 All right, so we'll get ourselves started here. Good evening, everyone who's joining us in Contois and everyone who's joining us online. Today is March 13th, 2023. And thank you so much for joining us. The time is 6.40. We'll begin this evening with our agenda, our council agenda, and going to item 1.01, which is a motion to adopt the agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? So moved. Thank you, Councillor McGee. Seconded by Councillor Travers. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion to adopt our agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda and just wanted to also note that we have Councillor Carpenter, who is joining us via Zoom. We'll move on to the second item is public forum. And public forum is for a time certain of 7.30. And we have not arrived at the 7.30 hour, so we will continue with our agenda and come back to the public forum. As the time is now 6.40, we'll move on to the first item that we can go to, which is climate emergency reports. Is there any councillor or does the administration wish to offer a climate emergency report? Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. I will just share with council, obviously a very significant vote on ballot question number two last week that endorsed, again, by a large margin, the creation of a carbon pollution impact fee. What, we're still not quite done with this. This may not have been clear to everyone to actually create this and start enforcing this new fee. There is gonna need to be some ordinance work and the BED team has already started working on that. And it will be ready to work with you on that to get it in place in the coming months. From my perspective, this is an important step forward in our efforts to become a net zero city. By 2030, this new fee works hand in hand with the very significant incentives the Burlington Electric Department is offering and the two of them together will be really quite a powerful combination for transforming our buildings in the years to come. Looking forward to working on that with the council in the month's end. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Are there any councillors who wish to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none, we'll close out that item and go on to, we'll go back to our consent agenda back to the deliberative and move on to item number six, which is committee reports. Are there councillors, committee chairs in particular, that wish to offer a committee report? Councillor Bergman. So just briefly, the Charter Change Committee will bring back for our last meeting the rules that were referred to our ordinance, out to our committee. And we're just gonna be revetting to make sure that all the changes and things that we did are included in the document that we're getting from the city attorney. So when we're having a meeting to do that the Thursday before, so we will put this on the agenda with the information to come and you will see revised rules at your next meeting. Great, thank you, Councillor Bergman. Any others who wish to offer a committee report? Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Powell. The License Committee will be meeting on March 22nd at 3.30 and among our more typical, or aside from our more technical items we're also going to be discussing the matter of the Cannabis Local Control Board and the fact that it seems to waste a lot of council time, subcommittee time, staff time. And worst of all, it is simply an obstacle that lengthens the amount of time that applicants, for an applicant to actually get license. It's a hoop that they have to jump through that is a guaranteed yes because we're not allowed to vote no. So we're going to be discussing what to do about that. And if anybody wants to weigh in on that, please contact a License Committee member or Cannabis Local Control Board member. Thank you. Thanks very much, Councillor Shannon. Councillor Chang. Thank you, President. The Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Committee will be meeting on the 21st at five o'clock in the bushel room and we will be looking into the mission statement of the committee. We will also be talking a little bit about Juneteenth celebration and also receive update around the strategic planning of the roadmap for the city of Burlington around Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. Thank you. What time is the meeting? Five o'clock. Five o'clock, maybe you said that, I apologize. Any other, oh, I'm sorry, Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. The Public Safety Committee has been working in collaboration with the police commission and the police department to amend certain department directives as recommended by CNA's operational assessment. We will be working with the police commission later this month to review some of the work that's been done on those and would hope to finalize that work in April. At our next Public Safety Committee meeting on March 23rd at five o'clock, we will be working to finalize the committee's report on all of the CNA recommendations, which if all goes according to plan, we'll come back to the full council for a presentation and vote on the 27th. So look forward to bringing that back. Thank you. Great, thank you, Councillor McGee. Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. The Transportation, Energy and Utility Committee will be meeting on Tuesday, March 28th at five p.m. at 6.45 p.m. We don't have a complete agenda yet, but we will be having the airport leadership back to talk to us about the emission inventory that they're planning to do. Great, thank you, Councillor Barlow. Any other Councillor Travers? Thank you, President Paul. The Ordinance Committee does not have a meeting scheduled at the moment, although before our committee is pending the proposed zoning changes for the South End Innovation District, I think consensus has come to that because this is likely to stretch over multiple meetings that we will meet on this upon the next City Council term beginning. So folks are tuned in to the status of those proposed zoning amendments. We are looking to potential meeting dates in mid-April for us to begin as an Ordinance Committee or consideration of the South End Innovation District proposed zoning amendments. The other piece I will add in my role as Chair of the Ordinance Committee, but I know it involves Councillor Bergman as well as Chair of the Charter Change Committee, is that this Council did pass a resolution committing us jointly to continuing to consider proposals on police oversight and accountability in the event Burlington voters rejected the question seven proposal on a community control board. Given the results from town meeting day, we are now obligated and I'm glad to do so to continue this vital important discussion. I know I've already been in touch with Councillor Bergman and we'll be working to coordinate plans not only between our two committees, but also how to best bring in other community stakeholders and organizations as we continue to consider this issue. Thank you. Great, thank you, Councillor Travers. Seems as though we've covered just about every committee. So I think we can probably close that out and go on to item seven, which is City Council General City Affairs. Are there Councillors that wish to offer comments on General City Affairs or community updates? Seeing none, then we'll move on to the next item, which is item number eight, City Council President Updates. The only update that I have is that I did see, the Flint Theater is pretty dark and it's possible that I didn't see everyone that was at the public safety event. I saw a couple of city councillors at the event. It was a great conversation with some national experts on police oversight and accountability. It was a very interesting conversation. There was also an interactive aspect to it that did offer some community input and I've reached out to the organizers of the event to see if we can capture all of the community input and we can get that and use that as one more, one more way of gathering community and public input on police oversight as the committees of, as Councillor Travers just mentioned, the Joint Committee, which will be made up of the Charter Change and Ordinance Committee. And we will, we are, as Councillor Travers said, we are starting to work on that already and we'll be ready to go, certainly when the next council year begins in just a couple of weeks. Given that, we'll close out that item and go to item number nine, which is Updates from the Mayor. Mayor Weinberger, the floor is yours. Thank you, President Powell. Just one item from meeting eight, exciting event coming up this week that I intend to be at and I'm sure there'll be councilors there as well. We, the Burlington School District will be moving forward and having its groundbreaking of the New Burlington High School on Wednesday and it's a very important project for this community, one overwhelmingly supported at the polls and it's exciting to see it reaching this milestone there. It's also, I will share a lot of discussion in Montpelier making good on our mutual, attempting to make good on our mutual commitment, working with the school district to secure other sources of funding to ensure that it is not Burlington taxpayers alone that are shouldering the financial cost of this regional entity and this entity that is gonna involve a significant cleanup that was required by state action. So that work continues and I hope to be back soon with further updates there after this exciting milestone. Great, thank you Mayor Weinberger. We still have plenty of time between now and the time that the public forum would start. So we have three other meetings that this evening that we need to attend to, that being the local control commission, the local cannabis control commission and the Board of Civil Authority. So we'll recess the city council meeting at 652 and we'll call to order the local control commission meeting at the same time. The first item on our agenda is item 1.01. Is there a motion to, and this is the local control commission meeting if everyone wants to get to that agenda. The first item on that agenda is item 1.01 which is a motion to adopt the agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? Thank you, Commissioner Shannon, seconded by Commissioner Travers. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have our agenda, which moves us on to item number two, our consent agenda. Commissioner Shannon, is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda to take the actions indicated? So moved. Thank you so much. Seconded by Councillor Travers. Any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. Which moves us on to our deliberative agenda. There are five items on our deliberative agenda. The first is item 3.01 which is an application for a festival permit for two days for Oktoberfest, Waterfront Park, September 22 and 23 of 2023. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the two-day only festival permit application for Oktoberfest at Waterfront Park Friday, September 22nd, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. and Saturday, September 23rd, 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Any discussion? All those in favor of the motion is made by Commissioner Shannon. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Which moves us to item 3.02, a first-class restaurant bar liquor license application for piece of magic, LLC doing business as Revolution Kitchen. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2023-2024 first-class restaurant bar liquor license application for piece of magic, LLC, DBA, Revolution Kitchen at 9 Center Street with the following conditions, contingent upon fire marshal approval and with all standard conditions. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Which moves us to 3.03, an outside consumption permit application for piece of magic, LLC. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2023-2024 outside consumption permit application for piece of magic, LLC, DBA, Revolution Kitchen 9 Center Street. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion as made by Commissioner Shannon to approve the 2023-2024 outside consumption permit application for piece of magic, LLC, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. We'll now go to item 3.04 which is a first and third class restaurant bar liquor license application for half enterprises. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2023-2024 first and third class restaurant bar liquor license applications for half enterprises. DBA, side bar, the other half. 202 Main Street with the following conditions contingent upon fire marshal approval and with all standard conditions. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously which brings us to the last item on this deliberative agenda. A first item 3.05 which is a first and third class commercial caterer liquor license application for pine and ginger LLC. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2023-2024 first and third class commercial caterer liquor license applications for pine and ginger LLC. DBA, the pinery. 377 Pine Street with the following conditions contingent upon fire marshal approval and with all standard conditions. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. And thank you so much to the license committee for all of this work. With no other business on this agenda and seeing no objection, we'll adjourn the local control commission meeting at 6.58 and call to order the local cannabis control commission meeting at the same time. The first item on that agenda is item 1.01. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? Move to adopt the agenda. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion to adopt the agenda please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That means we have an agenda. And our next item is item two, which are three 2023 local cannabis control applications. Before we go to the applications, is it, I don't know if there are any of the applicants present this evening. Members of the contra, there is one. Do we, are either of you aware of, or two, all three of you, you actually are all three of you together on the license committee. Are there any others that you know of that are present? Because I do not see anyone online. All right, so what we have done, this is an odd situation, we as has been pointed out, we don't really have a whole lot of authority, but we do have to vote on these. And what we've done in the past is while applicants are under no obligation to disclose their business information, we invite them to come forward, introduce themselves along with any information that they wish to pass along about their business. It's an opportunity for our version of a little free advertising. If you would like to, and again, you're not under any obligation to do so. Yes, please, and just make sure that you press the button that's right in front of you on the microphone that says push. Good evening, I'm Josh Markle. This is my partner, Scott Sweeney. We are forming True 802 Cannabis, which is located above Akes Place 134 Church Street. 132 is our shop, our new shop that is opening. Basically what I'd like to tell you guys is we're trying to start something organic, something from the ground up. I know that there is quite a few different shops that don't throw away from ours, right? So there's one in the alley. There's one to the right of us. There's one to the left of us. And I can assure you, we definitely wish success on everybody, but our plan is completely different than what these other shops are selling. So just not getting too in-depth on it, but we look at it as advocating for the farmers, for the consumers. We want you to come up and just, we're gonna have a couple of different zones, right? So you walk in, there's gonna be this information, decompression zone with some art on the walls of local farmers, of just different pictures of farmers, like flower in different, what am I trying to say, just in different stages, flowers in different stages, right? And the information of the farms. So we want you to gain the information. We want you to take a look around, and we will have people up there to help you on your way towards what you wanna purchase. So again, it's totally an interactive kind of thing that we're trying to work with right here. So that's just a little bit of what I have to say, so. Great. You're good? Yeah? Okay, wonderful. Thank you so much. Thanks for being here. Are there any other applicants? There were three applicants float on the herb closet, and then you as well. Are there any others that are here? And again, you're under no obligation to do this, but it's just an opportunity to introduce yourself to the community. Okay, seeing none and seeing no one with a raised hand online will go to the deliberative agenda. The first item is item 2.01, float on, and for this item, I'll go to Commissioner Shannon for a motion. Thank you, President Powell. Would it be appropriate to move all three at once as a slate since your only option is yes? Yes. Thank you. Yes. I move to approve and recommend to the local cannabis control commission that it authorized transmission of local approval of float on cannabis application, the herb closet cannabis application, true 802 cannabis application to the state cannabis control board. There is a motion made by Commissioner Shannon to move all three of the local cannabis control applications. