City Council - Regular Meeting

The time is 6:00. I will now call to order this meeting of the Wooki City Council. Uh we will start with the pledge of allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Brennian to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Thank you. Good evening, Mayor. Um we now move on to agenda review. Uh council, any items of uh change or concern uh of the agenda tonight? No, no, no.

All right. Wonderful. Uh on to public comment. So this item um is reserved for members of the public uh to discuss items that are not currently on tonight's agenda. Uh so if you do would like to discuss something that's not on the agenda, um if you are online, I'll just have you raise your hand. Uh there is nobody here in council chambers. And there's no non-staff one.

I think the public is staffed. So, okay. On to our consent agenda. Um, we have the approval for the look at control board meeting minutes of January 26, 2026. And city council meeting minutes of January 26, 2026. Uh, the approval of council payable warrant January 29th. The approval to authorize senior center fundraising event at Dumb Luck Pub. Uh, council, any concerns with the consent agenda? I would need to abstain from a perfect. Do you want to just abstain from the whole vote or do you want me to remove it? Okay. Um, in that case, would anyone like to make a motion for the consent agenda? So moved. Seconded. All those in favor? I abstaining me.

Wonderful. Thank you. Uh, [clears throat] we'll move on to council reports. [snorts] Let's start with council.

All right. On Febru February 9th, we'll have the next meeting of the inclusion and belonging commission. There are two main agenda items that we will be reviewing. We will be talking a bit more about the comprehensive work plan and planning summary followup um around the comprehensive work plan. Uh Revy presented to the commission at our last meeting as well. So, some additional work on that. And then uh an item that has been on the agenda for a little while, which is drafting some group norms for the commission itself. Um and those will be the primary items. And again, that's going to be February 9th at 6 p.m. both at city hall and via Zoom.

So, thank you, Deputy Mayor. I do not have any updates. Wonderful. Councelor G. Uh the housing commission will have a joint uh meeting with planning commission on Thursday, February 26 at 6:30 p.m. here at city hall. Wonderful. The safe, healthy the safe, healthy, and connected people commission has a meeting on Tuesday, February 10th at 5:30 p.m. at the Myers Memorial Pool.

Wonderful. Thank you. Um I don't have a ton of updates. Uh the city manager joined me last week on Town Meeting TV at their studio uh to discuss our budget. Uh we did a a full presentation of what that is going to look like for voters. Uh so I believe you can go to you can find time TV either on YouTube or if you go directly to their website as well. Uh you will be able to link there uh to their YouTube to watch that. Um and there's going to be a variety of other opportunities for folks to learn about uh the budget uh coming up. I'm sure the city manager is going to do an update there. So I'll leave that to them. Um,

on that note, yes, everyone in Wooki is invited to the community winter supper tomorrow night. Join your neighbors to build community from 5:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. in the lobby at the Wooki School District. Hopefully, you do it other outside of that time. Also, enjoy free restaurant catering from businesses on Main Street and more. Connect with city council and schoolboard members. Learn about the city and school budgets and have a great time. We've packed a lot into the event to name just a some of what you can expect. Community members can try the city's budget activity. Check out a Wooki firet truck, get creative with an art project, register to vote, sign up for summer programs, apply for a city job, learn about school clubs and programs, and lots more. Residents, voters, students, and families are encouraged to attend. For full details, visit wooki.gov/supper. And be sure to share the event with your friends and neighbors. This is all.

Looking forward to it. I ran into a Wooki resident on Sunday who I've never seen at one of our budget discussions and they're telling me how excited they are for the community supper. So, it was a great great planning on everyone's part. Thank you. All right, we'll move into our regular items. Uh discussion approval um introduction to update ordinance chapter 28 fees. Angela,

