 We'll talk about patrols and lack of enforcement. A couple of weeks ago I was on Pearl Street toward the Battery Street and on the south side of the street, on the sidewalk, three skateboarders got on. The first two went on, the third one fell on his back and rolled out into the street past the bike lane and luckily for him there was no car coming at that same time. Okay, not only is skateboarding an annoyance and maybe can cause possible injuries to pedestrians, but obviously in this case with the condition of Burlington Sidewalks they're not too good and he could have been killed or maimed, anyway. So I looked past him further west and there was a person in a nice yellow jacket and I would have expected that person to say, hey, carry your skateboard, didn't happen. Okay, this sort of thing is repeated on the Church Street Commons. So a woman smoking, she goes past and there were the two female patrol officers there and they're referred to by some people as the two bumblebees. They're together and I can't see why they're together because it seems to me it's a job and the enforcement doesn't need two people together. They can start from one end and cross each other and they can be aware of lots of stuff. If they need the big guns, they have a phone. Okay, I saw that woman smoking, I looked toward the patrol officers, nothing happened. There was a kid on a bike, he went through, nothing happened and then I saw in one situation where there was a skateboarder who was also a smoker and he was going up Church Street. So that encapsulates the whole business with the lack of real patrolling and that kind of lack of enforcement, after a while it creates a sort of seedy atmosphere. You like to have some freedom and you don't want an armed camp but at the same time somebody should say, hey, you know, put the cigarette out. I've never seen that and I think we should. Thank you, Mr. McDonald. Jennifer Decker is up next to be followed by Lucy Gluck. Good evening, Ms. Decker, welcome. Thank you very much. I came to speak out in opposition to the basing of the F-35 nuclear bomber at the Burlington airport which the city council does have the power to cancel and that's a really important opportunity that all of you have before you. I wanted to share some of the testimony by Dan Grazier. He spent 10 years as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps. He had deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan and felt that that taught him to evaluate weapons and equipment for their true military value. He also graduated with a degree in military history from Norwich University and he works now for the Project on Government Oversight. He has studied the waste and abuse that often accompanies Pentagon weapons programs. The F-35, the current price tag as far as I know is something around $1.5 trillion. Surely much more costly to all of us as American citizens than is being factored into our local conversations. Despite the flood of optimistic press reports emanating from the Pentagon and industry funded media outlets, the F-35 remains a deeply flawed program. So other folks have spoken about the nuclear issues and there are many other issues and problems with the plane. But just to highlight some of the nuclear issues, the B-61-12 bomb, which is sized for the F-35's bomb bay, is the world's most dangerous nuclear weapon. So I wanted to invite all of you on the city council and the mayor to an event that we're holding to commemorate Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Sunday, August 4th from 4 to 6 p.m. in the park across from the airport, where we'll be continuing to educate the public and educate our leaders about the importance of banning the basing of these planes. So I wanted to also quickly mention that the planes are single-seat fighters. This is the first time in history that on a nuclear platform, we only have one person working together. I'm sorry, one person watching the webinar. Previously on all other systems, there have been multiple people involved. The jobs are not what has been promised. The jobs will mostly go back to Martin, not to folks in Vermont. And the ownership cost to Vermont is very steep. So thank you very much for this opportunity to speak. Other cities have said no, this is our chance. Thank you, Ms. Decker. Lucy Klopp is up next. She's followed by Rachel Siegel. Good evening, Ms. Klopp. Welcome. Well, I think most folks know I live in the old North End. And I grew up in South Burlington just a little ways from the airport. So it's been here since I was a little small five years old. And the airport and that community, our community in Burlington, and also UNESCO especially, all the people that can't be here to speak because they may not speak English. They've only been here a while, but they're the ones who are going to be heavily impacted by the F-35. I personally think there's just a long list of reasons why the F-35 should not be based in Burlington with the population that we have. So close to the airport, the health and safety issues. But as a bottom line, when next month I'm hoping you'll actually consider a resolution that's being worked on by some of the folks on the city council here, when that language is presented to you and has been, your similar resolutions have been passed to say you don't want to prove ours in Vermont. It's kind of a no-brainer. I think everybody can nod their heads and say whether this thing carries nukes or not, it still makes us a target, unfortunately. But to at least draw the line there, and so we're putting our hands in your minds and your hearts to really do whatever research you can between now and then next month when the resolution comes. One place that has a lot of media, really unbiased reporting and a lot of good information is the Save Our Skies for Vermont website. If you haven't ever been to that website, you can see all the people that have given the reasons why the plane should be canceled, but there's a huge section of that around the nuclear issue. And so if you could just take some time, some of you have already done this, but if you have a few minutes to look at that before your meeting in August when this resolution comes before you, I would appreciate that. I think it would be helpful for the discussion. And to know that we're following it, the Winniske, South Burlington, the Vermont State Senate has all said this makes sense. But very pleased we could make our voices heard around the nuclear issue. And I hope that you'll be willing to do that. Thanks. Thank you, Ms. Gluck. Rachel Siegel. Could you come forward, Councilor Siegel? Welcome. Dave Hurkins up next. Nice to see you all. Oh, good. And after that. I am here to speak to a couple of things. First, speaking in favor of the diversity, equity and inclusion resolution that you have coming forward and really excited, really excited when Councilor Deng reached out to me about it, that things are moving forward in this way. It's one of those things where you look back on the work you did seven years ago or no. Oh yeah, like why didn't we do X, Y, and Z then? And now it seems so obvious now that he laid it out and then you all work collaboratively on it. It's really exciting, I'm really excited about it. And I have two little hesitations about it that I'll mention because I think there's always room to do that, right? One is my concern about having a singular position in charge of it. We know that when Dan Alam was in that position for the schools, he died of a heart attack. That wearing the job of being the person doing diversity and inclusion work for a huge institution, especially as a person of color who hopefully that's even higher because they are experts on racism, that that's a huge toll in terms of the stress and can cause heart attacks on people. So maybe the next iteration is to give a department not just a single person. And then I also hope that nobody just pats themselves on the back because we always all need to keep working on this stuff and especially for white people to continue our own development and racial identity work. So thank you in advance for doing that. I also unfortunately am here to speak in opposition to the F-35s, which we all now now are going to be nuclear capable. And we all know that while our senators have said they don't want any news here, they're not likely to. I don't see them following up on their word on that. But you can and we can. And if you go to the Save Our Skies website, you'll see a list of seven different cities where through resident pushback, the Air Force did in fact change their mind. It is in fact not too late. It is not too late. And you are in a position of incredible power. So I hope you will utilize that. And it brings us back to diversity and equity because if you are really true to the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion, you'll recognize the disproportionate impact of the F-35s. Even if we do make it to the 75th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in a year, we're heading up close at the point. Even if we make it another year, we don't get bombed for being a target. We still are disproportionately impacting poorer people and more people of color with the noise impact. So if you really stand by the principles of diversity, equity and inclusion, as you're doing with this wonderful resolution, I hope you will also apply that to the impact of the planes on poor people and people of color. We know that militarism always impacts poor people and people of color more than people who can be insulated from it on the Hill. Thanks. Thank you, former Councilor Siegel, former City Councilor Dave Hartnett. Councilor Hartnett, welcome. Good to see everybody. It's glad to see Councilor Siegel here. My topic is commissions and the selection process and Councilor Siegel and I made great changes to that. Hopefully for the better, but obviously we failed. Just not three hundred nights ago, but over the last six years, this process has been a circus here in the city and it's been unfortunate. Probably one of the most important things that we can ask from the public is public engagement. That we want people involved. And serving our commissions is one of those roles. Why would anybody want to serve our commission? Knowing the process that we've been through. What happened to Commissioner Dunn? A few weeks back, there was a disgrace. A man that's given great service to the city, many years representing the Progressive Parliament, is up for reappointment at the Police Commission. It's not the fact that you didn't give me a point in it. I know those things happen. It's the fact that this Council used him as a bargaining chip to get their friends on the commission and get political favors done for them at the expense of Jim Dunn. How did Jim Dunn not get appointed when everybody up here on this table wanted him to be back on the commission? I'll tell you how it happened. We put our friends on, we take care of our political flavors, and we're worried about who might run against our city council. Okay? And it's not all the Councils. It just takes one or two to rule the process. And quite honestly, there's a long history here led by Councillor Paltz