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Is there any discussion on the motion? Commissioner Travers. Yeah, just very briefly, President Powell, one of the joys of serving on the license committee and whereas I have some concerns around the authority of the Cannabis Control Commission of serving on that commission, has been the sneak peek that it provides into the business activity and the vibrancy of our downtown. And I'm incredibly excited that we have three additional cannabis applicants here who are looking to open businesses downtown. We've already approved permits for Revolution Kitchen reopening under new ownership. Former owners of the Half Lounge on Church Street are moving into the sidebar on Main Street. Oktoberfest is coming back to our waterfront. And it's incredibly exciting to see our downtown continuing to return to being a vibrant place for folks to be. I'm grateful to the folks who are here and the other applicants who are opening up shop and really contributing to that. So thank you. Well said. Is there any other discussion on the motion? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion as made by Commissioner Shannon and seconded by Commissioner Travers, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously because in fact, that is really the only thing that we can do. With no other business on this agenda and seeing no objection, we'll adjourn the local Cannabis Control Commission meeting at 7.05. And that brings us to the next meeting, which is the Board of Civil Authority. That is chaired by the mayor. So I will pass the gavel to the mayor to preside over that meeting. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. I will call the Board of Civil Authority into order at 7.05 p.m. and would welcome a motion on the agenda. So moved. Thank you, Senator Second. By Councillor Shannon. Any discussion of the agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and it brings us to our only item of business on the Board of Civil Authority agenda, which is the consent agenda. And I would welcome a motion to take the actions indicated on it. Make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions as indicated. Thank you, seconded by Councillor Shannon. Any discussion of the consent agenda? Seeing none, we will have a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The consent agenda carries unanimously and with that, we have completed our agenda and without objection, are adjourned at 7.06 p.m. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. That brings us back to the public forum. I'm just gonna take a moment to look at the number of people that have signed up for the public forum. We still are about 20 minutes early, despite my best intention of being able to time this so that we would literally go into public forum from all of these other meetings, we're actually running a little bit ahead of schedule. So I'm just gonna need to take a little bit of a break to see where we are and then we can come back. So if you can just give me a couple of minutes. Fill one out and bring it to the clerk, which is who is also to my right in the front of the room. If you wish to speak via Zoom, you can go to burlingtonvt.gov, public city council, public forum, and a forum will come up. Just complete the forum and your answers will come into a spreadsheet that I have right in front of me on my computer. That way I can call on you in the order in which you signed up. It has been our practice that Burlington residents will have first priority. We'll go to Burlington residents in con toys first and then to Burlington residents online, then back to non-Burlington residents who are here in person and we will finish with online Burlington residents that are joining us online. During public forum, we make one request of everyone that speaks at public forum other than keeping to the time limit. And that is that you please use respectful language. I'd like to remind everyone who's here in person and online that there are families who watch our council meetings live and they do this to instill in their kids and in their families a connection to civic engagement. We ask that you think about that when you are making your comments. Please direct them to me as the chair and not to anyone else at this table. Please do not personalize your comments. Again, we are excited. We are always happy to see a large gathering for public forum and we wanna hear what you have to say. And it is a lot easier for us to listen if you speak respectfully. With that, we will go to the public forum and the first person is Jessica Oskie to be followed by Emily Copeland. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you. My name is Jessica Oskie. I am award five resident. I live on Charlotte Street. Thank you all for sponsoring and supporting the resolution condemning violence against transgender people. This resolution matters. With so much hate, fear and polarization in our country and even in our community, I don't take for granted how lucky we are here in Burlington, Vermont to have leaders like all of you that model caring about each other as a non-partisan and non-political act. As the mother of a transgendered kid who is now in college out of state, I worry every day about his safety. I'm so grateful that he had the opportunity to grow up in this community and the benefit of a caring and supportive foundation from the Burlington School District. There are bad days and mean and cowardly people, but in the end, because of strong leaders like yourselves who use your voices to condemn hate, violence and bigotry, love will win. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jessica. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Emily Copeland and I just also would remind you if you could just use your hands to show your support for what someone is saying as opposed to clapping. We can continue with the public forum. Emily, thank you for joining us. Thank you. My name's Emily. I'm award seven resident. I live on Best Haven Drive and I am here on behalf of my beloved trans neighbors and family members who are too afraid to come to things like this right now. So I'm here also trying to model to my two kiddos who are here tonight that this is what you do for people that you love and this is what you do for your community. You come and you stand up against things that are not right. And we are big time Burlington Arms Walkers and we take stickers down every day. And my kids know all about what the stickers mean and how they don't include all of our friends and family members. And they are seven and 10 and they wanna do better. So I'm here trying to facilitate that. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Olivia Taylor to be followed by Julie Masuga. Good evening. Hi. Hi, my name is Olivia Taylor. I am a resident of ward seven and I clean stickers. I'm here today in support of the resolution that supports the LGBTQIA community and condemns transphobia. I believe that every person deserves the opportunity to find themselves in a safe and supportive environment. Around the country, right wing extremists and special interest groups are spending money to enact policies that limit the rights of trans and queer people. In Burlington, there are people who wanna make schools, parks and public spaces unsafe and unwelcome to queer and trans youth. This resolution won't rid our city of hate but it does show everyone that the city is committed to creating inclusive shared spaces for our queer and trans community. I am hopeful that this resolution will lead to further action and change and I am extremely thankful for all of you for working on this together. To close, I wanna say to every trans person, you matter, you are important and I will never stop fighting for you and gender affirming healthcare saves lives. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Julie Masuga to be followed by a state representative, Emma Mulvaney-Stanek. I don't consider myself trans but would making myself more masculine make me more of a target? And this was after convincing myself to come to city council in the first place. I've been quiet for some time though I used to come here constantly and even ran for office. Part of it was just life getting busy and part of it was fear. We've all seen the stickers, the podcasts, the tweets and then things escalated. Vermont's GOP attacked legislators who were trying to help young people get access to gender affirming treatments. Shortly after these threats, fur and feather, a trans person from Montpelier was stabbed to death. A week later, someone threw a brick through the Pride Center's glass door. Transphobes with cameras harassed people at the Pride march and then came to antagonize and berate children at a charity fire truck pole. They insist that the parents of trans children should be put in prison. They brandish guns in an attempt to intimidate. They try to incite violence with the hope of filming the aftermath. We've encountered many of these incidents, our little community safety group, deescalating and planning escape routes in the event of a shooting. Every time we do so, we feel our intestines turn to stone. We wonder if our trans family will come home with us that night or if they'd be murdered like Fern was. But we know that the distress of not being able to live as openly trans causes high rates of suicide. Gender confirming care is one of the least regretted medical procedures that exists and a tiny fraction of our percentage of people who do de-transition do so mostly because it is too hard or dangerous to exist as openly trans in our society. But here we are with the fear in the back of our minds that the trans folks among us might be killed. The first time I heard someone announce their pronouns, I was confused and admittedly annoyed, but I grew up. I freed myself to wonder about what gender I wanted to be and it turned out I didn't wanna be any of them. I've been threatened, doxxed and had my home vandalized just for being a supporter, but here I am with no hair on my head, intestines turn to stone and so much love for my trans family that I can't help but keep showing up. Thank you very much. Next speaker is State Representative Emma Mulvaney-Stanak to be followed by Romeo von Herman. Thank you, good evening. Good evening. You've changed. And former City Councilor Emma Mulvaney-Stanak as well. I'm State Representative Emma Mulvaney-Stanak. I represent Chittin 17, which is half of the Old North End into the New North End. And I am a former City Councilor. I served about 10 years ago in this body. And this resolution you have before you is so important. I don't think I've actually been here since I served on Council. And it is that important that I decided to show up tonight. To show solidarity to the trans and queer community of Burlington, but beyond Burlington throughout the state of Vermont. I'd also like to acknowledge because a lot of these stickers are showing up inside my district in Chittin 17. I'd like to really lift up the allyship and the expression of allyship by numerous community members who have removed stickers constantly for over two years now. They are showing up in parks, schools and storefronts in the Ethan Allen Shopping Plaza. They're everywhere and they're persistent. For safe and inclusive communities, what it requires is consistent action by allies, consistent action and public expression of support. And I'm glad to see this resolution today and almost all the Council signing on to that resolution because it acknowledges the importance of the existence of these individuals, our neighbors, our community members, our family members. And when necessary, we must require enforcement of local, state and national laws. As other speakers have mentioned, there is growing attacks on the LGBTQIA plus community, not just today, but it has been growing for years. And there is their hate crimes and proposed and enacted legislation growing around the country. Acts like these stickers are part of this concerted effort to challenge the mere existence of queer and trans people in our country and our state. We must take this seriously. It should not end with this resolution. And we must especially take action when young people are targeted, which we know is happening due to the targeting of schools and youth centers like outright Vermont. Vermont is not immune from hate and the state delegation that I serve with are looking into researching our state hate crimes to see what gaps exist and making sure that we can protect schools in places where young folks and minoritized communities convene. Good is that important that we work together and I hope it goes beyond this resolution. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Romeo von Herrmann to be followed by Leif Toronto. Toronto. Good evening. Good evening, thank you. Madam President, Councillors, Mr. Mayor, the city administrative team, I also want to show my support to the trans community and the importance of being able to be at a place where it's equitable, inclusive and caring. More importantly, as a member of the Green Mound Transit's Justice Equity and Diversity Committee, I always stand for the importance of equality and as well as inclusion. Saying that, I also wanted to table a motion today as part of the speaking time, which I do understand is two minutes and I was wondering if subsequent meetings, it could be considered having two additional time for up to four minutes if possible in the future. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Leif Toronto to be followed by Aspen Overy. We can come back if anyone knows whether or not this person is still here. Leif Toronto. Yes, oh, great. Please join us. No worries. You just need to press the button right in front of you, the green button. Oh, this one. You should be good now. Hello, yep. Sorry, I was upstairs. No worries. Hi, I'm Leif. I wasn't sure if I would come today. I was pretty afraid for my safety. I'm pretty afraid for my safety now because I have been doxed by TERFs before and it could happen again for talking here, but I thought it was important. I want you all to know that Burlington is not different from the other places where all this transphobic stuff is happening around the country. We are not different from Texas. We are not different from Tennessee. I know sometimes it might be like, oh, everything's all rainbows here. It's not. I can't even count the number of trans friends, including myself who have been attacked or harassed in the streets. I can't count how many times I've tried to pick up my meds from Walgreens and waited until the pharmacy closed or the number of times that I've seen stickers walking around. It's really scary here and I'm glad you're doing something about it. I do want you to know though that this resolution is not gonna fix all those things, so I hope that the reaction to this isn't, oh yay, we passed a resolution. Everything's back to being all rainbows. It's fine. I'm not sure if what we need right now is more visibility. I think what we need is support. We need affordable housing. Basically every trans person I know in this city is housing insecure. And we need accessible healthcare. We need to be able to walk around without being afraid. We also need protection from the cops, so I'm a little worried about more cop involvement with the stickering, so just wanted to flag that for you all. Please don't criminalize the trans supportive stickers because we put those up. Those are nice. Yes, so that's what I have to say. Keep going. Do a lot more things, please. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Aspen Overy to be followed by Mary Ann. Either one will work. Sorry, my bad. Okay. Hi, my name is Aspen Overy and I'm here to speak on issue 5.07 in support of the curriculum. A few weeks ago, I held a vigil for Breonna Gay on the steps of this very building. Breonna is a victim of the same violence that is infecting this country, that is infecting the world, that is reaching its tendrils into this city. It's a violence that is attempting to strip the autonomy, strip the lives and strip the dignity of trans people. And I want to say this is nothing new. We have been here before in Germany. The Magnus Hirschfeld Institute was one of the first habits books burned. Because of course it was. We, us as trans people, we have the power to define ourselves, the power to reach into ourselves, to reach into the social fabric and craft our very being. And now this building wouldn't change anything. This is functionally a symbolic bill and Breonna needs to far, far more to be a safe harbor for trans people and the families that are coming and will come. But what this does do is send a valuable message and is a message I hope to echo here. That as long as there is breath in my lungs and life in my body, I will fight for my liberation and fight for my autonomy to have control over my own life. My siblings and I have the basic right to dignity and a basic right to live free from the fascists here. We will not go back. We will not be silent. We will not be eradicated regardless of what these monsters would like. Trans rights now, trans rights forever. I yield my time. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Marianne to be followed by Christopher Aaron Felker. Ward from Ward 7. And I'm here to call out WCAX's intentionally divisive trans activism that is harming this community and possibly trans themselves. I became suspicious of their so-called reporting even before trans feather was murdered. I noticed then how much more time they were giving to the story than other news outlets. Then the story with the help of the Pride Center and activists developed into bullies are causing trans suicides. De-transitioners tell a different story. In the last seven days alone, very influential CAAX has poked the hate bear with four filler trans stories. One on people pumping in the workplace, another on normalizing menopause and another about the Catholic Church organized St. Patrick's Day Parade on Staten Island. With the intention of stirring up division in this community, they reported that trans alone were not allowed to participate in the parade. The honest story is that for the second year, LGBTQ was not allowed to carry their banner. The parade after all was all about things Irish. I complained to CAAX about their activism. I received a very angry and hateful email in return accusing me predictably of being transphobic and hateful. As I see it, WCAX is intentionally stirring up haters to manipulate this community and all of you. They need to stop their irresponsible, misleading and excessive trans activism. To the trans people here, I just wanna say, it is hateful to label everyone who doesn't support gender ideology as hate, hateful and transphobic for the purpose of intimidating, shaming and silencing them. You may think that hating people, those people and politically manipulating others to hate with you feels right, but it is wrong. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Christopher Aaron Felker to be followed by Jane McDougall. Good evening. Good evening. Stickering campaigns are common forms of free and political speech. We didn't invent stickering campaigns, we learned them from you all. This resolution contains multiple references to so-called transphobic stickers which made me realize that many may actually not know or be aware of what the written content of these stickers is. These stickers state such controversial phrases such as I defend women's sports spaces and rights, listen to detransitioners and no one is born in the wrong body. It is objectively obvious that this is constitutionally protected speech on an area of public concern. To those who demand that government censor, track and target individuals because they deem their statements to be offensive, know this, we do not censor or criminalize speech in this nation because it offends. That's simply not how this works. Furthermore, the threat of state violence to attack and suppress political speech here is extremely chilling and has been interpreted by members of my LGBT Alliance as another escalation by this administration. Stickering campaigns are utilized in this very city by such organizations as Black Lives Matter, Cop Watch, Pro Choice Organizations, CEDO, the AFL-CIO and Ramble, even the transgender community. So if the city wishes to crack down on graffiti, they can crack down on everyone, but they won't and we are not backing down. Thank you. Just also would just like to remind everyone that part of Public Forum is allowing us the opportunity to listen to all points of view and everyone should feel welcome to be here. So if we could all just simply keep, you have your opportunity to speak and once you've had your opportunity if you could just allow other people to speak without interrupting them, we would appreciate it. Our next speaker is Jane McDougal to be followed by Nick Tatakis. Hello. How are you? I'm here to speak about the sidewalks on Cherry and Pine. The wheelchair ramp is busted and the sidewalks where I live at Cathedral Square are not in the greatest condition. I was told that Cherry Street and the sidewalk was gonna be ripped up to be physically having new piping underneath sometime. My friend that works here said that she's gonna call Rick at Cathedral Square. I thank you very much. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Nick Tatakis to be followed by Kim Jordan. All you need to do is just make sure that the microphone in front of you is on and if the green light is on, then it's on. Hi everyone, my name's Nick Tatakis. I am a member or resident of Ward 3. I was inspired to come here tonight because of the resolutions that my counselor, counselor McGee highlighted for me. So I wanna talk about saying that I'm proud to be a member of the LGBT community and proud that my counselor is supporting these resolutions tonight. I'm proud of my LGBTQIA plus community members for speaking up tonight and sharing their stories. Specifically, I would like to voice my support for resolution 5.08 and the portion of it reiterating the call for overdose prevention centers. I am a public health professional and I have a history of working in Philadelphia in the harm reduction space. And I know that harm reduction works and harm reduction saves lives. And I would be a proud Burlingtonian if we had an overdose prevention center. I know that overdose prevention centers are especially important for people who are in extra precarious circumstances after a period of abstinence and that period can be voluntary. It can be made mandatory and if they return to use they're especially vulnerable to fatal overdose. And I believe that overdose prevention centers work safer consumption sites work, harm reduction works, empathy works. It all saves lives and so I implore you to continue the work to find how you can bring more of that into Burlington. Thank you. Thank you, Nick. We see you. We see you. Our next speaker is Kim Jordan to be followed by Lizzie McCullough. Hi, Kim. Hi. I'm Kim Jordan. You see her pronouns. I am the director of the Safe Space Anti-Violence Program at Pride Center of Vermont. And I am speaking in support of resolution 5.07. It is a beautiful resolution. It is well crafted. It included perspectives and voices of people directly impacted by LGBTQ plus hate and harm and silence. And I also want to acknowledge that it was created with accountability and support and visibility isn't always safe, right? And we all want to be in a place that we feel seen and supported to be who we are. Over two years ago at Pride Center we were alerted to these stickers in the New North End that our non-binary, gender non-conforming trans residents and siblings felt minimized their human rights and they felt unsafe. In that two years escalating hate and harm in our communities, in our country has escalated. And so it is only natural to draw the line that that harm that is happening to folks in other parts of the country is just gonna be here unless this body, this city stands up and says not here, right? That act of visibility of opposing harm and hate is vital. And it might not be able to be legislated away but it can be loved away. And we need you to stand up and say not on our watch. Harm and hate not on our watch. We're all gonna cause harm accidentally oops but intend to harm and saying some people are more human than others. It's not okay. So I invite you to pass this resolution as someone who's queer and as someone who works for a statewide organization against hate and harm. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Lizzie McCullough to be followed by Kel Arbor. Welcome. My name is Lizzie. I'm a Ward 3 resident. And I just wanted to come here and speak about my sister who's trans and who I love very much. She's creative and she's intelligent and she's beautiful and she's kind. She's a performance artist. And I wanted to share a quote from one of her pieces which is a monologue addressed to herself the year she came out. I want you to know that as the years go on it will get easier for you to exist as yourself to assert yourself but it will not get easier for your grandpa or for anyone to continue to label you with images that only become more obscure. The people in Vermont and in this country who deny the existence of trans people refuse to understand that trans people are here and they always have been here. They refuse to see the humanity and the joy in people who find the strength to assert themselves and they refuse to see their own hypocrisy as they use bad faith rhetoric about women and children's safety to enact violence on people who deserve to live their lives in peace. Yeah. That's all I wanted to share today. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Kell Arbor to be followed by, I'm sorry, my apology. Go ahead. I got myself out of order but that's all right. Please, it's okay. Please, welcome. I work in Burlington. That's okay. My name's Kell Arbor. I use warrior and they pronouns. I work at the Pride Center of Vermont as the director of the health and wellness team. I also came out in Burlington. I was assigned female at birth and in the late 90s, Burlington became a refuge for transgender, non-binary and non-binary gender, non-conforming people. We are so diverse in who we can be and Burlington has been a beacon. We've been a mediocre, pretty good beacon. We've been a beacon for LGB people but the TQI of us are not being served while in this state. I live in Montpelier right now and I agree with everybody who's saying that the hate is happening everywhere. I see it everywhere. I drive around the state. My neighbors are petrified. I don't move in that fear because that fear can't exist in my life. We have to move in liberation and to have that support and that space to be our authentic selves, we need these resolutions to support transgender neighbors and community members and stop this hate speech. The number of people that come to the Pride Center because they have had a traumatic life event. I almost died of an AIDS diagnosis. We are taking our own lives. We are leaving this state for other states because we don't feel safe here. I want us to be better than good. I want us to be who we can be, not just who we are being now. I want us to dream of a space where the youth, their beautiful, diverse, incredible identities that we support them. Our bodies are our choices. We leave the womb and we need other people to help us support our freedom when we're young. We're standing up for all the young people here. We never had that as kids. I'm 45 to imagine that I could have been supported and didn't have to struggle and go through such pain and trauma, but Burlington gave me a safe space. We are not doing that for everybody and this resolution could help. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Mark Montalban to be followed by Todd LeCroy. Welcome. Evening, my name's Mark Montalban. Identify as a cis man. Also identify as that I have members of my family who are killed in Holocaust and those who fought against fascism in Italy. And the thing that I find interesting and I've been to Germany and why certain types of hate speech is not allowed is because how hate speech manipulates, spreads fear and convinces people that their neighbor, their coworker, even their relative needs to be eliminated. I think there's two areas I wanna talk about very briefly in Burlington. Progressive areas and many people came here for many reasons to Burlington for social justice but not to be harassed or being pigeonholed and attacked. Whether it's Berkeley, Boulder, Santa Fe, Montpelier. Strategically, hate groups are coming after what was considered safe. This resolution is good because it's a path in the right direction but I think we have to go further and consider a sanctuary city. You may not realize how many people are coming from Texas, Kansas, other places. People who have been threatened or harassed, their kids have been threatened, who have been transitioning, who are coming here literally seeking freedom. It's no exaggeration. So I think part of what Burlington needs to do is collaborate at other quote unquote progressive minded areas and strategize. Another factor I wanna point out very quickly, I was told not to come here because it may impact my business. I'm a cultural vendor. I do a lot of business and trades in the New North End and there are people in our part of town who actually would like to eliminate transphobic people who told me that because I am supposedly one of them. I was even called a traitor because I'm considered a heterosexual male. So let's really look at what's going on. There are, I would say, at least a couple hundred people within our city who want to eliminate folks they are in fear of. I will say this is a pandemic and as in a health pandemic, this city better take this pretty damn serious because I'm hearing language that those from my grandmother's generation heard in the 1930s. I hope that sinks in. Thank you. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Todd LaCroy to be followed by Lee Morgan. Good evening. My name is Todd LaCroy and I go by human being. You see how that reaction was? You see, Americans are messed up. I remember the day when people who fought for tolerance were tolerant themselves. You know, when I started Occupy Wall Street, that was our ethics. Now, everybody has a problem in this country. The selective outrage that's going around. Everybody wants to be selective about their outrage and use it as a reason to harass people they don't like from all walks of life. All of you do it. All of you have been taught by Facebook to do it. And you all are participating. I don't see too much sanity going around amongst any of you. Here we are now. Squirrel, you guys remind me of the dog with the collar in the movie Up. Here is a wedge distraction we are arguing about while we fail at police reform, while we failed at the economy for our children, while rents are unlivable for our children, houses are unaffordable, drug problems left and right. And all you people do is argue over words and their meanings while the actions are ignored. I have withstood so much violence and aggression and hatred from all of you, from all walks of life in the last few years. And it's amazing because you all tell me I'm something that I'm not. To justify your harassment, your abuse, and your torture. And you know what? I can't hardly ever find anybody who is honest, human, tolerant, and listening and trying to hear anymore. And you are all guilty of that. Thank you, thank you very much. Our next speaker is Lee Morgan, highly and our last speaker in Contoy's who is a Burlington resident is Dana Kaplan. Just trying to find my place, my note. Sure, take your time. I was adding as I was listening. My name is Lee Morgan. I am a Ward 7 resident. I'm here to speak in support of the resolution supporting LGBTQIA plus community members and condemning transphobia. The beginning of my life was a very dark time for me. I did not come from an accepting family. So to just put it mildly and to paint a picture of what that looked like for me, my teen years were a complete blur of suicide attempts, overdoses, and substance use disorder. Over time, I learned how to build towards the life I wanted and surrounded myself with people who could get me closer to that goal. As a result, I haven't had any contact with my blood family in over 10 years and I don't miss it. I've lived in Burlington for over four years. I came here because it was a refuge from where I was as a trans person. And let me tell you what my life is like now because it's really good. It's funny what being in a supportive environment and having loving people will do. So I fell in love in Burlington. I'm getting married in June to someone who accepts me and loves me and is proud of me along with his family. I don't have to hide who I am at all. I am super involved in the Burlington community. As most of you know, I'm on my NPA Steering Committee. I'm on the Community Development Block Grant Advisory Board through CEDO. And you folks recently appointed me to the Parks and Rec Commission. And on March 1st, I celebrated 15 years clean and sober and coincidentally, I haven't attempted suicide since I got sober. Life is really good for me in spite of my environment growing up. If you pass this resolution tonight, you have a chance of helping people's lives be good because of their environment. And I'll just finish with this. The day of trans visibility is vital to building a safe and accepting community for all and showing our young folks that may be in a dark place that there is something to stick around for. Thanks. Thank you so much, Lee. Our next speaker is Dana Kaplan. We did have someone who had asked to speak. I don't know if you're a Burlington resident, but you can certainly go next. That is Karen Sita. Hey folks, my name is Dana Kaplan. I use he and him pronouns and I'm outright Vermont's executive director. I forgot about the time limit, so I'm gonna read fast. For over 30 years, outright has worked tirelessly to build a Vermont where all LGBTQ youth have hope, equity, and power. In the recent months and years, we've seen a rise in aggressive anti-trans hate. We must understand that these attacks are attacks on our rights, our lives, and dignity, and in the proper context as real and escalating threats to public health and safety. A coordinated nationwide effort is underway to erase and disenfranchise trans people. According to the ACLU, 409 anti-LGBTQ bills are currently active in the United States, most of which target trans youth. For Vermont youth, the national landscape forms a horrifying backdrop to the struggles that they face every day in their schools and communities right here. Trans youth have been targeted online by peers and authority figures, singled out for false and defamatory media attention, their identities weaponized by adults who care more about making a political statement than about their well-being. The kids are not all right. The stickers plastered around Burlington's neighborhoods constitute an anti-trans hate campaign, and it's just one more tactic among many that aims to tell Vermont's LGBTQ youth that it's not okay to be who they are, that they are not valued or cared for or allowed to exist. In Vermont, according to the 2019 YRBS data, we know that LGBTQ youth are two times likely to have been bullied than their peers, three times as likely to have skipped school in the last 30 days because they didn't feel safe going to school and four and a half more times more likely to attempt suicide in the last year. As adults showing up for LGBTQ youth, it means taking visible and vocal action against hate, supporting them in facing day-to-day challenges and taking decisive action to create communities where they are not only safe, but seen, celebrated and loved. This moment demands urgency and decisiveness. It's time for the administration and city council to break its silence and show LGBTQ youth that their lives matter and that Vermont is a place where they belong. I wanna thank the Burlington city council for taking up resolution 5.07 and for LGBTQ youth watching and listening, know that we are here for you, that you are loved, respected, cared for and adored for exactly who you are. You are worthy of a world of possibilities before you and we are here to help you. Don't hesitate to reach out to us. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Dana. Our next speaker is Karen Sita to be followed by Jessica. K-E-R-E-N. Okay, yeah, I see that. I see that, welcome. I'm not a Burlington resident, but this whole state belongs to me. So I speak for the state and for the Africans that are not here, the Asians that are not here, the immigrants that perhaps don't have the English to speak up and say this is not normal and we are here to fight for people who don't wanna normalize the unnormal. Now, I understand we all wanna be ourselves, but you know there are women that are suffering too that we get to really find a solution for them. I'm fighting for the women that enjoy penises. I'm fighting for the women that enjoy going to dress shops and being only with women and not having to subject ourselves to men or whatever they claim to be. I mean, yes, be yourself. However, why make it law? Why have to force us to follow their will? You know, this is democracy that means no one can impose their personal will on you. And you know, many times, many, many times this issue is being imposed on us. There are many people, whether they like to admit it or not, you know, for me, I speak the truth because I'm gonna do what I need to do in this life and then I'm going back to where I belong, heavenly places. So I'm just here to do my thing. Now, I'm still a woman. Anywho, the point is, this is the time, this is the time for us to look at what is morally right. I'm a student at the Harvard Kennedy School. We study morals all the time, moral leadership. Are you guys doing what is morally right? Now, Vermonters call me a lot of things. They don't call me religious. Okay, so this is not a religious issue. This is not a whatever they wanna claim. This is what's morally right. We are women that want to be women. There are a lot of Africans that are highly uncomfortable with this. There's a lot of Nepali people that are highly uncomfortable with this. A lot of Vietnamese community that are highly uncomfortable with this, but yet they don't have the English or the spunk or the ability to come up and say, hey, we disagree. We don't want our children around this. We don't want to be subject to this type of stuff. So this is time for our leaders to think about the future and Vermont in general. Yes, we wanna be open, but if that means suppressing other people's will to ensure that one other person's will is more advanced than others, then we really have to think about this. Hi, Mario. Hi, Mr. Mayor. Nice to see you. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Jess Kell and then I believe we will go to Burlington Residence online. Welcome. Hello, I'm Jess Kell. I'm a Burlington resident and I'm a very proud parent of a beautiful and thriving transgender son. He grew up in this community. He had the ability to thrive because of the diverse and beautiful people that he's been surrounded with his entire life. He's currently out of state in his first year of college. We regularly get texts from him. Did you see the legislation out of South Dakota? Did you see the legislation out of Florida? Did you see what happened in Missouri today? He's terrified as a resident of this country by what is happening across this country. What I invite you to do is allow him to increasingly speak with pride about his home state and his home community. Passing this resolution will give him the opportunity to speak to his classmates and say, look where I come from and look what kind of support my home community offers to me. Thank you. Thank you very much. We will now go to Burlington Residence that are joining us online and we'll just take a minute to get a timer up. And the first speaker who is joining us online is not afraid, I'm not gonna probably not pronounce his name correctly. It's Thomas Maggie and you'll correct me if I've gotten your name wrong. I have found you and enabled your microphone. You just simply need to unmute on your side. Hello? Hi, we can hear you if you'd like to go ahead. All right, in certain contexts, telling the truth can be perceived as hateful, particularly when it's used to criticize or challenge deeply held beliefs or norms in 1950. It would be a woman not wanting to work in the kitchen. In 2023, it is not instantly agreeing that someone says who they are. Truthful warnings and affirmations about states of being are not hate speech. The statements on the stickers they're supposedly hateful would have been considered normal by pretty much everyone until 10 minutes ago. Common sense, neutral scenes considered hateful while immature, punk-like scrolls where you can actually detect the rage and target certain individuals are lauded. This sort of response can only occur after heavy brainwashing. I will read part of the book, The End of Gender by Dr. Deborah So, which I find to be relevant. What does it mean to feel like a woman or to feel like a man? Who could have predicted that such benign questions would evolve seemingly overnight into the next civil rights frontier, once uncontroversial in matter of fact discussions about gender and becomes a cultural minefield, hostile terrain striking fear to the hearts of anyone who trades against orthodox. The unforeseen shift in the state of this land is that it's positive and untraditionalist gay rights supporter who wants me to be studying kinky sex and sex toys to be conserved by those who negated what I have to say is right leaning and republishing. Also, there's a babble on B. Our client says historians stopped how kids throughout history did not commit suicide just by having no access to gender surgery. Thank you very much. Our next speaker joining us online is Bill Ogin. And Bill, I have found you and enabled your microphone. You can go ahead, you're just unmuted on your end. Or just muted, I'm sorry. Bill, if you just want to unmute yourself, you can begin speaking. We will go on to the next person. Which is someone identifying themselves as Bentley. I have found you and enabled your microphone if you want to speak. You're just muted on your end. Hello, the resolution supporting LGBTQIA plus community members and condemning transphobia is a perfect example of why House Republicans are looking into the weaponization of the federal government. This resolution invites weaponization of local government. There are a lot of lies built in this resolution and gender ideology as a whole. You claim we are targeting youth. We're extremists spreading hate when that is precisely what you and radical leftists are doing with gender ideology targeting gay kids. This is a stunning narcissistic reversal, the kind of rhetorical tactic common to domestic abusers, psychopaths and munchausen mommies. You accuse us of what you are guilty of. You confess to targeting children by projection. You admit your hate by slaying accusations at people who merely disagree with you. We don't hate anyone. We have a problem with the active grooming of children into a cult that insists if they don't surgically sterilize and chemically alter themselves, they're doomed to unhappiness and likely suicide. We reject that false presence premise. As a gay man who protested the outright fire truck pull and the vicious assault on gay rights pioneer Fred Sargent, I find the use of our community's accomplishments over the past 50 years, aberrant and offensive. How dare you weaponize gay men's accomplishments in order to advance lives that harm kids? The so-called aggressive stickering which includes phrases like no child is born in the wrong body and trans women are men, get over it and lifelong medical dependency isn't kindness. It's a business model are innocuous statements of observable fact. Further radicals like yourselves have no problem with threats of violence or personal attacks directed at Republicans like Christopher and Falker. Violent aggressive stickering is fine as long as it only targets your political enemies. Your hypocrisy is apparent. You support eugenics sterilizing minors. You support medical experimentation on them. This is Joseph Mengele level insanity. I invite you all to wake up. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Kevin Hurley and Kevin I've enabled your microphone so you should be able to speak. Okay, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead, please. Right there. My name is Kevin Hurley. I'm a 42. Oh, my apologies. I did that. My apologies. Go ahead. You should be able to speak now. Okay. Please start over. Go ahead. Yes. I'm my apologies. That's fine. My name is Kevin Hurley. I'm a 42 year old gay man. I am also one of the coordinators of the stickering campaign that you, the council are pretending as what you call transphobic hate speech. This resolution paints myself and my colleagues in Burlington as a hate group and we know what happens to people in hate groups, don't we? You intend to paint targets on our backs but of course you and the mayor are lying. We are not a hate group. It may be inconvenient for some on the council but the public should know that you are targeting a group of gays, lesbians and bisexuals only because they refuse to enthusiastically indulge the delusions of a loud minority. This resolution publicly associates us with the murder of a young man who made bad decisions. It implies that because of our speech, Fernfeather is dead. Fernfeather was killed by a psychopath hitchhiker who he chose to pick up, not by anyone connected to us. But that doesn't fit your made up narrative, does it? Just like those who tried to silence our predecessors in the gay and lesbian rights movement, you will not succeed. We will speak the truth publicly and loudly and you certainly will not custom tailor a graffiti law specifically to fit your desire to quiet us. We will continue to use public spaces to exercise our First Amendment rights and to shed light on your lies. I can understand why that makes you uncomfortable. I can and will return to this public forum every other week if need be to repeat the truth to you. We are not the ones advocating for the chemical castration, sterilization and genital mutilation of children. That's you. We are not spreading hate. We are telling the truth and you know it. Like it or not, no one was ever born into the wrong body. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Avery and Avery, I've enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak if you just unmute on your end. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can. Go ahead. Great. My name is Avery Erdogan. I'm in Ward 1. I'm here as a member of the LGBT community and I'm a member in a myriad of ways to voice my support for the resolution that is acting to show support for us. Across the country and the world, Vermont is one of the safest places to live as a person in the queer community. And yet bigotry is still very present. We are still targets of violence and hate and just anger for literally existing and defending ourselves in the face of all of this. Keeping us where we are is not enough. We must keep pushing forward for legislation that's not fighting against us but actively lifting us up. We are not immune from hate in our small community and we must work together to rise above it. Supporting the trans community also goes beyond the surface level issues. It includes livable wages, secure housing, and funding education. Moving Burlington forward as a whole cannot come without uplifting minority groups. We just want to exist without fear or worry but some think that's too much. Our existence should not be political but it is. We together must be in this for the long haul and committed to building a better world and setting the stage for the rest of the country and the world and to be a beacon of hope and safety. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Jay Voss and Jay, I have found you, enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak if you just unmute on your end. Hi, my name is Jay Voss. I live in Ward 5. And I'm speaking to the resolution that everybody else is speaking to. If the purpose of this resolution is to support trans folk and stop the anti-trans graffiti, it is already a failure with this device of language. Of course I have for the violence of throwing rocks at the front door of the Clyde Center. But I'm also shocked by the assault on Fred Sargent at last year's Burlington Clyde March, mention of which has been purposely left out in the resolution. I'm sure it's a homophobic decision. Mr. Sargent, a hero of gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, and I would add transgenders for recognition of our rights, was present at the Stonewall Riots in July 1969 and organized the first gay liberation march a year later. But what I really object to are the further resolves in the resolution, particularly in line 30, now therefore be it resolved that the city council and the mayor condemn these fateful acts against trans community members, ignoring a blatant attack on LGB persons. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Joanne Callis. And I have found you and enabled your microphone, you should be able to speak. My apologies if I mispronounced your last name. Hi, can you hear me? Yes, we can, go ahead. Yeah, I'm Joanne Callis or Callis, depending on how non-American you wanna get. My name is Joanne, I'm from Ward 4. I'm not trans. Are you missing? What? Go ahead, Joanne. I am not trans. I don't understand what it means to be trans. Honestly, I don't even know how I feel about medical transitioning. The things that I do know is that I have worked with trans kids and trans adults. And I've learned that it's their choice to make and it's our choice to help them be who they feel they need to be. I do very much understand how small, hateful stickers can fuel larger, hateful acts of violence. I'm sick of seeing the stickers around town. I don't care what all these people who are pro-stickers say they are instigating hate. It's not just about trying to show a different viewpoint, it's stigmatizing them. And I'm here to show support for trans people, even if I don't fully understand them, because they're humans and we need to treat them ethically. The stickers, all the negative comments, that's not ethical. I'm here to support the resolution and to stop this diatribe of ignorance and hate. I'm done. Thank you, thanks so much. We will come back to con choice with non-Berlington residents. There are three who have signed up. The first is Miguel Lozano, to be followed by difficult handwriting. Sue Valeti, I apologize, it's difficult to read. Miguel, go ahead please. Longer than usual, wait. I am honored to have your attention to express my unwavering support of Mayor Weinberger's appointment of Michael Lechance as Fire Chief of Burlington, Vermont. As we all know, Chief Lechance has been a dedicated member of our community for over two decades, serving the city with the utmost professionalism and selfishness. I cannot express enough the importance of having a strong and capable leader at the helm of our fire department, especially during these trying times. Chief Lechance has proven himself to be that leader, time and time again, always putting the safety and wellbeing of our community first. But let us not forget the tremendous sacrifices that Chief Lechance's family has had to endure as well. The stress and worry that comes with being the spouse or child of a firefighter or a police officer cannot be understated. And I praise them for their bravery and resilience in the face of these challenges. Furthermore, I would like to take a moment to thank the entire Burlington Fire Department for their tireless efforts to keep our city safe. Every day these brave individuals put their lives on the line to protect us, and we are forever in their debt. I ask you, all of you, to come together for one thing. And that's to join me in supporting Mayor Weinberger's decision to appoint Michael Lechance as our new fire chief. Let us honor his dedication and sacrifice as well as that of his family and the entire fire department. Yes. By giving them the respect and support they deserve. Thank you. Thank you so much. So someone hopefully can help me out here. I'm not, you know who, you know who you are. You are who you are, yes. Great. I'm here so extremely upset. I am here to support the trans community. It is like God punching to hear. Some of the people here talk about some of these stickers that