City Council - Regular Meeting

That sounded like a good thing for you with the SOS. Yes. We're good.

Two minutes.

Angela, how did all the closeout go?

It's going. Well, I'm doing payroll right now, where half of payroll's in last year, half of it's in this year, so I have to manually split the raises and the hours. And then AFSCME has a clause in their contract that any payouts of their comp time have to be on a separate check, and then they have a longevity bonus that's on a separate check. I'm about...

Triple checking everything.

A third of the way through the final review. Goodness me. Well, thank you.

Then I've got to write the journal entry.

One minute.

We have not fixed whatever the issue is.

All right, the time is 6 o'clock. I will call to order this meeting of the Liquor Control Board, and we will start with the Pledge of Allegiance led by Deputy Mayor Brenna Oakley. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, Thank you, everyone.

Good evening.

Good evening, Jenny.

So, exciting, Stewart's is going to Winooski. Staff has no concerns about this. Everything is fine.

You know, I just wish they would bring back their glass bottles, but other than that, that's great. Any questions from council?

Is this a new, are they taking over? So they're taking over Simons. Okay. And Simons is going to stay in business until August. So the middle of August is when Stewart's will take over.

So we'll still have three stations on Main Street, not four, basically. The question behind the question. Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you.

All right. I'll seek a motion to approve the consent agenda.

So moved? Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Wonderful. Thanks, Jenny.

Thank you.

The time is 6.01. We will now move on to our Winooski City Council meeting. We will start with public comment. This time is for folks to make comments on items that are not on tonight's agenda. If you have an item that is on tonight's agenda, I'll just have you wait until that moment. Any questions? There's nobody in the room. I believe the person on is for an agenda item. If you have anything else you'd like to speak about, please just raise your hand. All right. We'll move on to our consent agenda. Anything that anybody needs to pull out of our consent agenda?

If we could pull item E for board commission committee appointments.

Perfect. Yeah, we can make that item A. Does everybody agree with that change?

Any other changes from councilors?

No.

Okay. So then for our consent agenda, we will be approving approval of city council meeting minutes of June 15, payroll warrant June 7 to June 20, accounts payable warrant June 26, accounts payable warrant July 2nd, and external commission's reporting procedure. Can I seek a motion to approve the consent agenda?

So moved. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Perfect. Thank you very much. Only one to counsel reports. Eli, let's start with you.

Lovely. All right, so this month's municipal infrastructure meeting will be held on Thursday, July 24th, 2026, from 6.30 to 8 p.m. at City Hall. The agenda will be published in the upcoming weeks, so please keep a lookout on the Winooski website or Front Porch Forum. If residents have items they would like to add to the agenda, please reach out to me. Additionally, the municipal infrastructure has a comprehensive plan open house on Wednesday, July 29th, 2026, from 5 to 7 at the Winooski City Senior Center. This open house will allow folks to give feedback on the city's long-term infrastructure goals and objectives, for example, water, sewer, stormwater, transportation, and energy infrastructure improvements. During the event, city staff will present maps identifying recommendations for transportation improvements based on input from the Winooski Block Bike Plan and the Transportation Master Plan. Lastly, light freshments will be provided. We hope to see folks there at the upcoming meetings.

There was a special Burlington Airport Commission meeting on Tuesday, June 23rd. And at this meeting, we specifically talked about a snow removal equipment building. And we made a recommendation to the Burlington City Council regarding the snow removal equipment building. And then our most recent airport commission meeting, which was last week, was canceled or brought down due to lack of quorum. That's it.

Thank you. Deputy Mayor.

Sure. Housing Commission did not meet in June. I do anticipate both Safe, Healthy and Connected Commission as well as Housing Commission to both meet on the regular scheduled dates and times for July. So keep an eye out for the agenda notices. For those, Chittenden Solid Waste District had their regular annual meeting on June 24th to elect officers, and then a normally scheduled commission meeting followed that, at which point the board approved for the executive director to proceed with negotiations for a company to operate the recycling facility and to take on the marketing of the materials that come from the recycling facility. So more to come on that soon. I'll see.

I'll see.

I covered the June 17th meeting of the Planning Commission since it conflicted with Juneteenth in Winooski. At this meeting, the Planning Commission discussed amendments to the Winooski Unified Land Use and Development Regulations related to site design elements. The discussion of the sections being reviewed included how to limit lawns and green space in favor of deciduous and coniferous trees, shrubs, and ground cover, how to manage requirements for tree coverage, and how solar panels could fit into shade requirements, and the merits of deciduous trees as a winter screening element as opposed to conifers. The Planning Commission also bid a fond farewell to some of their long-term members whose terms have expired So I want to thank, once again, the members of the Planning Commission who are leaving, Sarah, I am sorry, Van Rijkshorval, Abby Blything, and Brendan Sage. Sarah, I'm sorry if I got your name wrong. The Winooski Finance Commission will next meet on July 14th at 6.30 at City Hall around Zoom to discuss the payment agreement procedure and to elect new officers.

Thank you, thank you councillors. And thank you councillor Goodrich for attending that meeting so that I could attend our Juneteenth ceremony as a Winooski. Really appreciated that. It has been a while since we met. We've had Juneteenth in Winooski and French Heritage Day. So a big thank you to downtown Winooski and city partners who help plan and organize those events. Please pass our thanks along to all of the board members who do a lot of work and to Sarah as well. Both events really well attended. The waiter race was extra fun this year. Council of Turkos participated and did not win, unfortunately. But put in a valiant effort. Just a reminder to folks, as it continues to be quite hot, the Winooski Pool is a great place for folks to cool off, as well as the library has air conditioning during its open hours. So if you're feeling a little warm at home, those are two good places to try to cool off. Excuse me. Planning Commission. We'll be meeting this Thursday at 6.30 here in City Hall for anybody interested in attending. City updates. John.

