online, which in retrospect, maybe we could have made that a little easier, but again, we're trying to get to... really digging into these details, really digging into the issues and trying to facilitate a multiple room Zoom meeting is kind of difficult. So we made the decision to try to manage that in person, but there might be interest from the community in some sort of online forum around that for renters perhaps.

I would encourage attempting some form of online participation if there's an avenue for that.

Yep, we did put out a survey for folks who could not attend that in-person meeting. We have had some responses on that. So we have tried to make sure that there's opportunities for asynchronous and online participation. I think we are hoping to have the planning commission meetings to discuss these topics to be the online participation option. And we will also make sure there are online participation options when we bring this plan back out to the public.

directory for the downtown. That was one thing I thought was still missing. So we help cross-sell each other, because I do try to make it so that when people are at my store, I send them to other people's stores. I think that's something we're desperately missing. Thanks for answering.

Can you just tell us your name? Oh, sorry. Dave Knox. Thanks.

Amber, my apologies. Can we I could not hear a single thing he said. So my apologies.

If you don't know if it was just a business directory for the downtown and for for all of Essex basically, so businesses can help cross sell other businesses.

Thank you.

Anybody else? All right. Cool.

You're good to go. Cool. Moving on. Here we are in the plan drafting process. We're in our second meeting with the Planning Commission on this. We've talked about energy and climate first because we wanted to line up with the timing of a pilot program that the city is doing with the Climate Action Office on a new municipal climate planning guide. That's why we kind of went a little out of order than what we normally would do. This month, August, we will be talking with the Planning Commission about the overall vision and the history sections of the plan and trying to figure out, again, how do we navigate all of these important themes from the Community Vision and Strategic Action Plan throughout the document so that folks feel like it's a navigable document, that they understand how that vision is being translated into the goals and priorities. So we'll be taking that big picture view, and then we'll kind of go back to chunking away at a few chapters at a time each month. I would encourage the city council to pay attention to what's being discussed if you're interested in a particular topic. We are also, about a month or two in advance of each topic, we're trying to do outreach with the respective department head. So for instance, we met with Chelsea to talk about infrastructure and water and Wastewater so that we can get a handle on that Our Ricky Jones is our next one. I think to talk about with Public Works We also met with Mark Bristlin to talk about recreation and open space management. So we will We've been keeping Regina and Chris in the loop about who we're meeting with when. We're also going to try to provide an opportunity for any advisory committees to provide input. So next week I'll be at the Tree Advisory Committee to talk about urban forestry. We'll try to connect with the Recreation Commission so that they can have input on their section. So just know that we're trying to put our fingers everywhere in a good way. And just so you know, the format of the meetings of the Planning Commission, you know, we're talking about a particular set of chapters. We're also revisiting the last set of chapters that we worked with them on in order to wrap things up and close up any comments that we heard from the commission itself. The question for you is, does any of the city council want to be involved in that plan drafting process specifically? Do you wanna talk about a particular topic? Do you want any other updates or do you wanna just have us run through this for the next six months and you'll see us in March?

I mean.

You could have a say.

On the one hand, I'm trying to find that page with a schedule.

mean i think from while you're finding that you know as a former pc member i mean i think it's important that you're always involved so like you you've got a schedule if it's a if it's a topic that the city council and as an individual wants to go and have you know they can go to the meeting they're a public member and participate i don't know that that we're going to have a like you come to us every other month or something and give us an update. I don't think that's, that's what we're going to do. Um, but I do think it might be helpful to, for us. to be paying attention when you give the draft so we can be proactive if there's stuff in that draft. Just again, in my experience of having that go horribly wrong when it landed here. So that would be just my two cents about the process.

Go ahead. We'll have minutes. We'll have the ability to watch the videos. Looking at the schedule, it might be nice. I mean, we'll probably only have one meeting in December, right? But maybe an early – I'm trying to remember the tax season now has changed. We're a month or two ahead. Right. Or the budget, sorry, season. What I was going to say is, at some point, as you're coalescing this into an executive summary, it might be an interesting time to check in like this. Here's where we think we're landing. Here are the four or five takeaways from each topic, or three or four. Because even after that, there's still a month or two. And then the whole public outreach and the whole public hearing thing in five or six months. But it might be a nice point without overdoing it. And in the meantime, we can all jump in whenever we're curious. Yeah.

And I think the Planning Commission has expressed interest in working with the City Council on that implementation table and what those actions will look like, and particularly in how those are prioritized.

Yeah.

I think there's been an interest too in pulling out like a top 10 or 20 or whatever the number is, priority actions for the next three to five to eight years. So I think that's a really good opportunity to interface with the city council, especially because it will be around budget time. Great. We will make note of that.

Bethany, did you...

Yeah, just wanted to comment quickly on that. I agree that I think involving the city council at the stage where we are determining implementation is the right time. I'm sorry also for everyone for how stuffy my nose is. No worries.

I mean, also sensitive to the fact that the planning commission, if they want My approach would be to stay out of their lane a little bit and to just sort of raise my hand if I have a question once in a while. If they would appreciate more involvement, I'm game. I just don't want to get in their lane and make it difficult for them. So if they're listening or if anyone has to pass that on, I will be as involved as – more involved if they'd like it. But I'm trying to respect the process.

Sounds good. I think that any participation will be welcome. And I think they also would, without speaking for the Planning Commission, would appreciate the roles and responsibilities approach. One other thing I will mention as I have the timeline up here and just showing you which topics we'll be covering when, at least as far as we have planned it out now, that timeline for adoption is really April, March through August of next year. There is some flexibility in exactly when those public hearings happen and how many of them there are. to some extent. And there is technically an option to go beyond August and have a expired plan. It's not really a big deal if we do push out a little bit beyond that. But I want to be very clear that our goal is to make sure that you have an unexpired plan for the entire time that we're doing this process. And I don't see any reason to think that we will not maintain that schedule. But if something blows up on your end, let us know. Yeah.

Either questions or comments for Darren? One more quickie, sorry.

Will there be opportunity, it doesn't, like you all will talk about economic development in December. Will there be opportunity to kind of have some cooperation between the exploration that we're doing separately, whoever that does that with this process? Yes? Okay. Yes. Hopefully. All right, great.