that plays games with this process. That is committed to putting her friends on political flavors. Keep it, try to keep the names out. I'm directly my comments to the Council, but I'm just gonna call it as it is. You can't have that process. You cannot. You worked five and a half hours putting a slate together. The Thursday prior to that, the 20th, right? What good is a slate when all these cycles are being made, putting their political friends on and taking care of their friends? What does that say to the people that want to be on our commissions? So I come with a solution tonight that I hope this Council will think about, because I know it's easy to come up here and complain. Right? But here's what I like. I like the process to look like three city Councils representing different parties, the chair and the vice chair of each Commission that we're selecting, and a representative for the mayor's office. That committee to put the council, to the commissions together. That takes the politics out of it. That takes the friendships out of it. We're also getting input from the chair and the vice chair of what that commission might need that they might be looking for. We'll hear about attendance issues with commissioners. Right? We don't go, excuse me, I want to finish up because there's one point I want to make because we do have an issue with one commission and police commission with attendance records. She's better approached about whether she's just continuing to serve her now. She was approached before the process. She has made it very clear she wants to finish her term. She is feeling bullied by city Councilors to leave that position so they can get Jim Dunn back on the commission. That is unfortunate that we have a single mom who's got a mom on a nursing home that she's trying to take care of and she feels that members of this Council and they're the same ones that are playing all the games are bullying her to get off that commission. That is not okay. Thank you, Councilor Hartnett. Karen Long is up next to be followed by our final speaker, Nancy Jacobson. Good evening, Ms. Long. Welcome. Good morning. Usually you say when you're coming up there. I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Give me a minute please, because I am going to read tonight instead of like losing my thought because I tend to get nervous. So, I'm going to talk about the lake and our sidewalks. I do want to say before I read my piece that I heard the most troubling thing that somebody went to Burlington Health and Rehab and the only thing this person wanted was to get outside and get some fresh air. And I have recently complained about one of our step ups from the sidewalk is the size of my phone. This is one slab, this is the other. So this woman who is 70 had to push her friend, who I don't know how old she is, on the street. And we know on East Avenue, same thing, co-housing people say that our sidewalks are so bad on East Avenue that they are pushed in their wheelchairs, motorized wheelchairs on the street. So anyway, that just, I can't believe you couldn't ignore that. And I do appreciate the extra $500,000, but that is not going to help when we're spending $6 million on City Health Park. And those sidewalks are good. So anyway, I'm sorry because I actually have something written here that I want to read to you. Stormwater Reloff is the greatest source of the excess phosphorus fueling algae blooms and accelerated beautification. The city of Burlington loves the rain garden and I do too, but it has been incredibly lax and irresponsible about enforcing our regulations on lock coverage, letting lawns be lawns instead of parking lawns, and protecting public and private green space from compaction and vigilante- What? Miniponpa. The person came to the door while I was putting away some knives and kits because I was a grandson, and my husband hoisted around, putting his hands over me while I'm holding me nice and standing in my hand, stabbing myself. I go to the door and I still have it small, carrying knife in my hand. I forgot all about it, and apparently I was yelled at three or four times by my husband, so I dropped that. Well, I didn't drop it because I knew if I did, it would spring up knowing what I had in my hand, and injure somebody else besides myself or the police officer or my husband who got six in my front entrance hall. And the next thing I knew, I threw it out to the east. I was facing the south, he was facing north. That's Jacobson I am gonna have to. And he assaulted me. He slammed through the door three steps after I took it and he slammed me on the floor just before my foot surgery, and I've been handicapped since. This is my first time out since this happened, and I will not put up with it. If something isn't done by a person who lies or is not trained properly, something else is gonna happen to him. One person on this committee knows about it, and I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Jacobson. J.F. Carter, News Bizer, final speaker. Good evening, welcome. Good evening, yeah, sorry to sneak up last minute but I just wanted to express my support for the resolution that Mark helped introduce and that I think will most likely pass unanimously tonight, and it's definitely a step forward, and the Special Committee on Policing is a step forward, but I just want to make sure that the council and our community make sure, similar to what Rachel Siegel had mentioned, that we don't kind of lull ourselves into a false sense of security around. We did it, now we can put that issue to bed and move on, because it's a constant process, and I certainly am not one to pretend that I grew up in a family that social justice was a common topic around the dinner table, but it takes a lot of work on an interpersonal level and on an institutional level, and I think everyone on this council representing the community of Burlington has kind of an extra responsibility to be investing in that, and just to highlight the need to continue that work. We had conversations around body cams, we had conversations around the need to divert resources into addressing the root causes of why we need policing in the first place, why folks are suffering from addiction and poverty, and trying to decrease those interactions, negative interactions with police. And still we had an uproar in city government and among community that was somehow anti-cop to have those conversations. So I think, you know, while this is probably the most significant piece like resolutions that at least in my short four years of being involved, we need to make sure that we recognize that there is a ton of work to do moving forward. And then quickly, as I am running out of time, I just wanted to express my support for the resolution that should be in front of everyone in August opposing the basing of the F-35. And I also just wanted to throw on folks' minds that we should really start to have a conversation about ranked choice voting again in the city and the benefits of it and how that can benefit our local democracy, both in local state and in federal levels. So I appreciate the time and thanks for letting us speak. Thank you, Mr. Neubeiser. That will close out tonight's public forum. Thank you everyone for coming out tonight and speaking. We appreciate your sentiment. And we will now move on to item number six, which is the consent agenda, Councilor Busher. Yes, I'll move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Seconded by Councilor Roof, all those in favor of adopting the consent agenda and taking the actions indicated, please say aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Item number seven on the deliberative agenda is a report from the Burlington Electric Commission. A report from the Burlington Electric Commission. Good evening. Thank you. The Council, I am Gabrielle Stettins. I'm the chair of the Burlington Electric Commission, one of five commissioners. It's great to see you all this evening. And with me, in case you guys have any really sticky questions, is our great general manager, Darren Spinger, who just started up on his second year with us. I trust you received both the annual commission report, which was this time signed by all of our commissioners, as well as the performance measures report, covering all of our efforts and the BED teams work over the last year. Also, I don't know if you have a copy of this, but you should take a look at some point. It's available on the website, the 2019-2020 strategic direction. And I just wanna highlight, I work in the energy field, not so much in Vermont, but in many, many states in the US as well as Canada. And the major drivers for an electric utility are to make sure that it's safe, make sure that it's reliable, make sure that the rates are affordable, and then more and more over the last several decades, we've seen more and more discussion about making sure that the utility and the utility of the future is becoming more and more sustainable. And I just wanna say that that is exactly what BED has been working on. If you've had a chance to skim through the performance measures report, pretty much all of our stats are either improving or holding steady. And this goes from how frequently there's a power outage planned or unplanned as well as how long the duration is, as well as our rates heading into the 11th year of not having a rate increase that's pretty unheard of when everything else you possibly buy goes up. And also in terms of reliability and finally the innovation aspect. The innovation aspect is really about trying to figure out how we can continue to drive towards the Burlington City net zero energy goal by 2030. And that's for everything from power, so electricity to thermal, how we heat and cool our buildings to also ground transportation, not airplanes. But I'm happy to take any questions. Our four commissioners have been with us. We just had a new commissioner join last year, but otherwise everyone's going into another round. And Darren, I don't know if you wanna add anything. I just wanna say that the team continues to work really, really hard. Our budget that was just passed by the commission you all and the finance committee. If you take a look at those stats, pretty much everything is holding steady. Even labor expenses, every single way that is possible, this department is holding steady. And it says a lot, not just for a city department, but also if you look across the US at independent operated, so for-profit utilities. If you look at municipal utilities and if you look at cooperatives, it's really great work. Can we always improve without a doubt? There's always room for improvement, but it is great work. And I encourage you to actually take a look and skim through that. I know you guys always have tons of materials, but it's pretty impressive and it's why they keep winning lots and lots of awards. I'll just add very briefly that Burlington Electric's really fortunate to have the commission that we have and the support that we've had from our electric commission has been outstanding in terms of helping us move aggressively on a number of our goals, giving us appropriate oversight when it comes to our budget process and