Meetings
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[Rep. Michael Boutin]: It's an equity issue. We do not
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: have Alright.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: We hear a lot, folks. Good morning. It is Wednesday, March 18, shortly after 09:45. Our force first order of business is h nine zero two, an act relating to approval of amendments to the charter of the city of Barrie. We're doing an introduction walkthrough today, and we are joined with representative Boutin. He is a sponsor of this with representative who is sequestered in wazied beans. How are you, sir?
[Rep. Michael Boutin]: I am doing well. And
[Chair Matthew Birong]: yourself? Honey week. It's moving. Alright.
[Rep. Michael Boutin]: Just for the record again, Michael Putin, Berry City Representative. Representative was unable to make today. However, I'm pretty well versed in our charter language and the history of it. So, I can just start off the first part of it, we currently have it set up so that any real estate deals have to be signed by the mayor. And this particular charter change, three thirteen, is to also allow the City Manager or any Councillor duly authorized by an action of the City Council. So, is very important for process, because sometimes the Manager's out, and we just had our Manager leave the country for three months. Sometimes the mayor's unavailable. Not three months, three weeks.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: I was gonna say that's a hiatus.
[Rep. Michael Boutin]: Thank you for the looks. The
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Very, very gracious vacation package.
[Rep. Michael Boutin]: Yeah. Very gracious vacation package. One that I would love to have. But that being said, so it's it's just allowing more flexibility in that process. The the process of allowing it doesn't change. It's just having someone sign it. The city council still has to sign off on on those those deals. 06/2001 is just increasing the amount of reserve that we can maintain, for historical context. Originally, Berry City had a 0%. So any money that was collected would immediately have to go back into our budget to buy down the rate. About ten years ago, while on city council, we've made the decision to raise that to 5% so that we can maintain some of those money that that may have, you know, rolled over to the next year so that we didn't have to borrow any funds. Unfortunately, we have not been in the role of being able to collect not collect, but retain some of that money for the most part. But we do wanna raise it to 10% just to be on the safe side. The vote, because it did have to go before the city, or the changing of signatures or who has to do that, it was passed by 05/22 to February. And then the charter change for the reserves to increase from 5% to 10% was approved 06/1374. So the idea of the city being able to maintain those reserves was far more accepted than having more people to sign documents than the mayor. Interesting fun fact. Not sure why that was the case. Okay. That's it. So, the motion is to approve. No.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Right. Any questions for the member before we shift over to council? Pretty straightforward. Okay. Seeing no hands. Alright, sir. You
[Rep. Michael Boutin]: have a wonderful day.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: You too, sir. Thank
[Rep. Michael Boutin]: you, by the way. Wonderful. Hope you have fun many years of the world. Bye bye. You know what? Maybe I'll stick with.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Hey, sir. How are you?
[Tucker Anderson]: Good morning. For the record, Tucker Anderson, legislative council. You should have in front of you h nine zero two as introduced, which proposes amendments to the charter of the city of Barrie. You just heard an excellent summary overview of the two proposals within the bill. I'll give you a quick 50,000 foot overview of what those two proposals are, and I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have. So we're gonna focus on the operative provisions of the bill, which are always in section two of charter bills. This amends the City Of Barrie charter in sections three thirteen and section six zero one. Starting in section three thirteen related to the sale or lease of city property, as the representative explained, this allows the city manager, any council counselor duly authorized of the city council, to sign approval for the sale or lease of city property. So it adds those officers as signatory parties authorizing. Section six zero one, this amends subsection b related to, end of fiscal year audits. We'll work through the section here. You let me know if you have any questions. At the close of the fiscal year audit, any unexpended funds remaining from the city budget may be retained if approved by the council as an undesignated fund balance for future use. You should be familiar with how these work because just last session, this committee and House Ways and Means advances advanced a proposal in the emergency management omnibus bill that allowed any municipal corporation in the state to exercise the same authority with respect to undesignated fund balances. Any funds retained pursuant to this provision shall be limited to an amount not greater than 10% of the city general fund budget expenses for the most recent voter approved fiscal year. Any amount remaining in excess of that amount must be used in subsequent budget to reduce the tax rate. To explain how this jives with the general authority that passed just last year, this is more restrictive than what is in place for other municipal corporations in the state. So the way that the general law is now structured is that at the end of the fiscal year, any, funds that were not spent in the fiscal year for an approved budget item can just be transferred, by both of the legislative body of the municipal corporation into an undesignated fund balance that can be carried over from year to year. So there's no restrictions on that ability once the end of the fiscal year comes. So this is a little more specific than what is allowed under the general law now. Happy to answer any questions you have. That's all that is contained within the four corners of H902.
[Rep. Michael Boutin]: Yes,
[Chair Matthew Birong]: I had my head down, I didn't see who raised first.