We're already talking with Simone Bedford, the economic mobility specialist, about interfacing with her work and also with the economic development consultant, strategic plan consultant. So we have a meeting early August, I think, to talk about that?

Yes. Yep.

Cool. All right. I'm going to open it up to public comment before you run, Darren. Anyone in the room? Anyone online? Not seeing any hands, so you can run.

Okay. I should say, Chris, did you have anything else you wanted to say about the comprehensive plan update process?

I do not know.

Great. Thanks. Good to see you. Thanks, Darren. Good to see you.

Be in touch. All right. 5F, introduction of the form-based code amendments to the LDC.

Okay. I am going to put up a set of slides over here.

It's just working.

So yes, there's a set of land development code amendments that's working its way through the Planning Commission right now. The Planning Commission has been reviewing this and making edits to it for really like over half a year now. It's been a pretty big initiative. And the biggest part of it is form-based code. But it's not the only thing. Every time we open up the land development code, if we know something needs adjustments elsewhere, technical changes, it's going to be included in the draft package. So there's more than just form-based code. But that's going to be our focus today. And that's really, I'd say, from a public perspective, the biggest change and perhaps the most interesting change that is proposed. So, the impetus for the form-based code, code amendments really stem from Connect the Junction, the plan that was adopted by the City Council on December 17th, 2025. And the, The change in height limits and where growth is meant to be centered. is a big part of it. So I think form-based code is meant to steer the direction of how this new development can be made and what it's gonna look like. Just as a reminder for context, the housing targets that we're working towards is In Chittenden County, by 2050, the housing targets that came out of the housing needs assessments is 32,000 new homes. And Essex Junction's share of that regional target is about 3,100 homes. During Connected Junction, there was a capacity analysis, land capacity analysis that was done, and it found and it estimated that under existing zoning regulations along the Pearl Street corridor and in the city center, there would likely be capacity to add about 1,144 new homes. If you raise the height limits to seven plus one, so that last floor for qualifying affordable housing developments, that number goes up to 1,662. And that number likely goes up to just a little over 2,000 with a height limit of about nine stories plus the one for affordable housing. housing. So the plan landed on the highest option over here, nine stories plus one story for the qualifying affordable housing developments with caveats as to where that is distributed. The village center zoning district was broken up into sub-districts. It looks a little bit like this. So the Village Center Zoning District, where we are right now, is at four plus one. Much of the rest of the district is at seven plus one, and then the corner where the Lincoln Inn is would be at nine plus one. And along the Pearl Street corridor, the plan calls for nine plus one as well. I'll note that as a part of the proposed LDC amendments, right now there's a kind of phasing in of the height limit changes along Pearl Street because of the sewer capacity constraints that you were just talking about today with the West Street. So that will have to come in at a later time.

Sorry, one quick question before you go too far. Can you define a home? Units. One bedroom. No. Or a whole unit. So it could be a studio, one bedroom, two bedroom, three bedroom.

Well, I think there's an assumption that there's going to be a mix of needs in terms of housing typology. But the housing needs assessments and the regional housing targets does not break that down by unit type at this time.

OK. Thanks.

All right, so we were just talking about the phasing, but what would change right now under the proposed zoning regulations would be just what's outlined in black. So form-based code, the biggest change that it entails is that's conventional zoning, mainly regulates use, what activities is on a property, whereas a form-based code focuses on physical form and how they shape the public realm. And for the Development Review Board, I made these slides for the Development Review Board originally, so it's not addressed to the proper party over here. But the DRB would be reviewing many projects based on whether a design looks harmonious with its surroundings, or functions harmoniously with its surroundings. But under form-based code, there are clearer, more measurable, and objective standards. So the point of these is that it's easier to predict the outcomes, it's easier to apply consistently, and it's more defensible if it gets challenged in court. Discretion does narrow for the DRB, but that can be a good thing. If a project meets a standard, that element is satisfied and it's not based on taste. But there is still some discretion where the code calls for it, such as with waivers and exceptions. At a high level, this is what the form-based code sections of these amendments will cover. So there's a lot about building heights and how it relates to the width of the streets. That's what we are gonna call the street room ratio. Rules about residential adjacency, so kind of the transition between this higher density Pearl Street corridor and the city center and the surrounding neighborhoods. How buildings sit on the lot and meet the sidewalk, and that's gonna be called frontage types. stuff about facade composition, articulation of materials, how parking can be placed and screened, and a kind of revamp of the landscaping metrics. Uses, the permitted and conditional uses that are currently in use charge are not changing, so any use that is currently allowed in these districts will remain. Historic resources will still remain protected under basically the same rules as before. The historic resource overlay district remains the same. The design review overlay district will remain, but it's gonna have the village center and the TOD districts carved out of it. So it's gonna kind of look like a patchwork of a little overlay districts, but the reason behind that is because design is now going to be governed by the form-based standards, so it doesn't make sense to have them both. and site plan review will still apply, so things will, larger projects will still go to the DRB. There are some other municipalities using kind of more practiced informed base code that allows for kind of a larger role for staff to administratively approve things that check the boxes, but at this point, things are still going to the DRB as it is right now. So I'm gonna go over some of these main topics just to give you a sense of how it's meant to work. So the street room ratio, building heights, and how it relates to the width of the street. I think there's a recognition that a 10-story building looks very different along a narrow street versus along a wide street, and also it looks different based on where it's placed if it's close to the middle of the road versus pushed back further with a setback. So under the proposed rules, there's a one-to-one ratio kind of upper limits and a one-to-two ratio lower limits. that is counting the width of what is considered the street room. So that is the street itself, the sidewalks, landscaping, and the setback on a developer's own private property. So you can increase the street room width by kind of eating into your own property. And a one to two ratio is there to kind of look at the opposite scenario. You wanna make sure that development doesn't look too barren. This wouldn't really allow for strip malls with really large setbacks in parking out front. So if you exceed one to one, that wouldn't be allowed under these rules. So this diagram on the left shows what that would look like. So how would you bring that into compliance? Well, you can use what are called step backs. So you can add kind of mid-level terraces. Of course, you can also just not build to the full height. But you could use step backs, or you could use a combination of step backs and impose your own setback, basically. Push your own building further back. So the Planning Commission took a look at some existing or previous development applications and kind of imagined what street room width would look like. So the new railroad avenue, the street right-of-way is relatively, is narrower than some of these other streets that we have around here, 57 feet. So the building height proposed there, which is right up to the street edge, is 54. Now, that's just four stories, so that would mean right up against the street. In this situation, if we only counted the width of the right of way plus any setback as a part of the street room ratio, the front of the building would be limited to four stories. The Planning Commission did kind of take a further look at this and their recommendation right now is that if a street is beside a rail right of way, because they know that the rail right of way is not going to become buildings on the other side, that that should also count as a part of the street width, or at least be allowed to count as one. I mean, it wouldn't be forced to be counted as one because they also didn't want it to be too restrictive on the lower end. But that is one tweak that they made to the street room ratio that wasn't initially brought up by The consultant just wanted to show you.

