 restroom, get a cup of coffee, get a bag of lunch, charge their devices, and also use a computer. This was not only very well received by the guest and the community. Last winter we used emergency funds and this winter we would like to have it at the same location for six months. Operating costs is around 40,000 a month. That includes security and CBOYO as an operating part of the FW. In addition to that, the Fletcher Free Library has ARPA initiatives from department heads. The Fletcher Free Library has what we consider some pretty low-hanging fruit, easy and low-cost initiatives to help with the house's population. That includes bins for that they can store their their belongings during the day. It also includes outdoor charging stations, so at all terms of the day and night they can charge devices that they have. So that is the extra 20,000 that you'll see and here it's to better serve their needs during the day. Let's start at the next question. That's the second question. Okay, thank you. Just to share, I mean I don't want to let you know sometime before we can give a full report. The survey that you're doing so far, but just I think would be an issue for folks to know this action is very consistent with you guys so far. It is and I do know that Councillor Hightower last week had indicated that we have been coming a little bit key smell for some of these emergency allocations. We have currently we have 1,400 responses on the survey. The overwhelming number one response is to address homelessness. So I feel comfortable that this is in line with the responses we have so far. So the survey has not even been out for two full weeks yet. And as I said, the overwhelming response is to address homelessness. All for the discussion for part one. Thank you again. I was just wondering if you can remind us before we how much to see this, how to be able to show this to the people who aren't listening. I don't know. I'm happy that it's something that we have increased, you know historically, homeless, homeless supports that have been- Can both of us speak out? Yeah. Just sometimes to remove the mask, especially in this room, like to help the people who are listening here. Yeah. This is for people online and for people online. Okay. And where is it helpful to speak in a certain direction? Here. I think it just picks it up. Yeah. It's kind of predictable. All right. So just just showing historically, social services are paid for overwhelmingly by the state. State has the agencies with its responsibilities, the city's investments in directly and homeless, homeless sports has been very modest. That had been changing over time. I would say over the last, I can just speak to the $1 a year to add extra months to the low-marriage, or when we were warming ourselves up. That was our first direct investment. That was expanded to about $100,000 a year, $110,000 a year that we are paying as our share of the year-round low-marriage or shelter. In addition to that, we do have a house of trust fund, which has between, at this point, approximately, prior to the year doubling that the voters approved last year was about just $400,000 a year that the city was putting directly on local funds being put into one form or another of housing. Some of that we go towards homelessness directly or some element of homelessness. But it's on that we're actually in the building outside of the house of the homeless who we don't have a problem with. We have been, I mean, we are going to be, as we take the larger office summit, go through the public process, we will also be connecting with our community partners to provide us with these services to see the best way to invest in these moving forward. A further discussion of item 4.01. Seeing none, we will go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Did anybody oppose? Motion carries unanimously. This brings us to the 4.02. So 4.02. This is very similar to the item we had last week, which our members will remember where for essentially for auditing purposes, we're doing something unusual this year. We don't normally have these tens of millions of dollars of federal funds to invest. And as a result, we're sort of figuring out the proper way to document what we're doing. Even though you already passed in the budget use of our funds for BED rearage issues, and to deal with the fact that our parking fund, traffic fund was devastated by the pandemic and needed some revenue replacement, you already approved that in the budget, but the others have requested additional documentation of that for the reference. And this is us. So that's what we do. I think it's going to be a BED to support the government together. Yes. All right. So with that, that's a 4.02. It is on the floor and very good discussion on our question. How's it going? Yep. I want to make a question about who they're recommending the city council to rise out of an important division of public funds. One million dollars. Thank you. Any discussion of 4.02? Seeing none, we'll go to all those in favor of motion. Please say aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And this brings us to 4.03, which is a substantial change request to Betsy. I was getting the downtown tax from the financing district. And here to brief the board on this is Director Brian Crain. And he's joined by David White. White is our investors who, as councilors will remember, are new members of our team to assist us with both the city place development and brings a vast background in Vermont's TIP legislation and administration of these TIP districts. And it's really had a lot already. It's a short number of weeks with us. And the key time is for the TIP districts. So with that, I'll turn it over to Brian and David to see this slide. Sure. So I was talking to David before we came in. It's almost exactly 10 years ago that he and Stephanie Clark made this from David's firm and I sat with the council to get the council to create the downtown TIP that was 10 years ago. So you'll hear a little while the accomplishments that have been made. We still have some time left in this TIP district and I think what we're going to present tonight hopefully is his compelling support for finance and then the council. The key thing that I just want to point out is that the what you're discussing tonight does not relate to city place. So that is the waterfront TIP district. It does not relate to the GO bond that is facing the voters soon. Balancer, I guess, are going out momentarily. So this is very specifically about the downtown TIP district with respect to the Great Streets project on Main Street. And so really, as well as the sewer ravine that runs in the ravine that used to cross a good part of the city of the Zarks that still didn't run through the property. Some will call the gateway block or the super block. It's the people who've been there a long time. They can call the old county jail. The property has been used for a lot, but it's the parking lot now before. So the I think the thing that I just want to just highlight is the idea that if is a tool, the municipalities have available because we're not recognized that the way her striving, strong, vibrant downtown is to invest in the infrastructure of those downtowns and that just just by comparison, 40 years ago, when Bernie Sanders, who has became mayor, had a source of revenue that funded those projects called Federal Revenue Sharing. We're going to get a million dollars from the federal government to fund projects like that and infrastructure. And it was a $10 million general fund. So if you went with that ratio, we'd be receiving about six and a half million of federal dollars to fund these types of projects. But because revenue sharing was discontinued under Ronald Reagan, cities had to come up with different ways to fund infrastructure. So that's the historical note that is why people say, why do you do this complicated method? It seems really not the best way. The reason why is because local government only has so many ways to do it. And this is a way to fund infrastructure without relying on today's taxpayers to pay for its new growth, bringing in the new revenue to cover the cost to service the debt that you incurred to build the infrastructure. So it's a long topic, but it's one that I think people sometimes miss out on why we use this in Vermont so much. This is Laura Wheelock. When we used this last week, we had to keep it active. Otherwise, the video turns off. There's just not enough people moving. Thanks, Laura. And did the audience also shut up or just the video? Just the video. Hello. Almost like it goes into a sleep mode. So you don't even get talking, guys. You just get talking. Yep. All right. The PowerPoint, we got a little bit of a glitch, but I don't think it would be that hard to solve right now if I sent it to somebody. That's a cat. So David, I'll hand it off to you. Okay. And I'll send it to the rest of you to get up to the PowerPoint, but we don't start right. Your presentation. So for the record, and for those of you who don't know me, I'm David White, the President of White Park Real Estate Advisors. And yes, we've been involved with TIP for more than a decade and have helped establish the majority of the tips that exist in the state of Vermont today. So very, very familiar with how those work as well as having set up the downtown TIP district for the city a decade ago. I'm making the assumption that most of the people here are relatively familiar with how TIP works, but let me, once we, I wish we had the PowerPoint available because I've got all kinds of nice graphic slides, but let me give you a quick overview just as a refresher. And for those maybe who are watching by Zoom or in the audience who aren't as familiar with it. So when you establish a TIP system, you define a specific geographic area. Certain properties in the TIP district, others are not a TIP district. It's very specific in terms of which properties are part of the TIP district. And in Burlington, you're actually in an unusual circumstance. You're the only municipality in the state that has two TIP districts. There's the Waterfront TIP district and the Downtown TIP district. And I should caution you that those two TIP districts operate under somewhat different rules because the Downtown TIP district was the very first one established in state of Vermont back in the mid-1960s and was established by legislative decision before the current process was established. And what I'm going to talk about tonight is not the Waterfront TIP district and not about the way those rules work. I'm going to talk about the Downtown TIP district. Downtown TIP district, thank you. Excellent. All right. So I'm going to talk about what is TIP, Downtown TIP, specifically what we're proposing. I'll be operating for questions. I'm going to go through very quickly because this was actually set up for the public hearing later tonight. So bear with me as I grab off very quickly next slide please. So if you look here, the Waterfront TIP district is most of that pink area along the waterfront. Plus it includes the old, you know, where the Marriott is at Hotel Vermont and the former wall now, the future city place. The Downtown TIP district is the blue area that sort of wraps around and it encompasses much of downtown but not all of downtown because in the establishment of TIP district, the Vermont Economic Progress Council wants you to keep it as small as possible. They argue to take this property out, that property out. And so it does not encompass all of downtown but it is that blue area that wraps around. So it does include say Pearl Street, both sides, it includes Cherry Street, the North side, it includes all South of Muskie Avenue, a portion of Main Street, and some of the other properties west of City Hall. So next slide please. This is the gist of it that basically the concept is that what the municipality does is identify those infrastructure barriers that are making private investment difficult. And it varies from municipality to municipality. It also varies from project to project but the concept is municipality borrows money to invest in the infrastructure that removes the barriers that enables or incentivizes private development and the new taxes, only the new taxes from that development then in turn pay off the bond. And so when you establish a TIP district, well I'll get to the, let's go to the next slide. So if you look at this one, there's a lot going on in there. Do you mind if I walk up and stand by it for a moment? Might be easier to understand. So when you establish a TIP district, you determine what's called the original taxable value or OTV. What's the value in the TIP district today at the day you establish the TIP district? And then the taxes from that value continue to go where they've always gone. You don't take a nickel of that money so you're not taking it, continue to go to the education fund, continue to go to the general fund, etc. Over time as you incentivize and as new development and new values created in the downtown TIP district, 100% of the incremental new municipal taxes goes to the TIP fund to help retire the debt that's incurred. In the education fund, 75% goes to the TIP district, 25% goes to the Ed fund right from the get-go. And over time, the TIP district generally has a life of about 20 years and there's some nonsense to that. I won't get into a huge detail, but once all the debts paid off, then all of those taxes, municipal and education taxes go to where they would otherwise. And so 20 years out more or less, there's this new shot of revenue that goes to both the municipality and to the education fund. Now, what's important to understand is that there's under the statute, there's only a 10-year period during which the municipality is allowed to incur debt. After that, you're done. You cannot incur any more debt. And it happens that because it was established in 2011, normally that would expire in 221 and we'd already be over. But the TIP district's legislature's expanded it by two years, so we actually have until March 31st, 2023. So there are only two years left and that's critical to both the decision tonight, but also potentially some future decisions. Because when March 31, 2023 rolls around, you're done. You can't borrow any more money. This tool is no longer available in the downtown TIP district. And you also have only a 20-year period during which you can retain the education portion of the taxes. I will parenthetically say that the municipality has the right to retain its own municipal taxes longer if it chooses to do so. We're not proposing that tonight, but it's conceivable something the city could look at in the future. But for now, what that means is because, well, let's go to the next slide. Let's see. I guess we can see most of it. So the district established in 2011, the first debt was incurred in 2016, and you count the retention period for education taxes for 20 years from then. So the final period for retaining the education taxes is 2036. And the final date for incurring new debt is 2023. Thank you. Let's go to the next slide. So historically, so far what's been done in the TIP district is the Great Streets projects on a project on St. Paul Street, some repairs to the marketplace garage that needed to be done, the Brownfield cleanup, the Browns Court parking lot before the Eagles landing project was built there, and some stormwater upgrades that were done at the same time as the City of Park renovations along Main Street. It didn't make sense to do those later. So that's been done. Let's move on. The OTV, the original taxable value in the district was $170 million. You currently have a value of about $285 million. So you've got incremental value of $115 million in the TIP district. Now, a portion of that is as a result of the reappraisal that took place, and another portion is as a result of new projects. I don't happen to have the breakout or know the breakout between those, but there's an incremental value since it was established of $115 million. The voters approved a total of, to date at least, have approved a total of $10 million of debt of which $5.4 million has actually been incurred, and that leaves, and of that $5.4 million, some has been paid off. So it's currently about $4.6 million remaining balance on that original debt. So as of the beginning of the current fiscal year, there was about $1.8 million sitting a positive value in the downtown TIP fund. We are projecting looking forward about $2.4 million to start in the TIP district. We expect that to grow over time, and this includes, I should say, not just the direct incremental taxes, but the city did enter into an agreement with Champlain College that is paying $260,000 a year in development fee for the Eagle's Landing project until the end of the life of the TIF district. So through 2036-37 that range. So this includes that $260,000. And out of that $10 million, because we've borrowed about $4 million, and there have been some of what are called related costs, which are operational costs for the district, there's about $4 million left of what the voters have already approved. So very quickly, we're here because we're going to propose, we have to go to VEPSI for what's called a request for substantial change to the district. And basically what that means is VEPSI wants to know absolutely anything to change from the district. And some of the changes are not what we would consider VEPSI, excuse me, substantial, but in this case, I think it's fairly substantial. The process in general works like this. So we're required to have a public hearing, which will happen tonight with the City Council. The application to VEPSI as soon as the City Council approves it will go in at the end of this week. It's due on the 29th for a hearing, which will be in November with VEPSI. We will, assuming this all goes positively, we'll be back to the City Council looking for you to put probably in January to make the decision to put it on the March ballot, some additional debt. And then we hope to have VEPSI approval, it could happen as soon as the meeting, but more likely they'll wait a month or two before they issue the formal approval. But we're anticipating VEPSI approval. And then there will need to, there's required additional public hearing that takes place before the bond vote. I would anticipate roughly the February timeframe and then go back to the voters again in March. So there's a substantial amount of process before we even get to issue in the bond, which do have to happen before that March 31st date in 2023. Let's move on. So you're familiar with the Great Streets program already. I won't belabor it, but that's the core of the City's investments in downtown to try to incentivize it. And as a piece of that, let's move on. The main thing that what's currently approved is the Great or by VEPSI is the Great Streets projects from Main Street to South Union, on Main Street, sorry, from South Union to Pine, and Great Streets on South Monuski from College to King Street. Let's move on. That's currently approved. What we're proposing in the way of change is to add the two lower blocks of Main Street so that it goes from Pine all the way to battery so we really connect with the waterfront more effectively and just get it all done at once. Remove the two blocks of South Monuski at this point. And I want to be clear that this effort also includes subsurface utility upgrades, reconstructions, replacements, and extensions. It just doesn't make sense to do the surface without also doing what's underneath it. So a fair amount of the cost is actually in this part. And we are adding in the relocation of the ravine sewer as part of the Great Streets project because it crosses right under Main Street and it doesn't make any sense to not do that now because then you'd later have to rip it up of what you just invested in the Great Streets on Main Street in order to ultimately do that. And I will add that that ravine sewer that's getting rid of it across that property is critical to being able to develop the gateway block. You just can't build over the top of this thing. Related costs will be looking for approval for just under a million and a half dollars over the life of the TIFTIS. So from now to 2036 in terms of related costs and in total a debt limit of $31,500 that includes, I might say, the $4 million that's still left in the $10 million that's very approved by voters. And exactly what form of the bond council wants to go to or the bonding. I don't know but it's actually $27 million and a half new bonding if you will. Let's move on. So just to reiterate in terms of Main Street because I know there's been some confusion but here's Main Street and there the different segments are in different areas. So the segment here along City Hall of a couple of blocks along City Hall and just west of there the next block west of there those have been approved by both the voters and by VEPSI. The eastern two blocks have been VEPSI approved but have not yet been asked that we've not yet asked the voters for approval and the western two blocks will need both VEPSI and voter approval. So from VEPSI's perspective this section is not part of the substantial change because they've already approved it. This section is but with the voters we'll go back for both of those. Let's move on. So very quickly in terms of the ravine for those who aren't familiar with it this kind of looks at some of the utility subsurface utilities. This is College Street. This is South Wynuski. This is Main. There's Memorial Auditorium. There's the fire station. Here's the library. This purple line is where that ravine sewer runs and it goes right under the library crosses right under this where the parking lot is and you just you can't build on top of it. So that's got to go away if the city ever wants to see this redevelopment. There'll just conversation about whether it might be the high school but irrespective of whether that ever happens here you can't develop the site without dealing with that ravine sewer line. It's got to be relocated off of this property. So included in that 31 million five is a budget to relocate it around a long college and South Wynuski and get it out of the middle of this so that that can get developed ultimately it doesn't hurt me the way it is. And for those who don't know that's what it looks like. This is actually a photo inside the sewer right behind that was taken right about here behind the fire station. Can we keep it as a tourist attraction? Well it had skulls and so forth. Maybe it would be. Let's move on. Okay and for those who don't know here's the view today from the corner of South Wynuski and Maine looking there's Memorial Elector and there's the fire station there's the congregational church 1870. If you haven't seen it before that ravine was you're talking serious and this is just the part that's visible there that's a bridge on College Street it goes crosses over and goes and there was another bridge on Main Street. So this was very very potential and one of the challenges on the side is not just dealing with the flow but also dealing with there's probably not very good impact that's filled in there for foundations. Let's move on. So in terms of private development we've been conservative we're anticipating in the cash flow that the YMCA hotel will happen and we've got it several years out. It's not happening right away but we've got it several years out. The redevelopment of the VFW site that Champlain Housing Trust now has under contract and we expect that to move forward and also there's a smaller project over on South Champlain Street that's fully permitted although I understand they may be coming back to enlarge the project but the developers absolutely intend to go to proceed. So those are the only three new projects we're relying on in terms of the cash flow projections for this. Ones that we have high degree of confidence will actually occur. In addition to that we're showing background growth of only about 1% per year annually for the rest of the life of the TIFS district to help support it and there are a lot of other private projects we've noted I think about the potential redevelopment for instance of the Cathedral over on Cherry Street through that we've noted in our application materials but we're not counting on any cash flow because they're speculative we don't know whether they'll happen and when they'll happen but we've noted that they may be and some of the improvements may help incentivize those. Let's move on. So this is the time of the cash flow I'm not going to walk you all the way through but there's been a highly detailed analysis done and it starts with the amount of cash that we've got available it looks at what we project in the way of annual revenue into the TIFS district including this is the 260 from Champlain College total available revenue of the existing debt service our projected debt service for the 31 million and then the total projected debt service related costs and the cumulative surplus deficit and at the present time we're projecting about six million dollars in surplus at the end of the life of the TIFS district. I should caution a couple of things one of the most important is that VEB-C currently will not allow us to assume any increases in tax rates over the life of the TIFS district whatsoever they require us to assume zero increase the truth is I think that's absurd I think it will increase that history shows that education taxes at least I know the municipality never raises its taxes but the education tax at least will go up and but they require us to be very conservative and assume zero if those go up even by one or two percent a year annually on the average this number is going to be a heck of a lot bigger at the end of the life of the TIFS district so I think there's there's a fair amount of comfort in this if you will in terms of where I think we will end up let's move on. So just caution I do this is probably not the last time we'll be coming back to you I think we'll likely in less than six months to be back sometime in winter spring 2022 to talk about more great streets projects we're not prepared to go in tonight this is kind of a heads up so that surplus that that's being shown at six million et cetera we may well end up wanting to use to help invest in Cherry Street or Bank Street or South Mesquite Avenue that's a future conversation but just giving you that heads up so I think that's it oh the quick summary which is simply adding Main Street removing South Burnoski total debt limit we believe there's a sufficient increment comfortably to pay the debt service and we're going to need city council approval so they'll be able to submit it this week. Say a little bit more about the last point. That's great dude. Thank you. Someone who works a lot with the district is great to see it all made out that way so clearly so again the action tonight is to allow us to submit this application to VEPC there will be future council actions well numerous yes future council actions notably there is definitely another vote by the council before this to send it to the voters that that vote would be that was up there before probably in January yeah yeah so we'll add to that which is that there's also if VEPC approves this and the voters approve it does not obligate the city to do all of this something changes between now and when you want to actually implement it you can choose to cut back on it you can't add to it without going back to VEPC but it doesn't obligate you to spend all that money on these projects thank you that's okay great I have a general question about using this funding model in general which is since we're assuming that there won't be any tax revenue in place I think for the funding itself I guess how does that interact with kind of our annual budget which it does assume that there will be increases that will be flowing towards our general funds and then if any increase is going forward go to funding how does that impact our quick summary the the base increment you can use to float us in the education fund with no exceptions I think whatever whatever the valuation was whatever the tax assessment of that was prior to the formation of the district that that is unaffected by anything we do in the district with this district and there's some exception with the waterfront district in the past but with this district we need a new increment new revenue created gets divided 25 percent flows to the fund and the city under you know not gets divided up proportionally about 30 percent goes to the city 70 percent goes to the fund so 25 percent of the new taxes generated in the district flow to those entities 75 percent of the increment for this time of the 20-year period flowing to the district and that's for more protection yeah yeah I want to clarify one the two points one is that actually the way the end fund money and the municipal money is handle is different in the case of the municipal tax 100 percent of the that of the municipal tax taxes on the incremental value goes to the TIF fund that's 25 percent of the in the education fund 75 percent goes to the TIF fund 25 percent of the education fund just to clarify that point but the other point is to to your question that any in actual increase in tax rates to the mayor's point on that I showed you the original taxable value the OTV was 170 million so any increase in the tax rate will also increase the revenue to the general fund from that from the increase in the tax rate that does not go to TIF so whatever taxes tax rate is assessed on that 170 million dollars those taxes will continue to go to the to the general fund and will not go to the TIF fund it's only the taxes if there's an actual increase in tax rate which I expect there will be on the incremental taxes that will go to the TIF fund but I will add to that that once you reach the period of time when it's no longer incurred debt March 31st 2023 so very soon Vepsey has the right to take a look at what your tax revenue is in the in the fund if you actually have more revenue that you need to retire debt they can then reduce that and allow some of the funds to start to go to the education fund and to the general fund some of the surplus so that doesn't just accumulate there when you don't need it doesn't accumulate though at the end of the life it gets distributed yes to the extent that it doesn't accumulate the surplus it'll get programs distributed to the end fund and the general fund based on what portion they each put in that if there is a surplus and it seems there is a six-minute over six-foot in the sense that this project that project gets the end and uh my question was going to be that's the city have the capacity to do it but now here in the it's not only the city and it's also correct and who's going to make the determination to get in this part that's that's actually done by the by the state um the run I think the progress council has the authority at any point during the life of the district to change what the proportions are at the end of life the district the statute's very clear that has to be distributed proportional so if the municipality put in 30 percent and the end fund put in 70 percent then the end fund gets 70 percent what the surplus is at the end the municipality gets 30 and if they allocate this money to the city as it comes with strings saying you cannot use this money for an explanation or you can use it inside your discussion and well during life the district stick their large strengths at the end no that it just goes to the general fund just let me say this is the most thorough presentation but give me a say but I will also consult uh thank you for the yes I want to make sure that our questions were played you talked a lot at any attention it's fundamental if the assumption that the state makes us assume that that she makes us assume that there's going to be no increase in taxation proves inaccurate and thus more revenues end up flowing more than 75 percent increment flows in the district that's why it's a little absurd that it is such a conservative assumption we'll be assessing that together up until March of 23 and if we still do have the ability to incur other debt to use those funds the council and the voters that's the official experience right so follow up question and I'm not thank you is basically because I just know that for our for our budget like forecast over the we've changed some of the assumptions to be I think a little less conservative so I just want to make sure that we're not running into suddenly having a lot more money that's going to be flowing to tip some point to the handle but as we expected when we're making us consider assumption so understood I I don't we we certainly have been taking into account the the taxation as we've been constructing these budgets and and so their conservatives shouldn't really impact the way we budget excess presentation so I was curious about the removal of the Southwood use key piece recognizing that the district is performing better than we thought it might is this informed by capacity issue or is it something else and is that is there another way to potentially keep up the both the positive a moment of that we've seen in recent years in terms of improvements you know for you I know for our software needs are I know that the state's going to come through that we're going to have some significant significant money to retake but it's our other opportunity to make that more extreme I think the goals to to make improvements on Southwood's here is still probably in what they held but the right now the request is to essentially redo that tip capacity from being great streets on Main Street knowing that we're going to come back probably next spring or maybe sometime next spring ish to talk about what to add to go back to they want to come back but just this time it wants to sort of narrow the project not keep the use key out of it and it may just put it all on main street and then come back it's done like but not too far that's a check well he's the console president scientist that I kind of know that way that's the statutory the statute says the highest selected official of the legislative body and the highest appointed administration it's my sector last year we have to do it again this week I might add that we have four new lock units you know on main street there are questions from the engineering all the more perspective sort of every source people are familiar with the details okay so I don't believe we have a motion yet we are hoping to get the update we get to the agenda as well further questions we're ready for motion does fall thanks to all of us to approve the uh say substantial change request to Pepsi where it's not about to get destroyed by the city council president that's Tracy and she could demonstrate well the search to execute the attached form of the puzzler that's a second question Jane thank you any further discussion great we'll go to move all those that do emotionally say hi on the eight months motion there's yes thank you thank you and uh we'll see you back again soon willing to run the whole point again