really coming up with ideas with us as we go. And I think that the team really appreciates the interactions that we have with the commission. I very much appreciate Gabrielle's leadership and we're fortunate to have the dedicated citizen commission that we have. All right, thank you. Questions, we'll start with Councillor Tracy. Thank you so much for this report and as well for your service to the city of Burlington as both chair of the commission as a commissioner in general, really appreciate that. One of the issues that I care about a lot is district energy and seeing that project move forward. And I'm just wondering what work the commission has been doing on that issue and how you see that work proceeding in the coming year. Sure, so we saw a lot of progress over the last two or three years. We found an entity that could provide a variety of different business models, either the city potentially owning and managing the project or them owning and managing the project and us being off takers essentially. A lot of great research. At this point, I don't know if you guys are looking at natural gas prices unless you work in the field, probably not, but that's what tends to drive the price of electricity right now. And it continues to be really phenomenally low, which has made the discussion and the budgetary review for some of our key potential off takers who we need, those Lynch pin properties, to really crunch their numbers tighter and tighter. We do have a couple of opportunities we're looking at moving forward. I've been working on a couple of side discussions with Darren in terms of how the Department of Energy might be able to actually help support the project. That's very far off in the future, but we're working on it. And there are some new ideas about how we might be able to continue moving along this path. The model still stands that if we were to move along what Porix, the company that had done a robust amount of work up until about a year and a half ago, a year ago or so, the model still stands that if we were to shift over the technological design that they had come up with, that we would see overall a two thirds reduction in FMBT, so basically thermal carbon output is an easier lay person to put it. Yeah, I think we had been focused in the legislative session on getting some authority to help us fund the next phase of work through our existing incentive funds. We received that authority in a bill that the governor signed just in June, I believe. And so we're in the process of trying to reopen some of the discussions with the potential customers with that in mind and talk with Porix, talk with different stakeholders, and see what the best route is to move things forward. I think the factors that Gabrielle mentioned are very much real, I mean, we are facing, we're essentially trying to move forward to competing fuel source to compete with natural gas potentially at very low current prices. So we need a longer term level of thinking, I think, when we look at this project, but it's very much alive. We have some new authority that we're looking to use to help move it forward. And my hope is over the next coming couple of months we'll be doing some additional intensive work and have some things to report back to you. Thank you, Councilor Tracy, Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Wright. Thank you both for being here. I know on the report you touched on sort of the electric lawn mower and the electric vehicle, just hoping maybe you could speak briefly to that. And also, I know there's sort of what outreach you're doing to sort of expand the scope of, I know that's been some criticism we've read in terms of its limited outreach. So I'm wondering sort of what you're doing to increase those wonderful programs that you're offering. Sure, I'll take a first stab in there and you can finish up after. I'll just note that this is the general manager's that the lawn mower is like his personal drive. I mean, he's excited about it, like every week to mow his lawn. And I personally have signed up to try out the electric vehicle that you can loan for a few days just to get a sense of how far you can drive on it, what happens when you go up a hill, down a hill, because I still drive like a 15-year-old Subaru. In terms of outreach for the lawn mower perspective, certainly there were a few different outreach events at the video of him trying out the electric vehicle. And he says he's not quite there yet. He needs to have a few more years to drive his current car in the road. But you know, that highlights the need even more to your point of slow and steady and repeated marketing, because we don't buy new cars every year. And if we're gonna make this transition to a more sustainable society and community, then we have to constantly gradually infiltrate people's heads so that if they're gonna maybe think about a new car in two years or five years or seven years that they're ready there and then. But go ahead and add whatever else I'm missing. Yeah, I think with the lawn mower program we've had great success. I think we've done more than 90 lawn mower rebates in a little over a month. And that's outstanding for us. We've had the downtown hardware store and the hardware store on North Avenue, the 2A store sold out, I believe, of electric mowers for a period of time. And I think what we're seeing is we have a $100 rebate on a piece of equipment that's $3, $400 and it's very comparable already to a gas mower. So people, the $100 is helping to move the market. With EVs, we're offering or plug-in hybrids $1,200 or up to $1,800 for low-modern income customers is still only a fraction of the upfront price. Even with the federal tax credit we know the upfront price can be challenging. I was at and I'll leave it as an unnamed auto dealer in the community this morning because we do talk to our different potential partners in the auto community. And I think we have a challenge when we think about outreach is that some auto dealers, even that have a plug-in hybrid or an EV for sale, don't necessarily look at it as a vehicle that they're trying to move actively. A few of them do and I give them credit for that but this is a market that's partly been created through regulatory push at the national level. One that we fully support and I think our challenge is getting more and more auto dealers, auto makers to see this as something that the consumer wants and needs to have opportunity to test drive to be educated about because it's a unique experience when you get into an EV or a plug-in and you drive it and you enjoy it and you see the performance and fuel economy benefit but we've got some outreach challenge there with that particular aspect that we're working on. Well, and to that point, besides the fact that it costs less to actually drive in terms of filling up your tank with electricity versus going to the gas station, the maintenance fees are significantly less as well. So there's a bit of a push and pull there if you're an automotive dealer that actually does a lot of business by providing ongoing maintenance. So that's a tug within the industry as well. Thank you, Councillor Mason, Councillor Busher and then Councillor Pine. So you mean the advertising on TV for the leaf is a little misleading that I can't just fly? That's great. Yes, so anyways, I am very interested in, since my life has changed somewhat and I'm not really driving long distances anymore, I am more interested in electric vehicle now. So I just wanted to just share that. As far as the lawnmower, are there still electric lawnmowers now available and how long will the rebate be available for people? We tend to run our programs on a year-to-year basis so most of the time we'll say that they expire December, the end of December and then we'll renew or update them but folks can expect that that program will be available for the remainder of the year. My intention is that we'll keep it available in coming years because I think we've seen the value of that in driving adoption of electric mowers and I know it can seem kind of a trivial thing but it's really interesting to me that something like five to eight percent of local air pollution in a community can come from these types of engines. These smaller non-pollution controlled are very relatively non-pollution controlled engines and the statistic that really jumped out at me was that collectively as a nation, when we spill gas from that remote, we lose more than an Exxon Valdez spill worth of petroleum every year by spilling gas collectively. So electric has a number of benefits, cheaper, cleaner, safer and I think we'd like to see this be a part of the future for a long time. That's really good to know and I'm interested but I wanted to make sure that the people watching would understand how long they had in order to take advantage of this rebate. You, Councilor Tracy asked you about district energy and in your communication you said and you referenced this that you were looking for some minor modifications to state legislation and you said it was passed. That has to do with access to thermal incentive funds. Is that the piece of legislation that was just signed in June? Yes, yes, the governor signed that bill and it lets us use our existing funds to help support the project in a more meaningful way. You can see. Maybe not, maybe that's really. Oh no, sorry, excuse me, sorry. In your report also you talk about the strategic direction vision for Burlington and net zero energy and you talk about a report, a draft that was available in May and then a final report in July. Is that actually ready for prime time? That's not yet, it's still being worked on. The consultants that BED and the commission decided upon, there were many, many consultants that submitted proposals. Their goal date for completing their year final report in terms of their research is the end of July and the goal on our end given that so many people are out of town et cetera in August is to really do a proper release in September in terms of what their findings are. Obviously there's gonna be a given take in terms of where does the discussion take us but in terms of their methodological analyses and all their modeling, that would be complete by then. Will that report be at least either presented to the council or at least be on consent for us to have access? We were hoping to work with the council to set up a date hopefully in September where I could have the folks from Synapse which helped us with the study and RSG come and present with the Burlington Electric team and really do a thorough kind of run through of that analysis. Great, thank you. Thank you, Councilor Bushard. A lot of items left to deal with. Councilor Pine up next then Councilor Hanson then Councilor Jang. Councilor Pine. Also. Councilor Pine passes. Councilor Hanson then Councilor Jang. Thanks so much to both of you for being here and answering our questions. Just two quick ones. One is around the EVs. You mentioned some of the challenges around getting stronger uptake of EVs and this is a question that we had discussed a bit in the budget sessions but I'd love if you could reiterate some of the potential solutions to get especially