So if they're along which, so that would have to be along the back or along the side. I'm just trying to think of the shape of the tracks over there. How would that work?

So from this view right now, behind the camera, there's a right of way. So there's a rail right of way. So that means functionally, we would be counting this as more than 57. I think it would be like 100. So along Railroad Ave, there would be a much wider effective street room.

So it would go from the Indian restaurant across the road, across the grass, across the tracks, and that would all be included kind of as the, to count for what they could build along Railroad Street between Main and... I am trying to imagine where, specifically where you're talking about, but I think... Over by the rail yard, over by the train station, not including the train station, but like, so go up Main, turn left. The buildings there, the bridal shop, all the way down that way.

Yes, but it doesn't matter so much over there because that is the portion of the village that is owning district, the sub-district where it's still limited to the current height limit of four plus one. Okay.

But if it wasn't limited, they would use the whole street, the sidewalks, and the rails. Correct. And the tracks, across the tracks. And the parking for...

Well, actually, I guess it didn't really consider if there's another street on the other side. Well, I wouldn't think about that. Let's forget that. I'm just trying to get an example. So it's just road plus rail right away.

Yeah, so we come over here to the Crescent.

Which would allow a bigger, a taller building because of the wider, okay.

The Crescent has the road, the fence, the green space, the fence, the rail.

Yeah, the whole thing.

So that...

Here's another example of street room ratio being applied to something that has just been built. So at 17 Park Street, if you take a look at the edge of the right of way, feet in street room width. Their building height is 56.5 at five stories. Now using some AI for imagination, this is what that building could theoretically look like at seven stories. And that, if it went just straight up at seven stories, sitting where it is, that would exceed the one-to-one street room ratio. So that would not. That's right. They would have to terrace back the top story.

Just the top story? How far up that building do you think they'd have to terrace that back?

I think, so it's just exceeded it by a little bit, right? 1.09, so it would just be the top story in terms of what the mandatory step back. They could also push the entire building further back, but of course there are various different options for how you could actually build it in a way that would comply. Okay. Residential adjacency, so this adds an additional setback. So this is really talking about the back of these lots. You know, I think there was really a concerned, and there was a lot of thought going in at the Planning Commission about, you know, how much to to regulate the fronts and kind of like, if you set a lower street room ratio limit, then you're basically requiring step backs at the front. But then you also have some kind of, you also have reason to not build all the way to the back. And then, If you go too much on both sides, you're effectively limiting where you would be able to build from a three-dimensional perspective. So this is what they settled on. I think it's a compromise that they thought made sense. If the difference in proposed heights at the development versus the allowed heights in the abutting residential district is four more stories, then setback is increased to 30 feet. And then there would be a landscape buffer that's required.

Is that from the property line of the rear of the residential property behind it or the building?

That is from the property line. So the little kind of horizontal dash in the middle, that is the property line. Okay, so next piece of form-based code is about frontage types. So how buildings interact with the streets and the sidewalk. The code prescribes six different frontage types and has different rules for each one. So some of these, so only for certain types, only for the linear frontage would you be allowed to build all the way up to the street. And linear frontage is only for active retail uses. There are various different regulations that apply to these different frontages, but for example, Oh yeah, so this is just a look at the type of set, the ranges of setbacks that would be allowable for each type. You don't have to read through that right now. Illustrated examples here, the plaza frontage has specific requirements about weather protection over the principal entry, pedestrian amenities, seating. the plaza itself and it requires a setback for part of the frontage to qualify. And just for an idea of what level of depth the frontage definitions come with, this is kind of what you would be seeing. Next, there are rules about facade composition and articulation of materials. So about materials, there's what is defined as a primary materials, which would be limited to wood or high quality fiber cements, brick, natural stone, stucco, or certain metals. So you'll notice missing from that is vinyl siding. Secondary materials are kind of for accent only. So this is only for the side that is, this is the side that's facing the street. The rules about vertical articulation, I think to me the most interesting and obvious part about this is that it prohibits blank walls exceeding 20 feet in length. Building base articulation, so this is about kind of a change in style and material and layouts for the first and second story of a building, just to break up the mass visually. There was a lot of consideration about parking. There was a frontage type dedicated to parking. This was actually requested as an addition by the planning commission. The original version we saw had stricter restrictions on how you could place parking, how you could build structured parking along the Pearl Street corridor and the Village Center zoning district. But there was a recognition that there's still, you know, There's still quite a bit of a parking demand that's going to have to be met somehow, and if we make it really difficult to build that, the cost will end up being passed on to the residential and commercial tenants. There is kind of, so in the Village Center Zoning District, a liner building would be required, and that means if you have a parking structure that's like two or more stories of parking, the front of the building that interacts with the street will need to be, can't be parking. It's gotta be the retail or a residential part of it. You can also put it at the side or rear and that would be okay. And there was a lot of comparison done with other municipalities and looking at examples. This is one building that's from 2021 in Winooski. I think a lot of people just casually driving by might not notice, but the first floor, from the blue block onwards to the left, is actually parking. I mean, it's a little bit obvious with the grates over there. But beyond that, there are windows. And it looks like it matches with the rest of the windows there. But if you look closely, you'll see fluorescent lights in there. And that's a part of the parking lot. The Planning Commission thought all things considered, this would be an improvement over an example like this, where it's screened, but not really hidden as much and integrated into the buildings, and they wanted to make sure the frontage standards allowed and encourage more of this if parking was to be built at the ground level within the building.