thank you all right so um now uh city attorney can come and join us at the table and there's there's been a couple of developments over the course of the day one's the legal aspect of the moment with respects this year's land we also I believe I saw him before Paul dragon the executive director of cd oyo I think is with us can we be far enough great and um Paul's core team is the team that has been charged with trying to work with all of the individuals who've been camping in serious lane sure that everyone who is interested in it has some support everyone who's interested in a better housing um option is given the opportunity to pursue that Paul has an update on that work as well so why don't we why don't we do these two things why don't we start then there was a another emergency um motion motion today that has been addressed today so we're putting up the the council and important finance you have a number of counselors here or online as well as members of the media and no people are having some trouble hearing so I'm going to try to protect you can start with that and then we'll go to apologize sure so just to update the council you last met the support of finance last met there was an emergency motion by last week by two individuals who claim to be occupying the series lane site seeking a temporary restraining order and they filed an ex parte which means just without notice to the other side which is allowed under the rules the court rejected it because it was not sufficient to establish a right to the relief that was sought um and uh so today there was a revised emergency motion essentially it wasn't uh it was the same parties that were filing it seeking the same type of relief uh the court notified the city that this had been filed and uh about noon time gave us three hours to respond saying that they were going to make a decision on this motion before the end of day we filed our response to that motion uh in the court shortly after shortly shortly before 430 issued a decision denying the renewed request for the motion but there is a hearing on a preliminary injunction hearing on thursday uh at one p.m so where do they stand right now the court has effectively refused to either issue a restraining order or any type of legal jurisdiction that would um limit or affect the city's ability to um act upon its policy uh there is an injunctive hearing um a preliminary injunction hearing uh on thursday but you know until either an injunction issues or such um there is no legal limitation on the city's right to enforce its policy just stands right now all right thank you for that update den um and um i will be speaking a little bit further in light of that we're planning on going forward but before doing that um i would like to ask uh paul dragan um to share um his update uh on how the work to find better housing options for all the campus at sears lane it's going again just to remind people how cdo got involved when um i made a decision uh a couple weeks ago now that the camp had become unsafe for campers for neighbors for first responders um we immediately um sought a partnership with the state and um through the state with cdo yo to be working in an intensive way with campers to find housing options and that request was granted essentially emergency authorization affirmed if you can get granted by the state um empowering cdo yo to um work with individual mobilized resources and find uh new housing options for folks and that work from report that i got earlier today is going quite well and wanted um to ask paul to to share the update with uh with the council and the public paul are you able to do that no he was with us he was like he's right there dr pine is trying to connect but this doesn't work quickly i can share my but the council appreciate your directly so far well can we ask paul to repeat it or are you um he's here he's here because he doesn't think that's him but he said he said he had some connect connection problem all right let's see i'll get back in all right well well go ahead councillor jane you get uh while we're seeing if that works go ahead if you have a question for the city attorney sorry that i can't hear from the senator that's okay but i didn't say that the city can't hear anybody from that side and i think it's up to this thing so a couple of responses no um in the opposite but i do want to be careful the term of the that's a certain meaning uh in the law we're not talking about eviction here because there's a landlord tent but um because these motions were denied we can move forward um as the city sees it um in taking action um in regards to seriously so then what is that here yeah so um the way in which and and i apologize i'll just see the only way to think of to explain it is effectively is when you file a complaint you're asking for certain reasons and that relief will come at the end of the the court process which may be months years but under rule 65 if there aren't is the ability to seek out what is known as a preliminary injunction which is to say if you meet certain standards to look at likelihood of success on a merits um that there is a compelling interest um and other issues you can be granted essentially a order from the court that says to the other party do this or don't do that um and if it's even so uh necessary that you can't even wait for preliminary injunction here and rule 65 allows you to uh file what's known as a uh temporary restraining order which is you go into court you say the other side does what what they say they're going to do we're going to suffer a record of harm you need to grant us this emergency temporary release um and sometimes at sparta meaning you haven't even contacted the other side the court granted or not granted um and sometimes it means that you've contacted the other side but it's just a quick ruling from the court but it's usually a snapshot and these are all just pieces in time to either have someone do or not do something um so it does appear that uh paul dragging is with us it says jordan rinnell there but that is that is paul um paul you're speaking to the board of finance as well as many city counselors who are not on the board of finance and members of public and media that joined us and i'm not sure if you've ever heard me before but i said you could update folks on how the work with the campers at sears lane is going um and the success uh progress you're making finding better housing options for folks that are yeah sure thing thanks everybody for having uh having me kind of so i'm with the shamp lane valley office of economic opportunity and we have a street outreach team three members who have been doing um outreach to different uh encampments and serving people who are experiencing homelessness all around chitin and county through um beginning in in july and they've been going regularly to the uh sears lane and working with the residents there they serve lunch there every day um since there was an order to remove folks from uh sears lane we have been working on trying to get them into either hotel rooms or uh we also have funding uh for campers um we have funding to help people relocate if they have a housing plan uh in another town another area um so we're really uh trying to work to get them to wherever uh wherever they can be in terms of harm reduction just as long as they want to leave so um that's that's the work we have been doing uh i think as of the end of the end of the day tomorrow we have nine people confirmed who will be going to hotels 12 people most likely two people have uh said that they have um they would like to relocate to another state because they have some ties there or we can connect them with services a couple of people have requested campers which we we can purchase um and then there are some people who are still looking at other options uh i was telling the mayor earlier it's a very fluid situation there's anywhere from 20 to 30 people there people come and go um sometimes weekly others i met a person there who has been there for two years um so it's it's hard to know exactly because it's not like you go there and everybody is there um you know we go there at different times of the day and you're not going to see every single person there so we're working hard to try to make connections um make sure people have uh at least food every day try to get them warm clothing and referrals of course to housing and other services but that's the status as of today and i'm happy to answer any questions okay thank you very much paul um and uh i will open it up for questions in one moment uh can you just speak to it has it been cvoio's goal to connect and offer supports to every understanding the fluidity and that it that there's some variability about who's there but it's been the goal to connect with everyone there offer them an assistance yeah i think we have connected with the vast majority of people who are there um so and we recently have been handing out a flyer for people that we can't connect with just to let them know that hey if you do want to leave we can help with hotel rooms or we can help with travel or we can um you know we can work with you on some other temporary plan so i can't um say with a hundred percent sure we've connected to every single person there however we've connected with most and we've certainly given and supplied the information so that people can connect with us if we haven't seen them all right thank you very much um uh are there questions and oh and we have many times this year in the room rather does anyone have any questions for paul this morning thank you thank you for being here i think what i'm hearing you saying is basically you haven't studied work with this thank you for this time it's been an ongoing process that cvoio has undertaken and it's not only also it's here can you do it to our country is that right yeah uh that is true so just for a little bit of context um we had been operating the holiday in shelter in south irlington uh through the end of june and that was the state's largest emergency shelter we had about 155 people there at any given time when that facility closed at the end of june we knew so we got a grant through a variety of sources to have three street outreach workers so we've only been doing street outreach as an agency um since july but we do have uh we do we do know the folks that were serving because we did operate the holiday in for 15 months it just as an ad i would let you know that we just we did receive a grant for a mobile outreach fan with two computer stations that will be operating hopefully we we just put out a request for proposal so hopefully have that van up and running uh so people can come in uh apply for benefits in the van um check their email apply for jobs just just another added benefit so if people are going to be um dispersing from sears lane or going anywhere else or as you know we we have a uh a real issue with hotel rooms and availability this will just be another opportunity to reach out to people again not sufficient it's all harm reduction we all know we want permanent housing for people um we just are not there yet as a as a community or as a state um and if you are if some people choose to stay you are not going to manage the site but you will continue to provide support yeah we'll continue to provide um support i think the city uh has showed a great level of um you know patience and support for the site up until the order to uh remove and um i know that they issued an rfp cb oeo didn't go for that rfp neither did any other agency our perspective is that you know we're not there to manage sites we're we're there to help self organize so we'd be happy to go into that site or any other site like we do with our mobile home program and do some resident organizing and that means trying to create community and have people self manage their own living situation that's something we would do but we're not going to manage a site um that's just our perspective and if people continue to stay there um we would continue to go in and we would continue to provide food every day emergency services and if folks wanted something more around you know helping people to better uh connect around community and self organize and self organize we'd be happy to do that as well thank you thank you okay president chris so i'm curious as to when these arrangements were made was that today for or uh which arrangements for for the for residents who are are staying there because i guess not in context i was there on full saturday and sunday speaking with folks and i didn't find a single person to i spoke to there at sears lane who had any idea what they're going to do what they were going to do from tuesday so a lot of confusion that existed and i'm speaking just from the folks that i spoke with directly and they hadn't had contact or spoken with folks and that they didn't know where they were going to go yeah no thanks for going there um no our team is there including today they're there every single day providing food and i was there passing out the flyers they connect with people every day and they have um nine commitments for people to go to hotels on sunday i got a woman into a hotel uh she called me here and we arranged for her to go to a hotel so i i can't i can't answer for what you're hearing i'm just saying that the team is they're making arrangements every day providing uh food and um transportation is an issue as you know because uh there's not a lot of hotel availability so we also have to set up taxis and uber but yeah every everybody there has knows that there's everybody there should know that there's possibilities that cvo eo is providing resources if if people do indeed want to go the second question is for the motel the folks who are staying going to be staying in motels will that continue beyond the end of the year where the when the governor has extended the program but has not committed to extending it beyond the end of the year or will that funding drive up at that point yeah i i think you have to separate out um the two uh pieces so for the you're talking about the general assistance program where the governor has extended to stay cvo eo and a number of other organizations as advocated for that through december and even longer this funding that we received was short term funding from the state we asked for funding if people wanted to leave uh sears lane we asked for some immediate hotel funding where people could go for up to 30 days so that is up to 30 days and whether they'll be eligible for the ga program after that or not i am i'm not sure i mean we would advocate for that obviously and we'd advocate for more money until people get permanent housing for people to either stay in hotels or some other facility um we've you know weighed in continual continuously on more housing options until there's permanent housing thank you thank you thank you paul um and uh certainly what paul is reacting to is consistent with how much he says i've had with lacy schnett about um her uh her work with um tamper to say and consistent with some of the reporting even that has been uh done by various charles um counsel freeman thank you uh sorry i wasn't sure how to get into the queue um thank you paul for um providing a little bit more context and thank you councillor tracy for those follow-up questions i think for me um though i hear that there is an attempt to have a sort of coordinated continuum of of resources um of um whether it's housing um other sort of whether it's like healthcare or you know substance use support or mental health support um sort of anything that um anyone done at sears lane may need access to food you know um these are things that anyone would need access to but certainly include folks at um anyone done at sears lane as well might need access to it just doesn't and this is not to disregard the um any of the work of cp oe or cdo but evicting and i and i hear the city attorney that eviction is not the the correct term removal whatever we want to use um you know it just it's still the entire um it the effect of it just it i can't help but feeling like um and not to be alarmist or dramatic but it just it reminds me of um back in the day when lunax was buying one-way bus tickets for houseless folks downtown we cannot displace houselessness the sears lane encampment exists because people will always need access to non-traditional housing until we have and and not only until we have permanent housing systems and housing is a as a housing first model where anyone can have access to low barrier housing with no question asked as a first but i don't want to be and i see you so i'm screaming the there i just want to be clear this is not intended to substitute for there's going to be a resolution this is an opportunity to ask questions to paul dragon will not be available later on um or i'll wrap up quickly i i understand and i will i will i can also make comments at the time that's fine i i will wrap up quickly i i what i wanted to say and it's not a question i guess it is just a comment as i i appreciate the work that's being done i appreciate any of the work that's being done around um resources that we're giving to houseless folks i and i this is why i didn't want to be interrupted because it is i i really didn't want to lose my train of thought and it makes it drags out the comments even longer um that um there will always be excuse me i'm getting worse um there will always be a need to um to have places where people can shelter on on communal on communal lands and have access to non-traditional housing and so i appreciate the work being done to find housing for folks who want that and need that and to have um or are sort of um resources and etc and so forth um so i do appreciate that work i just um i don't think um this update to me doesn't um doesn't replace the fact that um we shouldn't be removing the encampment at serious lanes but um thank you for thank you for the update okay can i respond uh mayor just quickly yeah one second uh paul listen i can't question the councilor hightower and why don't we yeah and so when we are we are late on time here so i think councilor hightower has the last question and then i'll ask you to respond to both yeah i've got one question for the city attorney back for that so that discussion later and so i guess really the only question is it sounds like there's a few things that are still ongoing and there's talk of campers but you get to be purchased so i guess my takeaway is we're not going to be ready tomorrow to have everybody have housing that is at least equal to or better than no as you can imagine campers are not an easy thing just to buy so this will take some time and um and the more time the better is how i would put it thank you last question for you paul can you just speak to we had we spoke before could you just speak a message in this update very explicitly the number of people that tv o yo is aware of that um uh are not um that do not intend to to leave or that have not taken advantage of the services being offered at this point what what number would you put that it yeah it's it's really hard and i hate to be vague i just it's it's so hard like people's condition changes day by day um there may be you know three to five or more it's just very very hard for me to say and and i do want to just respond quickly to counselor freeman because i agree completely you know uh people should be able to um stay it's not that i don't have empathy for the city for the neighbors for the businesses i certainly do um you know our position position has been you know we can help deliver services there and help people self organize what we're offering is if people do want to leave voluntarily that's where we're providing some support and services that's all thank you paul it's um appreciate the the collaboration and as you know it's been the city's goal as as well up until a couple weeks ago i hope that there was a different outcome impossible and certainly uh has been hoping that cdo yo could help with that gap i know you provided what you can but um i think you've acknowledged that some limitations on that hi and so thank you all very much okay thank you paul um so final statement i just want to make to sort of summarize all that and where where we are as you heard from the city attorney uh the the order the legal order to to um leave the encampment by 9 a.m tomorrow morning for being in place um it is my intention to keep that order in place because sears lane is unsafe it is even after the work that is happening and the process that's been made there and we can get into this in more detail later on tonight but it is still an unsafe place for campers it's an unsafe place for neighbors and it is an unsafe place for the city's first responders um so anyone who is still on site following 9 a.m tomorrow um will be subject to sections for trespassing that said it remains the city's goal and it's always been the city's goal to offer better housing options for everyone camping at sears lane who wants assistance it's been our that's been our goal since making this decision in youth to end and it's been pretend to offer better housing options so it's back well before that on a case by case basis the city may grant additional flexibility to those sears lane campers who are working in good faith with cdo yo or the city in other ways um and who have a housing plan that requires some additional time which as we just heard from paul some people will require a short amount of additional time and um it is our intention to work with those folks on a case by case basis if again they are working with the city in good faith and have a housing plan so with that um i think there will be further discussion of this topic later on tonight so there's no objection i can close it there at 651 and adjourn the board of finance and turn over uh the meeting to uh presentries okay thanks mayor so unfortunately we do need to go upstairs so we're going to go upstairs to make the decisions on the agenda and if we're doing that it's not going to be like releasing down here we're going to be able to stay down okay so how can we stay if you'd like to meet your might this year um we'll be coming back down you can't do this right here in the back room in the elevator we're just agenda this evening i just wanted to to say a few words a about a former city counselor who passed away um the uh counselor and the the counselor i'm speaking of is richard kemp many folks to know richard and have interacted with richard over many years as he had an incredible impact on our community not only on the city council but well beyond it in areas of affordable housing and racial justice on so many other areas i know richard was one of the the folks that got recording in progress personally involved in burlington politics and i can say that i don't know that i would necessarily um be here with it had not been for someone like richard being so warm and welcoming when i met him and so um in honor of richard i'd just like for us to have a moment of silence um honoring richard and also folks um don't know another piece is that richard is really a groundbreaking city counselor he was the first black city counselor in burlington so i think it's really important that we honor richards passing this evening um and just recognize his tremendous contribution to our community thank you very much councillor strongberg may please have a motion on the agenda yes i moved to amend adopt the agenda as follows add to the consent agenda item 5.22 communication brian pine cedo director meghan tuttle principal planner office of city planning regarding revised timeline for ad hoc redistricting committee with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file add to the consent agenda item 5.23 communication robert burstow johnson regarding 2022 vermont house redistricting with uh within burlington with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file removed from the consent agenda item 5.20 resolution december 7th 2021 special city meeting issuance of general obligation bonds for capital projects revised border finance and place it on the deliberative agenda as item 6.10 per councillor shannon thank you we have a motion on the agendas or a second seconded by councillor hightower any discussion hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting our agenda please say aye hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to item number two which is a communication regarding attorney richardson um and a in an executive session regarding a historic water billing issue city attorney richardson are you able to share anything in an open session before we go to motions on on the executive session sure this this concerns a potential settlement agreement the terms of which should be kept confidential because it's an attorney high-end communication and the terms of which if not accepted or altered could cause prejudice to either the city or or one or more parties involved in this so it's ongoing live like litigation and settlement talks okay so your recommendation is that we go yes sorry it is that we go into executive session to discuss this confidentially because it would cause prejudice to the city to discuss it openly because it does talk about compromise can you just talk right in your mic oh sorry it does involve the talk of compromise and i would recommend that the that the board go into executive session to discuss this as an attorney client communication okay thank you um councillor hanson may please have the first motion which is a finding yeah i move that the council find that premature general public knowledge of information concerning the resolution of historic water billing and collection issues would clearly place the city at a substantial disadvantage can we have a motion is there a second seconded by councillor paul is there any discussion of the finding okay seeing none we'll go to a vote on the finding itself all those in favor of adopting that finding please say hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously now based on that finding based on that finding i move that the council go into executive session to a receive confidential attorney client communications pursuant to one vsa 313 a one f and two to discuss a pending or probable civil litigation matter one vsa 313 a one e and we would have the city attorney and council and who else would i believe dpw staff and the mayor staff okay so moved thank you is there a second seconded by councillor carpenter any discussion on the motion to go into executive session okay all those in favor please say hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously and we will go into executive session only to discuss this this historic billing issue we'll come back for members of the public we're going to go um to a conference room um downstairs we'll discuss and then we'll come back and continue with our with our agenda and public forum um we should be we'll try to get back with uh with folks by 7 30 um are as close to there as possible if folks are interested in signing up for public forum you may do so in the corner over here by filling out that sheet or if you're live um or if you're remotely watching um you may do so by going to burlington vt.gov slash city council slash public forum thank you we'll be right back with you thank you very much everyone for being patient appreciated i know we're starting after 7 30 so we're starting a couple minutes later so i'll let the time go a little bit over for the public forum before then um we're going to be getting started with our public forum for folks who are interested in signing up um in or here in the room you may do so by just signing one of the sheets in the corner here and handing it over to city clerk um if you are in participating remotely or watching at home um by um or elsewhere just um you the way you can sign up for public forum is by going to burlington vt.gov slash city council slash public forum that will take you to a fillable form that you'll then um that you can then fill that you can then um complete and that will um feed into a form that I have access to and will read from the way that we'll do it is that um I will be prioritizing burlington folks who are in person then non burlington folks or then burlington folks who are remote then we'll go into non burlington in person and then non burlington remote so that's um the order of operations in terms of signups themselves uh as to the forum itself this evening I would um ask that people please maintain decorum uh in the chamber this evening so please that means that means a couple different things so your folks are gonna have two minutes the clock is right here so you can see your timing you also have a light system that's right there in front of you that gives you a green light means you have um decent amount of time left yellow means your time is running out red means your time has run out um please when your time has run out wrap up as right at that time um you know I'll let you go a sentence or two over but please don't go I'll start to ask you to please wrap up um this is a consideration having to do with open meeting law and maintaining uh fairness for each of the our different speakers this evening so please stick to that time I'll continue to ask you to wrap up until you uh you until you do so um and the other pieces that I would ask of folks this evening are also to please stay quiet during the forum um so no cheer please don't cheer it creates an environment where um people don't feel as comfortable as possible there so please please keep that um keep that mellow um so we can all hear and so that we can effectively move in between speakers as folks are speaking please do not interrupt speakers where it's really important that we're able to hear folks everybody has a chance or to sign up and participate so please um you know please respect our speakers this evening um the other piece the other pieces are please do not speak use personal attacks or really request that towards either counselors or the mayor please stick to the issues themselves it's the most helpful for the issues that you care about to speak to the issues themselves and stay focused on those issues and then finally please do not use profanity um within your um within your comments um or thereafter really would appreciate um if folks could really just stick to those things um and with that I'm going to go ahead and get our comments started for this evening um our first speaker um for this evening will be um actually that's a non-burlington one the first speaker for this evening um will be Lee Morgan to be followed by Andrew Chronichfeld hello counselors mayor uh people who I don't know your titles hello everyone I stand in solidarity with the residents of Sears Lane my main point I want to make is I want to just reiterate that a judge has enough doubt to the illegality of the eviction tomorrow that he has issued an emergency hearing on Thursday two uh requests for uh an emergency injunction have been denied that does not make the eviction any more legal again a judge sees enough doubt in there that a judge has issued an emergency hearing for Thursday and I am shocked and appalled that the city is going ahead with the eviction even though a judge wants to hear evidence by both sides and I also think like you can't wait two days and have enough courtesy cities represented by an experienced high power judge going against a civilian trying to put together a legal defense while he is being displaced he has today and tomorrow has to make the filing Wednesday he is being displaced tomorrow how can this man have the opportunity that a high powered city attorney has to make a case to keep his home I implore you give the court the respect that you ask of civilians to give the city government city government please give the courts that respect do not evict these people before the hearing give the man who is filing the decent courtesy of being able to put a defense instead of being displaced and trying to cobble it together thank you thank you our next speaker will be Andrew chronic felled to be followed by John Kirby chronic felled uh I live in the new north and I'm here to support Sears Lane encampment I think one thing that really struck me was that the whole catalyst of this eviction or whatever the term is was that they found drugs in the encampment first of all who among us in this community doesn't have a colleague or a friend or a family member that doesn't suffer from drug addiction or alcoholism it's it's it's almost everywhere and I've heard from other community members that the Sears Lane encampment has been there for many many years so it just seems very unfair for that to be the reason to me and then the other thing I was going to say was just about the timing of everything I mean to find housing in Burlington in five days or 12 days or whatever the final amount of time they had is impossible you need to have a background check you need to do an application you need to prove your funds so I mean I just don't understand that why why would you do that thanks thank you our next speaker will be John Kirby to be followed by Meg McGovern lifetime Burlington resident loud music fireworks revving motor vehicles shining lights and looking into people's homes drug deals stolen property and threats on lakeside residents lives these are a few of the issues we live 24 hours a day seven days a week nobody in this city deals with this law free zone as much as myself and my neighbor the residents of this encampment are not all homeless some choose this life top so they do not have to live within the laws and regulations of our society this city is offering alternative housing as well as compensation to accommodate these people the eviction should and must be allowed to continue thank you our next speaker is Meg McGovern to be followed by Trey Cook I'm waiting for Meg I'm Trey Cook at the University of Vermont Young Democratic Socialist America I just want to say that I'm appalled that the city is following through on the removal of these residents I'm new here and from what I'm being told the way this has been carried out it's kind of breaking any precedent that's been set in any other part of the country and when you do an eviction I'm not seeing the people down there getting written approvals I was there on Thursday night people were not expecting for trash removal to come through I saw the mayor's statement about their plans to do the trash removal online a little bit after but the people there don't have computers they weren't offered prior written notice about the way that the trash collection was going to get carried out I'm told that there's going to be a emergency hearing from the courts and I just feel like if you got that up in the air you shouldn't follow through on this sort of force for removal I think the city should be offering unconditional permanent housing all these folks not just 28 day temporary housing that you have to jump through a lot of hoops to get to recognizing a lot of these people are struggling with addiction and mental health issues that restrict them from going to some of these