more low income uptake of electric vehicles. I'll just put it out there right now as well to keep it quick. Something I hadn't seen but that caught my eye in the report was this energy coaching pilot program. I'd love to hear what's going on with that. Thanks. So I'll just say we should caveat it's not that we're not seeing EVs not being picked up. We are seeing EVs being picked up but just in terms of if you look at our climate change goals and the desire from a lot of Burlington residents to become more sustainable there's a lot more room to go there. And I'll just add I know there have been a couple of efforts and there are a few negotiated agreements with some of our local credit unions in terms of providing financing terms that are more favorable and more helpful for low income residents. And I believe we've had two that are completed but feel free to add more. I mean when I think about the EV market penetration we've had in Burlington with our rebate program we have something like 85 rebates overall. I think three of those have been for low modern income customers. The 85 is not enough because we know we need really significant adoption of EVs. The three is not enough because we're obviously not able to do enough yet to get more folks in. So one of the most significant things I think we could do and we're looking at it and we're not only looking at it at Burlington Electric but I think all the utilities are working with the state on this is there is a new state incentive program that is part of legislation that was signed this session that may offer incentives for folks who are at or below I think some sort of a median income level to help them with EV purchases and leases and that would be on top of our incentives so that could be a meaningful opportunity to add some additional cash and help make a lease or a purchase payment more affordable. And then in terms of our own incentives we've not to date offered incentives on used vehicles which we know with EVs used vehicles can still have a meaningful warranty on the battery and usually car comes with about an eight year battery warranty so if a vehicle is coming out of a three year lease and has five years left that could be a good vehicle for somebody to drive. We haven't had used vehicle incentives yet but the state is working with the utilities on that and there's potential for that to make those vehicles more affordable and we would have a role to play in helping customers with that. And just briefly on the energy coaching that you mentioned Brian Riley who's one of our great team on the energy services side working on energy efficiency has been hosting sessions at the family room and working with customers and the idea is to go where folks are who might need our help and might have questions about a high energy bill or an energy efficiency program. We've gotten great feedback from that I think we're looking at maybe trying to expand that around the city to other locations. Brian and our energy services team do a great job on outreach and that's a good example of them thinking creatively in terms of getting out there. Thank you Councillor Hanson. Two more councillors that I think we're going to conclude Councillor Jang then Councillor Polinow. So thank you so much for being here and I have a couple of comments and also a couple of questions. And first of all, Gabriella, thank you so much for, I can feel the love of what you're doing. I can feel it and also the knowledge, expertise, all of that I can feel it. Thank you for what you do for the city. So my first question is actually the second bullet. Avoiding the need for a rate increase for the 11th consecutive year. I see myself as still someone who is learning English but my understanding here is that you guys have the need to increase the rates but you are avoiding it. Is that accurate? Not quite. And there and feel free to weigh in afterwards. Right now we're monitoring the need. I mean it's like a home budget. You develop your home budget, you get a sense of your expenses and what your incomes are. And if something different occurs, you have more medical bills or whatnot, you need to adjust accordingly. We have been watching and monitoring the regional market and that's how a lot of our energy pricing and our income, not so much our expenses but a bit, but mostly our income, how that's developed is what's going on regionally. So when regional shifts occur, we need to monitor and address what we might need to change in the event that those regional shifts end up creating more and more expense for us. Thus far, we've seen shifts for example, the value of renewable energy credits. We've seen some of those numbers go down and then back up over the next two or three years. That's one of the items that we've really been looking at quite a bit. And because of other creative ways, for example our McNeil plant folks are very, very both fair but also diligent in terms of getting a really reasonable price amount for our wood products. So things like that, how can we reduce costs here to address when the regional market might change and therefore our income might change. But things do change in the region and we did think about a year and a half ago that we would probably need to increase rates in large part because of some of the regional market pressures and because of a variety of different measures that the BED team have identified and then brought to the commission and discussed the use of meetings that the team has really figured out a way to keep holding off on that. Will it come someday? Certainly everything goes up in price someday. But to the extent that we can hold our rates as affordable as possible, that's pretty critical. And the extent that if and when we do increase rates at some point in the future, the goal there would not be to do it by a teeny tiny percent that we have to come back next year, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I personally would prefer to see a reasonable stepped approach that is thoughtful. And to the point about the rates, that's exactly what the BED team is doing. I have other questions, but let me just ask you this one because I know many people waiting. But it's not only BED and I think this applies to all city departments. Most of the time when we get these reports, we don't hear the perspective from the staff. Do you do staff survey? What are the satisfaction in staying in the company? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Yes, definitely. So two general managers ago, we had a very long tenure. And then when we had a new general manager, Neil, come in, he did a lot of probing, a lot of staff surveys, and that has continued. And also to this strategic direction, to be honest, it kind of gets my go, but this comes to me after the staff have had a chance at editing it. And I'm like, wait a minute. But the staff look at it first and they say, like one of the major changes that has occurred in the last year is, I think it's our reliability team, felt that when they looked at this, they didn't see their work. They did not see how they're showing up and making sure everything, all the folks that aren't that interested perhaps, the poles and wires, all of that, that it wasn't really reflective here. And so that's one of the pieces that they came to Darren about and they said, look, we need to see more of how this resonates in our day to day work. So yes, there are yearly, I believe. I know I saw one about a year and a half ago, staff surveys, there's also been over the last three, four, five years, significantly more workforce training and a lot more ongoing education opportunities as well. But feel free to weigh in on both. Yeah, we've had an employee staff survey in 2015, 2017 and we're in the process of conducting one for 2019. And at least for the 2017 and the 2019, I believe this was true for 2015 as well. We don't conduct the survey. We contract to have a firm who comes in and conducts the survey for us and is able to kind of anonymize the data. So we get the feedback. We get to know what items are on people's minds, what things they would like to see more of, what issues they see. But people are taking the survey at a fairly high rate. I think last time was around 92% participation because they know that it's valued and they also know that they're not singled out when they respond. So we're in the process of setting that up for 2019 as well. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Our final question from Councillor Polino. I'll be brief, but I just wanted to publicly thank you for being so welcoming to me. Every time I've had a question, you've reached out and we've met and I agree with Councillor Jang that the approach you guys take to the work you do is very contagious. The fact that you've had zero complaints out of 21,000 customers in 2018 speaks volumes and keep up the good work. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Polino. And with that, thank you very much for that presentation. We appreciate that very much. And item 7.02 is a communication from- Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate your service. Communication from Daren, and thank you for the good work you're all doing. Daren Springer, General Manager, and Chris Burns, Director of Energy Services regarding the resolution relating to energy efficiency and rental housing for a relatively brief update on this. Thank you. We'd like to thank the council for the opportunity to present briefly on this report, which was in response to the resolution from two months ago from Councillor Hanson. Chris Burns and his team helped put some of the data in here together. I think I can summarize briefly and Chris is here to help me answer questions. What we looked at here was providing some background on what we call the time of sale ordinance, but it's the minimum rental housing efficiency standards ordinance. Looking at the background there, looking at data that we have and that we've worked with Vermont Gas on to accumulate further report that really looks at trying to give a whole picture of energy efficiency in the rental housing space. BED is only a partner in that space. Vermont Gas is a significant partner for us because roughly 95% of the community is served with natural gas. They run energy efficiency programs for weatherization just like we do on the electric efficiency side. So if it's a building that is electric heat, oil and propane, we would be the energy efficiency provider on the thermal side for that building. But in most cases, when it's a natural gas building for Montgas is doing both of the work as reflected here. And they've been very helpful, I think in helping us put the data together. Some of which in here is fairly unique data that looks at these different pieces by war so that each area of the city can be looked at in terms of energy use. And I'll probably leave it there and see if there are questions that Chris or I can answer related to the report. All right, great. Thank you. Questions from the city council? Councilor Hanson. Thanks so much. And just to give a little context for folks watching, the main issue that we're trying to address here is kind of the idea of the split