some are not as harmful, but when you see Shrastikas and actual calls for violence and blood, which is actually taking place all over this country right now, it is incredibly upsetting to see how blood-sending some of you can be. Last summer, while I was here in George Street with my friend who is visibly trans, we almost got hit by a car. I almost got hit by a car because my friend who is visibly trans was standing next to me at the corner of Church Street and College Street. It's so deeply upsetting how some of you care so little about the safety and well-being of people who just want to be. We have lots of issues and there are a lot of people, not only the trans community, who are suffering from the violence and the white supremacy in which we live. Every day, every day, if you actually pay attention, is you're hearing about the violence against the trans community. So I beg that you take it even farther than just condemn the violence against trans community but ensure that they are going to have a livelihood in this city. I yield my time. Thank you so much. Our last speaker in con choice is Jacob Kribs. Jacob. Hi, my name is Jake. I go by he, him or they is also okay. I am a health and wellness coordinator at the Pride Center of Vermont. I want to thank everyone for being here. I want to bring this down to something very simple, which is that most people I would argue in here have had some sort of disbarment from something they wanted to participate in based on an aspect of their identity. Whether they weren't physically able to let's say be on the fire department, whether let's say they had a color of their skin or they were born a woman at a time in history in the United States, you might not have been sitting in the same seats feeling as comfortable as you are now. People had to work hard. People had to speak up. People had to put their jobs on the line. People had to be allies. People had to believe that people were going through harder times than they were and do something about it. What that thing is, I can't say, I'm not you, but what I can say is the moment we start ignoring fellow Americans who are giving us their lived experiences about the difficulties they experienced just living next door, just walking down the street, that should make us all extraordinarily concerned and we should do something about it because the next person is gonna be you or someone you know or your grandmother or your sister or your brother or your trans best friend or your nibbling or your niece or your nephew. Now we don't go around and check all the fire department for genitalia and say that that's what gives them the right to walk down the street. We don't check to all your genitalia. We don't say were you born that way. Okay, you can or cannot have this position. That's not what we do. We enact terror against one another often in silence by ignoring, by shunning, by leaving people out. And so what I would urge you all to do in this moment is to think about times when you've been left out, when you haven't gotten the table at the restaurant and somebody else has, what goes through your mind? How does it feel? How does it feel to be put last and to look around the room and have nobody else say anything about it? That's what we should be thinking about. Thank you very much. We will go back to a couple of people that we have online and there was someone who did have their hand raised a Burlington resident and I missed them on the first go around. So I will come back to them. Rachel Siegel, I've enabled your microphone. My apologies for missing you on the first go around. That is okay, Council President Paul. Gave me time to finish cooking, so I appreciate it. Former City Councilor Rachel Siegel. Thank you. Yes, this is Rachel. I use she, her pronouns. I live in Ward three and I am calling about the resolution thanking the staff who worked at the Warming Shelter and reiterating the call for an overdose prevention site in Burlington. I mean, I think that the other resolution that's getting so much attention right now is also about harm reduction. We're trying to help people. We're trying to reduce the possibility of harm and pain and violence. And with the overdose prevention sites, I think sometimes some of what happens at them is referred to as a safe injection site. And I want to just speak to people for whom this is a new concept because I remember the first time I heard that this existed or that this was a thought people had somewhere in the world. And I thought, really, they give people a place to go shoot up. And I had this like knee jerk negative reaction based on my unconscious bias against IV drug users. And I caught myself. I was really grateful to catch myself in that moment and slow my thinking down and check myself. And then I was grateful to have some good friends who I can be upfront with when I catch myself in those moments and talked it through and realized like, okay, I'm having this knee jerk reaction in a very similar way that some people do around birth control, that there's people who say, you can't give kids condoms. They're all gonna start having sex. The idea of giving free birth control to kids, to young people, to anyone is because we know some of them are having sex anyway and it will reduce the possible harm of STIs and pregnancies. Same thing with a safe injection site. I was like, oh, right, that makes sense. So for anyone for whom it's a new idea, it feels like has a knee jerk bias against drug users because they are highly biased group, a group that we're highly biased against, I should say. That's a normal reaction and slow down and think about what you're actually saying because we would love to keep people alive and give them chances. Thank you all. I hope it passes and I hope things move forward with that plan. Thank you. Thanks, Rachel. Our next speaker is Mark Redmond and Mark, I've enabled your microphone who should be able to speak. Okay, Ira. Hi, this is Mark Redmond. I'm the Executive Director of Spectrum Youth and Family Services based in Burlington. Spectrum works with teenagers and young adults who are homeless, runaways, inter-exiting the foster care system, those exploited by human trafficking, those who've dropped out of high school. I'm speaking tonight in support of the resolution, supporting LGBTQIA first community members and condemning transphobia. According to the National Network for Youth, quote, research has shown that those who identify as LGBTQ plus have a 120% higher risk experiencing some form of homelessness. Up to 40% of the 4.2 million youth experiencing homelessness, identifying as LGBTQ plus while only 9.5% of the US population, LGBTQ youth plus disproportionately experienced homelessness compared to their straight and cisgender peers. Family conflict is the primary cause of homelessness which is disproportionately due to lack of acceptance by family members of a youth sexual orientation or gender identity. End quote, these national statistics mirror what we see at Spectrum. 48% of the youth coming into our drop-in center on Pearl Street identify as LGBTQ plus. In our warming shelter which we operate during the coldest months of the year, 22% identify as such. In our shelter on Pearl Street which we call the landing, 52% identify as LGBTQ. Keep in mind this is in comparison to 9.5% of the population of youth identifying as LGBTQ. So there is an obvious over-representation in America and in Burlington among the homeless youth population. Thank you to the counselors who have introduced this resolution, we are grateful to you. Thank you very much, Mark. Our next speaker is Ashley Edwards and Ashley, I can't find you on Zoom under that name. So if you are online and wanna raise your hand then I can find you. Our next speaker is, and I believe, our last speaker online is Sarah Sabalos and not sure if this is the right person but we'll give this a try. I've enabled your microphone, someone under the name just Sarah. You should be able to speak now. Just need to unmute on your side. Perhaps I have the wrong Sarah. So that will conclude the number of people that we have online. There was one other speaker who's in con choice and that is Kyle Blake, Kyle, welcome. Good evening, my name is Kyle Blake. I'm the president of the Burlington Firefighters Association. I'm here to support, I think it's agenda item 5.01, the appointment of the fire chief. We are thrilled about that. But before I speak to that, I wanna take a moment to thank an individual who the fire department and the membership of the BFFA, oh, a debt of gratitude too. And that is deputy chief, Derek Libby. Eight months ago when we were all of a sudden found ourselves without a fire chief, not a great time. Middle of contract negotiations, the end of a pandemic. Overtime through the roof, morale on the floor, members facing hostility in the streets we've never seen before in an impending dispatch crisis. Chief Libby was appointed acting, stood up, ran with the ball, we didn't miss a beat. And I would argue to say that there's not a member of the department that would say we're in a worse place than we were before because we're in a better place. Everything is going great. Chief Libby's not the only one that deserves that thanks though. And the other individual is the individual that will be sitting before you shortly. And that's deputy chief Michael Lechance. The mayor came and you'll probably hear all of this, spoke to each of our shifts, all of our members and asked what we were looking for in the next fire chief. And the one message that came out overwhelmingly was we wanted one of our own. We wanted someone that understood us, understood the problems we had faced traditionally, everything we've done to try to fix those and the challenges that lay ahead. And we have someone that's gonna be in front of you that understands that, that knows that and is going to take this department forward and continue to push it in a progressive way. Chief Lechance, some of the councils reached out, asked me what I thought about him. I made the joke, if you cut that man, he will bleed BFD. And I do not say that in jest. He loves this department, he cares about the members. We're gonna be in good hands. So I know I don't need to say this but I strongly urge a unanimous vote supporting him, supporting the BFD and supporting the BFFA. Thank you. Thank you very much. And with that, we will close the public forum at exactly 8.30 and move on to the rest of our agenda. Thank you all who came to speak with us today. The next item on our agenda is item number four, which is our consent agenda. Is there a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions as indicated? Thank you, Councilor Shannon. Is there a second to that motion? Thank you, Councilor Brandt. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of adopting the consent agenda and taking the actions indicated, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have approved our consent agenda, which brings us to our deliberative agenda. We have eight items on our deliberative agenda and there are time limits that we've attached to each item, which we've agreed to by approving our agenda and will do our best to keep to those time limits. The first item on our deliberative agenda is a communication item 5.01, a communication from Mayor Murrell Weinberger regarding the appointment of a Fire Chief. Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. I am excited to be bringing to you tonight a individual and Mike Lachance that I hope you will confirm tonight as the next Fire Chief for the city of Burlington and want to ask Chief Lachance to come have a seat here and after some brief remarks from me I may have a chance to hear from him directly. Welcome Chief. Appreciate how many members of the department are here as well and I appreciate the words from the head of the Firefighters Association, Kyle Blake. He said a lot so I won't repeat it all but I do feel very strongly that Chief Lachance has the experience to do the job that is needed in the years ahead. His career in the fire service began while he was still in high school as a volunteer for the in Mallets Bay for the fire department up there. He even then knew he wanted to be a Burlington firefighter has been with the department now for over 20 years has worked his way all the way up through the ranks to the rank a year ago of Deputy Chief and he's distinguished himself in that role during challenging times as Kyle mentioned. In particular, while we as in so many areas of city life and the broader workforce right now have faced real challenges with recruitment and retention Chief Lachance has really taken great initiative with changing the way in which we recruit new firefighters and I bumped into him in Randolph. He's been all around the state working to strengthen the community and he, as he has done so, he and something that really played a key role in my bringing him forward. He has shown himself to be very committed to diversifying the department in the years ahead, working towards a department that looks more like the community that serves. He has also committed himself committed himself to embracing the innovation that the department has gone through in recent years and working to achieve more of it, which is critical right now as the department faces unprecedented challenges being asked to do new things to respond to the drug and mental health crises that we face right now. Finally, in addition to his professional accomplishments his experience, his priorities, I'm excited to be nominating him, appointing him because I believe he's a great leader, he's a very good man. He, as you can see, has the support of the firefighters as a function of that. He is an incredibly committed father, I've had the pleasure of meeting his family and I know his father has joined us as well tonight. Thank you for being here. And I think the whole council is gonna find him as I have found Chief Lachance to be a pleasure to work with. I hope you'll have your full support tonight. Thank you very much, Mayor. Chief Lachance, thank you so much for being with us. Before we go to a motion and any comments from the council the floor is yours if you have any words for us. Thank you, Councilor President Paul. I do appreciate very much the Mayor's words and his support in this appointment. I very much appreciate the support of the firefighters of the Burlington Fire Department. And I very much appreciate the support that has been shown by community members here in Burlington. I look forward to this new role. I look forward to moving the fire department forward. I have great love for this department in this city. I do go back quite a ways. My father grew up in Burlington. My mother as well on Catherine Street and Green Street. And I just have, I've always, I always wanted to be a Burlington firefighter. I'll just say that. And it's, my career has been a blessing and I really appreciate the opportunity to lead this great department. Thank you. Thank you so much. Before we go to comments from the council, we will go to a motion. Councilor McGee served on the search committee and Councilor McGee, I would go to you for a motion. Thank you, President Paul. I move that we confirm the appointment of Chief Michael Lachance as the fire chief engineer and to grant a personal hardship extension of the department had residency requirement for the city council rules. May I ask for the floor back after a second? Thank you, Councilor McGee. Seconded by Councilor Bergman. The floor is yours, Councilor McGee. Thank you. I was grateful to participate in the search committee process to get the chance to hear varying perspectives on the role of a fire chief and on the future of the fire service and the future of the Burlington fire department. As many in this room know, I come from a family of first responders with a long history in the fire service. I've seen firsthand how trauma and stigma combined to create a challenging environment to adequately care for one's mental health and chief Lachance, one of the driving factors in my support for your appointment tonight is your commitment to member well-being within the department. And I just wanna thank Acting Chief Libby for his years of service to Burlington and for his leadership over the last several months through a number of challenging issues. And I'll be glad to vote yes tonight and I look forward to working with you, Chief Lachance, in the months ahead. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Are there any other Councilors that wish to comment before we go to a vote? Councilor Jang. Thank you, President Paul. But I have questions instead of comments. Okay. To the Chief. Sure. Soon to be Chief. Thank you for applying and for stepping up to lead. And can you, because I was not part of the search committee, I don't know much, I read your resume. I think it's extensive, it's great. But we are living in a certain time right now where public safety is so important to the forefront of all Burlingtonians, right? We also just passed a pandemic a couple of years and we know we are appreciative of the hard work of the members of the fire department, every single one of them. I was just wondering if you can tell us a little bit. What is your vision for Burlington? What is your vision for the men's and women of the fire department? Can you just tell me a little bit about it if you want? Sure, Councillor. Thank you for the question. My vision for the members of the Burlington Fire Department is to feel supported, to feel like this is where they're supposed to be. One thing about first responders is they need to feel like they are doing what they're supposed to be doing. They need to feel like they are in the place they're supposed to be. And these folks that come to work every day are here out of service to the city. And I really want them to feel supported by the city, supported by the fire department leadership, and to really want to come to work and want to do what's best for the folks that they serve every day. Yeah, thank you. Yes, and can you tell us a little bit about the residency requirement? Are there any plans for you to relocate in Burlington with your family? Currently, there are no plans, Councillor Franklin County currently. I've lived there since 2001. I was interested, my wife and I, when we got married, looked for housing in Burlington. And honestly, we were unable to afford it. I made $7.96 an hour when I started working as the fire department. We were just unable to afford Burlington at the time. We moved to where we moved, and we started a family. We have four children, all four of them are in school, and we just assume not pull them from the school. They are doing amazing, and that's not an apple car I want to upset. Thank you. Thank you. And the fact that being firefighter has been, since you were a kid, it seems you share it, and your father's here, and you stayed in Vermont, they were raised here in Vermont. I think I will be supporting you tonight here, and you have my vote. Congratulations. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Jang. Are there any other councillors who wish to offer comments or questions? Seeing none. Oh, my apologies. Mayor Weinberg, please go ahead. Thanks, President Powell. Since there's been a little discussion on the question of the hardship exemption, I just want to make sure that the council, the public, is clear that Chief LeChance, the council's really grappled with when is it appropriate to grant this exception, and has laid out three criteria, two of which Chief LeChance squarely meets. One is that as he stated, he has children in another school district. The council's grappled with this in the past and determined that that's an important reason for granting this. Secondly, he has, as we've been discussing, risen up through the ranks, and that is another reason for the exemption if someone is being promoted from within. So I appreciate that the motion has been made with that and the Chief LeChance certainly has my full support for the exemption. Thank you so much, Mayor Weinberger. Seeing no one else, we will go to a vote. So a motion has been made to confirm the appointment of Chief LeChance as Fire Chief Engineer and grant a personal hardship extension of the department head residency requirements per the council rules. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Warm congratulations, Chief LeChance. And as you know, none of us do this work for the city alone. While they aren't here with you, I know that they're here with you in spirit and that is to your family, your wife, Rebecca, to your children, Andrew, Jack, Ray and Grace, congratulations and also to your dad who is here with us. Congratulations. Thank you very much. Councillor Carpenter, I see that you have your hand raised. Please go ahead. Thank you, President Paul. As you can see, I'm traveling, I'm not in Burlington, I'm not in a space that's being great with the internet. And so I'm gonna unfortunately leave you and my colleagues. I want, before I leave, just to encourage all of you to support the resolutions 5.07, 5.08 and 5.09, I believe those are three very, very valuable resolutions and we need to pass them unanimously. So thank you for sticking in there for me and all the work you all did. Thanks. Thank you so much, Councillor Carpenter and we wish you a good evening. Thank you. So we will move on to item 5.02, which is an indoor entertainment permit application for half enterprises doing businesses, sidebar the other half and for emotion, I'll go to Councillor Shannon. Move to approve the 2023-2024 indoor entertainment permit application for half enterprises, DBA, sidebar the other half, 202 Main Street with all standard conditions. Thank you for that motion seconded by Councillor Travers. I did notice that the applicant is, I believe the applicant is online. Hold on just a moment please, is Adrian Sackheim and Adrian, I've enabled your microphone if you wanted to speak. Nothing to comment, I just wasn't sure if I needed to be here for questions and whatnot, but yeah, I'm happy to answer anything. Thank you. Okay, thanks so much. So we have a motion and a second. Are there any questions or discussion from the council? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion as made by Councillor Shannon, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Adrian, thanks so much for being here with us. Thank you for having me, thank you. You as well. We will move on to item 5.03, which is the tobacco license and tobacco substitute application for float on. And for that, I will go to a motion again to Councillor Shannon. Move to approve the 2023-2024 tobacco license and tobacco substitute endorsement applications for float on. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Seconded by Councillor Travers, is there, is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion again passes unanimously, which brings us to the last application item on our agenda, which is 5.04, a tobacco substitute application for Pearl Street pipe and beverage, Councillor Shannon. Move to approve the 2023-2024 tobacco substitute endorsement application for Pearl Street pipe and beverage. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. Seconded by Councillor Travers, is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. And that brings us to the resolutions that we have on our agenda. The first resolution is item 5.05, which is the acceptance and approval of the FY22 audit. And before we get into a discussion of the audit, I will go to Councillor Jang, please, for a motion. Yep, I move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Seconded by Councillor Brandt. So, and Councillor Jang, did you want the floor back? Yes, please. Okay, go ahead. Wanted to part, this item has been approved by members of Border Finance earlier and we definitely, all of us unanimously did support it and we did also provide some thank to CFO Chad as well as the mayor. For the community members to also understand that this is a big deal. This is like cities finances has been looked into by professionals and they haven't found anything that is really significant, which means that the city's financial health is definitely in good hands. I don't know, and the mayor one will go or under CFO Chad, but whoever they are, you wanna say really thank you so much for your diligence, for your hard work in making this really, for doing a great job. Thank you, yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councillor Jang. So for members of the Board of Finance, we have heard a lot about the FY22 audit, but for certainly for the community and for those who might not have, we'll go to CAO Catherine Shad for comments and then we'll go to some questions from the council. Thank you, President Paul. It is finally time to put that financial literacy training that we had in January to good use. So I hope you're all as excited as I am. We do have some hard copies for city councillors and we'll get to that in just a moment for those of you following along at home. You can find copies of all of these materials on board docs. There are a couple of parts to our audit and before we jump into the financials, we'll talk briefly about the accompanying management letter. As Councillor Jang noted, there were thankfully no material weaknesses or deficiencies noted in this audit. We do benefit from three recommendations from our auditors and the first one is a recommendation that has been made in previous years and that is to improve our general ledger monitoring and adhere to a more formal closing schedule. We have talked about this in the Board of Finance. This is what I'll say is probably the most serious of the recommendations because it is a previous year recommendation. This is something that I and the CT team have already started working on in terms of being able to make improvements for this year. At Board of Finance earlier tonight, we approved a new budget manager position that I worked on with Alina. We can see Alina Corsic is here. She's our lead auditor here to answer questions and this was one of the recommendations she made which was our CT office is really been pared down in recent years in terms of personnel and we didn't have someone whose function it was to help us at the end of every month to review all of the transactions that had happened and to really keep us on track to make sure that we were closing every month and reviewing any errors that occurred in a timely manner in which to make sure those did not happen six months after the fiscal year which you saw in this year's management letter. The second recommendation was to improve capital project accounting in CEDO. The letter acknowledges that we have made a lot of progress with our capital accounting. That's something we've been working on since I got here and we're almost there. CEDO is one of the more complicated departments so we'll continue with that. And then the last one is we've over the past couple of years run into some issues where around pensions are what is in the ordinance and what is in our collective bargaining agreements. There are some gray areas. We've worked through those one by one but we thought it might be helpful to do with our pension administrator and our city attorney's office a more comprehensive look to make sure that all those eyes are dotted and T's are crossed so we're minimizing those one-off issues that may come up. That kind of covers the management letter and I'm gonna jump into the actual financials. It won't take too long and then I'll open it up for questions. We spoke about at the training that one of the most useful parts of this, what can be overwhelming 100 plus page report is the management discussion and analysis. And so that is your first tabbed page. If you wanna open up to page 25, you'll see those are the financial highlights and that shows what the city's net position is. It shows the unassigned fund balance right there on page 25. And if you go just turn one page to page 27, you can see the changes in net position and you'll see there's a comparison between FY22 and FY21. And also you can see there's two columns, governmental activities and business type activities. And you will recall that this sheet assesses our near-term operating needs. You can take a quick glance at it, see that we are overall in better financial shape in 2022 than we were in 2021. If you turn the page yet again on page 28, you can get a look at our unassigned fund balance as well as our total fund balance. You will recall that our policy says our unassigned fund balance should be between five and 15% of our total general fund expenditures. We target 10% and we, as of June 30th, 2022, are at 11.7, so that is quite positive. And then over on page 29, you'll see a quick look at the net position of our proprietary funds, electric, airport, wastewater, water, stormwater. And then if you wanna go on to page 40, that is the second tabbed sheet, and that is our balance sheet. And that gives you an excellent view of the general fund. It also gives you a snapshot of the capital projects fund. I'm not gonna spend too long on any of these. I'm mindful of the time. Again, happy to answer questions. Something I do get a lot of questions about towards the back here on page 93 is a list of everything in the fund balance and in the bottom quarter is the everything we assigned during last year's budget for the assigned fund balance. We always talk about the unassigned fund balance because that is our kind of rainy day fund, money that we haven't set aside for anything. But this assigned fund balance is money that we have set aside for each of these items and we are in the process of spending that down. Last but not least, I wanted to highlight on page 134. We spend a lot of time previously in the report talking about our major governmental funds, but we don't wanna forget about the non-major ones. And this includes traffic, parking, CEDO, Church Street Marketplace and others. And so you'll see that here as well as ARPA. So in case you are interested in any of those, they can get lost because it's at a page 134. So I am done my short spiel and I will turn it over to the mayor before taking any questions. Thank you, Catherine. I wanna echo the comments made by Councillor Jang that there's a lot to be very appreciative of and proud of in this audit and thankful to the whole clerk-treasurer team for the hard work on it. It wasn't that long ago that our audits looked nothing like this and we've only gotten to this place through a ton of hard work over many years. At the same time, I wanna compliment and applaud you, Catherine, for not resting on that and continuing to stay active on even as we accept the audit tonight, already having taken action to address some of the observations, recommendations in the management letter. So the next year we will be in even stronger place. I fully support the action on the consent agenda to create this new budget position which I think is really going to address a challenge that has been tough for us for a number of years of closing out the each month in a timely manner and being able to produce reports for the public, for this council that are actionable over the course of a budget year. So I hope the council will join in accepting this audit and that we will keep working together to make the city's financial systems as strong as possible. Thank you. Thanks very much, Mayor Weinberger. We'll go to questions from the council. Would that be your CAO Shad? You're okay. You finished your comments. Okay, so we'll open this up to the members of the council. Believe, Councillor Chang, did you have a question or a comment? Go ahead, sure. Oh, you mean to our auditor? If she has something to say. Elena, did you have any comments that you wanted to make as well on the audit? Was a pleasure working with you. Was a pleasure working with Catherine. I worked more with her than I'm used to working with the CAOs recently. So this was really a great year and I really got a really good relationship built with Catherine and I appreciate all the hard work of the team that they put into this and we already have a plan to have a meeting scheduled in the spring to go over the next year to prevent some of the closing issues that happen. So I look forward to next year's audit. Great, thank you very much. Were there councillors that had any comments? Councillor Bergman. First, thank you. This is great. And it's sort of a comment for some future information. Thanks for highlighting the non-major governmental funds in the back as everybody knows. We have got serious, I'm gonna use the term infrastructure in the broadest sense of the term needs and many of these funds in the back are where we get to do the projects. You look at the traffic fund, it's got almost $700,000 in it and I know from, in particularly the work in the TUC and in our work on transportation demand management that there are just significant needs that these funds could be used if we had sufficient funds. One of the things that would be helpful in terms of going forward is also to see more history than what we've got. Now, you look at the parking facilities, we know that we've had major problems with keeping up with the repair of our parking facilities. So it would be as we look to the future to have a better look to the past and a longer vision that would be helpful. And in fact, I was really pleased with the demographic information that you've got there because it actually is long, although I do think one column could be really helpful. You've got a per capita and then there's only a statewide for like, it's more like a family type thing and so you can't sort of compare apples to apples there because we need to understand how the people of Burlington are doing relative to the city, to the state. So that sort of information will be very helpful as we go forward. We're gonna get a budget, you guys are working on the budget now and we're gonna be making some major choices and some of us have big ambition, right? And we know that we don't have the funds to meet that ambition, but understanding the long view, being able to look at the trends, trying to figure out how we're going to turn trends, what the trends that we can see mean you look at the demographic information with regard to income, both business and personal and I'm struck by that information to be quite honest. So it would be great in the budget process to be getting that stuff. I think it's only fair that the city council get that information and the people get that. Thanks for all this hard work. Thank you on there for your hard work and we'll continue, thanks. Thank you so much, Councillor Berger and we'll go to Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul and I'll echo the thank you for the hard work. I know this is a ton of work to produce this information. I had a question about the management letter recommendation, the first recommendation and I was wondering if you could just give us a little more color on what happened with the $5 million ARPA grant that was miss, I guess it was miscategorized. And if you could just talk about that a