other temporary housing places we also need to be offering them better processes for drug rehabilitation and mental health services so that they can start living a more structured life we shouldn't be at a point where we're telling people oh just live out in the street eat from the trash live in a tent and then say no we're not even going to let them do that we're going to displace and harass them to the point that they can't even live in tents and eat trash we have to treat them worse the fact that it's gotten at this point I feel like is a complete failure of the city's structures for housing and health and any other issue and I think right now is the point where you can still fix that and you should call off the eviction tomorrow get people some time to get their stuff back together and um yeah thank you um Meg McGovern I see that you're online so I will come to you when we get to Burlington um online folks um our next speaker um is Patricia Hart to be followed by Esher hello I'm the Reverend Trisha Hart I serve the first Unitarian Universalist Society of Burlington the congregation that Richard Kemp was a member of beloved member uh I'm here to read to you a letter that from the board of trustees of the U.S. Society as Unitarian Universalists our seven principles call on us to honor the inherent worth and dignity of every person and to act with justice equity and compassion and human relations and to support the right of conscience and the use of the democratic process it is in the spirit that we feel compelled to write to you to address the city's proposed eviction of unhoused Burlingtonians from the encampment encampment on Sears Lane tomorrow leaders in our faith community have been in conversation with members of our community experiencing homelessness some of whom have resided at Sears Lane and advocates working toward a solution with the knowledge that we've gleaned from these conversations and the principles that ground our faith we wish to say the following all Burlingtonians deserve safe and affordable housing we strongly support the policies of the city that acknowledging housing acknowledge housing as a fundamental right we call upon you now to take bold action to remedy the immediate crisis faced by our fellow Burlingtonians who are unhoused and to find long-term realistic housing solutions we also wish to address our fellow Burlingtonians who are unhoused we see you we care and we are very concerned we bear witness to your struggles as winter approaches and we hold you in our hearts thank you for engaging the Burlington community in important conversations about safe housing we ask you council and mayor to continue to provide regular updates to the community and address the causes of homelessness thank you thank you our next speaker is Escher to be followed by Sereno oh wait Sereno said does not want to speak no okay i'm seeing no okay so our next speaker after Escher will be Michelle Moran right i come to you again as a lifelong resident of Burlington unfortunately disgusted by the actions of the mayor and the city council deciding to move forward with the destruction of the neighborhood at Sears Lane you have spread lies about the supposed danger of this place and those lies are based in your inherent class please direct your comments to the chair i am i am max can i get my like five seconds back or will you stop interrupting me all right thank you where was i your classist um and racist comments about the supposed danger at the camp are disgusting uh to a lifelong resident of Burlington and supposedly you are all my representatives and you have failed me and you have failed so many people in this city poor people are not able to afford to live in this hellhole that you have all created for us and the systems that you keep reassuring people are there to help do not work and Sears Lane existing is evidence of that and the fact that you want to double down on your broken policies is just fucking breaks my brains during this profanity i'm sorry max it's disgusting and the destruction of this camp is not going to remove these people from this city i hope you understand that they're going to move somewhere else because the system that you have built is failing constantly every day i have been through it my entire life and it's broken and you're all just so far up your own behinds that you can't see that thank you our next speaker is michelle moran to be followed by adam france hello i'm michelle moran from the south end of burlington and i'm speaking in opposition to the action taken at your last meeting if you could just speak into the mic and folks just get close to the mic i'm here to speak against the action taken by the city council last week regarding prostitution specifically to decriminalize and take it out of our city charter i want to read excerpts from people who were interviewed for a film called the oldest oppression first from a sex trafficking survivor when i was being trafficked in vermont i was a minor i was 15 years old and every time when i was in my home in main and i knew that we were we were going to be brought to vermont i became frightened because it was the one place where i knew i would be brought and i never knew if i was going to end up coming home or not the people who purchased me none of them cared about me none of them cared about who i was or how old i was or if i wanted to be there they had an agenda which sometimes can be brutally violent i know that other survivors that i have mentored and worked with have been brought to vermont in many areas homes motels hotels massage parlors strip clubs bachelor parties i can honestly say that 100 percent of the women that i've worked with and i've worked with close to a thousand people and i have not personally met even one person who has said that they wanted to be there and that this isn't empowering for them or exciting or something they love doing not one another person executive director of the coalition against trafficking in vermont said when you are talking about prostitution you are talking about a system of brutal exploitation another prostitution and trafficking survivor the vast majority have been abused manipulated forced into it or they're trapped by circumstance the national director of world without exploitation said if you could please wrap up well there's this has been submitted to you i hope you will actually read it and take it hard thank you okay thank you our next speaker is adam france to be followed by miguel figaroa very pleased to call myself a resident of burlington burlington i believe is a community filled with good people and we share a common set of principles among these principles lay the valuation of the dignity of all persons uh in principle we all hold that every person is entitled to a place to live i think that the eviction of the residents of sears lane demonstrates that the government of the city of burlington is not upholding the principles that we hold dear when i cast my vote in march and every march thereafter i will be remembering how the city council and the mayor did or did not uphold the values of this community that's all thank you very much thank you our next speaker is miguel figaroa to be followed by dan bedo i want to start by bringing up a point somebody made earlier you can't displace houselessness it will continue to be a problem until our politicians decide that everyone is a right to permanent housing and when the discussion is about how we can help people to leave a place they found to lay their heads when the discussion is about how to prevent people from taking advantage of the crumbs you swept off the table to them it's clear to me that my politicians are not ready to have a humane discussion about housing you can count your unapathetic behavior and legalese and euphemisms but i see your shame and you will continue to face it until you make the right decision giving the residents more time before you evict them is the absolute bare minimum i'm sure you've heard there are more houses in this country than there are houseless people this room is the place where we fix that our expenditures reflect our priorities spend in support of universal housing proved me wrong and on top of all of that i like to say something about the mayor for his statements about the safety of sears lane please direct your comments to the chair about the mayor the aclu vermont has already called him out first spreading misinformation about the crime rates in in the city and the aclu directed their comments to the mayor so i'm going to be quoting them it is so damaging for public officials in burlington to peddle false narratives about public safety when they know that crime is down and that the reforms already underway are working bpd leadership in particular has fanned fears of a non-existent crime wave with a record number of press releases misleading and inflammatory rhetoric and questionable staffing decisions not me this is the aclu meanwhile the city faces a mental health crisis and a drastic rise in overdoses as well as increased racial disparities and police use of force incidents this is unacceptable end quote i see through it the aclu sees through it we all see through it you will continue to feel that shame until you do the right thing cancel the eviction grant universal housing and social programs thank you thank you her next speaker is dan beto to be followed by barbie allsopp don't worry i'm going to be nice this time uh max i'm sorry about what i said last time about you and your chair that was very rude um i just want to emphasize uh councillor freeman's remarks from last week's meeting that i felt were under emphasized demolishing sears lane is a discriminatory act of collective punishment if drug use or criminal activity were taking place in an apartment building imagine that the offenders might be punished but the building would never be torn down it would be illegal it would be unthinkable to do so we're meant to believe that these situations are different so what's the difference well the apartment building is someone's property and those at sears lane are camping on public property so who has the rights in burlington people or property the people of burlington or its property owners how are city resources to be used how do we imagine our future in one future the city continues to protect the sanctity of property above all else the law is a tool to shield the violence we intend against one another and people are turned out of their homes tomorrow on whatever pretext is the most convenient people flee the area or die in the cold maybe the problems that homelessness poses for tourism and commerce stop but it's more likely that they won't and that the same people demanding eviction today will call for crueler and more severe measures to protect their interests in the other future the first principle is human dignity and money and property are mobilized as means to ensure that it's fulfilled burlington becomes not just a city of laws but of equality under the law we mobilize the city's money and resources towards an unprecedented unconditional housing first approach to solving homelessness we invest not in pacifying or managing the homeless but in the homeless themselves i know which future i want to live in thank you our next speaker is barbie allsop to be followed by bruce alice thank you for giving me the chance to speak to you um the eviction of a resident for committing a crime is available everywhere in this state i believe but you only evict the individual who committed the crime you don't evict everybody who lives in the building that is the serious safety issue at sears lane or the threatening of a first responder i live in an apartment house we had a resident who threatened to kill every woman in the building the remedy was eviction for that one person using an analogy should my whole building be evicted if there's a drug dealer should my whole building be evicted because one person threatens and the answer is no we are treating these human beings differently and we are treating them differently even though we have tacitly allowed them to live at sears lane for years for years this problem has been before the city government and it just hasn't had any priority there has been nothing seriously done to address the houselessness problem in the city so-called affordable housing is not accessible to people who are considered low income this is not going to work whatever you do evicting them they'll turn up elsewhere and then somebody else will complain thank you our next speaker is bruce alice to be followed by todd lacroix yeah hi i'm a lifetime resident of lakeside and it's just too bad that this thing had to come to such a hat before anything was done the good part is some of these people that live there are going to have a decent home now hotel or wherever but that still leads us into it's turned into a very very dangerous area with the guns and the drugs we don't know who lives there or their sexual predators there and our kids are going through around it to go to the schools the pollution thing they got a 275 gallon fuel tank there there's oil there's stuff all over the place uh yeah they're not all homeless they're not all bad people but there is quite a few in there there's propane tanks everywhere are they paying to get them filled no they're going up and take them off some of the local stores they're all brand new propane tanks there's tons of bicycles 30 40 frames of bicycles and big piles every tent needs six bicycles come on you know all the bicycles missing around the city that's where they're coming from uh permitting i just said did an addition i had to go through you know huge things for permitting up there they can do anything nobody needs a permit the city makes these laws and passes these things uh you know let's say just a leaf floor you can't have leaf below in the summer because of the pollution but they can run a generator over there on my neighbor's backyard all summer round the clock is that right no i don't i don't feel it is thank you very much thank you our next speaker is todd lecroy to be followed by steven margolan thought all day what richard kemp might say today if you were here i can imagine it would go something like this american democracy existed before we all showed up it was a union of tribes up here in the north and they found that it was better to work together to survive the winters if one tribe was doing bad all the other tribes would pitch in to help that tribe survive the winter and they found that in the spring they had more friends and they found that that helped them keep them safe from the more violent tribes to the south the more aztec like blood thirsty tribes and they found that their union made them strong against this mighty empire and that came out of the need to survive hard winters they realized the value in that democracy in that union and jefferson and benjamin franklin thomas jefferson and benjamin franklin met with these tribes and learned these ways and that was one of the forgotten moments of history we romanticize history we forget all these things and we romanticize all these others greek democracy was not the only influence and democracy did exist here before us and we forgot its influence but again its necessity came out of the idea that in the spring you had new friends from helping them instead of enemies trying to kill you how many enemies do you want to make how many enemies amongst our people we make once i'll listen to you one second i'm sorry i wasn't aware what is happening if folks could please keep to themselves and then allow speakers to finish can you please please don't do that todd please finish up i apologize for interrupting you how many enemies do you want to make at some point they will outnumber you how many friends do you really want to make is really what you need to consider tonight because you have the chance to do that make more friends than enemies by doing the right decision making and remember that america is one big union of a whole different types of tribes still and it's up to all of us to remember that we are all a part of that union and then we have a responsibility to be other tribes as well thanks our next speaker is steven margolan to be followed by jada beardon max i'm not going to insult anyone today uh my name is steven margolan i've lived in burlington for seven going on eight years now i was a student at the college now i'm an adjunct professor and previously i have experienced houselessness i haven't talked about this before because i feel a great shame around it um the culture we live in incentivizes owning property as a measure of value or at least having a consistent place to stay because most of us rent our property and it was hard i i went to my semester abroad and then i came back and i didn't have anywhere to go uh and it gets brutally cold some nights i slept out behind echo because the heating pumps give off enough warm steam to help you through the winter and it's absolutely unbearable to go through that and i lost my job at the start of october yes i'm adjuncting for the college but we all know they don't make any money this very nice outfit i'm wearing is my teaching clothes this shirt came from the possibility shop they were having a bag day i got a whole bag of clothing for four dollars this jacket came from the free band at battery street jeans my shoes came from food not bombs because they were having a free element there are so many parts of this city that work to support our houseless community but this city council isn't one of them certainly not the mayor's office by evicting the people of sears lane you are expressing them to greater violence than has already happened in their lives and you are only perpetuating these cycles i'm staring down the barrel of reentering this cycle because i can't afford my apartment anymore and i'm absolutely terrified how you are going to treat me thank you our next speaker is jada bearden to be followed by chris gish yes hi um i just want to address like some of the things i was said earlier like imagine like spending your time and breath coming up with reasons why people should be houseless like the sociopathy in this room tonight is strong anyway i just want to talk about sears lane um i've been down there um almost every day for the past like two weeks and i've only seen about three representatives it's um uh councilman uh joe mcgee and um president max tracy and representative china uh and a couple of state senators like i'm sorry but like jones shannon lives two minutes away please direct your comment i apologize one of the counselors live two minutes away and they should be there um and like where y'all at i'm i'm sorry like i'm cold like i'm freezing uh the people's kitchen caters like it's a lovely space and i think y'all should come through and you know participate in community that's not too much to ask i mean y'all are public officials i guess and lastly i would like to say i've been in community with these folks and um they are incredible and i wish y'all got a chance to meet them and have conversations with them and know just who you're evicting you have to put a face behind exactly who's there and i bet it wouldn't be that easy to come through with bulldozers at nine a.m. in the fucking morning so i just want to say lastly in conclusion this i apologize but this is some classes bs because everyone deserves a house and just because they don't have enough money in the bank and cow doesn't mean that they should be houseless thank you and you know what that's some bullshit please don't use profanity next speaker is chris gish to be followed by rachel foster i believe i'm reading that correctly hi i'm chris gish currently ward five resident i've lived in burlington for five years and grew up in vermont i'm just here to add another voice to speak out against the proposed destruction and eviction at sears lane scheduled for nine a.m. tomorrow i urge the council to support councillor mcgee's resolution to halt this eviction and work towards real long-term solutions to lift up our unhoused community the most vulnerable people in our town deserve our most dedicated support not to be put out on the street suddenly when winter is coming just as they may have found somewhere stable to start a life it's it's doing so only two days before there's a court date over the eviction is even more unnecessary and destructive equally frustrating is thinking about the pretext of the alleged criminal activity happening at the camp people have been living there for at least six years and the destruction now is justified around these ideas of alleged criminal acts there are plenty of other places in burlington where someone threatens violence or deals drugs but the entire establishment doesn't get shut down and all the people evicted i urge the councillors to reject this ridiculous double standard being applied to our unhoused population and instead start to work towards supporting them in the long term with permanent housing and other and mental health and other supports rather than try to trying to erase them from our city you can't displace or erase houselessness you have to support them thank you thank you our next speaker is rachel foster to be followed by kit anders good evening i'm rachel foster and i'm a founder of world without exploitation which is a national anti trafficking coalition you could pull the mic in oh which is a national anti trafficking coalition comprised of almost 250 member organizations including organizations in vermont i'm here to speak about the fears and deep concerns we have about decriminalizing these sex trade in its entirety meaning repealing the charter and ordinance provisions dealing with prostitution i want to say that we fully support decriminalizing those bought and sold in the sex trade and not criminally holding any kind of arrest or penalties over people who have been exploited what we are really alarmed by is decriminalizing sex buyers and brothel keepers i have spent almost a decade speaking with hundreds of women and men who have been in the sex trade and really traveling around the country and working alongside them i have heard thousands of hours of stories of the inherent brutality at the hands of sex buyers it is not too consenting adults in a room it is one person who is deeply traumatized often by a history of sexual abuse neglect poverty marginalization in many many different ways and somebody else who's in a position of power so it's somebody who has no choices over somebody who has many choices and the dangers of brothels i have one in my own neighborhood where men line up to go into the brothel where a woman is working 15 hours what happens in the room whether it's a brothel a hotel room a car is not a consensual act it's an act of predatory exploitation thank you thank you our next speaker is kit andrews to be followed by mike shivelly hello i'm kit andrews i live in ward three i oppose the eviction and i support councillor magie's resolution yesterday i attended the weekly unitarian universalist service pastored by trisha heart who spoke earlier in her comments about people to people kindnesses and the sustaining connections we make with others reverend trisha drew a direct line between the residents of sears lane and us in the uu community and in the entire burlington community afterwards i learned about a friend of a friend who lives outside burlington who worked with houseless people in burlington 30 years ago and who is extremely upset over the idea that the city will evict those residents 30 years ago a geographic outsider looking in yet she is extremely upset landlords have a least-based relationship with their rent paying tenants landlords sometimes seek to evict a tenant sometimes succeed while the landlord must legally provide sufficient notice they have no interest in where the tenant moves the city of burlington is not the landlord of the residents at sears lane therefore firstly eviction is the wrong term in my opinion secondly the city my city has no business forcing the residents of sears lane out of their dwellings especially knowing that their alternatives are worse than their current situation the business of the city is to serve and support its residents and others such as communities and commuters and business owners in all appropriate ways and certainly to never allow wealth and power differentials among residents and others to influence the delivery of those services and supports i want to thank the progressive caucus and specifically councillor meghi for introducing the resolution to halt the eviction and find actual policy solutions rooted in data compassion and justice thank you thank you please if councillors could please silence your phones our next speaker is mike shivelly to be followed by sue getty well i'm here from the national center on a sexual exploitation and for the past 20 years i've had a series of federally funded studies on all aspects of the sex trade sex trafficking commercial sex and in the justification for the abolition of the prohibitions against prostitution in this in the city either through the charter or municipal ordinance violations there are justifications that it will make people safer that it will somehow improve the situation for those that are exploited in commercial sex and uh there are well over 100 000 studies on prostitution and i can go in there and pull out any finding you want when you look at the weight of the evidence it's extremely clear that the promise is made by the advocates for decriminalizing prostitution never ever ever happened it never works out that things are suddenly better stigma disappears they're treated better they and it's also not true that law enforcement turns this attention away from the petty crime of prostitution and diverts all those resources to stamping out sex trafficking there are a lot of misstatements in the justifications that i've seen along the way and what what looks like a very narrow little ordinance cleanup modernization is just a step in a much bigger plan and there's a national plan and there's a Vermont plan and part of it's at the state legislature there's a similar thing to the ordinance effort in Montpelier going on and and what you did last week and what is embedded in the in some of the things for this week and the future path on this is all pointing in one direction you can look at new zealand uh decriminalized prostitution they make no sex trafficking cases anymore because sex trafficking investigations start as prostitution investigations you're going to eliminate the ability to start our next speaker is sue getty to be followed by robert bristow johnson um thank you good evening i am here to advocate for the residents of series lane it seems to me that a notice five-day notice six-day notice of eviction for people who are houseless when the winter is beginning not only is it immoral and unethical it shows the white supremacist culture that lives in this room where people are not seen as people and respected i don't know how many of you have actually taken the time to go down there and meet the people who live there the residents who have the least of all of us and ask them what do you need how can i how can i actually make your life better so that you are not in this situation anymore so that we don't have all of these people living here in such conditions no one deserves to live like that and it really really shows what the priorities are in this room thank you thank you our next speaker is robert bristow johnson to be followed by sarah siratino so um i'm here to talk to you about what you're going to be deciding in two weeks not what you're deciding now but today you're getting information from the legislative apportionment board about house redistricting and this is really important your decision in two weeks is really important because we're going to live with it for 10 years so imagine a target and you're throwing darts at it at random you have a 50 50 chair and you divide it in half you have a 50 50 chance that the two darts hit the two halves separately you also have a 50 50 chance that the two darts hit the same half we have 45 legislative districts that are two member districts in the state of romand they're all the new map is going to propose 150 single member districts all of these two member districts are going to be split into two and there's a 50 50 chance that any of the incumbents in that will find themselves in a to both incumbents in a single single member district now we have four two member districts in burlington and we'd expect that two of them would be hit this way but we're even luckier than that we have out of 10 of our state representatives we will lose three of them and our madam speaker could be one of them it's either her or kurt mccormick they're out gabriel stevens or tiff blumly i don't know how to say her name one of them is out bob hooper carol odie one of them is out you guys have two weeks to think about this and to give your feedback to those folks on the legislative apportionment board there's lots of other really bad reasons to have this single member district map for burlington it's going to be unmanageable for the city infrastructure you don't want it and so please send them an unmistakable message next week please wrap up thank you our next speaker is sarah siratino to be followed by annie cell i'm sarah i use she her pronouns and um i'm against the evictions that sears then and in support of councillor mcgee's resolution to help the evictions there there's definitely no way that i can understand the urgency and fear that people must be feeling as winter approaches and they likely won't have a place to live um and being forced out of their homes without safe and supportive housing options in a city with abundant resources and the ability to make it happen um is very unjust a lot of us here can come here and go to sears then and speak a public comment and put forward resolutions we can claim that housing is our thing and something that we're passionate about but um at the end of the day i and a lot of people here can go home and go to bed at night and we can leave but so many people cannot um so the solution to one-off incidences of violence is not eviction it's not tearing down a community and upending something where so much has been built um especially when a court date is about to happen so practicing humanity and compassion is so needed right now and it's lacking and i really hope that um whatever needs to happen whether i mean whatever it is like there's so much on the line right now and um yeah i just really hope that like i don't know people are not um evicted tomorrow it's really sad to see thank you for your time thank you our next speaker is annie cell to be followed by william dunkley hi i'm annie i am here also in solidarity with the residents of sears lane i think um i agree with a lot of the comments that people have been making about it's just um seems really cruel especially right now when it's going to get so cold um yeah that's all thank you thank you our next speaker is william dunkley to be followed by christopher erin falker hey everybody um yeah i'm just here to speak on sears lane um i've got a lot of friends who have experienced houselessness in burlington recently a close friend who just got out of living in the hotels for uh several months um i've tried to hire people to work for me who have no housing and they have to go back to wherever they came from uh in order to find housing and then i don't have any employees um that's fine i don't have employees it's not fine that people don't have housing um evidently whatever whatever our political systems are trying to do to address housing is not working right now there's a lot that's probably beyond the control of the city council and the mayor um it seems that this planned eviction is an act of violence which could just be undone why not just leave the encampment be for now if there are no alternative solutions um it seems quite wrong to me that a political entity create an act of violence uh if the alternative is one that allows things to continue as they have been continuing albeit imperfectly um yeah i think sometimes just leaving an issue alone is better than carrying out an action that will create a lot of harm and not contribute to any meaningful solutions thank you thank you our next speaker is christopher erin felker to be followed by emma schoenberg good evening counselors council president tracy i am here tonight to speak on violent recidivist in burlington this past year we've had a couple of instances with people who who are repeatedly violent in our downtown core uh there it's true there may be a mental health component to uh the the reasons why this began but nonetheless we have people repeatedly being violent in our city uh duan williams right out here uh we initiated an attack at um ruben james was issued a citation later that evening please he engaged in an attack on a church street employee with a hammer and a bystander who tried to intervene recently patrick cristaldi i was engaged in um what i would call violent um vandalism here at city hall he has further attacked chinan valley office of economic opportunity and caught the committee on on temporary shelter including injuring a person there he stated two police officers that he wants to harm people to teach society a lesson i the lesson is that violent repeat offenders are a threat to the safety of burlingtonians and we must do more what we're doing now is inhumane it's inhumane to the person who's having a mental health crisis it's inhumane and he races the lived experiences of the victims of these attacks and it's inhumane to force this violence repeatedly upon burlingtonians just this past weekend yesterday there was a violent stabbing right outside you can be these wrap up reach out yes sir please wrap up you're done i just implore this council to please reach out and do more to try and keep burlingtonians safe thank you max next speaker is emma schoenberg to be followed by julie mesuga sorry that last one kind of took it out of me that was disgusting um i don't want to be here right now like i want to go home and cuddle my cat i've been part of food not bombs for a long time i've given up a lot of my life and a lot of my sanity to be a part of it and when people call me saying i have no access to these services that are being provided i say go to sears lane there's a community there i know you can access food there it's a last freaking ditch effort it's the barest minimum i can offer people because every service has turned them down i want to be you right now i want to be you so badly because i feel so powerless to stop what's happening i would do anything to change the situation that people are in down there these are my friends and my neighbors and it's also a freaking human compassion you have a lot of power and you have a lot of ability and you can just leave them alone literally doing nothing is better than what you are doing now um she's some crow leave them alone give them time i held a woman in my arms while she sobbed this week sobbed about not knowing