incentive where we're a renter heavy city, about 60% renters, but in most of those renters pay the heating bills but aren't able to do any efficiency work and the landlords are able to do it, but often don't because they don't pay the heating bills. So that's an issue and because of that, we've had somewhat limited uptake or people aren't taking advantage of a lot of these great incentive programs that are out there for energy efficiency. So it's both a climate issue that we need to solve and also an affordability issue as well. So that's kind of the background of why we're pursuing this. And in terms of some of the questions I had around the report, so there was one statistic in there that said that potentially about 40% of eligible units for this type of efficiency work have had some work done. I was wondering what timeframe that was over that that work had been done. I'm gonna say in the last 15 to 20 years. Okay, okay, got it, got it. And then the, a couple of the other items that I wasn't totally clear on the, in terms of the averages. So we got a snapshot of average usage per square foot. Could you, just to give us a sense, could you tell us how that compares to the national average? And also I wasn't quite sure from the data how that has changed over time. It's driven by the age of the housing stock, local and state energy codes, programs that have been running for years, climate. There's just so much that goes into it. So what we gave you was real data through our partnership with Vermont Gas through our energy champ program, looking, working with the city assessors, getting square footage for the buildings and doing those calculations. But I think you'd have to go and find reasonably like age, type, and most important climate, heating and cooling degree days. And in terms of the progress we've made over time, do we have data, do we have this current snapshot? And I was a little unclear on how it's changed over time. We haven't gone back and done that same analysis year after year, so I can't answer that question. And I should add some context is we run the energy efficiency program through the state that's a state regulated program as an energy efficiency utility and we're unique doing that in Burlington, the rest of the state has efficiency Vermont on the electric side, Vermont Gas runs it on the heating side. So we pretty rigorously track and report and there's some links in here, the data for our expenditures through that program, but some of the data that was requested here, we either don't typically track or we had to partner with them on gas to access the data. So where there's gaps, that's the reason why. And I understand there's been a lot of ongoing discussion about solutions and ways to move forward on this issue. Understand there was some hesitancy to make recommendations ahead of some processes being completed around that, but I'm wondering if you could at least provide some of the potential ideas. I think there are some kind of no-brainers and would love to kind of move forward as quickly as possible. And curious to hear if you could speak to any of the potential ways to make improvements. Yeah, so as mentioned in the report, we've had a group, not just BED, but really a city group that's looked at these issues around the specific ordinance over the last year and is continuing to do that work. I think through the mayor's housing summit, we have consideration of not just this particular potential reform, but other meaningful reforms that could go as well. I think our feeling is that it would be premature to recommend changes based on this particular ordinance without knowing kind of the outcome of some of that additional work because it could have an impact on what type of investment we're looking to make, what types of requirements we're putting in place, what effectiveness we would have. But I can say that the types of issues we've been looking at are, is the cap on cost still appropriate or should it be reasons around the enforcement and how that can be administered? So I think we would like the opportunity to complete the work through the housing summit process and be able to offer recommendations, not just related to the time of sale ordinance, but to the broader suite of potential programs that could positively impact energy efficiency for rental housing. Great, great. Yeah, and I'll just say as a comment, first of all, thanks for all your work and really excited to work together and moving forward, I think. This issue in these, and I feel from your department and from your leadership that there is a similar sense of desire to really address the climate crisis and to really work towards efficiency. I have an incredible feeling of urgency around this issue. There's not a day that I don't think about the fact that there's what an 11-year clock ticking to solve this issue. So for me, this force and the sentence recommendation felt incredibly vague. I'm really looking to the administration and to your department to understand a better idea of this timeline. There wasn't really any elaboration on when the housing summit, when that feedback would come back and how we can really move forward because we don't really have time not to be, it's not dramatic to say that we are in the midst of a climate emergency that this is a crisis and I really want to bring that sense of urgency. This was unanimously supported by the council. So I was just looking, there's so much information here and I so much appreciate that work but I was looking for just a lot more sort of information, even some low-hanging fruit in terms of some real recommendations that we can get going. Thank you, Councilor Freeman. Mr. Mayor, did you want to respond or Mr. Mayor, you? I would just respond to the question about the follow-up from the housing summit. As we committed to at the summit, we expect to have, we've committed to a September 4th meeting, public meeting where we will be offering preliminary proposals on all five of the issue areas that we took on that day, had workshops on it that day and have already responded to Councilor Hanson inquiries to try to collaborate and to lead up to that and we welcome the opportunity to try to do that as well. So we agree and I've been working for years on this NED-0 roadmap which will also be released in September. I think we are on the cusp of detailing how we're gonna achieve probably the most ambitious municipal energy goals of any municipality of the country and we share your sense of urgency and considerable more details forthcoming on that timeline. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Real set. Thank you. All right, thank you very much. Director Burns and General Manager Springer for that update. Appreciate it. Item number 7.03 as a presentation from Cotter Hashin and Ahmed Latif, BHS students. And we've got about 10 minutes for you to give us a presentation on this issue. Good evening. In support of Children of Yemen. Yeah. Thank you. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Ahmed Latif. I came to Vermont from Iraq as a immigrant on 2013. I had BA in law and Raktis law in Iraq and I had BA in English language and I just graduated from Vermont last school and got my master in law and I planning to have an exam for Vermont barring termination. I'm here just to support my daughter. She's leading, she's here to support the Yemeni crisis, the Yemeni children and I will let her talk. Good evening, everyone. My name is Cotter Hashin. I came here from Iraq in 2013 with my family as an immigrant. I am a BHS high school student, rising junior and my dream job is to be a cardiologist and I want to serve my lovely community. So today I will be talking about the crisis of Yemeni children. The violence of this war have caused thousands of victims to die and to be injured and most of them are suffering from lack of severe food, drinkable water, medicine and safe shelters and the Yemeni children has been affected by the war the most. So right now we'll be moving on to Cook Fact, Cook Fact number one. Every 10, I'm sorry. Third population is 29.2 million. 75% of the population is in need of humanitarian aid. People in Yemen do not find food to feed them or their kids. About 5 million, which is approximately 70% of the population is in living in trauma-like condition. 2 million are displaced and under that goes A, about 2.3 million people have been either had to leave their homes, which is unfortunately still happening. Yemen is the largest food emergency in the world and there are about 7 million kids in Yemen. So we'll be moving on to important facts, important facts. Every 10 minutes, a child under the age of five dies because of starvation. So as you can see in this picture, children in Yemen, they really need food and they really need medicine and I think the picture can really speak itself. So in here, this is a video that was published by BBC News. It's a reporter from BBC News that went to Yemen and met a female doctor there. And in there, the doctor kind of just showed her around the villages and why they really need help there, especially the children. So you can't play the video. You can't play the video. You can't just click on it. Play the video? He's trying. Oh, sorry. There's a sound to it. And the devaluing. Think you can count the roof. The number of children under the age of five is approximately 2 million. Yemen has a number of deaths per year, but it is intolerant as well. So if you mind, in a head strike, they provide more of your life as a child and life of the age of 10 or 11 or 12. It's interchangeable with this situation. The reason why it is these businesses or hospitals are now more likely to find a step to the path in which your children is widely available. But here's the question now. Is life going to be struggling? This floor is this. And now the supply is this central hospital to the grave. How many of you have one and a half million children? Sorry. So the original video was five minutes, but we had to cut it down due to the limited time. 8.4 million people are at risk of famine and not to mention 14 million people are brought out of the school to be on the way from them. And so people appreciate it from each month that the children are at home first, giving up anything. People are losing beloved ones, especially the ones who are leaving behind children. Especially young ones. Next. About a quarter of school-aged kids are out of school and 2,500 schools have been either damaged or not able to run. And the children, basic rights, is just to have education and they can't even have that in Yemen. So it's kind of bad. Next. 14 million of Yemenis don't have access to clean water, as I said. And 1 million people in Yemen are suffering from cholera. And so, yeah, it's okay. So this is a speech by Bernie Sanders that he did at the beginning of this year. And he was the first one to speak about this issue. And he rose away from, look to a lot of people when I was actually one of them. I didn't know about the issue that was going on in Yemen. So that really helped me. And so the video is too long, so I can't really play it right now. It's like 14 minutes. But this is the link in below. You can check