Sorry, Chris, just to be clear, that second example is prohibited?

It is prohibited in the Village Center Zoning District as proposed, but it is There are restrictions on it in the TOD district, but it would still be allowed. All right. And then, yeah.

So instead of having retail on the first floor along Pearl, they could have the first floor being parking with no retail at all, or a mix?

That's correct, yeah. I think there was a limitation as to how what percent of your frontage could be like that. I mean, you'll see, even with this example, there is a portion of the frontage is actually commercial, active commercial use. So something similar to that. I think there's a recognition that with the lots that are not so deep along Pearl Street, this was really the same, I think, issue that the developer must have been working around. It's a depth of the lot that's, if they added a liner, if they had to add a liner building in between the parking and the streets, there wouldn't be parking. All right, so landscaping, the biggest change is switching at least initially within the VC and the TOD districts from a cost-based system to a kind of performance-based system. So right now, you have to spend about, it's either two or 3% depending on your project size on landscaping, and you have to show a spreadsheet showing cost estimates of construction and whatnot. Hard for us to verify. Doesn't really talk about outcomes. This new system is a points-based system. with points assigned by type of landscaping intervention used, green roofs, permeable surfaces, and we kind of tested this against some existing and previous developments and made sure that it was, what was proposed was reasonable, kind of a stretch goal, but possible, and you would have to meet a certain point threshold that's set at 30 in the draft to meet the standards. And the denominator is based on the parcel size or the affected area if you're making a change to an existing structure. So Community Development has been doing some public outreach about form-based code. There was this utility bill insert that went out recently, and it pointed towards our web pages that are now dedicated to this topic. There was a news release, I think it's, there was mention of it in the newsletter, and Regina and I filmed segments of Junction City News on Monday on this topic. This is what the webpage looks like. Oh, and we're also in the midst of putting together some posters to hopefully be able to set up at National Night Out. Yeah, so where do things stand and what's next? So the Planning Commission is still doing a kind of final review, and we're still brushing up the last pieces of it. It's going through legal review. We do anticipate that public, if they're happy with what's in the draft right now, they can warn public hearing for September. I have framework, the consulting team working on a rendering to illustrate the street room ratio. And it's gonna be focused right there at the Park Street example. Ideally, I would have had them do one for Pearl Street as well. I do not have the budget available for that right now unless we move some things around. It is, you know, quite a bit of work. Each of these are, it's not included in the existing, you know, in the TOD plan project, the budget that we had with them. So, yeah, this has to be paid for separately. But we will have that in time for next week's event. But yeah, questions and feedback are welcome throughout the process. Yeah, happy to take any questions.

Nice introduction.

I'll go. Brian. Oh, sorry, go ahead. Anything? I'll come back. No, right now. Go ahead.

This is great. This is really a ton of work. Appreciate your work and the Planning Commission. It's pretty exciting, actually. I'm trying to envision this, like if I go back up to the beginning to the TOD map, like thinking about that section of Pearl, sort of between CVE and Pearl Street Park. It's hard to envision those lots being deep enough, based on what you've just described, to accommodate a nine plus one. I think what would be really useful for people, especially since that's in front of a residential area, is to see some examples of what is actually possible there. Like frontage, we're not an exhaustive mock-up for developers, but just sort of A likely scenario and a maximum scenario for, say, the former, I think of it as the former Firebird lot is a good example, where the lot between Subway and whatever the current restaurant is at Firebird, that section area, I think, is a curious, they can't be 150 feet deep. And that right of way is quite large, especially if the train track, depending on how you consider the train track. So with the train track across the street, the city right of way, the road, the sidewalk, the green space, got to be 80 feet, if not 90 or 100. And so it is a big curiosity, I think, for the folks living in there, which I'm one, to kind of see how that will impact. Because frankly, a lot of the other border areas, well, I mean, the residential areas also behind tractor supply kind of apply too because that also includes railroads. So if the railroad behind there is not included in the rear calculation, so I think all of this is just to say if budget is a problem, Park Street I think is a simple one to envision. I think where this becomes complicated is where you're actually meeting some of these residential, connections with this development and I realize Pearl Street's later but and maybe that's the answer maybe we wait on that for when we get to Pearl Street it's fine but please take that consideration and look at the map again and if there's an area that you're considering mocking up I just I think it's a really interesting way to do it I think it's going to be um It's really fascinating to see how it plays out. And I guess the other question I had is more process. So we heard from Darren about what folks are concerned about. And if my understanding is right, sometime in the next year, this could be what builders are working against or working with. And we don't really have municipal parking plan in place for what that looks like. we could before we have that municipal parking plan or an idea of whether we need a public parking garage or whether we need paid parking or how that's all going to work we could have buildings going up where people need parking that we don't have because we don't have to provide one-to-one or so that's a concert of mine that may keep me from approving this um impact fees are another I've brought up for the past few months now. Um, is there an, is there a review of connection fees and any kind of the LDC schedule for fees along with this to kind of modernize that? I realized we did that three or 45 years ago, but that's just a question. Um, and you know, Before we see a lot more residential, I want us to kind of revisit the work the Planning Commission's already done on a rental registry. Doesn't have to include the same fee schedule and way to pay for it, but I'm concerned that this building over the next three to five years will start to take resource time and staff time that we're not ready to give. Not just in the planning and building, but I mean like once it's there. So I'm pretty concerned about that. We're not out there actively enforcing a lot of zoning stuff. We have a builder that didn't put bike racks in. We have all of these issues and I'm skeptical that this is not gonna cost us later. So I think this is great. I'm concerned about the implementation. I'm concerned about saying, here, go with it, and us not being actually ready to go with it. So that's not really directed at you, Chris, or the Planning Commission. That's more for us. This feels like, great, we've got part A of a five-part or a four-part process, and I'm wondering if we really need to approve this without having the other pieces either in place or closer. And that's not a declaration. I'm genuinely curious how that's going to work. Very cool. I can see some of it in my head. I think it's great, but still big concerns. And the last thing, Planning Commission considering any of this and then any requirements in these buildings, rooftop gardens, someplace, I mean, how is that all playing into this rewrite? Is there anything about third spaces for folks that live in these buildings? Is that changed at all? It's been updated in this new revision.