Uh, the only update I'll mention since I'm here is we will have some pretty significant work on main street this week. So, uh, this week they're going to be doing the final paving work. Uh, so tomorrow they're going to start with milling operations, uh, on the South end of the corridor at Steven street and work their way up all day tomorrow. And then Wednesday through Friday, they're going to be doing the final paving work. Um, same starting sort of the South end working, uh, North. So there will be a southbound detour put in place for that paving work Wednesday to Friday. Weather looks good. So hopefully they can get through it all. And then line stripping will happen the week after. So they're getting pretty close to the end here. So this will be probably the last big disruption on the project. And we'll be finalizing sort of streetscape and lighting and traffic signals. But this week will be a bit disruptive.

Okay. Thank you for letting us know. I appreciate that. It's looking better and better each day. I gave a tour of Winooski to somebody recently, and they kept remarking on how great Main Street looks. So we're closing in here. So that's great. All right. Regular items. New regular item A, board commissions and committee appointments. We've got four appointments here, but we also have a member in the audience who I'll let Britton speak a little more about.

Yeah, applied for the Safe, Healthy, and Connected Commission. Carly, we're going to give you permission to unmute and introduce yourself if you would like. Did have the opportunity to interview probably a week or so ago, two weeks ago now. My memory's fading fast. But Carly was an excellent candidate. I'm very excited to have her join our commission. Carly, I'm not sure if you've been given permission yet to speak and if you would like to introduce yourself.

Can you hear me? Yes. Yes.

Hi everybody. I'm feeling a little silly that I'm the only person here.

I hope that doesn't make me seem like too big of a nerd.

But I'm truly happy to be here and was very happy to hear from Debbie and Mayor Oakley about my moving forward. So thank you for having me. I'm looking forward to the work.

Well, Carly, thank you very much. And you're in a nerd safe space here, so don't worry there.

Pretty excited to have the new energy from Carly and an area of interest that I don't know that we've had that type of representation on the commission before, but certainly something we've discussed at council is programs for our elderly population. and with uh you know the residents approving the budget on this past town meeting day that uh you know expanded the part-time position for the senior center to a full-time position that will hopefully continue the energy um and opportunity for Just putting more emphasis into that moving forward. So, yeah, really cannot say enough good things. I have a whole laundry list here, but I can't say enough. Carly will be great if appointed, as will the other candidates that are moving forward for safe, healthy, connected, and housing.

Awesome. Thank you, Deputy Mayor. Any other questions from Council? All right, then I'll seek a motion to approve these commission appointments.

So moved. Second.

All those in favor? Aye. Wonderful. Thanks, Carly. Yeah, thank you, Carly. Our next regular item of the night, discussion approval set fiscal year 27 municipal tax rate. Angel. Angel.

So this is new for a few councillors, but this is a mathematical equation that we use to set our tax rate annually. It is based on the watch brand list by the assessors, which includes all the real value of the properties here in the city, buildings and land. as well as personal property, which is equipment that is used in commercial business. And then we have a 20% commercial vacant land adjustment as well that is applied to any business commercial property or land that has got no residential buildings on it. So we get the total grand list and that is used with the amount of taxes to be raised that were set by the city council to determine what our municipal tax rate is. In this case, we are looking at a 6.19% increase, bringing us up to 0.8321. We did estimate during the budget process an increase of 7.92%. That is because our overall brand list increased by about 1.5%. We had conservatively estimated 0.4%. Also included are the veterans exemptions local adjustment rates. The city of Winooski has approved the increased voters exemption for veterans up to $40,000. The minimum in the state of Vermont is 10,000. We then do a local adjustment rate that is applied to the entire grand list to recoup the discounted taxes for those properties. There are 15 properties this year that qualify that were submitted to us by the state of Vermont. Two of those are not filing homestead exemptions, so that's why there are two separate calculations for the education tax rate to determine that local agreement rate. Those are combined. Our local agreement rate has gone up 0.0001 cents for those 15 properties. At the very bottom of the calculation, you will see the estimated impact to the average $414,000 home. We will actually be seeing a decrease for most people due to the decrease in the homestead tax rate for the education side. So most people will not see an increase to their tax bill. That is not true for non-homestead, but it's not, you know, horrible for most of the community.

Angel, thank you very much for that, for going over it with us. Yeah, today is, it's new for three of you. It's mostly procedural, and it wouldn't have to be, I suppose, but I think Angel would like for us to have it be mostly procedural, but if you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Not at this time.

No. All of my questions were answered.

Awesome. In that case, I will seek a motion to approve the municipal tax rate of 0.8321 and the municipal local agreement rate of 0.005 with the educational local agreement rate of 0.005. So moved.

Seconded.

All those in favor? Aye. Wonderful. That passes. The time is 6.15. I will, wow. Congratulations, Deputy Mayor. I will seek a motion to adjourn this meeting.

So moved. Seconded.

All those in favor? Aye. All right. Have a wonderful night, everybody. Thank you.

I need to see the tax paper so I can print them.