[Rep. Michael Boutin]: I
[Unidentified Committee Member]: was wondering if the authority to sign leases, is that something that's specified only in the very charter? Just out of curiosity, is
[Tucker Anderson]: that normally specified? I'm not aware of other municipalities that have added this to their charter. Under general law, there's authority that is granted to an agent specified by the legislative body. And there used to be an appointed position universally for corporations called the town agent that was responsible for being the party that would sign these sorts of agreements. But there was cleanup to the town agent language along with a few other municipal offices, say, six or seven years ago. And having a town agent, otherwise known as a town attorney, is less common now than it was at the time those statutes were in place. So cities that don't have any of that language,
[Unidentified Committee Member]: it would default to whatever the country Which
[Tucker Anderson]: their agent is. And or the legislative body would be. And gives under the general law structure, it gives the municipal corporation the authority to change the agents for particular types of transactions and have different designated parties carrying that authority. But those municipalities do have to designate an officer to be the agent for purposes of conveying real estate and then record under current law that designation. That way, if there's ever any question about whether, in chain of title, whether the municipal corporation actually fully and legally released the lands to an individual, you have a document from city council stating who the designated officer is and showing what their signature looks like. So there's still some bureaucratic heft to that process under general law.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Robin? I'm good. My next question was gonna be for the city manager. So we'll wait for after his testimony, but thank you.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Anything canceled? Thank you, counsel. Thank you all. And how are doing, sir? Good to see you again.
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: Thank you all, thank you members of the committee. I appreciate you taking up this bill and allowing me to testify. I really, what I was gonna say has been covered, so I won't repeat it. The only piece I will add that wasn't mentioned is on the fund balance piece. This is a really important provision for us. This was really important for our flood recovery. When the 2324 floods hit, we did maintain a 5% fund balance, which was created, you know, that the fund balance has really been created by vacancies, which I think is probably familiar to many of your communities. We struggle like many other places to fill positions. We've been carrying three or four vacancies in our police department for many years in their public works. And so that's how our fund balance has really been created. When the 'twenty three, 'twenty four floods hit, we were right at just about our 5% limit. And that was really important for us because, as you know, we have to front all the costs for FEMA recovery, right? And so, set up mechanisms for us to be able to pay for the flood recovery costs and the rebuilding costs. We've had lines of credit, but because we had a fund balance of this 5%, we didn't have to actually borrow a nickel to pay for our flood recovery. We were able to front load the costs of the FEMA recovery. We were able to then sustain ourselves. We got a bridge from the legislature after the 'twenty three floods, and we were able to, by using our fund balance, not have to borrow anything, and then wait for the FEMA reimbursements to come in and recover. And so that was a really important mechanism for us to have, to not sort of sink further into crisis, by having those reserves built up. So that's why, having this 10%, it's giving us a little bit more security. And it's really, I know legislative council mentioned that it's even more restrictive than other than is allowed by state law. We've looked at other city charters. It's way more restrictive than many others. We looked at Montpelier, for example, Winooski, they have some pretty general authority to carry over without limits. So anyway, I just wanted to add that little piece that from a financial standpoint, this was also really important for us to help us be able to recover from the flooding without going into debt, which would have been just another sort of crisis on top of the physical recovery we had to do. So thank you very much. I appreciate your time and happy to answer any questions.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Wrap up. Yeah.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: I just had one more on, six zero on six zero one secondtion b.
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: Yep.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: At the close of the fiscal year, and it adds the word audit, When did you normally audit? Was that at the end of the fiscal year or somewhere in between?
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: We're actually undergoing it right now for FY '25. So, it's usually about a year lagged. So typically, moved our town meeting day has been moved to May. And so, we typically have our audit for the preceding year done right around this time of year. We expect to have it hopefully the April. So we're typically making this decision on the fund balance about a year lag. So we'd be making a decision on the fund balance using sort of the prior year's numbers, the way this is set up.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay. Because we're editing the word audit. That's why I was trying to make sure where you were actually if it was before your budget or after your budget that you're figuring out what you would in excess.
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: Yeah, and that's a great question representative. We added that question in because that word in because to give us sort of certainty on the timing because otherwise, throughout the year, we could be making estimates about what a fund balance might be or what an access might be. But if we have it tagged to the audit, that's a pretty specific milestone that gives us, the council and residents certainty about how we're making that decision about that carryover.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay, thank you.
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: Thank you.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Good
[Unidentified Committee Member]: morning.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Good morning.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: I remember reading in the news last year that there was a controversy that I'm not quite sure exactly what happened, but it was about a building sale in Barrie. And I'm wondering if this this change to the charter has anything to do with that or if it's a result of that situation. And if so, can you explain that to me a little bit?