So there are no specifics about amenity requirements that have been added with this revision. It's been more focused on the shape and size of buildings. There has been, a unit composition requirements added in, unit mix requirements, so you have to provide a certain percentage. I think right now the draft is sitting at 25% of units that are two bedrooms or more if you are over a certain size. I think it was at 20 units. That's, yeah, that's the biggest change to that regard that's proposed. There are some of the things that you mentioned that I think I can respond to. So in terms of parking, there's municipal parking, yes, I mean, I think it would be helpful for the city to spend the time to look into municipal parking and the kind of consolidated parking. A lot of the times, parking is available, but you don't know where it is, because it's spread out. You're gonna have to drive around and go to a different property to find it, and you might not be allowed, because you're not shopping there or something. So yes, there's work to be done there. But having said that, I do think that based on what we expect in the pipeline, and the fact that the developer, and this is kind of straying away from this LDC topic, that's gonna be working on the Lincoln Inn property may be approaching the city with an ask about CHIP, CHIP financing related to parking. There's gonna be kind of negotiating, some negotiating leverage and an opportunity to collaborate specifically on municipal parking there.

And I'm thinking more like not so much shopping parking because I agree. I think there's currently plenty of parking downtown. I'm talking about like residential winter parking where over the past couple of winters, I don't know about you guys, but I well, when I was a city councilor started to really hear about it, like as soon as I think that last building went up, people were starting to freak out a little bit. So even that, what do we do with that? And does it free? Or should it be? At least the beginnings of some of those conversations, I think, need to start happening soon, especially if we're imminently going to hear about something like that. Yeah, let's put that out there.

Bethany, did you have something? No, we're not voting on this tonight. We're not. No. Okay. This is just information.

Any other council comments? All right. I'll open it up for public. Anyone online? Toggling. Just one second. All right. Go ahead, David. I'm going to come up to the mic. All right.

I'm still David Knox, in case anyone's wondering.

I just have a question about corner lots.

Is it... Which street are you adhering to? Is it the one for the bulk of the facade is going to be on?

So in terms of the street room ratio, it will apply to both sides, but there is a... There is a minimum right-of-way width assumption. We know that some side streets are quite a bit narrower, so there is an assumption that If you're below 50 feet, it's treated as 50 feet. But then there would actually be a little setback imposed so that you could, there'd be space to add a sidewalk if it was necessary. Yeah, but there was talk among the Planning Commission about whether it should apply to both sides or just one, and in the end it was settled on sticking with both sides. Okay. Yeah. Thank you.

All right, anything else, council? All right. Okay, thank you, Chris. All right, now we've got 5G, which is discussion and consideration of the Pearl Street Pedestrian Crossing scoping study, the final report.

Come on down. Amazing.

Have a nice evening. Thank you.

Hello, counselors. My name's Eliana Fox. I'm a transportation planner at the CCRPC. Really pleased to bring you this presentation and final report for the Pearl Street Pedestrian Crossing scoping study. Chris did a fantastic job summarizing it in that memo in your packets, but I'll go into a little more detail here for you. So just what we're going to go over. I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the overview and the engagement because we talked a little bit about that the last time we were here with you in February. So we're really going to dive into the agency of transportation crosswalk guidance and how the consultant team applied that for the alternatives development and analysis. And then of course we'll talk about the recommendations and try to answer your questions. So a little bit of background. The project scope is to assess the possibility of a crosswalk on Pearl Street west of the Champlain Valley Exposition. And the scope of work for the consultants included a review of traffic, pedestrian, and crash data, sorry, traffic data, pedestrian data, and crash data, a site visit and field measurements, an online survey to understand community needs, identification and evaluation of potential crossing locations using state and national guidance, conceptual plans and cost estimates for two potential locations. So that is the scope of work that has been completed. And then this background and rationale for this project came out of both the Connect the Junction TOD project as well as repeated community requests for safer crossings. The city engineer did evaluate these potential crossings back in 2012 and concluded that conditions didn't meet the V-Trans crosswalk guidance at the time. We'll get into what those are in a little bit. um and recommended the installation of this these pedestrians next 1500 feet sign and that was 14 years ago so we're thinking that the conditions have have changed since then So the study area, I'm sure you're all very familiar with it. We were looking at Pearl Street between West Street Extension and Weston Way, which is a class one highway, despite also being a state route. So that means it's maintained by the city. So the distance between the two intersections at Weston Way and West Street extension is about a half mile, and that's also the distance between crossing locations, so a pretty big gap there. There are also two sets of Green Mountain Transit route stops, and those serve the Route 2, which is a very popular transit route. There's residential area to the north, the dog park, community gardens, and more neighborhoods to the south. And so the purpose of this study was to improve pedestrian crossing safety across Pearl Street in order to access bus stops, retail, places of employment, recreational areas, and other attractions. And the need that we identified was that there are no crosswalks in this particular section. And so for the potential locations, the study focused on areas around these transit stops. These roughly equate to the Willys Court intersection and the area around Complex 159. So the existing conditions of Pearl Street, there are two travel lanes, a center two-way left turn lane, that's what that abbreviation is up on the screen, plus bike lanes in both directions, and that equates to about 48 feet, so a pretty wide road. The annual average daily traffic per V-Trans transportation data was about 12,193 vehicles per day. The speed limit is 30 miles per hour, and in the data we collected last fall, the 85th percentile speed was 34 miles per hour, which is almost identical to what it was when the city engineer evaluated this back in 2012. Again, this is served by GMT's Route 2, and this provides service every 20 minutes during the week. There were a couple crashes in the area. One crash that was just outside this project area involved a pedestrian, and we did review that as part of this project. So for engagement, due to the significant outreach that was done during Connect the Junction and the feedback that was gathered, we decided not to do an initial public meeting, but rather to gather community feedback directly from people walking on the street in the study area using these MON signs that you can see. We received 44 responses. In addition to that survey, we brought this to you in February at one of your meetings just to give you an overview and provide, you know, detail on that public input. The alternatives that you're gonna see in a little bit were presented to the Bike Walk Advisory Committee in March. And it's not mentioned on this slide, but Chris also circulated the alternatives to the City Engineer, Public Works, Police and Fire Departments, and we did meet with the City Engineer separately to discuss the alternatives. Okay, so pedestrian counts are super important because pedestrian usage is one of the things that is considered in the V-Trans guidance in approving a crosswalk. So in order to address that criteria, CCRPC collected pedestrian crossing volumes on Pearl Street at Willie's Court on Thursday, October 30th, 2025, and Friday, October 31st, 2025. The counts were done during the morning peak, the midday peak, and the evening peak periods, and the hourly peak period for pedestrians was on that Thursday between 8.30 and 9.30 a.m. with 14 pedestrians. That Friday, Halloween, was really cold and rainy, so the counts were definitely lower for that reason. It's possible that weather impacted this. There may be more pedestrian crossings in warmer months. And because of that, and also because of the conditions of the roadway here, pedestrian crossing demands are likely a little bit repressed. Uh, let's see. So the V trans crosswalk guidelines, um, again, uh, there's a minimum, the criteria specifies that there should be a minimum of 20 crossings per hour. Um, and so while the count that we conducted didn't meet the criteria, um, the guidelines also state that school aged children and older adults count as two. And we were not sure if any of those groups were part of the pedestrian crossing volumes.