where to go this is not about politics this is not even about safety can you please wrap this yeah i will i will i will please this is literally about the barest minimum that you have the power to do please wrap up thank you thank you our next speaker is julie mesuga to be followed by lia Jimenez uh similar to emma for once in my life i don't want to be here um the situation in sears lane is incredibly heartbreaking and i want to start this speech with something my friend sereno who is here who is a resident of sears lane wanted me to say on his behalf he said humanity and compassion you arrested one person and now everyone is paying the price they're honest people living down there respect human rights a lot of sorts which usually doesn't happen to me at these city council meetings and usually you know i'd like to think of myself as well spoken and put together but i've been shaken to my core by what's happening in sears lane after going there and meeting the people and realizing what the dire straits that they were in by last week at city council i was in the middle of trying to help a young trans woman who was homeless find some resources and she went she qualified for emergency housing and went to every single shelter in the city and for the past week has gotten absolutely nothing and now she's in the hospital because she had nowhere else to go sears lane is closing and that was the one other place i could think to send her the city put out a request for proposals for a contractor or a non-profit somebody to step in and co-manage the site with the people and maybe that wasn't the perfect plan but it was certainly better than evicting them and then two weeks later the request proposals was closed when has the city council ever done anything in two weeks time i don't know what else to say other than i i'm sorry that this is happening thank you the next speaker is lee Jimenez to be followed by Ali jaffari and i'm still hearing a dinging from council i think what i'm hearing a counselor or a staff phone over here so folks just please make sure their phones are silenced lee him and it okay thank thank you um and ali jaffari will be next go ahead thanks we live in a world where there are people who lack the community and resources to live a well and prosperous life like they deserve i see it as the basic purpose and function of government to take care of these people who live on the margins by providing social systems that can take care of them by that definition all of you are failing the basic functions of government that justify the pseudo power i pretend to give you i am so furious i know you know you are failing because you do all of these things to self soothe and to comfort the public over your failures of what use is there in sending people to shelters that are full to a motel voucher program that is full and is ending what good is it to give people temporary storage when at the end of your temporary assistance they will not have the funds or transportation to access their belongings to continue storing them safely when they will still not have housing please look please do not please my tone i know you feel bad and i think you would feel less bad if you made the situation better but you are actively making it worse and by definition making yourselves worse people i know you all get to live in a world where if you throw enough money and police and private security guards at a problem that you don't have to live it anymore but i live in a different world in the nonprofit work and volunteer work i do with people facing homelessness to tell you that these solutions are only to make yourself feel comfortable when you go to sleep at night and i'm here to shame you to know that that does not make you a good person and i pray that you are in a space to receive my shame to actually fix the problem because i've seen you mobilize to make things happen for the constituents you care about the business and landowner in class of burlington the gentrifying college students and the rich tourists that come to frequent their businesses these are the people you care about and i've seen you do things for them please wrap up so be accountable for being a better person thank you our next speaker is ali jafari to be followed by brian chino well i like to start by saying that for the last two weeks we worked very very hard trying to clean up the camp trying to do advocacy for the folks their case management and this is just such a brief time i have experienced homelessness here in burlington myself many times and i know it's a difficult experience i'm not going to make very emotional statements today i'm going to be factual i'm going to be logistical last year north beach campground was a good site it worked it was supervised there were people there but they closed it after a couple of months that camp site was a good site when we get when i got displaced i ended up in emergency room this is the problem is that we did not have any oversight in this campground and we're coming in here were structures that have been sitting there for 14 months we're evicting people from structures structures that are homes these homes are being demolished in a matter of a week we have we should follow eviction policy of the city these are not just campground people living there these are homes and structures that haven't created if they're not opt to code let's talk about it if we need to do cleanup let's talk about it let's give these people another chance i know there is a chance i know we have this in our heart we have the potential to do this i'm asking asking the people here please give us one more chance give us another opportunity to do the cleanup to keep these people housed because once they are in the street there is no place in the shelters there's no place in emergency housing currently and they're going to be on the street let's not displace these people today tomorrow morning i beg the mayor to allow these folks to stay i hope that we sleep on it and tomorrow we change our minds thank you our next speaker will be brian chena to be followed by ferried i'm like scared to do that these days over the past few days i spent time building relationships with some of the people of sears lane listening to their stories bearing witness to their suffering sharing mutual aid with each other and joining some of the people and dreaming together about a better world i want to thank the people who opened up to me and who had the courage to speak up in a world that has turned their back on you too many times and i want you to know that i believe in you i heard from you how the covet 19 pandemic amplified pre-existing mental health challenges and substance abuse caused by a society that causes poverty and creates trauma through use of force by our city and state and any forced removal of people from that land will only further contribute to the cumulative trauma of people punishment judgment and stigma make things worse people face cycles of loss in every part of their life they feel rejected abandoned and this recent threat of eviction fueled negative beliefs about not being good enough and not having value despite being stigmatized by our society the people that i spoke with are so resilient and generally want to work towards recovery and through so many tears i saw glimmers of hope in people's eyes despite the never-ending harm directed towards them many people at sears lane dream of a better world but not everyone has the same path some people are travelers others um want permanent housing people need a wide range of options and people talked about uh wanting a peer led encampment style supportive housing option where they could work in partnership with the rest of the community to make decisions about their neighborhood instead of forcing people to leave we need to catch people when they fall through the holes of the social safety net now is the time for our community to come together and to surround the people of sears lane with a circle of love in the book lakota woman by mary crowdog a sikangu lakota writer and activist with the american indian movement she tells a story about how generational trauma caused by society led to depression which was treated by her community with a circle of love as people visited her for weeks until she was better we need to bring our community together and surround the people of sears lane with a circle of love uh and the circle of love needs to grow until it surrounds all unhoused people in our community and we can build a universal housing system together where the basic need of housing is guaranteed to all as a human right you could please wrap up thank you our next speaker is ferried m to be followed by leif charanta um i started making friends with residents of uh sears lane last year uh july of last year when uh i'm sorry sorry i'll let you go go ahead i'm sorry when uh there was a community picnic uh to call attention to a neighborhood meeting uh that was being set up to determine what's going to happen to sears lane but it did not include any of the residents of lakeview who are renters nor did it include anybody from sears lane um 200 people showed up uh we listened to the mayor and uh he presented a plan about building uh getting shipping containers as like a possible uh solution to uh to make sure like people are have safe housing there um and so and then i started uh delivering food there every other week and uh and i saw like what the city's been doing and it was i was very encouraged by it there was a dumpster there there's a porta potty and the city was going to run an electrical line uh for the residents there um but uh two weeks ago when we learned about this eviction notice um i was surprised and and and um and and so since then i have been serving daily meals there and getting really to speak to everybody there and getting to know them um and one thing that struck me three days ago was when uh there was the stack gem at hula like the new like innovative innovation center um which is a marvel of technology uh it's it's amazing that uh that it's there like i understand like the bd partner with hula to ensure that uh it needs it's uh net zero emission um and it just goes to show like how if the city puts its mind to it wonderful things can happen and so please wrap up uh it's very disappointing to be across the street like there is nothing innovative to be offered um there's nothing imaginative so but you can do better thank you our next speaker in completing the burlington in person is leaf toronto sleep here okay okay thank you for letting me know that um our next morning gonna now transition to burlington um folks who are remote so i'm gonna um go to bear with me as i switch over i mean we'll have the timer up on the screen again continuing with two minutes for folks um the first speaker is cat arena camble to be followed by chainie noise cat arena i believe i've located you and have enabled your mic thank you i speak to affirm our collective right to loving safe and sustainable homes i'm here to relay information for my friends currently surviving homelessness and in housing advocacy burlington does not currently need fair market standards for housing i have a master's degree work at uvm full-time and can barely afford my studio apartment in ward eight for example our housing vouchers are currently referred to as quote useless vouchers because landlords will not accept them and do not understand the voucher system generating more quote useless vouchers and forcing people to continuously reapply is not helping options include educating and incentivizing landlords to accept vouchers or allowing our people to move into more expensive apartments and navigating the difference and expanding student housing at their respective campuses without homes our people are forced to camp we give options and take them away no longer able to camp at the camp grounds or on sears lane with shelters and hotels full where are people supposed to go this is not a rhetorical question families at days in are being kicked out without notice or option to renew their stays even though this is being done to create fair trade housing when we are violating people in the process some families have until december 31st which strips our people of shelter in the dead of winter as a resettlement city we are literally resettling black and brown people into home movements right now city leadership is creating a public campaign to criminalize our houseless community which allows them to heighten police presidents presence and resourcing if we do not collectively act in a spirit of vigilance and care our people will disappear into the prison system make no mistake this is strategic oppression in real time intentional or not whether it is being done consciously or not i believe in us to find a loving solution those who are listening to the community good night and thank you thank you our next speaker is chaney noise to be followed by salina colburn chaney i've enabled your microphone hello can you hear me yes i can go ahead my name is chaney noise i'm the owner of noise automotive entire my family's been operating the same business on the corner of pine street in sears lane since 1960 myself and my technicians drive by the encampment 30 to 50 times a day on our vehicle test drives and we see what's going the goings on at the encampment more than everybody in this room combined save the businesses and residents that border the property at last week's meeting i sat in the balcony and listening closely to all the speakers and gathered factual and counterfeit information houselessness is a disappointing reality in our society it exposes the worst parts of what the masses will accept how we can step over a person sleeping on the street and the thought exits our mind as if it never entered however the crimes in the south end are illegal regardless of one's opportunity to obtain and hold shelter grand theft auto cooking and dealing illegal drugs pointing weapons at first responders dumping garbage on the street building unsafe non permitted structures on public property within 500 yards of a school are crimes for those who said crimes have not risen i've submitted 10 police reports in the last six months which is triple the number in the last nine and a half years combined these crimes are not alleged they are supported by video evidence and it is not one individual who brought this eviction to head it is a result of many crimes to the businesses and residents in the south end most recently a woman had her camper van her primary resident broken into and her life stolen last friday it's much smaller and less accommodating than most of the structures on sears lane the individual and the security camera came from the sears lane encampment two months ago another individual lives at the encampment showed up and tried to steal my vehicle i stopped him because i got there earlier he lives there and drives a gray ram truck these are direct threats to my business family employees and customers all these criminal actions beat down any opportunities to secure full support for continuing this encampment i want to make it perfectly clear not all the individuals at sears lane are criminals but there is a distinct and real set of criminals operating there please ignore the rhetoric of a political party or social movement to resolution thank you next speaker is salina colburn to be followed by willow starki cruder salina i've enabled your mic thanks max can you hear me yes and salina colburn a state representative for burlington's chitinan six four district and a former city councilor as always i want to start by thanking you all for your work i know how hard this job is and how tough the issues that come before you can be i'm here tonight to speak in favor of passing the resolution on meeting the basic needs of ramoners experiencing homelessness i appreciate the call to action to the governor to expand the voucher system and have joined with many legislators and advocates and asking for the same your voices will be an important contribution toward meeting this urgent need i especially implore you to hit the pause button on the plan evictions at sears lane to engage in the steps outlined in the resolution and to work with residents there as well as the growing and willing coalition of service providers community members and mutual aid networks who are eager to help build both short and long-term solutions this is an opportunity for us all to come together as a community rather than create further displacement and destabilizing conditions when i served on the city's community development and neighborhood revitalization committee several times i tried to engage the administration and fellow counselors and looking seriously at some of the emerging models in states such as washington and oregon for creating sanction encampments equipped with community authored codes of conduct shelters such as tiny homes showers restrooms wraparound services and more at the time there was not a readiness to do so in a meaningful way i'm hopeful that now that these encampments have many more years under their belt and some encouraging data about their effectiveness at moving folks into longer term more stable housing it is worth another look there are pros and cons to this approach to be certain and it will be important to engage people with lived experience and housing advocates to assess what might work in berlington now with unprecedented federal resources and a pandemic that keeps raging is not the time to exacerbate or provoke homelessness again please hit the pause button and let's work with willing residents service providers and arpa dollar thank you okay our next speaker will be willa starkey cruder to be followed by dakin fuller willow i've enabled your mic yes hello um i'm here to implore the city council to pass the resolution 608 and to cease the plan to forcibly remove the residents of sears lane the inhumanity of removing these folks especially before the emergency hearing on thursday should be unbelievable unfortunately this lack of care of these residents cements the strategic oppression and stigmatization that this community is already living with a former speaker mentioned that we don't know who lives there some of us do and to those that don't maybe it's time to meet your neighbors that you're planning to disperse if not sparking human connection maybe it will at least make you realize the impact your decisions will have you've heard over and over that people are going to going to the services that should offer support and housing yet so many are being turned away finding that what have been offered as solutions are at best a temporary bandaid i would echo someone else who formerly spoke and ask you to find solutions that carry compassion and long-term solutions thank you thank you i am not able to locate dakin fuller um so i'm going to go to sophie erinson next uh and sophie will be followed by thea zalouski so sophie i've enabled your microphone hi can you hear me yes i can go ahead hi um i'm sophie and i'm a resident of ward one today i'm speaking um in regards to agenda item 6.08 i'm in support of councillor makie's resolution um and council members i urge you to stand against the eviction of the six years standing community at sears lane um you all have already failed the sears lane community by not having provided safe housing up until this point and now you're going beyond feeling the bare minimum and you're going to take away this home that they built together just as we transition into the winter um and this eviction is vile and inhumane or i also would like to address members of the public who came to speak in support of the eviction how can you not stand in solidarity with the unhoused when you are closer to houselessness than you will ever be to becoming a billionaire you know like while each of you are deserving of safety and security it cannot come at the expense of the safety of the unhoused like your right to safety is not more important than anybody else's and the safety of your property sure as hell is not as important as the safety of a human life and you know if you think this eviction is going to solve any problems like i beg you to consider the consequences of the stress that this eviction is going to impart on this year's lane community you know like you all are so afraid of theft and substance misuse and mental health issues and violence and do you really think that like the stress of being evicted is going to improve those things can you please wrap up just consider whether you came here tonight out of love or out of fear can you please wrap up thank you if folks can please not attack what other people have said as speakers our next speaker is thea zealuzki to be followed by brinn martin thea i'm enabling your mic hello can you hear me yes go ahead all right uh tonight i urge the council to adopt councillor mcgee's resolution uh meeting the basic needs of houseless for monitors this administration says that they're working hard to find housing for people however the actions in the past weeks and quite frankly indefinite years have shown that they're actively destroying and evicting people from houses they've built for themselves uh if there were other housing available if the goal is truly to provide folks with the resources that they need then let them stay where they've built community evictions are traumatic as several folks have spoke from personal experience from tonight and do not serve to protect people they only make people situations more dire i'll once again emphasize that this comes down to survival what's at stake with the passage of this resolution is people's lives now and in the future through the winter tonight uh the city council has the chance to put words into action by passing this resolution um and proving that they in fact are taking into account the weight and severity of what it means to evict people from a community quite frankly that they have built from nothing um the residents of sears lane have been putting in the real work towards solving the houseless problem that burlington faces so tonight uh with the passage of this resolution the city council can join them in this work or continue to put their lives on the line thank you thank you our next speaker is brinn martin brinn i'm not able to locate you i'm logging this grace um so i'm going to go to our next speaker which is marissa kemler to be followed by chris fiori and i'll give a couple others ahead of that so chris fiori will be after marissa kemler and then we have mike chamnes jean bergman eve dole cart and amy malinowski so um marissa i'm going to come to you i'm not able to locate marissa either and so then i'm going to go to chris fiori i'm not locating you chris um so i'm gonna look for mike chamnes mike i have located you and will and have enabled your microphone yes hello um i wanted to kind of reiterate some of what other speakers have said in terms of there are other programs or other models that you can follow you don't have to evict tomorrow at nine o'clock in the morning 25 to 30 people that have nowhere to go you just don't and regardless of what the inclinations of the police department or the city manager might be the hard reality is you just don't have to do it and uh i think that speaks volumes about your opportunity to potentially like not only pass and support councilman mcgee's resolution but to look at opportunities in the community like dignity village in portland oregon a public community campground an autonomous community that's been there since 2000 and it's successful it has a waiting list there's 60 to 70 unhoused previously unhoused occupants that are thriving in the community public campgrounds in durango colorate san jephano new mexico ithica new york that have been essentially established by those communities as community campgrounds that host the unhoused and homeless with hookups they have electricity they have showers they have infrastructure they host cars campers rvs those are solutions that we have to look at because that unfortunately is the triage emergency housing that we're faced with in this community i can repeat what a number of speakers have said regarding the fact that there just is no housing there are waiting lists for every nonprofit that's providing housing hotel program that potentially could end in december in the middle of the winter so i would employ you to do the right thing not evict sears lane residents tomorrow or ever work with the residents to develop an intentional autonomous community of which are examples in the community in oregon that you can basically model and look at that as a solution to a humane you can please wrap up appropriate solution one housing homelessness in this community thank you thank you next speaker will be gene bergman to be followed by eve dolecart gene i've enabled your mic gene bergman gene it looks like you're muted on your end you got no no yeah no i you were for a second there gene you're muted now unmute am i okay you're good go ahead gene okay don't start the clock until i start talking thanks uh please support counselor magies resolution and stop the removal there's no reason to evict the current residents of seared laying tomorrow to displace them against their will when there's no compelling reason as called for under the aclu's agreement and remember it's going to be 40 in the 40s and raining tomorrow just think about that situation now other people have said it but i just need to reiterate for all of you the city removed tons of garbage on friday with a cooperation of the residents the residents who were charged with violating criminal laws were removed now if the police have evidence of more crimes as mr noise alleges they should charge those people and remove them but not punish everybody else there's a court hearing on thursday the statement that the area is unsafe made today at the finance board is a bald-faced exaggeration that's the politest way i can say it without the publicly available facts to support it the resources provided by cvoe o as said in the finance board are extremely short-term but a 30-day hotel arrangement by cvoe o is clearly insufficient if you elect if you evict the remaining residents tomorrow morning you'll simply be punishing them for the actions of others without their day in court collective punishment of the rest is a human rights violation acting before the hearing is at least a moral violation of due process displacement before sufficient resources are available it's just plain wrong threatening these houseless residents with criminal charges of trespass tomorrow without a fair basis is shameful my city should not be a human rights violator it should not act to deprive these residents of their due process and their day in court it should not bring shame on us but that's what's happening i just want to end by saying please vote for the resolution and please act to stop as a stop as a body the mayor from issues trespass orders in the camp as being pursued thank you thank you the next speaker is eve dolkart to be followed by amy malinowski eve i've enabled your mic eve it looks like you're muted on your end can you hear me okay yep go ahead okay perfect sorry about that um my name is eve dolkart i've lived in burlington for almost five years and i want to appreciate and echo what others here have shared tonight in support of folks living on Sears Lane especially upholding valuing people over property i'm really grateful to have had the stability resources and support systems needed to rent here in our city and there are reasons that folks are needing to camp one of those is the lack of those privileges and other is the absence of affordable housing options especially for people who have no income or fixed incomes unfortunately the current public housing strategies as well-intentioned as they may be have been short-term fixes for the deeply rooted housing prices public vouchers and temporary housing offerings have obstacles that many folks are not able to navigate due to a plethora barriers including systemic oppression and trauma we have all learned over the past year and a half that home is more than a physical space however there is still that basic human need of needy place to lay one's head another human need is community so where are these members of our community supposed to go now how can we support affordable sustainable housing solutions and use the existing systems that we have in place to incentivize the landlords in our town to actually accept vouchers and support one another to create decent collective and supportive living spaces we're really talking about the health and well-being of our community and displacing folks from what they have come to know is home we'll have ripple effects on all of us thank you thank you our next speaker is Amy Malinowski to be followed by Jodi Woos and I'll read off a couple other after Jodi Gray's file J.F. Carter-Newbeiser, Primrose Van Wolvelier, John Collow, Rick Levinson, Marsha Johnson, Lisa Lax so I'm going to go to Amy Malinowski right now Amy I've enabled your mic um okay so I'm a white woman who has no lived experience with being unhoused um I live in Ward 3 and I'm also an owned up member of the generator makers space so I'm kind of biking by seriously all the time and tonight I'm speaking in solidarity with Sears Lane and calls to halt this really violent and humane traumatizing eviction process um especially before Thursday's hearing uh those before me have said so much that I agree with um so I just want to amplify the voice of Gina who's a Sears Lane resident um they said to whom it may concern we the people ask for your support and the fact that the city wants us to move out it's the only home we have I ask this how can a man or a woman adapt to and overcome our goals if they're fighting for their next meal or where they're going to lay their head um and as was said earlier tonight Sears Lane existing is evidence that programs we have for unhoused folks just don't work so called affordable housing is not accessible so where are these people going to go evicting folks is not going to address the underlying issue is just going to push it somewhere else so please stop the eviction give them time and also give yourselves time to explore other models in ways that we could be joining the residents of Sears Lane and imagine what housing could be thanks thank you our next speaker is Jodi Woos to be followed by Grace File Jodi I've enabled your mic uh I live in board two I'm a member of the Champlain Valley Democratic Socialist and I'm also a member of Generator Makerspace as our previous speaker was on Sears Lane a neighbor of the Sears Lane encampment the Sears Lane encampment highlights the problem of homelessness in our community this is a serious problem that as all Burlington residents know extends well beyond the Sears Lane encampment the folks there have presented our community our mayor and our city council with an opportunity to confront this now chronic problem the problem of affordable housing that we can no longer ignore the pandemic revealed to us how vulnerable we all are further the pandemic has demonstrated how understaffed our needed social services are it is time now to mobilize all city resources around the housing issue and a lack of adequate social services here I'd like to thank the Sears Lane residents and their supporters for forcing all of us including the mayor and city council to confront this important issue please do not evict tomorrow please deal now with creative solutions for people thank you thank you our next speaker is Grace File to be followed by J.F. Carter Nubizer Grace I found you and have enabled your mic hello again uh thank you uh Grace is unable to comment at this time and had asked me if I could read her uh pre-written comment if that's all right but uh for the record this is Faisalowski speaking the words of Grace File okay thank you so much for allowing me to speak I wish I was not here speaking on this issue and I wish that this eviction was not happening at all I'm here tonight to urge you to pass Councillor McGee's resolution and allow people to stay in the homes they've created for themselves at Sears Lane you cannot let landlord monopolies charge a thousand dollars for studio apartments and not expect homelessness you cannot have a rampant opioid epidemic and not expect homelessness you cannot continue to develop our town into a haven for the ultra wealthy and tourist pricing regular folks like myself out of existence and not expect homelessness houseless folks will and always exist because home houselessness is a byproduct of the system we live in and the solution is not to try to make them disappear because you are afraid or disgusted by folks experiencing houselessness the solution is to genuinely extend a hand to our neighbors and ask what they need and what they want Sears Lane is a community where I have felt safe and welcome it is an it is a community that deserves to be protected and treated with dignity and respect please move with compassion and vote for Councillor McGee's resolution thank you thank you our next speaker is JF Carter newbieser to be followed by Primrose van Wovelier Carter I've enabled your mic thank you so much for giving me some time to speak tonight the eviction of residents at Sears Lane represent some of the worst impulses of Morose administration in the Democratic Party in Burlington to the chair okay I will it is never okay for anyone to threaten first responders with violence however the individual responsible for that incident has been criminally charged and everyone else who lives there shouldn't be punished for the actions of others if someone engages in violent or dangerous behavior in one of our neighborhoods we don't evict all the residents on the entire street as a matter of public safety policy by simply forcing our unhoused neighbors out of Sears Lane we are not solving or meaningfully addressing the issue of houselessness all it would achieve is moving the crisis our community faces from one part of our city to other parts of our city this is inhumane and bad public policy I want to thank the Progressive Caucus and specifically Councillor Joe McGee for introducing a resolution requesting to halt the eviction and work to find actual policy solutions rooted in data compassion and justice I also wanted to thank President Tracy for conducting council business with consistently with grace and demonstrating to our community what that looks like in action as well as your years of service to the progressive movement and justice issues thank you so much for your time thank you our next speaker is primrose van wolverier to be followed by john collo primrose i've located you and have enabled your mic hello i'm prim um yeah so what i'm mostly going to be echoing a lot of what other people have said um because i think a lot of the same sentiments are um pretty straightforward for why it's a bad reason to evict the people down its tears lane forcibly remove or whatever the legalese you're trying to cover it up with is um beyond just the fact that like punishing everyone for the actions of a