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: Sure. Happy to explain it. So this this piece wouldn't wouldn't detect that we were we've had a building in downtown that's been vacant for fifteen, twenty years, the old JJ Newberry's building. It's a situation where we, you know, just an unfortunate out of town landlords that have kept it on, in disrepair, kept it vacant, sort of asked exorbitant prices for it. So the controversy or the hubbub we had locally was there was an effort to purchase the building by Berry Area Development Corporation, which is sort of an economic development organization that's not part of the city, but loosely affiliated with us. And the city council contributed, the sale price for that building was estimated to be $1,000,000 The city council pledged $400,000 of ARPA funding to buy that building. So, the controversy was there were people who had lined up for and against the purchase. And so, this wasn't a sale of city property, this was an acquisition, which is a sort of a nuance between the language here. Ultimately, the purchase was successful and the building, the city now owns that building and we're planning to redevelop it. But that was sort of the commotion locally last year about real estate.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay. So, this only goes in one direction. It's not they can buy stuff. Just one person It has the
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: talks about the sale or lease of city property.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Okay. All right. Can you explain to me when it says a counselor duly authorized by an action of the city council? Does that mean that they have to take a vote like they would vote on anything else?
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: Exactly. Yeah. That that would be sort of a, you know, we would we would take an action at a city council meeting proceeding the sale. And so, for example, if the mayor was going to be out of town or unavailable to execute the purchase documents, we would say, Councilor so and so is authorized by the city council, you know, move that Councilor Smith is authorized to execute any purchase and sale documents related to this transaction. And then that council would be present to sign the paper or they could do that for me as well, the city manager.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Yeah. Do you have an idea of how often the city council sells or leases property?
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: We have sold one piece of property since I've been city manager. I've been manager since '22. We sold the Wheelock Building, which is a historic old little law office in Barrie City. We sold it to Fox Market. So, that was one in almost four years. It's not very often. We really own a lot of real estate. Mean, we may be, the next piece of property, frankly, we may sell is that building that I alluded to earlier that we've acquired and we were looking to sell to a developer to build housing. So it's not too frequent. We really own just the basic sort of, we own City Hall, we own the Civic Center, which is the auditorium and the ice arena. We own the Public Safety Building and our water plants and wastewater plants, but we don't really own a lot of real estate other than that, besides this building that we've now come into for development reasons.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: I'm a hockey player. I've spent a lot of time with that ice arena.
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: It's the it's the best ice. It's the best ice in Central Vermont because it's so cold in there.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: It is quite chilly. That's that's how the moms rate those ranks. How cold is it in there? And then I had one more question. I'm just curious about this. That's all. I don't really know a lot about it. But my other question is, and it's not, I'm not against this in any way. I'm just wondering, like, I guess why I was asking earlier is, is that if there ever such a need, like if the mayor's out of town that someone else would need to urgently sign off on a real estate deal. Are you trying to ward off something specific or
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: are you
[Unidentified Committee Member]: worried about a specific situation? I'm just wondering what the inspiration is.
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: It's not really driven by anything in particular. I mean, we, we did, we, we haven't had any issues, with this. It's really more of a, you know, we, we, we, we did purchase a building. So we purchased a building for our new public works garage that was owned by the mayor. And so this, we've been more cognizant about who's authorized and not authorized to take these actions. And so there's nothing really specific about it. Representative Budden alluded to, I was just out for three weeks. There's times when the mayor may be out for time as well. And so it's really just to not find ourselves in a legal conundrum if something like this were to emerge. So no specific actions or concerns or nothing forthcoming that we're really worried about. It's more about, we're just more cognizant of our charter as we made some acquisitions on other end of the equation. And so it's really just trying to have good government and not get into a legal pickle if we can avoid it.
[Unidentified Committee Member]: Thank you.
[Rep. Michael Boutin]: Yep.
[Tucker Anderson]: Anything else for the city manager?
[Chair Matthew Birong]: No. Thank you. We had some time in the schedule, so we felt like checking in on with, checking in with you folks on this one. So we'll flag this for further discussion in the coming weeks once we get through crossover. And then, I mean, you know the drill. That's like charter season for us. It's like charter season. Yeah.
[Nicolas Storellicastro]: Well, thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time and your questions. It was great speaking with you.
[Chair Matthew Birong]: Yeah. Of course. Of course. Alright, committee. We have no shortage of bills floating around this building. So let's keep an eye on our assignments. Hey. I know rep Nugent and I both have to go to Sonic DevOps today speak to bills that went over there. You have OPR, I have regional governance. And then we have, in about a half hour, we're gonna reconvene to oh, nope. In fifteen minutes. Sorry. Twenty minutes. We're gonna reconvene on the amendment to h nine one seven. But everybody's all aware of what's going on there. So it's no additional primer. With that, Nick, please take us off.