it out, I guess. So I'll just be reading like two bullet points. I kind of just summarized what's going on in the video. So at the end of 2019, it will have taken the lives of 2,19, sorry, 219,000 Yemenis and 140,000 kids under the age of five because of starvation. Yemen is at risk of famine. And the most severe famine in more than 100 years. So what do they need? I put this in two groups. The first group is short-term and then the other one is long-term. For short-term terms, sorry, they need drinkable water, food, safe shelters and medicine. For long-term, in general, they need protection. But if we divide that and have, they need safe camps. Both dispute parties should not be bombing or using these camps and they should be running under the UN. And the second one, it says safe baths and this is just to help the Yemeni kids who are trying to, who have problem with their health care. They can just go to other countries' hospitals and it's basically kind of just temporary health access in other countries. So I made a donation link in Mercy Corps. So if you wanna donate, you can just go there and you can donate and your donation will reduce all the pain from those powerful innocent and poor children. And this is the link. We're trying to also make a GoFundMe account but there are some technical problems with it. So we will send you the link afterwards. So this is my cited page. Most of my information I got are from the UN website at Mercy Corps. Yeah. I wanna thank all of the minister counselors for being here and giving me this opportunity and a special thanks to Ali Chang for making me come up here. And I wanna thank all the people, the audience who've been listening and I wanna thank everyone who made me come here. Thank you. Any questions? Thank you very much for that really moving presentation and hopefully the video tonight will help you raise more money to help more kids in Yemeni. Councilor Pine? If I could ask a question? Yes. Can you just tell us how this, this is a tragedy, this is an incredible disaster for this entire planet but how did it come up for you as the thing that you wanted to focus on? Well, the whole story started one night my dad, he usually talked about public topics and so he said that he talked about the Bernie Sanders speech and so I heard that every 10 minutes a child dies and like I didn't know about that especially I'm Arabic, I'm Muslim and like you know I kind of should have like at least have an idea about it but I didn't know about that and so it's a hard broken story, you know? And so after that I did my research I went to my teacher and then this is basically where it started. Thank you, thanks so much. Councilor Jang? Yeah and it sounds like you from Iraq? Yeah. And Iraq been in war as well? Yeah. So why not help Iraqi children and why focusing on Yemeni's children? Well it's our moral duties to help as a human being to help the whole world especially the whole world is like a small village so we need to help all the people. Thank you. Yeah. Just 15 years old PhD student I think this is inspiring. Thank you so much. Thank you. And Abdulatif, thank you too. Thank you Councilor Jang. Anyone else? Thank you very much for that really moving presentation of the heartbreaking pictures that we will all remember and hopefully we can all do something to help that situation out. Item number 7.05 and 7.06. No, we're missing 7. Got it. 7.04 is a special, I told you it was hard to move on, special event outdoor entertainment permit application Councilor Roof. Thank you President Wright. I will move 7.04 approval of a special event outdoor entertainment permit application. Applications for July 19th, 2019 and July 26th, 2019. Mr. French Band on July 19th from five to nine, amplified music, yes, dancing, yes. Phil Aviar Band on July 26th from five to nine, also amplified music, yes, and dancing, yes. Seconded by Councilor Trudeau. To create the strategic plan and then that report came back and since then, you know, the Council and also the may have been busy with all the things. And I'm glad that this is time around we all came back together and very impressed of every single person here, especially those who met with the mayor, Roof Pine, Mr. Mason, as well as the mayor's chief of staff, Jordan Rebel. But I think it's important that because Burlington pride itself on being an welcoming and inclusive community. As the largest and one of the most diverse city in the state of Vermont, we have the opportunity to be leaders in highlighting the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion. Not just through words, but also through meaningful action. And I think this resolution is an important step in this direction. It create a senior position in the city government to guide and support city leaders and departments in becoming more diverse, equitable, inclusive, internally and all across around what we do. So it also creates a committee of the city council focused on diversity, equity and inclusion. And that committee will be tasked to explore the creation of a commission. So I think those two components are very, very important because around this book, nobody has a crystal ball. We all trying to figure it out. And I think having someone who would monitor progress and who also will be reporting to the mayor directly as well as the council as we move forward. So it's no doubt that the city, in the city we have, we face many challenges, but we have learned that diversity in our community is one of our greatest strength. We cannot take this diversity for granted. We must work diligently to ensure that every one, regardless of race, religion, gender, identity, age, ability or country of origin is fully included in the fabric of our community. And I think Latif who was just right here, 15 years old from Iraq, who just inspired all of us to look at the world in a very global and aspect. So we all live now in the same boat. We all live, we all human beings, basically. And I think this resolution began to develop the focus through the creation of a new position which has never been created in my knowledge. There were components of some city staff to do that work but now someone will be here to work diligently to erase race-based disparities around city departments and also to make sure that inclusion is at the lens of everything that we do. So to finalize, I wanna thank Mr. Mayo again for his leadership around this issue. We also cannot thank enough Stephanie Saguna who is here who worked diligently around this resolution in giving us the accurate data that we all need. Rachel Siegel was also here and to talk about what we need to do moving this forward. And I think one aspect of it is maybe down the road for us to think about the creation of equity and also engagement office. So it won't be just the work of one person. And what is good about this resolution also is there are so many steps in order for us to get to where we need to go. One of the steps is to just vote it tonight and after we vote it tonight, the mayor will be working also with a couple of city councils to create that job description of that person. And then from there, the council will be able to weigh on that job description, make amendments, make it better and then hopefully to hire that person by January 1st. I think that's important to highlight. So, and I'm sure there will be some amendments because there are not a city council here that haven't weighed on this resolution specifically. And I think Sharon Buscher, we had a lengthy conversation about this that was also very inspiring. So we hope that everyone will be able to vote for it and so that we can move forward as a council. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jane. Councillor Buscher. Thank you. I just want to just to echo what I learned about the process and how inclusive it was. And I really appreciate Councillor Jang reaching out to me and the conversation that we had about how he wanted to move the plan from the shelf to become active and to be fully embraced. I think this really does that. I had talked to him about one minor amendment, which I'm going to make or put forward. But the rest of this is I see that, I was going to call it Councillor Siegel, but Rachel Siegel came forward and referenced one concern. She was hoping that by having this one position, it wouldn't diminish the effort from the existing team. And I certainly want to make sure that that doesn't happen because I see this person is helping that team still have that commitment to racial equity, diversity and inclusion. But I see that this individual will help keep them focused and have keep this as a priority. And so I see this as essential working collectively with the existing team and not eliminating that team. So I certainly want to just make sure that her fears aren't realized. This is in no way diminishing. This is augmenting and expanding our commitment to this. The one amendment has to do with line four where I have to smile because it has to do with talking about diversity as a gift and this diversity encompasses people of color, people with disabilities, older people. That's where I want to make the change. LGBTQ, people of different faiths, et cetera. So the people working on this, I believe were in the younger category. And so what I had hoped to do was to eliminate the older people and put and not really eliminate the older people, but to replace that language with people of all ages, because I think that's more consistent with what we're talking about. We are trying to reach out to people everywhere and it's not just older people, but it's people of all ages. And so I'm going to move that or as an amendment to this resolution. Thank you, Councilor Bush. This is where I really wish we had friendly amendments. We would just accept this, but since we don't, is there a second to the amendment? Second by Councilor Jang. Any discussion on the amendment? Hearing none, all those in favor of that change in language that Councilor Busher just suggested. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. Thank you, Councilor Bush. You have the floor back. Thank you. I had also talked about making some other changes because as you know the resolution states over and over people of color and when I came to lines 20 through 23 where now it was, it stated blacks as opposed to people of color. I thought about replacing that language but I also remembered about the report that came to us from the criminal justice system which did differentiate blacks from Asians, et cetera. And so I chose not to change that, the blacks to people of color because I felt I was tinkering with a report that did differentiate different ethnicities and I didn't feel this would be well founded. So I've left that alone. So having said that, I'm really happy to be one of the sponsors and be voting in support of this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Busher. Councilor Pine and then the mayor. Thank you, Mr. President. I just wanted to point out that in many respects our school district has taken the lead on this issue really. They have had devoted staff. They have a committee, standing committee of the school board that is perhaps called the Diversity Equity Inclusion Committee I think. And I just want to point that out and say that I think we have a lot of work to do but it's really important that we not shy away from a topic that makes folks sometimes uncomfortable. And I think that's really important to just be upfront about that and name it and focus on the result that we're trying to get. I do think that I want to respond to Mark Hughes who asked me specifically because he was pretty sure no one else would want to read it. I'm going to read just the resolve clause if I could. So, Mr. President, I know we've waived the reading but I'm going to take a minute to do that. Now therefore be it resolved that rule four of the rules and regulations of the city council should be amended to add a standing diversity equity and inclusion committee to oversee the implementation of the city's equity strategic plan as follows. Committee assignments, no later than the second meeting following the election of the president of the council that is the president shall appoint standing committees on licenses, ordinances, institutions, human resources, charter changes, community development and neighborhood revitalization, public safety, parking and transportation, energy and utilities, parks, arts and culture and tax abatement and diversity, equity and inclusion. Be it further resolved that in addition to overseeing the implementation of the equity strategic plan, the diversity equity inclusion committee is tasked with the exploration of the creation of a diversity, equity and inclusion commission and shall report recommendations to the city council within 90 days from the time the committee is established. And be it further resolved that the city of Burlington shall create a senior full-time position responsible for overseeing, managing and advising other senior officials on the city's diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. The position will report to the mayor, be part of the city's leadership team and have city-wide responsibilities and authority. And be it further resolved that the city council respectfully requests that the administration consultation with the city council, institutions, human resources committee develop a job description and seek council approval for the proposed position honored before September 23, 2019 and seek to fill the position honored before January 1, 2020. Thank you. I just wanted to get that in the record and make sure that the viewing and listening public was aware of what the council is doing. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Mr. Mayor. Thank you, President Wright. I too want to thank everyone involved in working extremely collaboratively and productively to bring this action to the council tonight. Particularly, I appreciate Councillor Jang's leadership on this and collaborative posture throughout this and the generous recognition tonight that this is in some ways the continuation of work that we certainly have been trying to do as a city throughout the last seven years. I appreciate your recognizing of my role in that, but I do think it's fitting that Councillor Siegel is here as well tonight and that she definitely played a leadership role in the early formation of the committee. And I do think we have made some progress since the plan was completed in 2015, sorry, 2014. And I think that plan focused us as an administration as a city on some areas that may not have gotten as the attention without that work. I think in particular, some of the work the police department has done reviewing why we lose applicants, people of color going through the police trying to become police officers and why the outcomes are so much different for recruits that are people of color than white recruits. I think the work that has been done being much better about reaching out to various communities, particularly communities of color to encourage people to apply for our commissions. There's been a market change there. We have moved the ball a little bit in terms of overall city hiring and diversifying our workforce and more. I do think this core team structure that was set up intentionally instead of creating a position at the time on the recommendation of the report has had some effectiveness, but I'm very clear that I think this is the right step tonight and the whole senior team within the administration is supportive of this. I think we are in a moment. It's just such a tumultuous, interesting, scary time in some ways to be in this country and there's so many concerning and unprecedentedly terrible things, shocking things that we see our federal government doing. I also sense somehow simultaneously with that a real reckoning in important areas including racial justice. I think there is a growing awareness of just the vastness of the magnitude and the recentness of government and justice to particular African-Americans and I sense there is a moment we can make. We are making progress as a country where there's urgency for that progress and Burlington, every institution in America needs to be part of that. Certainly the city of Burlington needs to be a part of that and the current structure puts too much, too much relies on work out of the mayor's office to move us forward and for the kind of sustained, steady, day in, day out, detailed, rigorous work that I think really is necessary to make us an institution with less institutional bias, less implicit bias. We need the discipline and the rigor and the capacity of someone waking up every morning saying how do we move the city forward today? I think that's what this resolution, this position is gonna do and I'm excited that it appears to have such broad support tonight. Thanks for the right. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Any other comments by the council? Are we ready to vote? We're ready to vote. All those in favor of the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Passes unanimously. Item number 7.08 is commissions and boards. Boards and commissions selection committee regarding the special committee on policing appointments. Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Wright. I would like to make a motion to approve the following slate of individuals to fill the seats on the special commission to review policing practices. I would note before I start listing them off that pay attention because this is different than what was published with two additions and I'll highlight them. The first is two members representing local communities of color. The slate would include Mellow Grant and C.D. Madison. Second is the member representing a local mental health substance abuse service provider, Dr. Kevin Rodgers. Third is a member representing the local LGBTQ community that's J.F. Carter-Newbeiser. Next, the member from a local activist organization, Skyler Nash. Prior to, just for the council and the public's benefit, prior to the meeting, we did have three individuals that sought to be removed, but we did still move forward. In light of that, the one that's readvertized, we did not get any applicants that were interested in filling that specific role, so I would ask, you know, I know we've all agreed to sort of do some outreach to try and fill that position and as soon as possible, I think the expectation is that commission should kick off and get started because unfortunately, we don't meet again as a council for some period of time. So with that, thank you. Well, I also, I know the council president, there are some members that are here that may wish to speak, but I would again thank members of the public for their interest. Unfortunately, we did have, you know, more interested qualified applicants than we did necessarily slots. But again, thank you for your interest in what I hope proves to be a productive exercise. Thank you, Councilor Mason. Thank you for chairing that committee and good work to the committee. A couple of councillors are lined up. First, I do want to see if anybody that applied wants to speak, you don't have to. The names are on the slate and they're going to be approved, but anyone want to? Okay, hearing none, we'll go to Councilor Pine and then Councilor Polino. Mr. President, it's really just a question of how to ensure that this position that's being reopened, much like the position for, I think we designated it as a provider, mental health and substance abuse. This is a member representing local domestic abuse service provider. Could we also just understand perhaps without any amendments, but that could also be just a person with lived experience? Councilor Mason? I know that I know our resolution didn't say that. That's probably, I'm not sure. I'm the appropriate person to answer that question. I don't know if it's Roof or? I have a, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Nope, you gotta be recognized. Don't get to speak without. So, I mean, this is, I don't know. I mean, I know other than the belief was we would do specific outreaches to individuals that represent those organizations, but I would say our application of a criteria was somewhat loose. You know, you didn't have, so yes, we would encourage anyone that's interested that may fit, but I also, I'd welcome, if Councilor Roof has a different view as the author of the resolution, I would defer to him. That's your roof. The language is the language, but I think the intention was not to strictly limit it to be an employee of or a director of any of the service providers. So if there's someone representing a service provider, maybe with the endorsement of, they could be somewhat lived experience and not be an employee of. I think that would maybe meet the intention. If the whoever does the selection deems it applicable, I think that was the intention during the authoring of the resolution. Sounds like we all agree. Is that sufficient, Councilor Paine? Thank you. Councilor Polino? I just wanna say I had an update on that and I probably should have reached out earlier, but I didn't reach out today and got back from Keona Heath from the network against victims of, she's the same and program coordinator of Vermont Council on Domestic Violence and she's confident that if she's not interested in the position, she will find somebody to apply for it. She just wasn't ready to do it by 4.30 today. So it'll be, I'm confident they'll produce somebody and meet. Thank you for that update, Councilor Polino. Any other Councilor? Are we ready to vote on the slate? Peers, we are ready. All those in favor of the slate as proposed by Councilor Mason, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. 