few is inherently um messed up and inhumane I don't really understand what your like end goal is um you can you can kick these people out now um some of them might find hotels clearly not not everyone is going to because the services are um overworked or overwhelmed so there's most people are just going to have nowhere to go um so whatever you're trying to accomplish I don't I'm a little confused about if this is actually even going to help towards what your goals are um which I assume is make our community safer make the um make people feel more comfortable not have to see homelessness um obviously none of this is actually going to happen because they're humans and they live here and they're going to keep living here um whether it's at series lane or somewhere else so there's no reason to put them through all this trauma and grief um when not even your own goals are going to be accomplished um and even your yeah whatever um clearly we need to find more permanent solutions to this problem like many other people have said um and that's that's a process that's going to take some time and while we're working on that process just let people be let them live where they live and work with them to find more permanent solutions in the meantime just leave them alone no reason to kick people out of their homes with such short notice it's just it's just so cruel um so to yeah I implore you all to halt the eviction tomorrow thanks thank you our next speaker will be John Collow to be followed by Rick Levinson I see some folks using the raise hand function we don't use that to identify speakers the way they are speaking that you can do so is if you um go to burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum that will take you to the forum that you can use to sign up remotely um so our next speaker I do however have Nicole Bell you are in the queue that's the only one that I see on there E I believe I also see you on the queue as well but others I do not see you um in the the sheet so just keep that in mind and please use that system to sign up so next speaker is John Collow John I'm enabling your mic okay I can hear you go ahead good thank you my name is John Collow I live in the lakeside neighborhood directly adjacent to the so-called homeless encampment over the past several years I've walked past the site multiple times each day with growing concern about its direct deteriorating conditions while there is much in the resolution that is compassionate and worthy of community support the final ask which calls for the administration to continue to allow the encampment to quote safely continue does not as a result I encourage you to reject this resolution allowing the continued occupancy at Sears Lane in its present form is simply not an acceptable public policy response for more than two years the city has ignored repeated calls from adjoining property owners and neighbors about aggressive antisocial and criminal behavior that has come to characterize this occupation as a result the council is collectively failing the city it has abdicated its civic responsibility and ceded all leadership to a small unruly mob at the encampment and in the process you've lost the ability to distinguish homelessness from current activity simply stated the proposed resolution mctaire mischaracterizes a criminal enterprise as a homeless encampment which does it is service to the homeless not to mention the surrounding community and neighbors you know as you know an rfp was recently distributed by the city to established professional social service agencies are oversight of the encampment the lack of a response to this rfp speaks volumes to the high risk assessment and low probability of success perceived by these service providers to manage a population that has no interest in being managed and now in response to the mayor's decision to vacate the site a resolution has just been introduced that offers more of the same that is the occupation can quote safely continue unquote you know we can do better you can do better and there are alternatives although the solution to this issue is challenging and requires work hard work my question is whether or not the current makeup of the council has the capacity for the hard work rather than grandstanding per the true leadership skills that plays well being of our community over the righteous well you know it well john you say i'm sorry john your time is up okay thank you sorry about that um our next i lost track of time that is um the next speaker is rick leavenson to be followed by marcia johnson rick i'm not able to locate you marcia i am able to locate you and have enabled your mic marcia looks like you're muted okay go ahead hi can you hear me yep hi um i'm also in support of the resolution um to stop the eviction or at least hold it off temporarily until after the um court date which is Wednesday or Thursday i think um i um i think that you know if you evict everybody from the site and they have nowhere to go another encampment is just going to spring up somewhere else and i feel for the folks who are living nearby and dealing with this every day but i would like to think burlington is a community that can come together and come up with a solution other than just displacing people and waiting for it to pop up again somewhere else um it's also like everyone else has said very traumatic for people to be evicted it's not going to help um it's not going to help them achieve safer housing to just be displaced with nowhere to go um i would just really encourage counselors to try to imagine what you would do if you just found yourself homeless you would come up with a shelter and then suddenly you were going to get thrown out of it because someone else one of your homeless neighbors you know got in a criminal activity and now everyone's being punished like where would you go if you didn't have family i mean it's you should really just think about that because sleeping outside is really rough when it starts to get really cold and what everyone's saying is that shelters are full and there's nowhere to go so i i'm in support of um counselor these resolution and um and thank you all for your time that's it thank you our next speaker is lisa lax and i'll read off a couple more um after lisa we have micayla eladjum isabel sasha e and lawson and berwyn d margaret mcgovern and shillheimer and so i'm gonna go to lisa now lisa i've enabled your mic hi thanks for letting me speak i'm gonna try to be brief um there's been a lot of really good comments and uh in support of councilor mckay's resolution and i also want to support his resolution i think the entire issue is it's very shameful that we have uh people in our society who are not adequately housed um and i think this it the shame is not on the people who are in that situation but it's on us those of us with economic and social privilege uh for not doing what we can to ensure that the basic needs of decent shelter food and education are available to all and i just want to note that when i moved to burlington in 1981 40 years ago the population of homeless people was much smaller than it is today and the problem has only perpetuated um to a much greater degree and that the cause is the disparity increased disparity of wealth the rising cost of real estate the lack of affordable housing and i feel that the way to deal with this is not to try to eradicate the encampment which is hiding the problem or trying to get rid of the problem so that we aren't as uncomfortable by this and i think the long-term solution we need to focus on solutions other than what um evicting and to start to speak and work with the people in the community to help solve the immediate the immediate problem and work on long-term solutions thank you thank you our next speaker will be um mikaela oladjem to be followed by isabel sasha isabel or i mean um mikaela i've located you and have enabled your mic hi can you hear me yes go ahead um i am speaking in support of the residents at sears lane and to pass um mcgee's resolution and to not evict the residents where realistically are they going to go i'm gonna echo a lot of other people here i don't i don't understand how you can do this at this time when it's literally freezing almost literally freezing and these people have built their structures and homes and they have their place to live and you're just gonna kick them out with realistically no other place to go like it's just people are talking about like the building being not up to code i mean that is something that people could help them with if need be it's not something to evict someone over like i want people to examine their moral code come on that's all thank you our next speaker is i could not locate isabel sasha so i'm gonna come to e i've enabled your mic hello can you hear me yes i can go ahead i'm addressing my fellow citizens of burlington not the council so the system we live under capitalism that's working just fine as intended we can't make it better by electing more progressives or finding more diverse oppressors the way things get better is if we take back the power we give up by participating in this sham called electoral politics if everyone who showed up for black lives matter marches at battery park in response to george floyd's murder showed up this year's lane tomorrow there's no eviction regardless of what the council does or doesn't do business and property owners run this country the council serves capitalists not the masses of working people or unemployed people the path forward requires revolutionary solidarity that means nothing short of standing up to the bosses property owners and politicians with everything we can muster capitalism's body count continues to grow by the day we cannot allow this city to add the dear people on sears lane to that number by forcing them out of a one place in this city they can go we need a new system we cannot simply slap diverse shades of neoliberal duct tape on the capitalist death machine and expect it to start shitting out rainbows and puppies uh the system values the rules that protect ruling classes interests more than the humanity of those who back this system that's built up whose backs this system is built on find more information on how to get involved at sears lane community dot netlify dot app in the immortal words of black panthers all power to the people fuck the police please don't use profanity our next speaker is going to be and lawson to be followed by adam for wean and then i have d after that margaret mcgovern dan shillheimer or hammer brian leon gray daken fuller and chrysanthemum cara and i've enabled your mic or annie lawson hi thank you my name is annie lawson i'm a clinical social worker and i live in word for burlington is not special the wealth gap is widening in america residents of burlington are not entitled to avoid seeing houseless neighbors just because it makes them uncomfortable we are not immune here to the results of the policies that increase the wealth of those at the top at the expense of the most vulnerable what did we think was going to happen that said i continue to be impressed by how the question of sears lane is being handled i am enormously impressed by how the people of this city have handled the crisis of their neighbors who need more resources i'm not talking about the weinberger administration i'm not talking about the democratic members of the city council who would vote again comments to the chair i'm not um i hope that the council members um can hear me say to max that i urge them to vote for councilman gie's resolution this administration and counselors who would vote against it have failed the people of this city who have found themselves in the situation of being houseless but other residents of the city have stepped up and offered care respect and dignity to their neighbors they have collaborated with residents and with others of other neighbors who have built relationships at sears lane to craft creative imaginative solutions to the problems they're facing not just the residents of sears lane but many many americans burlington residents have taken into their own hands what our elected officials have willfully turned away from the mayor's office put out a request for proposals from nonprofits to share management of the state with residents who live there two weeks later the request for proposals was closed and now here we are with an eviction notice i spent the last nine years working in nonprofits and specifically in community mental health and i know as well as the mayor does that no useful policy or proposal can be created in two weeks either the mayor willfully manipulated the rfp process by offering a laughable window or the mayor is woefully out of touch with the waything world of social services whatever the reason it's not too late to change course and i urge those to vote in support of mckay's resolution thank you thank you our next speaker is adam for wean to be followed by d adam i've located you and have enabled your microphone all right um thank you for giving me some time to speak tonight um i uh have had the privilege to work with um members of my of our you know burlington community as a social worker for the past seven years and uh something that i've noticed from the moment i started in this work is the the lack of um places for people to have stable housing a stable place to call home one of the things that continues to rise uh in my mind in the mind of those that i work with is the inaction from those you know in our community you know both you know administration and even the organizations that we have here that are um labeled as the leaders in providing supports for those experiencing homelessness and and i and i see this as a community effort to get to a place where we have housing for everyone places to live for everyone this is a shared responsibility that i think many people um who are probably not here tonight are just taking easy paths and not shedding their voice which i think is not acceptable i i want to see solutions moving forward that bring the voices of those living these lives to the front and not those who are claiming to be experts to the front the issues that we've had have been here and they're going to continue to be here until we actually have sustainable transformative change there have been many many ideas brought up tonight that i think are wonderful and need to be embraced but the first thing that needs to be questioned is why do we continue to look at the you know look at solutions through the lens of middle class white people those solutions aren't working they haven't worked and they won't work until we actually start bringing those to the table who are living these lives and have the experience to what the solutions may be solutions are out there i'm so confident in that and i'm really hopeful that we stop what we're doing in this eviction take some time hit the pause button and start bringing the voices that um have the most experience and knowledge to the table not speak for them thank you thank you our next speaker is Deirdre Graham to be followed by Meg McGovern Deirdre i've enabled your mic hi can you hear me yes i can go ahead hi um i'm a bilingual resident um um i'm i didn't really have time to prepare much um i'm on the tail end of the 14 and a half hour day um i'm an essential health care worker and i'm a little bit muffled can is is that better a little hello that was a that was better there you go okay okay all right thank you um i'm a burlington resident i'm i'm here again speaking um disgusted heartbroken infuriated um and desperate um i i didn't have time to prepare much tonight um i'm also calling in support of the resolution 608 um to halt the eviction halt the demolition of the sears lane community tomorrow um i just want to say that these so-called safety concerns are they're still not valid grounds to displace people from their homes and in fact they're more dangerous than anything that's going on in that community um no one is a perfect past and placing people into permanent boxes of bad or unsafe or whatever insert the adjectives um is dangerous um and how can you live with yourself knowing that you're toying with people's lives deciding if they deserve safe housing or not this is an incredibly dire situation please please search inside yourself for a shred of compassion and empathy and support the halting of the demolition of this community um the resources that certain members of this administration keep quoting and bringing up are a joke and i know firsthand i'm seeing a friend who lived at sears lane trying to navigate them um and even if someone can get into a hotel just name one of the so-called recent stories um this is a fucking joke obviously i've asked you imploring you all all to take a breath to stop can you hear me yes at this point i'm just imploring you all to take a fucking breath and stop this act of violence this community our community just wants self-determination and to be left in peace thank you thank you our next speaker is meg mcgovern thank you counselors i'm also speaking in support of residents of sears lane in hopes that the city will find them safe housing i'm a licensed realtor and property manager for 27 and 53 sears lane i'm a native of vermont and have lived in berlington 36 years i love berlington and i'm very concerned about the level of houselessness and lack of affordable housing for all income levels i also work in berlington and manage four berlington properties i'm a long time financial supporter of cot spectrum king street h well uvm and other non-profits we work with standpoint housing trust as well helping them find properties to establish affordable residential units i say this because i feel our community is strong and there are many many people like me that have the same community values i've been meeting since april 2021 with local businesses and residents trying to find solutions for the safety and behavior issues that have been occurring around sears lane i'm happy to hear that the mayor is moving forward with assisting residents to find permanent housing since the since the encampment living conditions are inhumane dangerous and attract criminal enterprise and bad behavior that impacts the entire area the encampment is out of control and can't be managed current neighboring building tenants are afraid to go to work kids are afraid to walk to school and businesses are being robbed and broken into constantly we have seen this on the news and with the zero response from the well intention management rfp my experience in commercial real estate and construction have me very concerned with the structures that have been erected and i'm afraid the people are in danger constant running of generators and other unpermitted heating sources make me fear for the encampment residents and environmental impacts on lands please allow the mayor to continue his efforts i hope the council considers approved approved campsites like north beach that worked in the past thank you thank you so we are at 937 and we started at 737 so that's a two-hour public forum i have two burlington residents left on the remote to also who are here on the in-person list i have about four also in-person non-burlington and then about five or six folks who are burling non-burlington residents who are remote so unless the council is seeking to make a motion to extend the public forum to hear those remaining councillors consistent with the agenda that we voted on is there a motion Councillor Hanson um yeah i would just move that we complete the remaining speakers okay and only the remaining speakers what's that and only the remaining speakers uh yeah i'm not sure what you mean but yeah okay all right thank you is there a second seconded by Councillor Stromberg any discussion okay hearing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of hearing the remaining speakers please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries and we will hear the remaining speakers the next burlington resident who is remote that i have is dakin fuller um dakin let me find you i think i know i found you i think you're under another name okay dakin i think i haven't found you is this dakin can you hear me yes and i'm i found your name correctly yes okay thank you um i'm dakin i was born and raised in vermont i've lived in burlington for seven years and i stand in solidarity with the residents of sears lane i live on conger ab which is directly next to the camp and i have never had any problems with anyone living there in fact well for the very first time i actually went there last week after i heard that they were going to be evicted and i honestly have never felt so welcomed anywhere um one of the people who was living there offered me food and he invited me into his house and it was really nice like it was warm it was cozy it had a loft i just it's like everything that i personally would want if i could ever have the money to own a home which i won't because of the rent prices in burlington um another thing is that the argument of the camp being noisy is completely uh misplaced given that this is an extremely noisy neighborhood in general we are directly next to the train tracks um hula was doing construction for like what felt like a year um as well as the bike path um like it's just not a quiet neighborhood and it never could be especially since there's like two beaches in our neighborhood so that's like kind of an invalid argument but personally having been on the verge of homelessness before and uh having struggled to find affordable housing i really deeply uh empathize with the people living there and i really do not want them to be kicked off that plot of land uh thank you for listening to me thank you i believe our next speaker is also on this zoom uh chrysanthemum cara apologies that is also me okay so that's that's a repeat okay so it's a repeat okay all right thank you all right so our next speaker is um that brings us to the end of the burlington folks who are remote so i'm going to try i don't think any stands so i do okay i'm sorry sorry about that um the next speaker will be leaf uh we're transitioning back to in person and i had a couple of burlington folks um leaf toronto did sign up um and is now here so leaf go ahead can you hear me yep go ahead thanks um i'm leaf and i'd like to talk to you about why i missed my original slot for public comment i missed my turn because on my way here to speak to you in a solidarity with my friends at sears lane i came across my friend who was sitting outside on the corner out there in the shadow of city hall covered in water and shivering and he has no dry clothes and nowhere to go tonight i missed my public comment because i as a civilian constituent had to go and help find him clean clothes and so that he would not die in a freeze in the colds and i just would like you all to reflect on how deeply you have failed the people and the houseless community of burlington when your own constituents have to miss their public comments to talk to you about housing justice so that they can keep their houseless friends from dying over the past week i've spent a lot of time at sears lane and i know that a lot of the folks there have absolutely nowhere to go and i want you to know that in the absence and in your absence and failure people have been stepping up for each other building structures helping find people places to go and i ask you to please not criminalize the people of sears lane and the people who love them for wanting our friends to survive and for wanting people to have a place to live i want you to realize that the people of sears lane are burlington there is no secret other outside force invading this city the people of sears lane are our neighbors they are your constituents they are people who have been failed by this city i want you to know that i feel safer at sears lane than i do here as a trans person and someone who's survived violence i know that my friends at sears lane i know that my friend on the corner will stick up for me if i am in danger they will welcome me and out of the rain they will fight if someone tries to hurt me and i do not know the same thing about all of you i want you all to know that you are the most dangerous people in burlington right now not any alleged criminal at sears lane but you tonight and tomorrow you will decide whether 25 people lose their homes can you please wrap up we will decide whether people survive or die and i just want you to choose well can you please thank you the next speaker is laura mcpeak to be followed by maggie caron thank you all for your time i am speaking in favor of the resolution if you could just speak into the mic please i'm laura mcpeak i'm speaking in favor of councillor maggie's proposal to wait on the eviction of the sears lane community i speak today as an individual apparent and a health care worker housing is health care and this eviction risks health care and safety displacing this already traumatized community poses a greater risk from the point of view of the pandemic risks worsening the public health care crisis and further threatens public safety the fragile population needs more help and understanding not less and the short timeline is particularly problematic everyone can tend to violence if they cannot meet their basic needs as i know only too well from working in the emergency department and the trauma of this removal will have public health and safety ramifications it's easy to create headlines about people's bad deeds or mistakes but that doesn't accurately represent the entire situation i have worked with these residents in the community outside of my health care profession and i rarely see them in the emergency department if you don't pass this resolution i expect that to change in the next week please consider this thank you our next speaker is maggie karen to be followed by katharine zelda good evening and thank you all for your time my name is maggie karen and i'm here representing the organization new englanders against sexual exploitation and what's coming around to you is a letter that i'll be reading some excerpts through i'm actually going to take this off so i can see new englanders against sexual expectation is comprised of people active in the movement to end human trafficking including survivors of sex trafficking occurring in vermont we write to caution the berlin's vermont city council that the empirical intersection of commercial sex with human trafficking the preponderance of research on prostitution and the reality of law enforcement constraints in the united states argue against the path toward full decriminalization of this sex trade including sex buying brothel keeping and pimping we write to present facts not reflected in the resolution or your july 12th hearing full decriminalization does not empower or enhance the safety of historically disenfranchised groups instead it legitimizes the worst possible forms of exploitation of these very populations and empowers those seeking to abuse and profit from them full decriminalization does not free police resources to be deployed to pursue the more egregious felony level crime of sex trafficking instead full decriminalization of prostitution undermines the ability of police to initiate and successfully complete investigations of sex trafficking where prostitution is legal human trafficking is more prevalent and investigation and prosecution of human traffickers plummets the most likely outcome of this change in burlington referencing your ordinance change would be increases in sex trafficking and in the numbers of individuals exposed to violence and unsafe conditions many cases of sex if you could please wrap up sure you're done i'll just finish this then as many cases of sex trafficking specific and evolving for month that's page six you can read the rest thank you for your time our next speaker is catherine's aldat to be followed by rick lashway it's catherine's aldat here don't see catherine is rick lashway here thank you for hearing me you could speak into the mic please to speak on behalf of the people in the encampment at sears lane or to underscore the word people sat here and listened to some really great arguments as far as why to postpone this and as i look around at the faces it feels like a decision has already been made which i hope is not the case i'm a resident of chitlin county i'm not a resident of burlington i have been coming to this encampment for 10 months almost every week i've gotten to know some of these people uh one of them i consider a very good friend um i've heard some of these suggestions from um you know examples around the country of trying to solve this this problem and i can tell you that uh i think there's i think that's a much better solution to put this on hold and to work on other solutions i also have a former business leader i have connections i have uh people that we have conversations about these type of things i know residents in chitlin county that would get behind uh solutions that involve uh federal local and individual support and i for one uh would throw my my hat into that as well um i ask you to seriously reconsider um this horrible um it's just not morally it's not morally correct i i don't understand legally in the united states how this could be even considered i don't understand how there isn't legal representation for the most vulnerable of our community and uh i hope you seriously consider postponing this and in preserving the buildings that have been properly erected thank you thank you next speaker is julian levy for levy good evening council um thank you for for taking the time to listen to all of us um i grew up in vermont um grew up in esthix i love growing up here it's a wonderful place um if you have resources which i personally don't but i come from a family who does um when i have tried living on my own i ended up also without a home only temporarily because i had the the family with resources that can help bail me out when i lived in burlington i worked between two and four jobs year round i never went out to eat i never took vacation i worked and i spent more than 75 of my income on my housing i'm currently living with my parents so that i can go to school so that i can try and find something that will pay something that will afford a house but i have next to no hope of ever owning one and i come from a lot of privilege and i cannot wrap my head around kicking people out of the only shelter that they have especially in the morning on a day we know will be cold and wet especially when we know that there's going to be a court hearing about it in a couple of days i also want to point out that the vast majority of people that have come out in support of the the residents of sears lane have been young they're the ones who have come into a system that is screwing them over left and right is not necessarily the people at this board who are at risk of losing their house and so i came to speak on behalf of people who are the most vulnerable i didn't know about the sex trafficking in vermont but good god that's terrifying and it seems wildly connected that we would possibly criminalize the most vulnerable people and kick them when they're down and i would like to just add one last thing which is to call the violence that is there rather than address what is causing people to have the dire circumstances in which they make those decisions is outrageous and so please please drop the justice of having a little more time and providing some sort of help please wrap up thank you next thank you the transition back to remote um non burlington so i've got a couple folks on there um james unsworth to be followed by dana keys gibbons nicole bell dan schilhammer and brian leon gray james i've enabled your microphone great thank you very much i've sat here this evening i've listened with an open mind and heart to those who've spoken this evening i can tell the passion the speakers have spoken with is authentic and based in care for their fellow humans being homeless is not a crime and those folks who are experiencing that do need help the need for affordable and alternative housing for all residents of the queen city is real it would be inhumane and amoral to not help those in needs however despite the rhetoric that all of these individuals at sears lane are law-abiding members of our community just is not true there have been drug arrests weapons brandish first responders threatened and forced to leave neighbors are scared generational businesses are worried about their livelihoods the city has begun partnering groups such as cb oeo to find safe and healthy alternatives the residents of sears lane are actively being given options for safe housing but perhaps on too short a timeline this time of year you can't help people while ensuring that laws are being obeyed the two are not mutually exclusive i do believe it's impossible with the current situation at sears lane a plan needs is needed and as far as i can tell based on the lack of response the rfp there is none there are a number of issues with sears lane but primarily the lack of oversight oversight and safe utilities i'm in support of reinstating a managed site at north beach or another adequate site i firmly believe that the sears lane site will present a losing battle for those who attempt to manage it in its current state i urge the city council to come up with a real plan thank you thank you our next speaker is dana keys gibbons to be followed by nicole bell dana i've enabled your microphone hi it's dana i'm a former resident of burlington i live in sorry dana someone's talking in the hall please please can you please stop can you please stop can you please not interrupt other speakers thank you sorry sorry dana your timer has been reset please go ahead um i'm a former resident of burlington i live in winewski now because there's no affordable housing in burlington um but i work in healthcare in downtown burlington and i'm really proud to be speaking tonight in solidarity with the vast majority of the other speakers and the people who live at sears lane um like the majority of the other speakers tonight i oppose the removal and the destruction that the city has planned for tomorrow at 9 a.m at the sears lane community more time needs to be given um and this is really an unfair standard that would not be applied to other residents living in other areas of the city um the removal of sears lane is not going to make any of us safe so do the right thing tonight and pass resolution 6.08 i think it's clear that the people have spoken and you all represent those people and i'm also in agreement with them that we need to pass resolution 6.08 and not destroy sears lane or remove anyone from that area thank you thank you our next speaker is nicole bell to be followed by dan shillhammer and brian gray nicole i've located you and have enabled your microphone hi thank you for having me my name is nicole bell and i am a wister massachusetts resident which is the second largest city in new england i am also a survivor of prostitution as well as the founder and chief executive officer of an organization that serves over 