little bit and how will you specifically, what measures are being put in place to help address that, thanks. One of the things I have noticed since I got here is that the CT department is quite good at any of the standard entries that come to us, we incur a bill, it needs to be paid, that bill gets paid. But where we have struggled is something like that $5 million where we as a council put that into the budget and it's what we would refer to as kind of an inter fund transfer or something that needs to be just done kind of on the books. And frankly, within CT we have not always had great communication or a process to ensure that once a month or even once a quarter someone is going through the budget and as I'm budgeting for next year I'm realizing I don't know what the percentage is but I would hazard a guess that maybe 20 or 25% of everything that's in the budget are those sort of inter fund transfers. And so I've been working over the past couple of months since I got the first draft of the management letter to ensure we have a process and that I'm sitting down with our controller every month and checking on each of those items in the budget. I'm not sure that's the best use of my time which is why we are recruiting for a budget manager but it seems to me, frankly everyone thought someone else was doing it and we needed to assign that role and responsibility very clearly and knowing how important it is the buck stops with me so right now it is my job until somebody becomes somebody else's. Okay, thank you. Thanks very much, Councillor Barlow. Are there any other councillors who wish to speak to the resolution or to audit? Seeing none and seeing no others in the queue we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, oh, my apologies, go ahead. Thank you, President Paul. Just hopefully someone can make a friendly amendment. In line 16 it should be your 2022 audit instead of your 2023 audit. Thank you. There were probably about four of us who read that resolution and we all missed it so thank you, that's what we need auditing for. That is a friendly amendment and that would be friendly to you, Councillor Chang and to the seconder which was Councillor Brandt, yes? Okay, great. Thank you so much, Attorney Sturtivant. With that we can then go to a motion on the resolution so all those in favor of the motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously and also as well from me, thank you so much, Catherine, for all of your work, for all of the work of your entire team, all the city departments, I have to say this is the single best discussion that we have ever had at a council meeting on the audit and all the time that I have been on the council. You have educated us with financial literacy which was a resolution that was passed in 2012 and you were the first CAO that was willing to take that on. Thank you, thank you so much. Our next item 5.06 has been postponed so we're gonna move to 5.07. Do you need a minute? This brings us to, so we're on 5.07 which is a resolution supporting LGBTQIA plus community members and condemning transphobia. I will go to Councillor McGee, the lead sponsor of this item for a motion. Thank you, President Paul. I would move that we waive the reading and adopt the resolution and I ask for the floor back after a second. Thank you, Councillor McGee. Seconded by Councillor Travers. Councillor McGee, the floor is yours. Thank you, President Paul. For several years we have seen increasing hate and violence targeting the LGBTQIA plus community, especially transgender people here in Burlington, around Vermont and across the country. This national trend is part of a concerted effort to push queer and transgender people to the margins of our society, to deny them their humanity and as we see in legislatures throughout the US to legislate them out of existence. There are people here in Vermont who through hateful rhetoric and protests have attempted to intimidate and marginalize queer and trans people, particularly trans youth. Here in Burlington we have seen increasing quantities of transphobic stickers being put up in our public spaces near our schools and near spaces that are meant to support and celebrate the LGBTQIA community. We've seen hateful vandalism of the Pride Center when their front door was shattered with a rock. We've seen hateful transphobic protests of Vermont Pride in the outright fire truck pole, events that are meant to be welcoming, supportive and joyful celebrations of progress, self-expression and community. We've seen national hate descend upon our school district after Fox News aired a segment about a district DEI workshop on gender identity and pronouns. For years Burlington's LGBTQIA plus community, transgender youth and concerned neighbors have pushed for action to be taken to condemn this transphobic rhetoric and put an end to the harmful stickers. By adopting this resolution, the council will send a clear message that transphobia has no place in our community. To those who spoke out against this resolution tonight, I ask you to reflect on your rhetoric and your actions and consider taking accountability for the harm you are causing to many in our community. To those who have not felt seen, heard or protected, I am deeply sorry. Government has had its best when leaders are connected to the people we serve and responsive to any harm being caused. We have failed to address this hate in the past and while we can't undo the harm caused, we can commit to doing better going forward. This resolution will put into the public record our efforts to launch a citywide campaign for Trans Day of Visibility, which will continue through the month of March, month of April, excuse me, and call for the city to celebrate Trans Day of Visibility annually on March 31st. Through this campaign we will uplift and celebrate the voices of trans community members and take action to make clear that Burlington is a safe and welcoming place for all. I want to take a moment to thank Olivia Taylor for her help in drafting this resolution and all of her work removing stickers over the last several years and to Representative Emma Mulvaney-Stanik for her steadfast advocacy and the many others who have pushed the city to do better to protect queer and trans neighbors. I look forward to continuing this work and I'm grateful for the broad support that this resolution has received and deeply grateful to the many people who came out and spoke in support of trans community members tonight. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor McGee. We will open the floor to councillors for discussion, questions, comments on the resolution before us. We'll go to Councillor Shannon and then Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. There was a note that my name was to be added as a sponsor but I am not sure that it technically happened so if that is a friendly amendment, I would appreciate it. That is certainly, I would imagine a friendly amendment. That is friendly, yes. Councillor McGee and Councillor Travers. That is a friendly amendment. Thank you so much and thank you for that support. Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. I also wanted to thank Olivia Taylor for her work on this. She spent a lot of time educating a bunch of us in the New North End and raising awareness and scheduling weekly sticker removals which Councillor Carpenter and I were able to participate in back in December so thank you again for Olivia for that. And I know this resolution is controversial, especially to those supporting the stickering but my hope is that this resolution will demonstrate city support for the community members affected by the stickering campaign. And something that hasn't been mentioned but is important to me is that I hope we'll start the process of strengthening local ordinance around the basement of public property because that's what I view the sign stickering to be. I mean, it's akin to graffiti and it was especially when it's done to target someone or some group in the community in a harmful way, it seems like we could come up with some standard that didn't impinge on people's right to free speech but that would also protect our ability to make sure that groups weren't harmed by this. So I'm hoping that when this comes and gets into ordinance that we'll be able to make some headway on that. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. I'm sorry, were you done? Okay, all right. Were there any other Councillors who wanted to speak to this resolution? I'm sorry, Councilor Travers, my apologies. Thank you, President Paul. I don't have prepared remarks so we'll try not to ramble on too long but I do think it's important to speak on this important matter. First of all, but before speaking to the specifics of this resolution, I do wanna generally speak to the fact that our ordinances are very clear that defacing public property with stickers regardless of their content is unlawful and we've seen an uptick of this, not only in the harmful and hurtful ways that I think have been rightfully called out by this resolution but we've seen even beautiful artwork as of late around the city be defaced with graffiti. Defacing public property with a sticker is a civil offense. We've had folks here, I know it's sometimes difficult to know who is behind some of these acts but we've had folks here who have identified themselves now as those who are at fault here with respect to defacing public property or our ordinances allow with this as a civil offense for them to be prosecuted as such and regardless of the content, I would suggest that the city take action with respect to that and to that end, look forward in our role in the ordinance committee, looking into as Councillor Barlow said, figuring out how we can continue to strengthen those ordinances. Now speaking specifically to the content of this, Councillor McGee, I wanna thank you for bringing this resolution forward. I know that it wasn't easy. Unfortunately, I know it comes at a personal expense to you. I think this was very brave of you to introduce this resolution. I also wanna echo your gratitude for folks who similarly bravely came out tonight to speak at public comment. You know, as a cis white male, I have never experienced someone calling into question my identity or my very existence and so I cannot begin to personally understand what it must feel like to feel that personally. But I do know that I love and care for people in my life who have felt that and I know the world that I want my kids to grow up in is one where they feel safe and protected for whatever identity they choose for themselves. And so, you know, I understand we could have debates and we had debates in law school around the First Amendment and whether it should extend to protecting hate speech. And I know that regularly courts have taken a very broad look with respect to the First Amendment and hate speech and I know that we in all likelihood could not be passing a resolution tonight that flat out prohibits the type of stickering that's been the subject of the discussion that we've had right now. Because frankly, it's the type of hate speech that whether you agree with it or not is protected under our First Amendment. But the First Amendment doesn't stop us as a city council for calling out that speech for what it is. It is in the eyes of many of our community members, hateful, it's harmful, it's hurtful and I'm glad that we're taking this opportunity to call it out. So thank you, Councilor McGee for bringing this forward. I'm proud to co-sponsor along with you and hope that this council can unanimously support it. Thank you, Councilor Travers. We'll go to Mayor Weinberger and then perhaps we'll go to a vote. Thank you, President Powell. I too want to thank Councilor McGee for bringing this resolution forward and so many Councillors for co-sponsoring and I hope we'll have unanimous support tonight. I will be enthusiastically signing this resolution. It's, I appreciate the work, the opportunity to give some input into the resolution to Councilor McGee and the lead up to tonight and then a couple of large meetings that we have had with Councilor McGee and others over the last several months. And then once it's signed, my administration will be working hard to implement it and make sure that everything in this, the numerous items that require city action are carried out. I want to thank everyone who came out tonight to support the resolution and who has been working for a long time to remove the stickers and take other actions to make sure that everyone in this community feels welcome and included. And I want to specifically thank Olivia for her work and I also want to thank the numerous city staff in the parks department and the traffic department who have also worked to remove stickers. These anti-trans stickers and recent demonstrations are aimed at making members of our community feel unwelcome and unsafe and are unacceptable. These actions are especially problematic and cruel in that they have been aimed at Burlington children and in that they come at a time of increasing terrible anti-trans rhetoric policy and violence nationally and even here in Vermont. The administration will continue working with our community and the council to make clear that Burlington loves and values our queer and trans community members. We are standing with the many Burlingtonians who through their actions and with their voices are creating belonging and safety for their LBGTQIA plus neighbors. This is the spirit of Burlington that I want people to see and know, it has been heartwarming tonight to hear someone of you come out and talk about Burlington as a safe harbor, as a place, a city that has had particular significance and importance in your lives and we've got to work hard to keep it that way. So together, we will continue working to ensure that every person who lives in and visits our city feels safe and welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. We'll go to Councillor Freeman. Thank you, President Powell. I was trying to decide how much I wanted to say because this topic feels emotional for me and the conversation was emotional as well so I was sort of jotting some things down as you were speaking. I just wanted to thank Councillor McGee for bringing this forward. They did incredible work on it and I just feel really thankful for you carrying that and also for so many community members who set forward who worked on this, who've been working on the issue for a long time and also who just came out tonight and spoke. It was really wonderful to sort of counterbalance some of the harmful rhetoric and language that we heard. This was a very emotional conversation for me at least. Sorry, I tried to gather my thoughts about this. I always feel, not always, but around this I feel torn just because these conversations can be very emotional but I feel like giving voice to the experience is also really powerful. I think, I already cried once during this meeting so just bear with me. I just want to say I love being trans. I love it so much. I was like, oh, this is just gonna be a day where I cried. And I, yeah, I love it a lot and it's also confusing sometimes. I think someone spoke to, or several people spoke to, having resources and community for young people and I know I've spoken about this with some of my colleagues on the council. I think I consciously realized that about myself as a late teenager and but it's so funny to think about what things could have been accessible for me as a young person. And it's very hard to say this all tearing up, I'm sorry. It's funny to look back at myself from younger years and my childhood and it's not me, which is so weird because I think as a person and some of you probably have picked up on this, I'm really strong at being me. I have a big personality and I like to be me. I love, I have to come in with a big personality so it's not that it was horrible or terrible but it's just not me and I think it's so nice to keep figuring out what me is and to be able to live more fully in that. And I'm not someone who has medically transitioned but I live more days feeling boyish or like a boy and experiencing dysphoria and I want to continue to be able to make choices about my body and about my life and to continue to experience what it looks like to feel seen in that identity. And so I really did get emotional. I just really appreciate that it seems like this will absolutely pass unanimously and I just, when these conversations come up, I continue to feel so thankful that we pass them unanimously and I just want to extend my gratitude and thanks to the folks around this table and your support of this and hearing the affirming things that you're saying. It's really, it's wonderful and I really appreciate it and I appreciate everyone who came out tonight and I'm sorry for some of the comments that were really, they were hard for me to hear and maybe they were hard for others but this is a really meaningful conversation and thank you for the work we're doing as a community on this and thank you for letting me cry. So thank you, thank you, Councilor Freeman. Are there any other Councilors who wish to speak to this resolution before we go to a vote? Seeing no others, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously and with our thanks, Councilor McGee for all of your work on this which brings us to the next, the next item on our agenda, 5.08 which is a resolution thanking city staff and community partners for their efforts at the emergency warming shelter and reiterating the call for overdose