7.09 is a resolution for the use of proceeds from the sale of Burlington Telecom. This originally was on here from the Board of Finance. It is not being sponsored by the Board of Finance, but it actually has my name on it. Councilor Powell, did you want to, did you wanna move away, Councilor Powell? I am prepared to do so if you want to. So why don't you go ahead, Councilor Powell, if you don't mind? Sure, no, I don't mind at all. So I'd like to move the resolution, waive the reading, ask the floor back for the floor back after a second as I need to make a few amendments. Seconded by Councilor Shin. Councilor Powell, you have the floor back. Thank you very much. I don't know if there are where the, I have a copy of the changes. Councilor Powell, you have the floor back. Yeah, I know. We're working on getting those up there so that everyone can follow along. Okay, well, they'll work on getting them up and you just go ahead. All right, so on the resolution before us, I would propose the following amendments. Just strike lines one through four on line 19 to change the dollar amount from $1,075,000 to $570,000 and on line 19 as well to replace the words proceeds from the sale of Burlington telecom to dollars from the unassigned fund balance. And then as well on line 19 to replace the word eight with the number four. And go, sorry. Go ahead. So I just wanted to just mention that just for the benefit, especially from Pete following along, that I think this resolution is another example of collaboration between the administration, the council and also the board of finance who discussed this earlier. I think all parties have worked collaboratively to address a significant capital need. We all know that we need sidewalk plows. Yes, sidewalk plows. No, snow plows. Sorry, sidewalk plows. Well, we need both of them. And we need this. This is a way of collaborating to address a significant capital need and balance that with a funding source that we all hopefully can support. As we all know, the mayor and his state of the city address stressed the need to replace our aging snow plow fleet. The resolution asked for the council to support the purchase of four brand new snow plows, sidewalk plows. And over time, there will be a need to replace others, but that will be in the years to come. The resolution originally came from the board of finance and because of the funding, there was some concern about that, but I believe that all members of the board of finance now support the resolution we have before us. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Powell. And so, Councillor Powell, can you, I lost track for a second there. So to crystallize the changes that the number of amendments made is again, one more time. Okay, so to crystallize it, we are gonna be taking, if approved, 570,000 from dollars from the unassigned fund balance as opposed to where it was originally gonna come from, which was double that amount, 1 million, $75,000 that would have come from the proceeds of the sale of Burlington Telecom. So in other words, instead of eight plows, we're talking about four. Okay, and the other four will be decided at a future date. Yeah. All right, thank you, Councillor Powell. Councillor Busher and then Councillor Mason. I guess point of order. Is there a motion on the floor? That's what I'm trying to do. Councillor Powell, did you make a motion on those amendments? Was there a second? Did you put that on the floor as amendments? No, I did not. Okay, so you are making that motion on a series of amendments that did what you just suggested and is seconded by Councillor Busher? No, we're not gonna go back forth. Councillor Busher, you wanna second that? You're seconding it. No pointing back and forth. Go ahead, Councillor Busher, you have the floor. In addition to the second. Thank you. Okay, I just wanted to further amend the title. So now it should be use of the unassigned fund balance to purchase four sidewalk tractors. And I just wanted to make sure that got updated also. But I did wanna speak to this amended resolution. I want to thank the mayor for listening and coming forward with a resolution that he can live with, but certainly felt more strongly with the original resolution. And I understand that. I had suggested that maybe we could use the unassigned fund balance to do this. And actually it had a conversation once again, trying to revisit where we were with, we wanna have at least 10% in as unassigned fund balance and we're at 13.5. And so I had talked to the CFO about how much money that really was and was trying to come forward with a proposal that wouldn't fully fund all aid, but maybe would have funded maybe six or so. I know that there was some hesitation in moving forward with that dollar amount because of some uncertainty with where we're gonna land and how we really wanted to preserve some of the unassigned fund balance in case we came up short and we needed to use some of those dollars. So I am happy that we are able to deal with the emergent issue of the sidewalk plows and I'm also happy that we will continue the conversation about how we are going to deal with the proceeds from the sale of Burlington Telecom. It is unfortunate that the timeline for the purchase of these plows was August 1st and yet we had not had a opportunity really to have an in-depth conversation about how we would spend the proceeds from Burlington Telecom. So that's the unfortunate part of this process, but I am happy to move forward with this. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Busher. And just to be clear, when you talked about the title, I don't think we need an amendment on that or we can just have the title changed to say that it's unassigned fund balance. We need a motion, do we need an amendment on that? Yes. We need an amendment on that. Okay, Councilor Busher makes the amendment. Yes. Change the title, seconded by Councilor Pine. Councilor Pine. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favor of changing the title. As suggested by Councilor Busher to unassigned fund balance, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, thank you. And we have Councilor Pine. I wanted to echo what Councilor Busher said regarding the Mayor's willingness to hold off on the BT sale proceeds going to this particular priority, which we all think, I believe everyone agrees is a top priority. We need to figure out how to improve our sidewalk plow fleet. I would ask in the next maybe few weeks or maybe a month or so that there'd be some analysis about the savings in terms of labor hours and parks and basically downtime. I mean, there is a significant savings in having new equipment in the fleet that will free up people. And that I know I keep harping on this idea that when we have in the past need to buy fire trucks or police cars, lease purchasing is one way to do it. And you would use the revenue that would normally come into the department for capital expenses to service that at least purchase payments. I just want to hammer that one a little bit more because I don't feel like I've said enough. Thanks. All right, thank you, Councilor Pine. Mr. Mayor. Thanks, President Wright. Yeah, I'm fine with tonight's outcome. I think it's a good step. It's an important step in the right direction that is supportive of our team that works during the snowstorms in some pretty tough conditions in these vehicles. And it will have the type of benefits that Councilor Pine was just alluding to, which are significant. And I do think this will minimize public frustration, will reduce some of the public frustration we've sometimes seen in storms when these vehicles have been broken down and slowed our response to clearing the sidewalks. I do just want to note here, especially given that this is also a note the night that we began to talk about the BT funds and how they will be used, that I think the kind of challenge in figuring this out is a harbinger, is I think showing, illustrating some of the challenges that we're gonna have in the next budget year, if we want to maintain the, I think considerable momentum we've built over this being the third construction season in a row. If we want a fourth construction season where we're creating the level, the sort of historic level of sidewalk replacement, sort of historic level of road repaving, continuing to move forward with the upgrades of our fleet that has been a major part of this facility, of the Sustainable Infrastructure Bond as well. We're coming to the end of those Sustainable Infrastructure Bonds. We are projecting a modest gap for FY21 to sustain this. And if we are not going to consider dipping, using BT funds for capital items, I think we're gonna have a real challenge and that is part of why we think it is not prudent to go beyond the four vehicles here. And so I just want to note that we have, I'm confident we can get through it, I'm confident there's some good solutions, but we do have some challenges coming if we want to continue through FY21, this kind of level of investment. And then we will have further challenges in FY22 and beyond when the Sustainable Infrastructure Funding is completely gone. So this is gonna be a topic we return to in the months ahead, years ahead. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Councillor Hanson. Thank you. Could someone provide some clarity just on the math here and how we ended up at the 570 rather than half? I'm sorry, Councillor Hanson, I missed. I'm wondering how we ended up on that number rather than having the number. CAO Anderson. There was a discount to buying eight that we don't get if we buy fewer. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. Are we all set to vote on the amendment? We haven't voted on the amendment yet. No, are we all set to vote on that? Looks like we are. Everyone, please say aye. If you're in favor of passage of the Karen Paul amendment. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously and those changes have been made. Are we ready to vote on the resolution? Looks like we are. All those in favor of the resolution as amended, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Item 7.10 has been, was removed from the consent agenda but has been also pulled from the agenda and will be brought up at the next meeting. So that moves us on to number eight, committee reports, any committee chair that would like to report to the council on committee activity, number nine, city councilors on general city affairs. Any councilor on general city affairs, hearing none. Number nine is city council president and my one update that I have is that in regard to the special committee that we formed on police issues, I am appointing councilor Shannon. This is not adding to the tax burden to add to the capacity in CEDO, allow it to better address its full wide range of responsibilities and mission. And I really welcome the council support and finding an innovative way to do this. And we will be posting the job description tomorrow and it's a key role for the city if anyone has any ideas for us. We welcome references. And then finally I just wanna point out before we meet again the festival of fools will occur out on church street in the downtown. It's really become a wonderful annual event led by our Brooklyn city arts department. And I hope the public will come out and enjoy it this year. And it's promises I hear from Doreen. It is going to be the best addition of it yet. So I hope we'll see big crowds out there. Professor Wright, that's what I got for a night. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Mayor, need a motion to adjourn and everybody have a great rest of the month and we'll see you in August. Motion by Councilor Roof to adjourn. Seconded by Councilor Hanson. All those in favor, please say aye. Opposed, we are adjourned until August.