300 prostituted individuals every year annually many of those individuals from vermont i'm speaking uh tonight to oppose that that agenda item to decriminalize prostitution you know uh that you know councilor freeman is saying if we care about the safety and well being a prostitute of people then we will push for decriminalization as somebody that has experienced that and somebody that runs an organization working with almost 30 other survivors every day i can tell you that that is not what prostituted want nor need you're talking about a significant housing crisis tonight and people that are displaced and what you want to do is increase the the ability for white men with money to access the bodies of your most marginalized communities you know if you think one thing doesn't have to do with the other you are so disconnected it's very easy to sit in a place of privilege and talk about what we should be doing i would invite you to come to our organization and spend a day with those being exploited in the sex trade and then tell me you think it is in their best interest to continue to be rented and bought and sold and masturbated on and harmed and violated and strangled every day um because you think that is increasing the safety of your community i can tell you firsthand it is not and the harms of prostitution are something that people will suffer with for the rest of their life you're looking at increased demand and increased demand means people will be trafficked into meet that need and those will be the people that i serve coming into your community to be bought to privilege then thank you the next speaker is dan shillhammer to be followed by our final speaker ryan gray dan i believe i've located you and have enabled your microphone dan shillhammer dan it looks like you're muted on your end dan shillhammer dan you're still muted on your end if that is the right dan our final speaker is brian gray brian i've enabled your microphone hi can you hear me yes go ahead yes uh you got two things going on tonight um one i don't envy your position at all um it's um hard to sit there and try to run a city and you know be looked favorably upon by everybody um but let's get to the two issues one prostitution dan i'm having legal prostitution are you brian i'm having legal hearing you legal prostitution can you hear me now yeah legal prostitution might have built most of this country uh but every city that was founded in they were eventually shut down i think we should just take a lesson from our you know former you know uh ancestors and whatever and continue to criminalize prostitution it's not a way to go as far as the folks on sears lane you know it's it's hard to find housing you know like moved up here uh 13 years ago we lived in barlington we were most homeless with a child you guys uh helped us get on our feet and eventually we were able to get an apartment get a job you know and get off the welfare system completely um it takes hard work it takes people to counsel people to get there and you know my wife working at uvm for a long time you know being these people are people that get high they go in there they mistreat you know first responders and stuff like that and it's hard to say you need to let them stay there because if you you pick them they're just going to find somewhere else you know make trouble you know and there's no point doing that and as far as low cost housing you need to consolidate barlington with ethics of a new ski and cold desert you know consolidate all of jitney county that way you can get taxes from everybody and put the taxes where they need to go y'all don't have enough tax money coming in and burlington to do all these different things you want tax the hell out of property owners and you know they have to pass that money off so ladies and taxes ain't gonna do anything for you guys thank you and that was our final speaker for this evening includes our public forum so we will now go into um our agenda itself folks a chance to switch over to that um brings us to item number four which is the climate emergency report uh or do anyone does any counselor or the administration have any climate emergency reports okay seeing none we'll go into our next item which is the consent agenda Councillor Stromberg may please have a motion on the consent agenda and move to approve the consent agenda and take the actions indicated we have a motion is there a second seconded by Councillor McGee Councillor Jang I believe you had a technical correction on the minutes is that correct yes can you please speak into your mic november september 19 27 actually the burlington city council we had one action that was specific to increasing to providing some support to police officers in the records it says it was voted unanimously but councillor gang was not present I was absent and it would be good if the record can reflect my absence okay so city attorney Richardson can you just please speak to are we able to just amend the consent agenda without pulling this item off because it's a technical correction yes um this is a technical correction if there's unanimous consent to unanimous consent to making that correction then it can be accepted as amended and you do not have to pull it off the consent agenda okay all right so you're making essentially so is councillor Jang essentially making a motion that's that's correct it's a motion to amend um this minor correction which if it's unanimously accepted by the council would not require the item to be pulled off of the consent agenda but could simply be accepted as a correction and allow the consent agenda to move forward okay thank you so we have a motion from councillor Jang to make that small technical correction based on a factual issue within the minutes is there a second second by councillor Barlow any discussion okay all those in favour please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously brings us back to our original motion on the consent the entire consent agenda is there any further discussion on that hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favour please say aye aye okay any opposed that carries unanimously and bring now bring us into our main agenda itself um we will get started on our deliberative agenda in just a second I do want to just um we do have another meeting however the local control commission meeting that I'm going to recess us for um we'll I'll recess the city council meeting at 1006 and convene the local control commission meeting at that time um first item on the agenda is the agenda councillor Mason may please have a motion on the agenda thank you president Trisha I'd like to move that we adopt the agenda as presented got a motion is there a second second by councillor Hanson any discussion seeing none all those in favour of adopting the agenda for the local control commission please say aye aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously next item is a consent agenda may please have a motion councillor mason thank you I would move that we adopt or adopt the agenda and take the actions as indicated we have a motion on the consent agenda from councillor mason a second from councillor Hanson any discussion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favour of adopting the consent agenda please say aye any opposed that carries unanimously motion to adjourn is in order so moved moved by councillor mason seconded by councillor Hanson any discussion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favour please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously and we have now adjourned our local control commission at 10.07 I will reconvene the regular city council meeting at that time and we will now dive into our deliberative agenda for this evening with a communication from Brian Pine CEDO director Richard Hessler projects and policy specialists and I believe David White as well will be joining us with regards to the downtown tax increment financing district so please join us up here one moment councillor Paul may please have a motion on the just to waive the reading and accept the communication yes president Tracy I would waive the readings accept the communication and place them on file thank you is there a second seconded by councillor Hanson now go ahead thank you thank you very much for the record Brian Pine CEDO director and having sat on that side of the table I really want to just thank you for continuing to go through the public process that we just went through I know that was perhaps challenging in some respects but thank you nonetheless earlier this evening at the board of finance we spoke about the substantial change request which is the terminology that's used by the Vermont economic progress council what other than I'm going to ask David to go into the slideshow we'll try and be more concise perhaps than we would have been otherwise given the time of the evening and then we'll open it up to questions so thank you for the record my name is David White I'm president of White and Burke real estate advisors we are consultants to the city on the city place project and also relative to the downtown TIF district and why don't we just launch right in so the next slide so I'm going to talk about what is TIF for the benefit of those who are not familiar with it particularly in the public talk about the downtown TIF district itself as well as give information on the substantial change proposal and there will be an opportunity for questions let's move on so Burlington does have two TIF districts and I want to be clear that we'll be talking tonight about just one of those there is the waterfront TIF district that that was the first one it was established in the mid 1990s and it operates on under somewhat different rules than the downtown TIF district the downtown TIF district is the area you see in blue on this and it has Cherry Street and Pearl Streets along the north and to the right hand side which is east you is it's along largely along south musky avenue in that area and then it wraps around city hall and city hall park with some other areas to the west let's move on so TIF is an economic development tool and it fundamentally is a process by through which the city establishes a specific geographic area of the city we just saw the map of it where there are very specific properties that are in and there are others that are out and that the objective of the TIF district is to foster economic development and further investment within the district and that's done through the city identifying specific infrastructure limitations that make it difficult for development to occur to then borrow money to to improve the infrastructure to remove those barriers or limitations that then fosters new development and the new taxes only that are generated by that development are then sequestered used in a special fund the TIF fund to pay back the original bond or debt that was incurred to create the infrastructure let's move on so this chart is a little bit challenging from a distance but fundamentally if you see in the middle of it that long blue or gray bar it says original taxable value what happens is at the beginning of the time when the TIF district is established the taxable value of all the properties within the TIF district are frozen at that at at that value and the taxes generated by that value continue to go to the same places they've gone all along primarily to the state education fund and to the municipal general fund and those are never touched so we're not dipping into existing financial resources but over time as new development occurs the and new taxes are generated by the new value over and above the original value then those taxes a portion of them not all the portion of them are used to go into the TIF fund to pay the debt now in the case of the municipal taxes here in burlington for the downtown TIF district 100 percent of the new taxes only generated by the increased value go to the TIF fund for the education fund 75 percent of the new taxes generated go to the education fund 25 i'm sorry excuse me go to the TIF fund 25 percent go to the to the state to the education fund so that splits 75 25 with 75 percent go into the TIF fund and that's only for a defined period of time the city is able to retain those new taxes for a 20 year period to help retire the debt incurred in the TIF district at the end of that 20 year period the city can no longer retain those state education taxes let's move on so this TIF was originally established in 2011 the first debt was incurred in 2016 the final date for new debt that is march 31st 2023 and that's an important date because after that time the city can no longer use this tool for further infrastructure investments so there's less than two years left in the life of the of the the not the life of the TIF district but the ability of the city to incur new debt in the TIF district and so it's important that the city make the decisions if it wants to continue using this tool to to move forward rapidly during this period of time the final year when the city can retain education increment is 20 36 that's 20 years after the time the first debt was incurred let's move on so where are we at today previous work done in the downtown TIF district and paid for through TIF at least in part is the great streets projects that were completed on st. paul street some repairs to the marketplace garage the brownfield cleanup at the browns court parking lot before that was redeveloped for the eagles landing project with champlain college and then some stormwater upgrades that occurred here just adjacent city hall and city hall park on main street let's move on so in terms of the finances of the TIF district as they stand the original taxable value in the TIF district was approximately 170 million dollars today that value is approximately 285 million dollars so there's been an incremental increase of 115 million dollars which is a mix of both new development and the reappraisal that recently the total debt incurred to date in the TIF district is about 5.4 million some of that has already been paid off through you know regular payments of on the debt and the current balance is about 4.6 million let's move on so we get the next slide please oh thank you so the Vermont economic progress council which is referred to in shorthand as vep see requires a rigorous process in order to get a change to the what's proposed in the TIF district which is what's bringing us to you tonight so it starts with the public hearing we're having tonight an opportunity for the public to hear about what's being proposed and comment on it the goal is to submit the application by this friday which is the deadline in order to get us to the november hearing date with vep see and then um we assuming all that all goes well and we would anticipate uh asking the city council to place a bond vote on the march ballot for um some further work to be done um we anticipate vep see to approve it sometimes november and january they could in theory approve it on the same uh month but they're usually will wait a month or two before they make their final decision on approving the change there would be required public hearing before the bond vote that's required in the in the law and process and then hopefully the voters would approve it at the march meeting and then that all has to happen before the city can incur additional debt let's move on so the core of this downtown tiff district infrastructure improvements that have been done and are being proposed are is the great streets project this is a conceptual image of a long main street near city hall park but there's certainly other designs for the other great streets areas let's move on the currently vep see has already approved the great streets projects from on main street from south union to pine and great streets on south wunuski from college to king so that's currently approved now we're proposing to modify that if you'd move on um the the core here is to add the lower two blocks of main street taking it all the way down to battery street remove the south wunuski segments of it at this time they might be added back in later but for this change remove them i want to be clear that the great streets projects includes the sub surface utility work makes no sense to do the surface without making sure that the utilities underneath are well are in good shape and it also includes one of the things that's been added is the relocation of the ravine sewer which i think many people know cuts across much of the the downtown area of the city and particularly goes through the gateway block which is targeted for redevelopment and can't be redeveloped effectively while the ravines who are still located there in addition there are related costs which have to do with the cost to operate the tiff district um that we anticipate over the course of the 20 years it'll be about a million and a half dollars and will be paid through tiff and a total of about 31 million five we're proposing uh to uh as the debt limit here of which about four million remains from the amount previously approved by voters let's move on so this shows the just to clarify the areas of main street the upper two blocks um start starting at south union um have been approved by vepsey but have not yet been approved by the voters so that would be part of the march ballot the middle two blocks have been approved by both vepsey and the voters the lower two blocks haven't been approved by either so that we are seeking those to be added by vepsey and then also voted on by voters in march let's move on very quickly the ravine sewer cuts across the block the core block here from college street to uh to main street and it cuts right underneath the library and behind the fire station and through the parking lot at the corner of south wintersky and main and it can't be built on top of the image on the right hand side is in fact the uh an image within the sewer this was built in originally starting in the 1860s and uh is not in good shape and and is not structurally sound enough that you can build over the top of it let's move on and this image shows uh if you look at the right hand side the corner of south wintersky and main looking toward memorial auditorium and the fire station and the congregational church in the background and on the left is what that looked like in 1870 that that shows you that there used to be it was quite a ravine it was not a minor uh feature and it is the line that goes through there that we need to remove in order to be able to uh continue potentially redeveloping the gateway block and also uh before the main street segments are done let's move on um in terms of uh downtown development the we've included the potential hotel at the ymca the redevelopment of vfw site by cht and another small project in south champlain street and some background growth in our in our tiff projections there are other projects we've noted in the application but are not included in the cash flow because they're speculative and timing is unknown at this time let's move on um this is a detailed sheet copy of which is available the city council received previously and it does show the cash flow in the district and shows that we do anticipate about six million dollar surplus based on the assumptions that are made here we think it's conservative assumptions surplus at the end of the life of the district i think it's likely to be even larger than that but i caution you let's move on that we are planning to come back to the city council or expect to uh sometime over the winter spring for another request for approval of to submit an application for substantial change and much of the surplus may well get used at that time and let's move on so in summary we want to add the lower blocks of main street remove south runuski um we are proposing the debt limit we believe there are sufficient incremental taxes available to pay for this um and but we do need city council approval to submit the application of epsi which we are seeking from you tonight great thank you so much anything to add director pine no i think uh david summed it up very well we're open any questions okay great so we have an item that actually moves forward the change that's requested but in between that we have to have a public a public uh hearing specific only to that item so if counselors are okay with that i'd like to have any questions and comments specific to the item on 6.03 um so are we is that okay so with that um are we can we please go to a vote on just accepting the communication and placing it on file all those in favor of doing that please say hi hi hi any opposed okay that carries unanimously we'll now move into the public hearing so if you two could just please um free up those seats in case someone wants to speak who's here um so like i said before we are only asking for comments on what was just presented so the issue of the downtown tax increment financing district uh and the substantial change that's being requested um is anyone who's here uh in person looking to comment on that and only that okay seeing none i'm gonna go look at the online if anyone who is listening in online um or through the zoom is interested please use the raise hand function to identify yourself again you're only allowed to speak to the the downtown tiff tiff district issue and the substantial change that's being requested to that okay i see one person brian gray brian i've enabled your microphone yeah uh as far as uh you know taking a bond out and more money to uh refile you're not coming through clear sorry uh can you hear me now a little bit better yeah yeah sorry i'm kind i'm in south carolina right now so it's a little uh little ranger ranger uh about my phone anyway uh i don't see a problem with it it i mean you gotta spend money to eventually make money and eventually garner more taxes to offset you know more spending i mean the whole idea of you know having to town is to see if they'll see if citizens do well um and i mean i don't see a problem with it you know but the only issue is you know the rest of the taxes you know where is where is this tax money going to come from you know uh property owners are already stressed to the breaking point paying school taxes and everything else uh holington has some of the highest taxes you know in the state so you know that's my question is where is this going to come from thank you very much thank you there any other folks interested in speaking just to this issue around the downtown tax increment financing district okay seeing none we'll go ahead and close the public forum and we will move into item 6.03 which um is the motion regarding the substantial change councilor paul may please have a motion on that i would move uh to approve the city's substantial change request to vebsi for its downtown tiff district and authorized city council president max tracy and chief administrative officer catherine schade to execute the attached formal request letter thank you councilor paul is there a second second seconded by councilor stromburg now any is there any discussion any any comments or questions from the council okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us into our next item which is 6.04 which are and thank you again really appreciate the presentation david and thank you director pine as well for for your work on this next item is a series of public hearings regarding some ordinances that are some zoning ordinances that are being proposed this evening i believe we have david white with us the other david white on the line welcome david yes indeed thank you good to see you again remotely we have david joining us remotely this evening so david are you disabled to before we open up the public hearings on those just those specific zoning changes just give a brief synopsis of what each of the zoning changes is yes happy to president tracy can you hear me okay yes i can all right great so there are three zoning amendments before you this evening that have been through the city's planning commission and your ordinance committee the first one is za 2107 and it has to do with how we measure building height and specifically then how dormers affect the measurement of the height of a building so this amendment has three different parts to it it provides guidance on the starting and ending points for measurements and standards measuring building heights that are on slope sites it provides guidance on how dormers are to be measured and the design standards for incorporating dormers into roof lines in the extent to which an addition of a dormer affects whether or not a change how in the addition of a dormer on a roof changes how we measure a building's height and it defines eaves and dormers in article 13 the definitions so that's the first amendment the second amendment is 2108 it is an amendment that comes to you as a result of some changes in state enabling legislation adopted as part of act 179 there are three components to this amendment as well the first has to do with existing small lots and it effort it affords additional provisions for the development of an existing small lot when those lots can connect to municipal water and sewer infrastructure the second has to do with accessory dwelling units and it removes the bedroom and occupancy limits from the ad u standards and definitions in the city's ordinance and increases the alternative maximum size for ad use to go up to 900 square feet from what i believe with 800 square feet and finally it changes the duplex from a conditional use to a permitted use in the rl and in the rl districts it deletes attached dwellings mixed use uh from the use table and distinguishes between multifamily dwellings of three and four units and those of four or five units from a conditional to a permitted use in the institutional district these again these are all changes that were that are being proposed as a result of changes to the enabling legislation so that our ordinance is consistent with the state law law the final component is uh seven za 21-09 and it is a series of corrections and updates and clarifications to the downtown form-based code i won't run through the list of all the different components of this but after having a couple of years of being able to apply this this code to real-life projects we've collected input from department of permitting and inspection staff applicants and just kind of our own rethink and rereading of the ordinance we would we have are including a number of improvements to how the ordinance is read how the ordinance is used and how it applies itself specifically in situations where it's applying to a modification of an existing building rather than a completely new development from whole thought so that is a very quick synopsis of the three zoning amendments before you tonight perfect thank you so much really appreciate that one second before we get into the public hearing on all of those zoning amendments that were described it is 10 30 which under council rules requires us to make a motion to suspend the rules and extend our agenda is such a motion um uh council member did you have a motion yes i would move to um i guess extend our agenda just through to the end of our deliberative agenda this evening okay so we have a motion to suspend the rules just to complete the deliberative agenda this evening is there a second to that seconded by councilor hanson any discussion on the motion to suspend the rules and complete just the deliberative agenda okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously and we've suspended our rules and will therefore complete the the deliberative agenda this evening now i will go ahead and open up the public forum on those zoning amendments and let me just restate the zoning amendments if you would like to speak to only these zoning amendments um we and the zoning amendments um are specifically za-21-07 height measurements dormers and eaves za-21-08 act 179 changes to channel to uh to 117 and za-21-09 updates and corrections to article 14 are there any folks here who would like to speak to any of those zoning changes okay seeing none i will now go to folks uh participating remotely um you may use the raise hand function i'm to do so i see sharon busher raising uh sharon i will uh i've enabled your microphone sharon so all you'll need to do is just unmute yourself uh president tracy i hit that by accident i don't want to speak okay thank you sharon have a good night you too anyone else interested in speaking specifically to these zoning amendments um in the public hearing on these zoning amendments okay seeing none we will go ahead and close the public hearings on those items and we will move into a series of votes on the ordinances themselves um which brings us to item 6.05 counselor mason may please have a motion thank you president tracy i'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading adopt the ordinance as presented and do not need the floor back given the explanation by david white but would also note he is available if there are any additional questions thank you thank you very much is there a second second seconded by councillor stromberg any discussion okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to item 6.06 councillor mason thank you president tracy i'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading adopt the ordinance as presented thank you we have a motion from councillor mason is there a second seconded by councillor hanson any discussion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to the last of these three ordinances item 6.07 which is um councillor mason thank you president tracy i'd like to waive the make a motion to waive the second reading and adopt the ordinance as presented we have a motion from councillor mason is there a second seconded by councillor mcgee any discussion on this one okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously therefore completing the ordinances for this evening thank you thanks again david for your presentation um of those prior to the public hearing thank you our next item is item 6.08 a resolution meeting the basic needs of houseless vermoners councillor mcgee thank you president tracy i moved that we waive the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second here we have a motion from councillor mcgee is there a second second seconded by councillor stromberg you have the floor councillor mcgee thank you very much at its core this resolution is about saving lives if the forest removal moves forward tomorrow morning there will be residents who are left out in the rain as temperatures continue to drop with nowhere to go we've heard from advocates that there is no way to know that all the residents will have secure housing alternatives by 9 a.m. tomorrow further the solutions offered to residents thus far are temporary and will result in further insecurity at the end of the 30-day coverage period which will come as late fall and a long winter bring some of the coldest temperatures our shelters and transitional housing programs are at capacity with no permanent housing available for folks to move into at this very moment there are nearly 200 households who have been approved for section 8 vouchers but cannot find suitable housing and shampoam housing trust has a waitlist that grows longer by the day the housing crisis we face here in burlington has only worsened through the pandemic and the cost of living continues to vastly outpace the wages offered by many jobs we are experiencing the lowest vacancy rate seen in years and the units that are available are out of reach from any residents ever months current minimum wage a person would have to work two or more jobs just to afford a one bedroom apartment in the city someone is earning 1666 the current livable wage set by city ordinance someone would need to work at least two jobs to afford that same one bedroom we cannot have this conversation without acknowledging the fact that so many of our neighbors are one emergency away from job loss food insecurity or houselessness we're also facing a prolonged surge of COVID-19 which continues to climb to levels not seen at any other point in this pandemic health experts have told us that significant risk exists for people in congregate shelter settings and vermont moved to address this during the pandemic state of emergency by taking action to house all vulnerable folks using the hotel motel voucher program which the federal government has guaranteed funding for through the end of this year it is unconscionable that we would not use those resources fully to house all vulnerable vermonters this past weekend i was able to visit the sears lane community i talked to residents who have been there for several months and are unsure where they will go when the removal deadline arrives tomorrow morning i talked to former residents who told me that the camp at sears lane saved their life i witnessed a group of people working collectively to build community and care for one another in a way that our support networks have not been able to offer in this community effort i see the foundation of a compassionate response to the crises houseless people face every day the force removal of the entire sears lane community is not a solution or a band-aid there's an act of cruelty with no promise of consistent safe shelter on the other side which will endanger the lives of the residents and as we heard here tonight the only option for folks may be the emergency room keeping sears lane open and extending the ga hotel voucher program are temporary solutions which will save lives by passing this resolution tonight we will make abundantly clear that housing is a fundamental human right that people deserve to have their basic needs met and that we are committed to addressing the underlying crises faced by so many in our community we must continue to work with the residents of sears lane and all on house folks to develop plan to meet their basic needs we have the resources to do this and every day we do not is a dreadful failure i hope you all will enjoy me in supporting this resolution and in so doing saving lives thank you thank you councillor mason i have councillor hightower to be followed by councillor i mean councillor i'm sorry councillor mickey thank you councillor mickey i have councillor hightower to be followed by councillor mason go ahead councillor hightower thank you i will also be reading a statement given the emotional nature of this resolution i'm appalled at the action the city has chosen to take from a five-day notice the refusal to move the time in line for more than a week this without any dramatization is the worst action the city has taken since i became a councillor few of us could sustainably change our living situation in five days and the less your means the more difficult the change the folks of the city is supposedly partnering with are asking for more time they said today and i quote as much time as possible to get people alternative housing they said they cannot do it by tomorrow they cannot do it by tomorrow in the face of this our words of housing alternatives is an empty platitude word said to gloss over the inhumane removal of