I'm sorry, you quoted a peak number here as being under the 20 guideline, but the 20 guideline is not a peak number. It's an average?

It's a peak hour. So within one hour, there should be, they're saying... V-trans recommendation for a crosswalk.

20 people jaywalking. Right. It's a minimum V-trans recommendation.

No, no, but what the recommendation is referring to is my confusion. Do you mind going back to the last slide? All right.

There we go.

So we're at 14.

Well, I understand, but- It's missing the word peak hour.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Okay, I see what you're- For evaluating potential new crosswalks, and they'll be shown on the next slide. This evaluation process provides a consistent way for practitioners and communities to evaluate crosswalk locations and ensure that they prioritize safety and need. However, there are limitations to this guidance. That's why it's guidance. These guidelines cover the entire state of Vermont and therefore apply to a very diverse set of roadways. So for example, the same set of criteria that we use for Pearl Street could be used to evaluate a crosswalk on a 22 foot road in a rural part of the county. And obviously the contexts are very different. And so because of that, the guidance does give some discretion for engineering judgment, which we're gonna talk about also.

And I really did take a look at the limitations part of it, and we're really thinking about why we would stray from the V-Trans guidelines, if at all. And one thing I noticed was that the V-Trans guidelines effectively said that if you had a road that is half as wide and had a third the traffic volume, but had 21 pedestrians crossing during the peak hour would qualify, but then a road that is twice as wide and has tripled the volume, but is just as under that threshold would not meet the guidelines. So, I mean, I think it's... It's clearly not a one size fits all solution or threshold and that there is some nuances that should be considered.

Yeah.

I mean, it stands to reason that if the bus, if that bus line is as busy as it is, that most of the folks getting off that bus are probably going across, at least on the way back in Essex Junction. So at some part of the day, it's got to be really close, if not over. That's a great point. On a regular basis.

GMT did provide boarding and alighting data for us.

Yeah, so GMT ridership by itself probably wouldn't trip that. I just meant in combination with whatever else. Yeah, contributed.

OK. So these are the seven criteria that I was talking about. So the good news is that the two locations that we evaluated met six out of the seven criterias. And I'm not an engineer, but I was like, huh, that's pretty good. There should probably be a crosswalk there. There's really good visibility. There's existing infrastructure, sidewalks on both sides. And add to that that it's a really busy road. The speed limit is less than 40 miles per hour. And so although the pedestrian counts don't meet this minimum, the guidelines do give some deference to engineering judgment. And the engineers that completed this study with us felt that transit users need a safe way to cross Pearl Street to access the bus stops and that the volume of traffic and the width of Pearl Street make crossing the road challenging. And so yeah, a crosswalk would address some of those issues. So a couple of reasons why the engineers feel, and I would say for myself as well, feel quite strongly that a crosswalk is a good approach. Every transit journey begins and ends as a pedestrian one, and to access the route number two bus, riders must cross the Pearl Street at least once for a leg of their journey. Yeah, you know, the report talks about A UVM Medical Center worker who might live north of Pearl Street gets on the bus in the morning to head to work. When they come back and they're on the opposite side of the road, they don't have a safe crossing.

So that's one reason.

Exposure is another one. So as I mentioned previously, Pearl Street carries approximately 12,000 vehicles per day and is about 48 feet wide, creating long exposure times for pedestrians. The multiple lanes on Pearl Street create a complex crossing environment requiring pedestrians to assess gaps across several streams of traffic at once. And this increases decision difficulty and the likelihood of accepting an unsafe gap in the traffic.

Yeah, so actually we looked at the video recordings of that and noticed that we're counting how long people had to wait. Sometimes it was zero, sometimes it was closer to two minutes. But there were quite a few situations where people would have to wait over a minute and then they'd run across. And running was actually quite prevalent.