this is slightly off cycle from when the fees chapter is normally brought to you. Our water department flagged for me an issue with the fee for damaged water meters. Uh it is no longer enough to cover the cost. Um the fees for the purchase of meters has been escalating quickly. So we are now um recommending that that be at cost at time. That way we aren't having to revisit this repeatedly. Uh damaged water meters are either from vandalism or broken frost plates from meters getting too cold in basement areas that are not heated. Um while we were doing that, we did make additional updates since we were opening the chapter to the water department ordinance um specifically related to after hours callouts. Um the way that the ordinance had previously been written, the most that we could get for an after hours call out was $37.50. uh that is less than one hour of overtime for the staff and we are required to pay a minimum of four hours for any on call staff that respond after hours. Um so we've set a rate that is enough to accommodate um with a little bit of a buffer for four hours of overtime. That is a rarity. It has happened one time in my tenure at the city. Um the other changes that we made are the addition of some contracts for public customers in the parking section. Uh this is to give us the opportunity to sell spaces to members of the public in the Cascades garage when CCV transitions over into the Abnaki garage at completion. uh we are set in the amount that we can charge as a minimum per another contract that we have in the city. So the $96 uh and change that is there for monthtomonth or annual contract

customers is the lowest we are able to offer the public. It will escalate 2% annually based on that other contract as well. And if somebody wants a month-to-month contract, we're going to charge a little bit of a premium um because they can cancel within five business days at the start of a month. Um and then there was just some cleanup in the clerk's fees section. The dog licenses seem to have some repetition um regarding the licensing structure and it was a little confusing. So, we just cleaned it up a little bit. Great. Thank you. Um I appreciate you explaining that as you went along. So, I do not have any questions as a result of that. Angela, thank you, council.

No, no, thank you. Um, I'm curious if there's been any um rears or failure to pay from the existing fee structure the past year and there's any outstanding not for damaged water meters. No. Okay. Okay. Um, so that replacement fee would be direct to the landlord or homeowner.

The landlord or owner. We have one instance where we are in discussions with multiple parties involved. The water meter for a property is actually located in their neighbor's basement. So, we are actually did have that one break recently due to extreme cold. Um, and so we're we're working to resolve that with all the parties involved. um and seeing who is to be held responsible for that meter breaking since the person whose account it is had no control over whether or not that space was heated.

Yeah. Um, and then I have a a related but follow-up question, and you might be able to remind me if it's a legislative bill or if it's something in our neighboring municipality, but um I'm curious about there's some conversation about um creative ownership where there's um like co-op ownership and if this would like changes here would need to be revisited if there was some legislation that allowed for a cooperative home ownership.

I'm not certain about that. We would probably have to discuss it in terms of the legislation that actually comes out, but we have a number of water meters in the city that service more than one unit. There's usually some sort of condo association that is actually responsible for the bill itself. Okay. Um, and so we bill the association and they remit payments and bill that out to all of the users who receive service from that meter. Um, okay. And it's not our responsibility to determine allocations. We do not determine allocations. Uh, we specifically do not uh read submeters.

Okay. um because we are unable to disconnect service unless there is a separate curb stop. Okay, thank you. Um any other feedback from Nate about the non-resident library card? That's not one that we opened per se. That's proposed. Yeah. So, no feedback? No. I've seen it used a couple of times, but um not overly so. Um we haven't had push back. Um I just know that since it was a newer fee that Yeah. caught my attention.

Yeah. It may have done what was intended and and prevented people from using our library as their home library. I see. Okay. Um I don't have further questions at the moment. All right. In that case, uh I will seek a motion to approve uh these changes as presented and set a public hearing. Oh, and set a public hearing for do we have to state the date? Yes. February. It's in the

I move to introduce the amendments to chapter 28 fees and set a public hearing date for February 17th, 2026. Seconded. All those in favor? I. Perfect. Thank you. Thanks. All right. That is it for our regular items. Uh we will now move into an executive session. Um do we we're not voting in this. So do we like Can we let him go? Yeah, we could do it in in there so that he can start wrapping up if you want.

Okay. All right. Um in the executive session we will not be make taking any votes or discussing anything else outside of what is discussed. Uh this is for the city manager review pursuant 1 vsa 3133 the appointment or employment or evaluation of a public officer employ or employee. Um I would invite to move uh that would be councel in that and inviting the city manager Ela Wong. Uh do I have a motion for this executive session? So moved. Seconded. All those in favor I I wonderful. Thank you.

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