the most vulnerable people in the city from the housing they do have and yet the eviction is still planned for tomorrow my apologies removal those of us on the side of the table have done little to nothing to help most of us have done nothing including myself the least we can do is keep doing nothing the least we can do is listen to the people who have actually been there and helping for months none of them are saying do the removal that's a good idea the seers laying camp encampment isn't safe but it's unsafe first and foremost towards residents some who have lived there for years and when we go through a pandemic and national rise in alcoholism opioid use the situation goes from sustainable to bad instead of offering help actual help we offer first a way to pacify the neighbors active management when no one answers the two-week rfp and really who can come up with anything beyond platitudes in two weeks we move on the problem isn't that organizations aren't willing to willing to work at seers lane but rather that they think active management is not a sustainable goal any organization i've heard from who cares about and has worked with seers lane residents wants to support self-management they're willing to support folks in self-management and accountability to keep everyone safe there are folks who stay at seers lane despite not always feeling safe why because this space for better or worse still offers them some safety it's their home and the city should support them and feeling safer in whatever way we can why do we appear uninterested in supporting self-management or other sustainable solutions why are we treating all individuals as one just by their shared socioeconomic situation we have temporary repositions in the city that are open we apparently have money for an rfp we have options that are rooted in data passion and justice we are choosing none of them one of the speakers earlier said that she wishes she was us because suppose that we we have the power to change this and yet i feel pretty powerless i texted emma when this happened to ask her to do more because i didn't know what to do this is the most ashamed i've ever been to be a representative of the city council so today i just limit the decision that seems based on what i heard a board of finance to have already been made tomorrow morning i will be another body under the leadership of folks who have done far more than i have to support seers lane and protest the removal thank you councilor hi tower i have councilor meson in the queue um thank you president tracy i would like to request a 10 minute recess if i may okay um i will grant it we'll be back at 10 53 slurs stromberg enhance it in the queue councilor stromberg okay thank you i feel like this is one of those things that seems very obvious for us to pass spending so so much time on it um so yeah i feel kind of embarrassed like sitting up here tonight and i just i didn't ever want to believe that there there could be such a lack of compassion i happen to believe that because i've been proven wrong i feel like we're like blank and punishing them for like simply existing like to you know i've never ever been i've i'm fortunate in many many ways from privileged background and and just kind of my you know i have a job and i have clothing and i have food and i have a bed to go home to tonight anyways we've all to some extent we know how it is to feel lost when we're trying to look for resources for something right we've always done we've all done something for the first time in one way or another somewhere in the world where we're like i don't know how to get help or you know what to do how to get the ball rolling on x y or z and i cannot imagine what it must feel like for those things to be about housing and for you know food and warmth especially in northern vermont um so i just i really feel like we need to still center that really critical topic that we had just been talking about about racial justice and environmental justice and economic justice and social justice um because this is what that is and this is a critical critical part of it um and i think it is our responsibility to to compromise and work on this topic but also give this resolution a chance give these people a chance because i have no idea how to help them tomorrow as as just another citizen as a counselor i don't i need to help our fellow burlingtonians i have no idea how to do that other than maybe get them some food and maybe get them some clothes but there's no long term thing that i have the power to do as one person sitting here so i would just implore us tonight to really really focus on the on the fact that this is such a big thing and i know that this is one example of that big thing and i know that there's a lot of frustration around it on both sides but we have we have to do something this is this is serious and it's it's real bad timing um so i just please just asking my colleagues and the administration to to be lenient on this and and really try to work in the next however long to to figure something out that's not what the outcome is currently for tomorrow so thank you thank you councillor hanson to be followed by councillor mason thanks um and i really appreciate everyone who has spoken on this um both on the council and from the public and i agree with so much of what's been said this is i'm trying to come up with all these ways to explain it in ways to say it but at the end of the day like this is just so clearly wrong to sit here and basically target some of the most vulnerable and marginalized people in our community people who don't have a lot of resources who are struggling in a number of ways to go out of our way from our art chairs here and to make their lives harder make their lives worse remove them from the only shelter that they have i don't know how that could possibly be justified and be seen as a solution that's going to create a better community or healthy community for them or anybody else um you know we've talked about the the work that's happening to find more stable housing um and and find better housing options for people at the camp who who want it and that's that's great that's exactly what we should be doing and clearly clearly it's possible because we've already made progress on it um and now that a lot more people are paying attention and a lot more people are showing support we're seeing we're seeing things happen and and we're that can continue to happen and we should do that and the city should support that um that that should be the focus to to displace and evict is is the opposite of that and just really has no place and i i can't i can't count comprehend how how that could be okay and how that could be a solution clearly there's alternatives clearly there's things that we can and should work on to better support folks down there to address safety concerns down there the residents of the camp want to feel safe obviously so if there are threats or safety issues emerging from the camp there's a shared interest not just from neighbors but from residents themselves of of addressing that and there's clearly a lot of opportunity for collaboration and and to get a lot of folks who are currently at the camp into better housing and also to support folks that ultimately um want to stay there who for one reason or another other the other options available to them if there are any if we do identify other options maybe those options don't work for them for one reason or another and they want to stay at the camp we can support that there's clearly tons of people in the community that can support that including cvo who came here tonight and said explicitly that anyone who wants to say they're going to be there to support them and we heard so many members of the public who it's the same thing so that is the approach and the response is find better options for those who want them connect folks with resources and then support the people that need to stay and there's really just no excuse I mean we on our consent agenda tonight we didn't even discuss or debate it was on a consent agenda which is um 263 thousand dollars to fund the daytime warming center and 20 000 to fund the Fletcher free libraries efforts to serve the needs of the houseless so and this is coming from ARPA funding from federal funding so clearly we have the ability we have the resources to better support people we're hearing that over and over again people are scrambling right now trying to do that for folks down there and they're scrambling because of this eviction deadline tomorrow and it's just tomorrow night people who are currently living at Sears Lane if the eviction moves forward do not have a place to go we know that that is clear and to to support that knowing that these people have nowhere to go is just unconscionable thank you councilor hanson and councilor mason uh thank you president tracy um i want to start by first thanking the administration and those who have been involved um volunteers cbo yo dcf everyone who's really stepped up over the last week uh to try and ameliorate some of the conditions and the issues that are at sears lane i've this is an interesting debate because i often feel it's somewhat similar to you know some of the national debate that it's you know the same set of facts but we have two sides drawing completely different conclusions i we heard repeatedly throughout public forum you know cherry picking whether this was the assertion that this was pre-textual that it was only because there was you know one bad apple that's simply not you know as one of the representatives who who represents ward five and has seen the encampment over the last you know multiple years i shudder every time i walk by there at the conditions that i'm seeing and the fear that someone is going to get very very hurt we have makeshift structures that are constructed they're generators running there's open gas containers there's electricity being pulled from a pole you know an outlet and and quite honestly i and councillor shannon have been expressing concerns for a material period of time and the administration has resisted those calls trying to make something work but what happened is plan b failed you know it got to a point where there needed to be a managed service you know an rfp was put out and no one responded to me that speaks volumes about the issues that were there that happened to coincide you know with the red rather large drug bust that happened at the same time but once you got in which the administration did and started looking at the conditions there's a litany of of crises and problems that we've all seen repeatedly it's in the emotion today no one talks about that i mean everyone talks about it's only the impact and i'm not undermining the impact on those residents but i'm struggling to understand are we waiting for something serious to happen before and then we all say it's not our fault the administration should have stepped in sooner it's just we all seem to be glossing over that fact ignoring the fact that there are residents that i represent who are on the other side who are living through hell on a daily basis one of the public speakers came up to me and told me before we started he had been threatened with a gun twice in the last week he took a week off from work because he was walking around armed all times because of fearing for his own safety he took a week off from work because he was afraid to leave his grandchild and his wife in their home that's okay we're okay with that i don't know which camper it is and whether that individual happens to have been displaced i don't know that nor does anyone else at this table but to just assume that that's okay we should put up with that that's not a realistic expectation that residents should have to put up with that day in and day out the additional evidence we got today someone launched a boat you know an arrow at a you know uvm medical center worker who was getting off a bus not acceptable behavior repeated public commenter spoke you know that that i live in an apartment and you wouldn't take down the entire you know kick everyone out because of one bad act that may be true but we also have health codes and public codes if someone went and built an entire apartment building without getting a single permit was running it off juice you know from from the local outlet no sanitary facilities open drug use and criminal activity no one would believe that the city would allow that to continue so at this point i'm not supportive of this given the 19 through 21 seek to keep it open indefinitely which i don't think is a realistic expectation nor is it fair to the neighbors i would like i know both chief lock and i believe chief mirad are online and i would welcome you know maybe hearing from them in terms of some of what they've supported and the public health issues that they've identified at the site if there's okay did you have a specific for them yes i would like them to speak specifically to the and i believe chief mirad is also online sure yep thank you welcome chief lock good evening councillors how are you tonight several weeks ago the mayor asked me my position on a managed encampment because obviously it doesn't fit the normal living conditions that went on the building code the way we enforce them and i told him i fully support a managed site that i understand that there is a houselessness problem and we do have to think about things outside of the box and and i would support that however um we face a crisis down there and someone will die they won't necessarily die from exposure they will die from fire carbon monoxide at that i am confident of we those structures are built with plywood pallets tarps all highly combustible materials you know our firefighters are probably less than three minutes away the building is down before we leave the station there is no way to exit you take the the storage of highly flammable lp gas cans gasoline cans mix that with smoking material probably a little bit of alcohol usage we will have a fatal fire down there this winter and and as i told the administration you know i you have to be prepared for that a managed site where we can manage the heating appliances where we have currently have stove pipes going up through just a tarp or a wooden structure without appropriate distancing again we are going to have a fire down there and and it will be tragic and then and i understand that we every day are required to place ourselves in danger for public good we don't ever anticipate being threatened with weapons it's just typically not what we do we certainly have um the capabilities for that we do carry bulletproof vests and and armored helmets for helmets but that's not what we do and i think for me that was a straw that i said i can no longer support this as it currently is it is a dangerous site it's dangerous for my people we've had to change our response plans to ensure we have police protection or police are responding with us or ask the patient not to to exit the site because we don't want to enter it that is um that is uncomfortable place to be as the fire chief more uncomfortable for my responders who have to be there two in the morning it would no discretionary time have to make decisions that impact the safety of those people in their own safety so again i think that a managed site works the conditions that are currently there are unsanitary unsafe to live in certainly unsafe to respond to thank you chief lock thank you i don't know if chief you're acting chief here it's online but if not that's okay i do believe chief mirad is online uh counselor uh council president tracy thank you for uh having me um i certainly echo everything that chief lock has just said uh from a responder perspective there have been a number of fires there in 2019 a trailer exploded uh we have responded there as police officers with great frequency um we have recovered numerous stolen vehicles there we have recovered numerous stolen bicycles there stolen property was recovered during the search warrant for the narcotics arrest that was made on october 13 we have responded there for incidents of violence uh it was reported to you just a while ago about an arrow it was shot presumably from the encampment at a uvm worker in the parking lot um or in the vicinity of that person it's undetermined but the fact that these are incidents are happening and i think that the person that the counselor mason mentioned with regard to coming home from work feeling that he needs to protect his own property i have great concerns about escalation there i have great concerns about current certain amounts of loggerhead that are happening between people who live in the neighborhood to the west of sears lane and those who are currently staying in sears lane there have been incidents of uh of heightened animosity between them allegations of rock throwing allegations of threatening with weapons uh and in some instances there have been people who have approached one another with weapons on both sides of that equation uh that is people associated with the encampment and people who live in the neighborhood to the west and eventually there is going to be an escalation that leads to something more dire we have seen this before in burlington encampments uh forest Bryant was killed in an encampment in 2014 he must be killed in 2016 these things do happen in these kinds of environments and it's because there is a sense of of danger and it's it's something that other members of the encampment speak about they've talked about it with members of of the police department particularly with uh with lacy smith um they they recognize it we are certainly cognizant of the need to find alternatives for people who live in this encampment currently and her staying in that encampment but the fact of the matter is that the conditions inside it are powerless they are dangerous they are not healthy and it is i believe irresponsible to allow them to stay longer than they have at this point i think that we're in a place where we can begin to actually find alternatives for many of these individuals alternatives have already been found for many of these individuals uh and it is not merely the one uh actor who was arrested in the ongoing narcotics investigation there are other individuals in that encampment who are committing criminal acts we do not have probable cause for those yet but anyone who goes to that encampment and sees the volume of bicycles puts that together with the volume of stolen bicycles that we have known to have recovered from that location cannot assume that there's anything other than a grand repository of stolen property similarly for automobiles that that is a location that not only the brolin to police department but other agencies have gone to to recover stolen vehicles successfully found them there it is uh there's ongoing activity of that kind there so this is not only the kind of place that people are talking about in terms of of nascent community or uh or some kind of sanctuary it's a place where there's ongoing criminal activity and a not insignificant amount of it thank you acting chief president tracy my last question maybe is for the administration there have been repeated questions about the r.o.p. process could maybe the administration speak a little bit to the engagement that went on before enduring and why at least it appears to have been unsuccessful thank you councillor mason uh yes i appreciate the opportunity to try to address questions about the r.p. and some inaccuracies about the history with sears lane have been stated tonight and last time we met last week so it is true that sears lane is a location that where there have frequently been encampments in recent years the city uh repeatedly and frequently um uh removed those recantment and encampments uh they were problematic in the past and the city frequently um took action um to keep uh to address serious public health and public safety issues what changed um over the last year during the pandemic um is that we have attempted to find as has been as many of the speakers called for tonight as some of our colleagues tonight have suggested we worked very hard over the last year to try to find some way to use the city-owned land to um uh contribute to be a resource in um addressing our incredible um housing crisis which is uh everyone who has spoken tonight um suggesting we have a major problem there is completely right we uh we people are right to be outraged at the housing challenges that for monitors face and the bro and tonyans face the so we tried to do something different here we tried repeatedly and we worked hard on this for a long time their first was an attempt to have essentially uh uh shelter pod um a proposal a year ago that uh almost received funding from the state this is before the city had emergency funds almost received funding from the state but failed on a divided vote we continue to work this year to try to come up with a way to as other cities have done successfully have a managed encampment there and we this was not a two-week process and i want to be really clear about the conversations began with the nonprofit community in uh the spring the intensified over the course of the summer and uh the CEDO team um director brian pine uh was his highest priority that that uh i gave him when he began his work in june and for months the city team worked to try to make a management encampment site work work there um even when it became clear that no one would respond to the RFP the CEDO team continued to work with the brolandton housing authority to see if some additional mou could be arranged and um that seemed to have some promise to it but that they are that organization is now going through a leadership change and they were unable to pursue it so we were left um in the days leading up to these two really quite unacceptable incidents um uh two weeks ago um we the the attempt to create a managing encampment uh clearly had not been successful and there was the city has no way um of addressing the very serious public health public safety and crime concerns that you've heard from from the chiefs if we are not without that um and so really uh i i agree with the councillor megea that this is an issue of life and death uh i and we are acting for a place of um being very concerned uh about what will happen um uh if we continue on the current trajectory as we've just heard from uh chief lock um we are very likely to see serious injuries and death if we allow the encampment in its current form to continue we have no way of better managing it um and so we are we are we are we are we are taking other action we are mobilizing other resources and i want to make sure this is is clear because i feel like from some of the comments of councillors tonight maybe and to be understandable i want to make sure i'm i'm i'm articulating clearly what the plan is starting tomorrow at 9 a.m. um we are we have we are succeeding in mobilizing substantial emergency resources to help anyone who wants help from the city and our partners get into a better housing situation uh those resources were not available until the administration announced the action that the encampment would be removed they had been made available on an emergency basis these are different emergency resources from any of the other state programs right now they have been mobilized specifically to a you heard from the executive director paul dragan is working on a one-on-one basis with everyone uh at the encampment that they can make contact with and though those efforts are succeeding um the there are somewhere approaching uh 20 people now who have through the work with cvoio found um found were on the cusp of finding new housing opportunities as a result of these emergency resources and anyone who is continuing as of 9 a.m. tomorrow the order will still be in place it you know keep there's a suggestion that there's an eviction happening tomorrow 9 o'clock what is happening tomorrow 9 o'clock and i welcome uh anyone who wants to talk to the city attorney to to get into this more precisely tomorrow 9 o'clock anyone who is still on the site that has been duly noticed um will be subject to sanction for trespassing if they're still there after 9 a.m. however um what um i have said to you what we have said publicly what we will be continue to say in to campers at the site tomorrow is that anyone who is continuing to work with the city with our partners in good faith um who is attempting to move into a uh alternative form of housing is attempting to access these resources that are being made available um we are going to give them time to succeed with that we are um not going to take precipitous action tomorrow with anyone who is is seeking to um relocate to a better housing option and um we are doing that work on a one-on-one basis uh and we are going to continue to work very hard to see that that work succeeds thank you councillor mason thank you president tracy nothing for all right i have councillor freeman in the queue thank you president tracy um is my microphone working okay tonight yep you sound good okay thank you um i have a lot of notes here and i think a lot of um thoughts have come up um during this conversation um i want to thank some of the previous councillors who spoke um from a place of vulnerability um it's always um it's always an interesting dynamic to bring um our full selves and our full identities to this space um i find for myself that um sometimes it's easier than others um and this is certainly one of those topics that um does strike a personal chord with me um i don't normally speak about this in the context of these meetings um i don't really speak about it publicly at all but um for that matter but um this issue feels important is important and it's important to me and so i want to um i just want to speak a little bit um most people don't know about this or i guess publicly i've never spoken about this i guess people who are closer to me probably know but um for many years of my life i'm lucky i think now to be in um good health sort of in general and good emotional health um but for many years of my um my life i um i was suicidal which i don't know if many people know um and i think that i promise this is relevant i think that for me um that experience um and having experience with mental health um has um given me um a sense of um shared community with um um with folks who also have a sort of array of mental mental health issues and i think that um what that has led me to is uh look at a lot of the overlap which there is a considerable amount of overlap between um mental health issues and houselessness um and it is one of the things that is most i think most frustrating for me in these conversations um when we talk about houselessness because although we can focus on um sort of um aspects of uh economic stability there is such um an intense overlap really with mental health and that's why um during the last meeting i brought up the fact that um for some folks um four walls is just not going to be um something that's ever going to work for them and it frustrates me so much because i find it to be extremely discriminatory that a group of people especially people who might be able-bodied um can uh sort of meet you know their needs in sort of more traditional ways can pay their bills at the end of the month can sit around a table and make decisions about other people's lives who may not have access to those and that is completely fair that they don't and they are allowed to do that and it is extremely discriminatory and ableist um to not consider that um when we make these decisions and that's why when i say that we need to have housing policy um that's inclusive and comprehensive that's what i'm referring to and so i think one of the other biggest frustrations about this conversation in this conversation is that one of the main things that gets brought up in defense of these types of policies things that close down encampments or put limits on people being able to sort of sleep outside if they if they want to and of course i actively believe that we should be giving resources to folks but we can actively do that without closing down encampments it is not an either or is this conversation about safety um and that um this this idea that um these are just sort of crime-ridden areas and that what we're really concerned about and i think this is what the administration has put forward and you know various you know folks that um that there's just such a concern about crime and that this is so harmful and this is so dangerous and i think that that is just such um it's not an argument that actually once when you hold it up to the light like actually has teeth to it it's um it's a way to deceive people into thinking that we care about harm reduction and safety when really what this action is is discriminatory it's classist it it marginalizes people who are maybe not doing well economically are not well in health have sub you know whatever it is that puts people in the in a position of needing to and we've heard people talk about um having being housed us due to domestic violence these are really serious issues and these are all reasons that people may become housed at a certain at a certain point and using um arguments that it is um that it's that this is just simply dangerous and this is why we need to um that we need to close this area is just um it's not it it doesn't actually um bear out and i think that um there that if you look at um if you look at harm reduction from the perspective that people actually um become less harmful the more resources that they have and the more community that's around them that we wouldn't use sort of this this um archaic thinking of this punitive um this punitive idea that we need to sort of um that if we remove the things that people have to meet their basic needs that this is somehow going to make them um less harmful um and so I really just find that that argument is completely um baseless um it's extremely frustrating it's it's frustrating to um to um to realize that this is going to um impact people in a way that is just I think completely unfair that the issue broadly um even if we move out the date of closing down the camp or if we um you know say you know it should be in a week or whatever there's no point in which closing it down is going to change any of those issues that are going to change the fact that this is essentially um punitive and um meant to um discriminate against people who for whatever reason have are houseless and it could be you know for any any various you know sort of causes and factors so um this is again this is just such a difficult conversation um to witness and um I I I always try to write things down ahead of time but um sometimes it's hard in that in the moment to um it's it's just an emotional topic and um I feel like I have made so many um emotional pleas um and pleas to people's values um and sort of this collective humanity into um and to not make um essentially like discriminatory decisions at this um at this council uh and um I I honestly it is so hard to know if it if it ever is really making a difference um and the amount of toll that it takes um to tell this story or any story over and over again when it is um the lived experience is uh so so difficult is just um it's just exhausting and sitting and hearing um the pretty um pretty awful and terrible reasons to close close this camp or any encampment um is just um it just feels absolutely terrible um and it makes me really sad so um I absolutely don't I absolutely support um leaving the uh the encampment open and um I really hope that as always I hope that we can um we can make a decision that actually supports people um and it's just hard to say whether that's going to happen tonight thank you councillor Freeman and councillor Jane I do not write a lot of statement but today I did I I I wanted to capture what I wanted to say about this issue and I completely agree that everyone deserves and have the right for a permanent housing America has all the resources we do Burlington has resources as well but what it seems what's lacking is the willingness to do it we have 15 million dollars that we want to figure out what to do with it in this city right do we have the willingness to definitely do but I don't think deconstructing the campus site will solve this problem because if we do it will just bring the same people who need housing to a different site a different location and all the people will experience the same problem different neighborhoods there are all the smaller let's say type of these camps in in the city they elsewhere you know but just in a smaller scale and those people are cool they do their thing they live their lives no drama nothing we have to recognize that for some people it this is about their way of life they do not need to be housed they do not need a voucher because I talked to these people I know most of them the city here we have held several housing summits have we ever included homelessness we don't and I requested it let's not look affordable housing let's look about housing for the people here at least two we did it here despite all my requests but I was told that this administration is doing something about it and soon there will be actions and proposal right here here we are I also wanted to clarify that I did not wait until this issue is hot for me to step up I live in the new north end I'm a proud new north ender I could have say oh this is not the new north end but when I heard of this issue I took action I lived on pine street for eight years never heard of the Searsland never until businesses the surrounding businesses been bugging me oh you know you have to come see I've been here in Searsland you know but never never been there never it's on August the 20th that I set my foot in there but what I have seen ladies and gentlemen what I witnessed what I have seen is my proper eyes I could not believe that I am in the city of Burlington the biggest city the economic driver of the state of Vermont I could not believe I interacted with President Tracy Cedo director because I was blown of what I witnessed what I have seen the stories that I heard from the businesses that I talked to I could not believe in that I was embarrassed to be a city councilor in here and then having this in at my doorstep not even knowing about it people have been complaining for years and years this issue is not new Joe the councilor Maggie maybe you are new but there has been lengthy conversation at CDNR members of CDNR include Democrats and Progressive about this issue the RFE all of this discussion please go read the the meeting minutes of CDNR this issue is not new well when I heard about it I took action I left my job on a Friday be there witness it talk to the homeless people who live there talk to the surrounding businesses to take action and I think time the time is right right now this is this is this is about the quality of life of property taxpayers of business owners the people who live there this is about their lives what's at stake during a public health emergency I have seen the humanity of those