prevention centers and for that I will once again go to Councilor McGee for a motion. Thank you, President Paul. I would move that we waive the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second. Motion has been made by Councilor McGee seconded by Councilor Bergman. The floor is yours, Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. I wanna start my remarks tonight by thanking the city staff and community partners who worked diligently to set up the extreme cold weather shelter at the Miller Center on the first weekend of February. That shelter captures the essence of harm reduction, meeting people where they're at, supporting them and keeping them alive. I imagine those who staffed the shelter didn't expect to operate an impromptu overdose prevention center over those three nights. We all owe our gratitude to them for their flexibility, their care and their compassion in saving lives over those three very cold nights. The experience of staff at the shelter points to the areas where we have much more work to do. Our community must become more vocal in our advocacy for harm reduction and clearing the barriers that currently exist for implementing an overdose prevention center. I'm grateful to you, President Paul, for your continued advocacy for harm reduction and overdose prevention centers. And to you, Mayor Weinberger, for your service on the Opiate Abatement Advisory Committee and your advocacy for those measures as well. And I'm grateful to this entire body for engaging in these hard conversations because we are pushing the boundaries of what is the status quo when it comes to addressing substance use disorder and houselessness and mental health. So I'm really grateful that we've been able to have those conversations in this space and find broad support for moving these things forward. In July of last year, this council voted overwhelmingly to endorse harm reduction in the creation of an overdose prevention center here in Burlington. In the months that have followed, the overdose crisis has worsened. And in 2021, we lost 217 Vermonters to overdose. Through November of last year, 212 Vermonters were lost to overdose with another 22 unconfirmed but likely overdose fatalities. And we don't yet have data for December. So by every indication, we will significantly surpass the number of lives lost to overdose in 2021. I'm bringing this resolution forward today because the legislature will reconvene this week and we need our representatives in Montpelier to take bold action to embrace harm reduction measures mentioned in this resolution and to save lives. Those measures include overdose prevention centers, access to safe syringe service programs and expanding the definition of what a safe syringe program is, permanent decriminalization of and lower barriers for buprenorphine, for opioid use disorder medication treatment, decriminalizing possession of all harm reduction supplies, clearing the way for drug checking services, decriminalizing possession of personal use amounts of drugs. These are all measures that are supported by advocates, by clinicians, by physicians and have been implemented around the world. And we see that they work, we see that the evidence is there supporting these essential measures and we know that they save lives and it's time for us to implement them now. In closing, I just wanna share my own personal story and my own experience with substance use and loss. My dad grew up in Boston with an Irish immigrant mother and a father who was a Boston firefighter. When he was 12, my dad was 12, my grandfather was killed fighting a fire that also took the lives of eight others. A year later, my dad and his siblings lost their brother to cancer. As my dad got older, he managed the pain of those losses by self-medicating. For years, he struggled with alcoholism and when he had to have the first of seven surgeries to address a back injury, he suffered at work. They sent him home with prescription opioids. He struggled with multiple substance use disorders for the rest of his life. And two days before the start of my senior year of high school, he passed away. I often dream about what my dad's life would have looked like if our society was free from stigma around mental health and drug use. I dream about a world where we don't lose another person because they were driven into the shadows by an unforgiving system that criminalizes pain and despair. People struggling with substance use disorder are parents, children, siblings, neighbors, and friends. They deserve a society and a system that recognizes their humanity and does everything possible to offer support and stability. That is the kind of, excuse me, that is the kind of society we can achieve if we lean into this work, if we embrace harm reduction and prioritize trauma-informed care. So I hope that we can unanimously support this resolution tonight. And with one voice, tell the governor, the Department of Health, and the legislature that it is time to save lives. Thank you. Thank you, Counselor McGee. Are there other counselors who wish to speak to this resolution? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion to wave the reading and adopt the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Thank you so much, Counselor McGee, for your work on both of these last two items. Job well done. That brings us to the final item on our agenda, which is item 5.09, a resolution calling on the Vermont legislature to support an equitable, affordable, and accessible early childhood education system. And for this item, I will go to Counselor Travers for a motion. Move to a wave the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back upon a second. Thank you, Counselor Travers. Seconded by Counselor Brandt. Counselor Travers, the floor is yours. Thank you, President Paul. So my introducing this resolution is born out of my three young kids. I was talking to Counselor Brandt earlier tonight, ages seven, five, and 20 months old. And the early childhood education providers that we've met at Ganyella Deem, here locally in Burlington, and now at Full Circle Preschool at Ohavi Zedek Synagogue, with those providers, having become a part of our extended family. My wife and I moved to Vermont from Brooklyn 10 years ago in part to start our family. We thought, mistakenly, come to find out that a move to Vermont would allow us to avoid the grind our friends had experienced in seeking out and finding available, affordable childcare in New York City. When my wife and I became pregnant with our first child, well, when my wife became pregnant with our first child, having previously, unfortunately, suffered from pregnancy loss, we were understandably apprehensive about telling folks about the development in our lives. Four months into my wife's pregnancy, though, we applied at pretty much every childcare provider in town, only to be waitlisted at every provider, except one, and being told by one provider that we were effectively four months too late. Thankfully, there was that one provider that had a spot on Yellow Deem here in Burlington without having family nearby. The early childhood education providers that we met there became a part of our family. My kids were the flower children in one of those wedding recently, and when three of those providers decided to leave and open a new preschool here in Burlington, full-circle preschool, we were the first in line to move with them over to full-circle and to work with them there. When we welcomed our now five-year-old and our now 20-month-old, the school was the first to know before friends, before family, because we knew we had to get in line. And thankfully, we found spots. But I know even this new school, like other childcare providers around town, already has a waitlist. And that's even with the great support of programs like the Mayor's Early Learning Initiative, which, as the mayor knows, early on in this preschool's existence, it was the Early Learning Initiative that funded the building of an additional bathroom at the preschool that allowed for them to increase their capacity numbers and bring in additional students. But even with that, folks are facing a waitlist. And these are the challenges faced by someone like myself who's privileged enough to be able to afford childcare once you receive a spot, and it isn't cheap. I would say many, if not most providers here in Burlington without the Act 166 funding that's available, childcare tuition annually can be upwards of $20,000 a year at this point in time. And we are at a critical moment right now where groups like Let's Grow Kids, which have had the great mission of actually being a group that's trying to work itself out of business. They don't want there to be a need any longer for Let's Grow Kids. And I think we really are on the precipice of some substantial change in this area. So I'm very grateful for their efforts, this legislative session, to really push our legislature and the governor to stand up more available, more affordable, more equitable childcare. And this resolution expresses our support as a city, showing here locally what we've been able to do in Burlington with programs like the Early Learning Initiative, but we need more help. And Let's Grow Kids and other advocates need our help. So I'm hopeful that we can get behind this matter. And I know there's a note here on the board docs from Lucia Campriolo from Let's Grow Kids, who also serves as our Ward 5 school commissioner, noting that in April, on April 12th at 1 p.m., there will be a rally with respect to their efforts. I look forward to being there and hope others will too. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councillor Travers. We'll open the floor to Councillors. Any other Councillors who wish to speak to the resolution? Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Powell. Thank you, Councillor Travers, for sharing all that. And I do take pleasure in hearing a specific story of how the city set up the Early Learning Initiative, which has funded both grant programs and scholarships for low-income Burlington children to receive high-quality childcare in Burlington or in surrounding municipalities. It is great to hear tangible examples of how the work we've done together, what this program has done. And as your comments point out, it's very clear to me, it's always been clear to me that the city's not in a position to come forward with a comprehensive solution that's really that this challenge demands. Our youngest Burlingtonians, families, childcare workers are all really being held back by the current system in so many ways. The money invested in early education, it's actually kind of upside down from the way we invest in other areas of society. The time of life when government intervention, government spending can have the greatest impact and can have the kind of highest returns is in the earliest years of life. And yet in this country, we continue to spend very little money relative to later stages of education. And we got a chance this year, I agree, to change that, here in Vermont in a way that will have an enormous impact on the quality of life and on life here in Vermont. And when we get it done here, I think we'll ripple outside of the state and could really be one of the first states to take this comprehensive step. So I appreciate Councilor Travis for bringing this resolution forward. I'll be there at the April 12th, then continuing to advocate for the state to take action to ensure that all Burlington and all Vermont children have our guaranteed high quality childcare. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Councilor Brandt, and then we'll go to Councilor Chang. Thank you, President Paul. I, as a woman, working woman who had two children, I have to say that quality childcare was absolutely vital to my mental health, the well-being of my children and my partner and my family. And it is often overlooked. It is a heavy burden financially for families and to have government help with childcare is absolutely essential. I also just wanted to say that there is an anthem that was created for and by Let's Grow Kids, written by Cat Wright and Chris Dorman. And I would recommend that everyone listen to it. It's very beautiful and it's, you know, it's of Vermont. It's homegrown. It's really beautiful. And as is this initiative, thank you. Thank you, Councilor Brandt. We'll go to Councilor Chang. Thank you, President. And I wanna appreciate actually Mira Weinberger for one of his work around early childhood education. As a mayor, I know we don't agree all the time and I know that I told you this before because the leadership in bringing early childhood education in the city of Burlington. And I think what he has done is basically strengthening equity through program for to support families of color. That's unique, that's very specific. Burlington has done it. To support families with children with disabilities, Mira Weinberger has done it. Marginalized communities have done it. The EC early childhood leader in the city, right? Working with vulnerable population and connected them with the CCIP childcare subsidy has been unique and this eyewitnesses firsthand help support many parents to come to the city and take advantage of the program you created. I wanna say thank you. Yes, but at the same time, I think we have to be very careful as a city about early childhood education. This resolution is not taking into account many issues that is happening currently at the state. We probably know as a resolution states, Act 45 was created by the legislator to study early childhood education. That study was out last summer and the recommendation of the study are not part, are completely not part of H2OA. Right now, or S56. This is the state of through Act 45, they studied early childhood education and childcare in the state. Recommendation came out. The bill they're discussing right now are not taking into account those recommendations. This is significant, right? And also as a municipality working to function basically by raising taxes, the bill currently people are discussing may have significant impact on taxpayers of Burlington. It is going to ask all four year old children to go to Burlington schools, to go to the schools, to the district, to receive preschool, pre-K programs. Currently, it's the third, three years old and four year old. They are participating in Act 166, which basically giving them option to utilize private programs and the state is ensuring 10 hours of pre-K to old third and four year old children in the state of Burlington. They can utilize it privately or in a partnership model. What we're discussing at the state is completely significant and I think we have to be careful as a municipality. Yes, I like component of the bill, which will be increasing the childcare financial assistant from 300% to 400% of the federal level. I think that's significant, that's great, right? I like also the aspect of providing more support to childcare workers, increased benefit, paid tuition for college, I like all of those. But there are component of this bill that will, if it passes as it is, it will significantly going to impact property tax payers of the city. What I like about this resolution though is a little bit general. It's not really specific, it's not talking into the nitty gritty of what's happening at the state through S56 and H208, right? Reason why I'll be supporting it, but let's pay attention and I think we need to focus more on how do we increase the early childhood program of the May Wineburg to support vulnerable communities in the city as part of the budget that we will be passing soon. Thank you, but we'll be supporting this as it's just general. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang, for those comments. Are there other Councillors who wish to speak to the resolution before us? Councillor Freeman. Thank you, President Paul. I just wanted to speak briefly. I was really excited to see this on the agenda. Thank you, Councillor Javres, for bringing this forward. I'm not sure about the comments regarding, I didn't see anything in it that overtly said that there would be a direct tax increase. I think that I understand that people in the US are nervous to talk about taxes. We do use taxes to pay for public goods, though. And there's not anything in this resolution, though, that really speaks specifically to taxes. I think the intent of it is to talk about how we fund public services. Early childhood ed is so vital. I really appreciated the Mayor's comments about how vital it is to fund that as a community resource. It's really wonderful to have so many of us around the table agree on that and agree on an issue. And I just was really excited to see this on the agenda. So I just wanted to thank you for putting work into it and everyone who worked on it and sponsored it and spoke in support. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Freeman. Any other Councillors before we go to a vote? Seeing no others, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously with our thanks, Councillor Travers, for your work on this resolution. This completes our deliberative agenda. And with that, I would entertain a motion to adjourn our meeting. So moved. Made by Councillor McGee and seconded by Councillor Chang. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. The motion passes and we are adjourned at 9.50. Thank you for joining us this evening. Our next meeting is on March 27th, the last council meeting of the council year. We'll look forward to seeing you then. Have a good evening.