Yeah, and that gets into the delay piece that we have here. So as Chris mentioned, he actually reviewed all the video to estimate that for us, which was really helpful. So average waiting times per his estimation was around 34 seconds, with many pedestrians waiting much longer. And 46% of observed pedestrians ran across the roadway, indicating unsafe conditions. Okay, so now we'll talk about the alternatives. So five alternatives were evaluated including crossings at Willie's Court and Complex 159 with and without raised pedestrian medians. One of the most important things to consider for a crosswalk is that it is on the pedestrian desire line and these locations were chosen because they were at existing transit stops and are a natural place for people to cross. The general concept of either of these designs could be adapted to a different location on Pearl Street if you wanted or if GMT wanted to move a bus stop and all that. So alternative two installs a marked crosswalk east of Willy's Court. Is that east? Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry, it's a little late. And this alternative includes an ADA-compliant curb ramps and detectable warning surfaces, advanced yield markings on the roadway, and two rectangular rapid flashing beacons and, of course, the striped crosswalk. Alternative three includes all the elements of alternative two, but it adds an eight foot wide raised pedestrian refuge median that has an additional RRFB for increased visibility and warning to drivers. This allows pedestrians to cross one direction of traffic at a time. So alternative 4 is the same as alternative 2 except it's at the complex 159 location. So just to reiterate this includes ADA compliant curb ramps, advanced yield markings, the rectangular rapid flashing beacons, and of course the striped crosswalk. Alternative 5 includes all of those elements and adds an 8 foot wide raised pedestrian refuge median. So here is a modified version of the alternatives matrix that is included in the final report. Overall, alternatives two, three, four, and five meet the purpose and need of the study by improving safety for pedestrians crossing Pearl Street so they can access transit, retail, places of employment, recreational areas, and other attractions. The median islands provide additional pedestrian refuge given the width of the roadway, but they do introduce cost and operational challenges. The rectangular rapid flashing beacon alternatives represent sort of like a low build alternative, if you will, less complex option providing a crosswalk, but due to the width of the roadway, the RRFBs may be out of driver sight lines. One thing that we wanted to note on this slide, the costs that you're seeing here are definitely based on the Vermont Agency of Transportation bicycle and pedestrian and transportation alternative grant programs, in other words, federal funding. which are noted on table six in the final report as potential funding options for constructing these sidewalks. And that is why they appear so expensive because when you construct anything with federal funding, it brings the cost up because of additional requirements and risk management expectations, those sorts of things. But definitely worth noting that if construction were to be done in-house, it would be considerably lower than what you're seeing here. So with that, the report and the study team recommend advancement of Alternative 2, which is a crosswalk with a rectangular rapid flashing beacon at Willys Court. This supports the city's transit-oriented development goals and long-term vision for a safer and more walkable Pearl Street. This option still improves pedestrian safety and transit access. It has a lower cost and fewer operational impacts than a raised median. And there's nothing to say it can't be upgraded later if pedestrian activity grows and you feel like the safety need is there. So although alternatives were developed for complex 159, implementing those are not recommended at this time until a safe and legal crossing to the dog park and community garden across the railroad is established. That was something that the city engineer brought forth and we all agreed made a lot of sense. Doesn't mean it can't happen at some point in the future but perhaps paired with that railroad crossing.

Yeah, there was also some discussion at the alternatives meeting about just the network connectivity value of both locations. And it was determined that the Willys Court crossing would also be able to serve a lot of people trying to go west. it would be able to serve more people if you were to pick one.

Thank you so much for your time. I'm happy to answer any questions.

And there's a recommendation.

Oh, yes, and there's a recommendation in your memo. Thank you for that.

Thanks, guys. I really love that presentation. I noticed the alternative three that has the raised, I forget what it's called. And Chris knows that I'm asking this because of its side effect on traffic calming. So I was wondering if there was any consideration given to bump outs on the north and south sides of Pearl Street as part of these recommendations.

So there are bike lanes on both sides over there, so you can't really just bump out the curbs. But having a median there would have a traffic calming effect for sure. But I think in terms of the trade-offs with the operational limitations, and emergency access, and also during the fair, to be able to reconfigure the road for different use, different lane configuration. It was determined that at this point, it's probably not worth the trade-offs until you can establish a higher pedestrian volume over here. Then you can consider it again in the future. The other thing that came up about pedestrian, like these median islands is that if you were to implement a median along Pearl Street, this might not be the highest priority location. It's it's the lack of a crossing all together that to me is the biggest problem Immediately.

Oh, yeah, sure. So certainly I wouldn't Yeah, but I wouldn't suggest we not put in the crosswalk if we can't raise it.

So yeah so I was just gonna ask and a Little bit of ignorance on my part. I just always assume Pearl Street is the same with all the way through right? So we have an example of this uh rapid flashing beacon crosswalk can buy mcdonald's in the fairgrounds that works pretty well the speed limit's a little bit lower there i think it drops to 25 at that point but as far as historical use It seems to be transitory okay. I drive that stretch of road all the time. The beacon lights seem to work pretty well, very well to alert traffic. I just wanted to make sure that it's the same width all the way through because I drive it all the time, and I remember when it was four lanes every which way, but I just wanted to make sure that I had that right information.

I think probably more or less it's the length.

It is the same for the crossing you're talking about. And yeah, it does work pretty well, but pretty well is relative. So I think the... It's not great when there's not a police officer in the middle if you're crossing regularly.

Well, it works... People go around cars. I just saw that last week somebody was stopped for the crossing. Somebody went around. Somebody was crossing the street and almost got taken out. It's like there's nothing you can do to control that, really, but people are going to do what they're going to do, but... It's a long way to go when you're walking it.

Yep.

But it's not a great idea right now, probably. How hard would it be? So how much of this do we have to go through? So first of all, operational changes aren't going to change. Operational issues aren't going to go away. I think we need to get around this it's difficult to plow concept if we are truly actually going to want some traffic calming things. Because all of the traffic calming things we're going to put in are going to be challenging for the winter. So we either have to figure out that that's OK. We might plow a little slower. I'm not arguing for the thing. I'm just saying generally speaking, The concept that it's difficult on plowing. Yes, it is. And we've been asked to do some of this work.

I think the cost side of it won't change, but the benefit side may change over time.