people who live there great wonderful people right the condition in which I found those people that's here's land wild cats dogs unleash just just chickens on the loose everywhere generators plugging my ears this is what I saw I've felt even in one point that I'm in a mechanical where people repair cars and motorcycles numbers you know the condition I came anyone who wants I can send you the email of frustration that I sent to couple among us to try to to just express what I see businesses are concerned property owners are concerned I did not wait until you hear report from WCAX to then talk about this where in your committees you could have pushed even harder for the administration to take action and they were doing it too it was just very slow at a smaller scale very slow right there were not a sense of urgency and I did not at least sense it to anyone from us we as a city council we have a standing items on our agenda climate health emergency we do we discuss it every day and we can do exactly the same thing by having homelessness progress report if we are serious about this issue I think that's what we need to do this is not about CS land this is a big issue and it need a comprehensive plan to get it done that's what I'm interested about I'm also called to ensure the safety of businesses property taxpayers and they are concerned I want action I don't want to talk I don't protest I'm not worried to come here to protest I was worried to take action and that's what I try to do and let's do it together this site CVOU made it clear today to us let me read you a couple of it and also I'm a board member at CVOU proud one Mr. Paul Dragan made it clear nine people have been already housed nine 12 people are strongly considering to be housed 12 he said there are two who are relocating in a different state elsewhere there are three four or five people left three four or five people and he said his team are there every day to provide services I think there is an all of us to come together on this this site we need to clean it up we need to look into all the people also who live inside the woods right we need to provide housing for them and whoever is willing to put a standing item homelessness progress report let's work together let's all come together and before the end of the day there has been also a lot of reports in the state of Vermont about chronic homelessness how the state and municipalities come together to put it down veterans they've been helped people with mental health we have work to do people who are addicted we have work to do but let's do it together I have amendments and my amendments I think are fair and it will allow at least for this resolution to be balanced I put those amendments and it's a coordination again Democrats couldn't look at it Mr. Mayor did some proposal for us to maybe extend not pushing people away tomorrow but let's allow CVO and those who want to be housed right to get the proper services they need within a week so if you ready President Tracy I want to yes please go ahead my amendments okay so after line 18 of the resolution I have three different whereas clauses I want to put them all down and if you want I can read it the first one whereas the City Council recognized the quality of life concerned experienced by some property taxpayers and renters living at the proximity of the Sierra Leone encampment site the second whereas clause the city of the city council the Burlington City Council is aware of several safety concerns expressed by members of the Burlington school district community and all the due to the proximity of the encampment site at Champlain Elementary School businesses and neighbors the third one whereas the city council does not ignore but recognizes all the ongoing concerns about the Sierra Leone encampment even before the COVID-19 I want to talk about those first Council President and then we can talk about the rest I want to bring those forward first okay so we have a motion on three amending in adding three whereas clauses is there a second seconded by Councillor Mason any discussion Councillor Hanson is it the ones that were emailed or are there changes since then yep they also on board it's the same thing on board okay are you clear Councillor Hanson is anyone I need a second to read it but yeah is there further comments is there anyone in the queue sorry no go ahead Councillor Freeman um I just if these are the ones that were sent over email um I am reading them now um I think the first whereas clause um I don't like it uh because it pits the language says property taxpayers and renters living at the proximity of the seriously I don't like the idea of pitting taxpayers and renters against people who are houseless that just is such a false dichotomy and I think is a really poor way to classify people living in community with each other I just think that is the quality of like concerns experienced by everyone why why are we just identifying it's just I don't I don't like this um um the safety concerns again I in the second whereas clause again I think that this is um this argument is a red flag to me the um if when we talk about safety concerns um a lot of again a lot of times when we when um so we all know vagrancy laws were um were outlawed we can't just uh basically it's on a crime to be poor anymore this was outlawed in the 60s 70s etc and so forth um but so now other excuses like behavior is another is a way that we get around vagrancy laws as um to penalize being poor essentially or or have mental health issues health issues etc and saying people are dangerous or violent um this is another way that we basically get around vagrancy laws because we still just want to make it a crime to be poor or mentally ill so I don't I don't like that whereas clause and then the last whereas clause again it doesn't I don't think it really adds to the resolution and so these whereas clauses as a slate I will not be supporting them thank you Councillor Freeman anyone else okay let's go um uh could I could I make a comment President Tracy yes go ahead Councillor Shannon thank you um I just wanted to acknowledge Councillor Freeman's point and I don't want to go slur um Jang wanted to amend the language I would be supportive of changing that first whereas clause to the city council recognizes the life safety concerns experienced by some taxpayers renters campers school children and passers-by um I think that to say they are merely quality of life concerns and not to recognize um that the campers are probably are certainly the most vulnerable of all in this situation I don't think quite captures the lived experience of of everybody in this area however I am grateful for Councillor Jang's efforts and I think it was close so again I I don't want to keep debating this this isn't an action clause but if there was interest I I do have that language thank you okay so are you not making an amendment Councillor Shannon I am not making an amendment okay anyone else in the queue on this amendment okay seeing none will the city clerk please call the roll on the amendment Councillor Barlow yes Councillor carpenter yes Councillor Jang yes Councillor Freeman no Councillor Hanson no Councillor Hightower no Councillor Mason yes Councillor Paul yes yes Councillor Mickey no Councillor Shannon yes Councillor Strongberg no City Council President Tracy no Six Eyes Six Nays the amendment fails we're back to the underlying resolution I don't have anyone else in the queue we're ready to go to a vote Councillor Carpenter I'm sorry Councillor Shannon oh sorry I've Councillor Carpenter first did you want to get it back in the queue for the underlying well I am confused because I thought Councillor Jang was going to go back to the underlying and and Councillor Jang had some yes additional amendments okay did you were you wanting to continue on Councillor Jang of course please yes okay yeah Councillor Jang go ahead thank you and it seems that the council is divided just to and refuse to recognize some of the concerns we have been hearing about this whole issue it's very clear but now you know I have another amendments to other I wanted to replace line 19 to line 21 with a resolve clause as indicated on board arc this is very clear that be it further resolved the City Council urges the administration and partners to continue to work on one-on-one with all Sierra Land campers to ensure that every camper who wants better housing and is working in good faith with that city to ensure that it is it has the time necessary to complete that housing plan that's the first I want to replace the resolve clause on line 19 to line 21 is what I just read Mr. President thank you we have a motion is there a second on that amendment seconded by Councillor Barlow did you want the floor back Councillor Jang no president please is there further discussion on this amendment council carpenter um just clarifying was the current um asks um that the encampment can continue and this I'm interpreting and I'm supportive of that the um city will work one-on-one to ensure everybody has a housing option so um to me that sounds like a reasonable and fair alternative the administration has expressed their intent to not ask everyone to leave tomorrow morning but that we get to a point where folks um can safely be given other alternatives and we heard from CDO they believe that's possible that doesn't answer the long-term solution about the fact that we probably need um some planned camping and we we need the time to get that plan together and so I think this that this will allow us to make sure that those current occupants are safe and that we can do some plan work um that we desperately need thank you I don't have any further folks in the queue I can get thank you I can get um I'm pretty sure and again just reading these as we go but um I think the um this might be stating the obvious with the other this is like this is 19 through 21 right now so in the final draft on board docs the resolution says this is where we call for the administration to continue working to get port solutions that allow they can't want to safely continue um I strongly prefer that language I think that um again as I spoke to earlier I think that it's important to um not just focus on the fact that some folks might be able to get access to housing um and that we should work to make sure that anyone who wants access to housing should have it um but I think that the the reality is that people my my belief is that people should have access to being able to um to camp or or be in non-traditional housing um and that's a rate that everyone should have and I I feel that the original resolution um more closely represents that value um and that um and that policy essentially so um I I don't think I'll be supporting this resolution thank you thank you Councillor Freeman I don't have anyone else in the queue Councillor Hanson yeah I think I don't have any issue with the resolve clause that's being proposed as an addition but I do have an issue with deleting deleting the existing resolve clause because I think that's where we're trying to make a clear statement and really call on the administration to not move forward with the eviction and so I wouldn't want to delete that but I don't have issue with um the new resolve clause either thanks so are you making never mind anyone else in the queue okay seeing none we will go to a vote on the resolution army not on the resolution on the the second amendment will the city clerk please call the Councillor Barlow yes Councillor carpenter yes Councillor Jang yes Councillor Freeman no Councillor Hanson no Councillor Hightower yes Councillor Mason yes Councillor Paul yes Councillor McGee no Councillor Shannon yes Councillor Strongberg no City Council President Tracy no seven eyes five days the amendment carries we are now back to the underlying resolution Councillor Jane yeah five minutes sorry Councillor Jane can we take the five-minute recess President Tracy five minutes yes okay we'll come back at 1159 okay President Tracy those were my only amendments any further discussion on the underlying resolution President Tracy could I get in the queue yes Councillor Shannon there's no one else in the queue so please go ahead thank you sorry I'm trying to turn my camera on while at the same time keep my my notes here um ending the encampment at Sears Lane is not about putting people out of housing and into the cold it is about helping people come in from the cold and go save motels and housing away from the elements that could kill them this winter that is if they survive the fire hazards and violence ending the encampment at Sears Lane is not about leaving people with no place to go it's about finding them housing and forcing the state to finally step up with assistance which they are now doing ending the encampment is not about criminalizing poverty it is about offering people the first rung on the ladder to climb out of poverty it is about assuring a safety net for those that want it and need it ending this encampment is about providing safety for campers social workers first responders and neighbors what are the safety issues in the encampment their needles human feces guns drugs drug dealing intimidation fights violence people have been evicted from Sears Lane already by the inhabitants of Sears Lane one camper was burned out of their campsite the whole place torched the structure bed and belongings all gone in charge there was an explosion at another campsite that thankfully no one died for 10 years there were campers there intermittently that were not problematic to themselves or others but that has changed dramatically i have been to Sears Lane and talked to campers though not recently because it's become increasingly unsafe i haven't done nothing i've volunteered with neighbors to clean up the site advocated for porta potties and dumpsters until a better solution could be reached and i picked up the bullets weeks after campers denied there were guns or that what the neighbors heard were gunshots one week ago a medical center worker simply going to their car in the adjacent parking lot was shot at from the encampment with an arrow barely missing their head a neighbor had a similar experience with an arrow into his property these are deadly weapons being shot at innocent people in the vicinity in a land without laws or accountability it is very difficult to ascertain who is doing this the piles of stolen bikes everyone denies ownership same goes for stolen cars speaking of ableism my differently abled neighbor and i don't use the term disabled because despite never having had the use of his legs he renovated his own home and many others and he gets wherever he needs to go by using a hand cycle his hand cycle was dragged from his home across the tracks and found already cut up in the encampment if someone lives in a house an apartment a motel or a shelter they cannot deny responsibility for all of the stolen property surrounding them the way they do at Sears Lane neighbor neighbors have been yelled at sworn at and intimidated by multiple people including one brandishing a weapon the response to that is neighbors carrying their weapons and the escalation that chief mirad describes many neighbors are unable to speak here because of the intimidation and fear of retaliation and anxiety they experience they don't sleep they cry while certainly not everyone in the camp is a criminal there are criminals in the encampment that victimize neighbors and other campers as well as the citizens of Burlington allowing it to continue is condoning the criminal activity and not serving the victims of the many crimes both within and outside the encampment this summer i went to sears lane with a social worker and met many people there and heard their stories i've also gone into sears lane alone which i won't do anymore and i've heard some very sad stories and i strongly feel people here deserve help the end of the encampment is the best way to facilitate that the state was unwilling to help us until we reached this point now we have partners i know because i have called them and begged we can work with people who want to work with us to assure a smooth transition we need to help people to get into a more stable situation than what they have now this is not a peaceful safe place while the firefighters may have bulletproof vests the school children the medical workers and the neighbors do not the same person who threatened the emt's also came to a neighbor's house to threaten that family after being charged and released the threats for the threats to the emt's and patients it can't be cleaned up with 20 to 30 people living there and more coming and going and nobody takes accountability i want everyone to get the help that they need and that can best be done by continuing the process of getting people into housing the mayor has tried for more than a year to find alternatives to allow the camp to continue but this effort has failed and the need to move people out of this unsafe situation is urgent i ask the council not to obstruct the efforts to assure people are able to take advantage of better options for real housing this winter delay could cost a life either of a camper or a neighbor or a passerby the status quo is profoundly unsafe our city is kind and our work city workers have shown kindness to the campers we will continue to work with people to solve problems and find solutions but to do that we need to be met halfway and we need a deadline which has already been set and extended and the mayor can extend it again on an as needed basis let's not obstruct the progress that has been made we need to act at this moment in time when we have partners stepping up to the table as temperatures continue to drop the best way to save lives is to house people not to leave them in a highly volatile and dangerous encampment removing people from a dangerous encampment and helping them into housing is humane not cruel even if the transition is difficult for everyone cvo eo despite their best efforts have not made the site safe and while they'll remain it still won't be safe it'll be increasingly unsafe as the weather worsens thank you thank you councillor shannon i don't have anyone else in the queue councillor hanson yeah i just want to say i don't think any of us are saying there's not serious issues down there there clearly are i think what we're saying is that we need to work harder to address those issues and and find the resources because we clearly have them both in terms of the expertise the money the people power the partners the collaboration we have the ability to to work on this and so what we're saying is let's not give up let's let's work harder let's double down and there's two fronts there's the front of yes finding people at the encampment who want to find housing connecting them with with better housing and then the other front is making the camp safe and i think we're pointing to ways in which the camp is incredibly unsafe but then we're just throwing up our hands and saying the solution is just to disband it and evict everyone when in reality we could put resources into actually making making the camp safe i i think we it's it's lazy to assume that it can't be done i know that it is possible i know that we can do it and you have service provider doing this hard work and are begging for more time to do that and continue that progress so we could not only allow them to continue that but we could also step in and and double down again not just getting folks housing that's key and that's part of it but also making the camp itself safer thank you thank you councillor hanson anyone else president tracy may i respond to that i'm mayor wineburger in the queue first and then i'll come to you councillor shannon go ahead i think i was in the queue after jack oh okay i'm sorry councillor freeman then mayor wineburger then councillor shannon it doesn't really matter i just didn't know if you saw me raise my hand well councillors go ahead councillor freeman um yeah i just wanted to sort of piggyback off that i so i think and i said this during the port of finance is that um again when we're talking about harm reduction and harm intervention um and this is why i think there is so much um criticism of um disposability and disposability culture in the way that um and this is what leads to i think systems that are punitive that are um that lead to um i mean there are many system many factors that lead to mass incarceration but i think the philosophy and the values um that lead to disposing and displacing harm um and violence and why um harm intervention is actually so much more about um and i think this is what councillor hanson was speaking to sort of earlier is that or at least that's what i heard from it is that um it's about um continuing to engage and that um what i brought up in board of finance is that um back in the day um we can recall um when lunics was giving one-way bus tickets to folks who were houseless um downtown and that um there's this aspect of saying um this person someone is harmful um they are having health issues um maybe they're down on their luck whatever it is um and so i'm going to give them a one-way ticket out of my neighborhood out of my backyard and out of my community because i don't want to deal with it not in my backyard and i just that is not the way that we reduce harm that is not the way that we treat human beings human beings are not disposable it's in it's in your backyard it's in it's in all of our backyard okay and we're not just going to do my belief is that we don't just dispose right and just displace that and that's why i'm so frustrated why i understand and i and i think that most people at the table are saying that we don't like harm that we don't like but that that's not actually what's happening here what we're what we're talking about is displacing and disposing of human beings and that that's not okay um and to not like completely um tear this conversation open but you know since we're here i might as well i might as well get into it since it's a it's a related topic and um what i think is so frustrating is that when i've brought up other aspects of of harm intervening um for example this is like forever going to be the third rail um and i feel like i am just um destined to constantly bring it up um and i and i just am going to go for it again once again um when i brought up and i i brought it up probably three four times about um this is this is so messy but i'm just gonna i'm just gonna go for it um that the the um the amount for example just using example of um harm in um uh the statistic uh high amount of harm um and abuse that happens by police officers in their personal relationships in their in their home life and the amount of times that i've been silenced in that conversation um and it's met with crickets when i bring that up even though it is statistically been looked at um it's because we don't my belief is that we don't actually want to address harm when it's messy um but what we want to do is we want to use arguments around harm um to sort of cover for things like displacing and disposing people based on values of that are actually really a classist um an ableist um and it's extremely frustrating and i don't think we should prop up those arguments with false claims that we're concerned about safety when what we're really um trying to do is is displace people and penalize them um and it's it's extremely frustrating so um i agree i i strongly advocate for for harm reduction for addressing um safety but i want to talk about things that are actually not safe and not just use um a lack of safety as a way to prop up um sort of arguments that that don't actually really have any tea thank you thank you councillor freeman i have uh mayor weinberger to be followed by councillor shaman i just want to try to succinctly address the statement that somehow um we're giving we're giving up we are not giving up on addressing the serious problems we have with housing and homelessness and houselessness in this in this community the on your gen as as councillor hanson mentioned the administration came forward and has expanded supports for uh people who do not have homes over the course of this winter with uh bringing back to the downtown at day station this is in addition to the biggest expansion of services for the chronically homelessness the city i think has ever had uh about six months ago nine months ago with the creation of the year-round low barrier shelter on uh shelburn road the cito team continues to work to explore to find a way to use city properties to next year have additional facilities to help us uh support people um who want to live in non-traditional settings who um are not able to access other aspects of our housing safety net or other housing options we need more tools to um uh properly and supportively uh make our way through future um challenges like the one we're facing here and the cito team and i will continue to work on that as hard as we can and bring another proposal back to this council as soon as as we're able to i don't it cannot succeed at the current um site under the current conditions but we are going to continue to work on the effort to add to the home the safety net that we have for supporting people who do not have homes and in the in the months ahead thank you mayor i have councillor shannon i have a lot to say but it's after 12 15 and i will refrain thank you thank you and i don't have anyone else in the queue let's go to a vote will the city clerk please call the roll councillor barlow yes councillor carpenter the resolution is the underlying as amended the underlying as what is your vote councillor carpenter yes is that a yes can you please say it in your mic yes thank you councillor jane yes councillor freeman sorry i can you can i just have a point of information what is your point of information i just i was confused by councillor carpenter so we are voting on the underlying correct yes the underlying resolution yes but someone i thought i heard someone say as amended i did i miss an amendment that was there an amendment that passed that i miss it i thought they were both six six but maybe i am maybe i missed an amendment did carry oh it did okay um sorry um can i uh sorry let me just process that do you do you want to can do you want no i need to vote now um sorry i completely miss that i thought that it was six six i'm sorry the hour um i don't know that's not a vote councilor freeman can you please please vote yes or no uh i just need a second to process i'm sorry where are you calling the roll okay well just councilor freeman what is your vote sorry i i just didn't realize there amendment i just i i i literally just need like 40 seconds i'm sorry can you just i i think it's okay if i take like 40 seconds i'm sorry i just do you please continue calling the roll councilor hanson yes councilor hightower yes councilor mason yes councilor paul yes councilor mickey yes councilor shannon yes councilor strongberg yes city council president tracy yes yes councilor freeman yes well wise resolution carries we will now continue with our next item on the agenda we have two more resolution studying community wide transportation demand management program councilor hanson thanks um this is a discussion that's been happening for a long time around transportation demand management um i think this is looking to take to move the ball rolling towards larger-scale action on tdm um community wide this was uh the funding for this study was included in the the mayor's budget that we approved um and the ideas that we would look into how we can create a citywide system where um institutions and employers would be required to support alternative transportation for their employees and visitors and people going to and from their site and so this lays out sort of a framework that we could study that um and i think the reason this is important why does it matter why are we putting resources towards it uh transportation is the biggest source of them still are in a climate emergency we still have a very long way to go especially in transportation but it's also an equity issue and an economic issue um we're trying to find ways to support people um moving around the city getting to where they need to get getting to key services and employers and being able to do that um cost effectively and not needing to spend tens of thousands of dollars to purchase and own and operate their own personal automobile if people choose to do that that's that's fine but we want to make sure that folks that can't afford that or choose not to do that can still move around safely and efficiently so that is the gist of it and that those are some of the reasons why i think this is important but this is really just a starting place um this would go to the two committee and it's it's going to be a long process even just to get the study off the ground so this is just up on thank you thank you councillor hanson sorry do we get a second on that i actually think i just spoke i don't think i actually made the motion please make the motion i will move to uh wave the reading and adopt the resolution thank you seconded by council high tower any further discussion yeah really really quick okay go ahead um thank you um i think this is a really incredible opportunity for a lot of different entities to be able to um be a part of this kind of transition that we do want to see here in burlington but also lead the way um in the county and the state and the country um so yeah i think it's so funny because we have the climate emergency reports right after the public forum and it's always like there's usually a dominating topic and then it's hard to just segue right into the climate emergency after that but i do want to reiterate the fact that like the west coast just had its worst storm ever um like ever in recorded history happened in the last 48 hours and that's pretty terrifying and these things are happening live and they're happening right now and they're impacting people and friends of mine that are living over there um so yeah i'm really excited that this is something we're going to be hopefully moving forward with and uh very serious way thanks thank you anyone else okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye aye that carries unanimously brings us to our final item of the evening uh 6.10 a resolution regarding the issuance of general obligation bond for capital projects council poll thanks president tracy i would waive the reading and adopt the resolution i do not need the floor back after a second okay seconded by councillor jane councillor our ceo shatter you're just able to to give a just a brief explanation of this because we already adopted this correct are bringing this back before you because unfortunately there was a minor issue in the table of the resolution that we that you approved a few weeks ago um and although that is not a binding table it did um cause some confusion with um some members of the media and the public so we wanted to make sure that although it's illustrative that everyone has the same information um and that's why we're bringing it back before you again we're going to come back before you assuming the bond were to pass by the voters before we spend the money um but this is just making sure that what's in the resolution matches what was in the powerpoint that we showed you at the end of september okay thanks any further discussion president tracy i have a question sure go ahead councillor shannon i was hoping that ceo shad could be a little bit more specific about what the difference is not having them side by side i don't really understand what changed sure councillor or ceo shannon yes um let me pull that up but the main difference is that uh we had money in vehicles um that is now uh been taken out and has been put towards municipal buildings and mayor do you remember what the other line item was yeah if you compare them side by side the there the the proper table um the one that is in the before you for action now has two million dollars more for sidewalk funding and the ceo indicated there's an additional 1.5 million dollars for civic buildings and the reduction is um in the fleet going from 5.4 down to 2.2 i believe those are the main changes uh that's correct there might be some minor additional ones but that was them that was the main one mayor i just couldn't remember about sidewalks thank you does that answer your question councillor shannon yes in addition could you also um speak to if we don't adopt this tonight and um we put it on on a ballot at a later date either march or november um my understanding is that that is that uh we may get a lot of the money that we need from federal funds um some from savings from last year capital funds we didn't spend last year so what exactly will be the impact of um voters not not passing this it's it's actually voters have contacted me today and i think yesterday saying that they have the ballots in hand at this point so it's an odd time to be amending it but i appreciate why you're doing this thank you uh mayor so to be really clear the ballot is not being amended the ballot was properly the language for the ballot was properly approved by this council um and the ballots have never printed in they have the ballots have been sent out and people are starting to vote and the error in the resolution does not impact again the kind of binding part of that resolution which was the ballot language um the table is um what where there were these errors um and they again they were not consistent with the discussion and the PowerPoint presentations at the board of finance and the council tonight that this was approved and this is correcting that um so that the record is clear essentially if so i'm a little hesitant to sort of go back into the debate of the implications of of what passage or non-passage of the of the of the bond means um there is language in the resolution that speaks specifically to um councillor shannon's question about if we are successful at securing more um federal resources than were projected when putting this resolution together it um there are guard rails in this resolution that uh that commit the city to come you know back to the council for further action uh recognizing those changes so if we do better than expected um with uh the federal infrastructure bill or other proceeds great we may not need to spend all this money and then we'll be something that we work through together thank you mayor councillor shannon i'll let it go thank you okay anyone else okay seeing none will the city clerk please call the roll councillor barlow yes councillor carpenter yes councillor jang yes councillor freeman yes councillor hanson yes councillor high tower yes councillor mason yes councillor paul yes councillor mickey yes councillor shannon no councillor strongberg yes city council president tracy yes levin eyes one day the motion carries and a motion to adjourn is in order so moved moved by councillor strongberg seconded by councillor mickey any discussion seeing none all those in favor please say aye aye aye any opposed we are adjourned at 1232 thank you