Yeah. So I mean, like, you know, fairground traffic is not going to go away if they think it will stay the same or increase. I'm concerned that the report said that the RFBs, whatever we call them, are gonna be slightly out of the driver's sight line. So if we're not going to do the island, which it sounds like we're not, and I'm not saying that's a bad idea, and we're gonna make the change to Pearl Street between Susie Wilson and West Street for speed, would say i make the corresponding change to make this 25 down to west street extension then increase it to 30 from west street to susie wilson which will get the same effect that you're talking about at the fairgrounds crossing so that works that works really well that was going to be yeah that was so i mean it was a thought in my head for sure yeah yeah and i think i might have interrupted you so no no you're fine um so i think if if that crossing if we're acknowledging that the crossing at the fairgrounds works well because it's 25 and we're going to lower the speed limit on the next segment i would suggest that we lower the speed limit all the way down to west street extension at 25 instead of putting the island in and and just build that into this option and acknowledge the operational changes and everything else that does struggle uh challenges excuse me and just make that change um I know that the 85th percentile of 25 is still going to be somewhere around 30, so people are still going to be doing it. But at least we've made the change and people will be asked to slow down. So there might be more likely to see the lights and the people in the crosswalk waiting. Just a suggestion. Compromise? I mean, we also learned that the quarter mile or third of a mile stretch between West Street and Susie Wilson with the speed limit change was 12 seconds. So I don't think this is going to be a huge...

The only caveat I will add to that is we had... He's not... Is he still a Corporal? We had Officer Greg, Corporal Greg here last year who said that V-Trans doesn't necessarily allow you to arbitrarily assign a speed limit to a road, but the speed limit needs to be for what the road is designed for.

I also thought that was if we own it, we can, if we're responsible for it, we can...

Yeah, I mean, I think we would have to look at, do some research and figure out if it makes sense. What are they called? They're called something.

Warrants?

Yeah, speed warrants. So in the same way that there's a whole VTRAN set of guidelines around crossings, there's a whole set of guidelines we would just have to look at for speed and make sure that we can actually do it.

Yeah, I think the warrants are also a little more strict than this, like require an engineer to evaluate the speed data and make a recommendation based on that, because otherwise it might not be legally enforceable. So, yeah, just...

I mean, I think it's a good idea, and we should definitely look at it. I'm just saying, I don't know that we can 100% commit tonight to saying, absolutely, we can make it 25%.

Well, we couldn't either way because we didn't warn that as part of this discussion. I wouldn't feel comfortable not even giving the community an input into the fact that we are potentially even thinking about doing that. So it has to come back.

If we can commit to looking at it, that'd be great.

We can commit to looking at it, of course. Yeah, because then it comes back.

I'd like to hear why it wouldn't work or if it will work. The only other thing I'll say is I think also for the 25 days, 100 hours, 125 hours a year that traffic is an issue there. I'd also like to get to a point at some point in the future where we're not making, I think this is a good compromise, but I think there's going to be more difficult compromises to make, and I think it'd be great if we were not worrying so much about the traffic at the fair. It's going to be one lane. I guess the bike lane will make it two. We'll lose the bike lane down. But it's going to be difficult no matter which way we shake it. And it might pressure the fair to kind of make some other arrangements for other gates. But it really is, if you do the numbers, 10 days of the fair, then maybe 15 or 16 of their other waivers for two and a half hours at a shop. And so it's a tiny, tiny time that is super inconvenient.

But anyway, Bethany, anything?

No, I mean, I had questions, but they were answered. Um, I I agree with everything that's been said. I think we can build a median later if we need to. My concern is not the plowing aspect. It's the fare traffic, because Raj is right. I don't think it's going to decrease. And I think it would be a real difficult push to sort of intentionally try to reroute from that entrance. But we definitely, we, I mean, I think we need a cross work here and I think it makes sense to reduce the speed limit. If that can be done.

I just want to put one important piece of information out there as we talk about how difficult it is to plow. I drive emergency vehicles down that stretch of road very, very, very often. And that suicide being unimpeded in that suicide lane is critically important. I'm just going to put that out there.

Totally respect that and hear it and other communities do this. So I don't, I mean, yeah, no, I'm just, I don't, it's a choice for sure, but it's doable.

Any other comments before I open up to the public? All right. Public comment online. All right. Not seeing any, any other comments or I'll take the motion that's in the packet. If anybody is willing to do that.

I moved to the city council, except the Pearl street pedestrian crossing scoping study endorsed alternative to as the preferred alternative for implementation and add the project to the capital project list with alternatives three, four, and five to be considered at a future date, but based on pedestrian crossing volumes, a reevaluation of operational impact and improvements to the adjacent railroad crossing.

Second. All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Thank you. All right. That's unanimous. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good night. All right. Consent agenda. Take a motion.

Make a motion to approve consent.

Seconded.

Feels like everybody considered everyone seconded that all right all in favor Councilmember comments and city manager report Regina We have lots of fun events happening in the city there Which of course I don't have in front of me Um, we've got maple street park stuff happening. Um, if somebody else has something to say and come back to me, I'll find it.

I'll tip the cap to the hundredth birthday party for Brown L that was a fantastic time. Uh, the people brought their appetites. We flew through the hot dogs. I was on the grill the whole time, so I didn't get to mingle or talk, but we sure did shovel off the hot dogs. So everybody had a good time. That was great. It was a great night. The temperature broke. The humidity broke. It was fantastic.

It was very fun. Lots of people came out. Lots of people put in a lot of work to make that happen, so it was really great.

I have National Night Out is coming up before our next council meeting. It's Tuesday, August 4th over at the high school. It's Essex Police Department hosts the event. It's a nationally themed event just to kind of bring community together and get to know your police officers, see what's happening around, build a little community. So we do that every year and it'd be a great time. And I believe it's five to seven.

I think that's right.

I'm confused because I have to be there at four. So I feel like it's five to seven.

There likely would be more hot dogs for you to grill.

Regina's on the grill. Oh, perfect. I am always Greg's immediate emergency fill-in when he needs to wander off.

Anybody else? It's going to be Karen Adams. It's going to be Karen Adams with me. Oh, there you go.

Great, I'm off the hook.

Good. Okay. I think you're still up. Found my stuff. Okay. Just checking day of the week as soon as I can get there. Yes. Okay. So Tuesday's Maple Street Park Summer Performances. So we've got Green Mountain Swing coming up next week. There's Very Merry Theater the week after that. Then also at Brownell on August 6th is the Teen Summer Reading Party at 6 p.m. And on August 7th is the Summer Reading Celebration with No Strings Marionettes. So lots of fun stuff going on in addition to what Tim said.

Cool. Cool. Thank you. All right. Who wants it? I move to adjourn.

Second.

All in favor?

Aye.

Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Everyone have a good night.