 either one in case of emergency and go to the right or left and out the front or back doors. For those participating online thank you for joining us. If you would like to be heard on any during public comment or any agenda item tonight just indicate your interest in the chat box I will be monitoring that for folks interested in speaking. We will not be monitoring the chat box for content other than technical issues or requests to speak. Thank you. Great Okay agenda review are there any additions deletions or changes in order of agenda items? Jesse? So the city clerk has asked us to table item number seven the selection of the city's top dog and first feline she is at the hospital with a brand-new grandson so we'll put this back on the agenda on April 18th. Okay any other changes? Okay seeing none we'll move on to comments and questions from the public not related to the agenda. Are you not going to speak? Is there anyone online who would like to address the council? Okay seeing none and you haven't had anyone. All right we'll move on to announcements and the city managers report. Tom do you have any announcements? I'll just thank the chair and vice chair for speaking to Senate transportation the last week on the Burlington International Airport. Your testimony was very well received and very articulate so thank you. You're so welcome. It was fun to do that for me particularly. Megan? Yeah just I'll say you're welcome as well it was really I thought a very constructive hearing so I I do encourage the committee to move forward with the bill and take it to the full Senate and thank you for your work on that Senator Chittenden. Okay is that okay? It is yeah. Matt thank you and about CWCAS. I don't know if it's appropriate and I'm sure it's been done already but I just would like to note that last Wednesday South Burlington resident sister Janice Ryan passed away and those who knew her or knew over work understand what she meant to the state of Vermont and she was a proud South Burlington resident and she'll be missed. Thank you. Tim? Nothing to say thank you. Pardon me? Nothing to report. Okay well that's good because I have a bunch of things I've been kind of busy so first thing the Climate Action Task Force met on the 30th and should we do that under the committee report? Yeah I guess I can do that. All right well then one that wasn't isn't a committee. Jesse and I met with a school board leadership that we typically do once a month. It was a lot to report their charter committee appointments. They hope they'll get to them. We told them we'd like it to begin in May and maybe it'll be on their next agenda. It's on their agenda I don't know if they'll take it up. Let's see they talked about their ready. I asked them in terms of you know when we would like to or Jesse went through when we would like the charter committee to report so hopefully they'll be engaged and if they're interested in and let us know. Michelle Boyer is the lead for the superintendent search so I mean I would just recommend if anyone has names besides Jesse to join that committee to maybe give her a call and a recommendation. They haven't finalized whether they would like Jesse as part of that. I hope they do because I see really positive things with that kind of integration. On the impact fee they're still waiting for Jonathan's research. So and and they noted that since they're already over 100 extra students in two of the elementary schools they feel that it's more important than ever to get that kind of developed and to the council to potentially consider an education impact fee. They are working on coming up with a recommendation for an educational impact or a school impact fee and they're working with Jonathan. What's this last thing? Slesen. I know he's the only guy in the state apparently where he does it. Slesen from RSV who only works on educational impact fees. No impact fees. Impact fees. So they're contracting with him or working with him to get information about that but he hasn't come forward hasn't finished his research yet so so they're not ready for that but they did acknowledge since they have more than a hundred over you know over their capacity in two elementary schools that the sooner they get that information and a resolution to the council the better because they believe they're going to be looking at expanding schools or they'll need some of the money to collect to help moving forward. It's a city specific study that he's doing. Yes just for South Burlington. Yeah. I asked about the bonding outlooks and and we told them we're gonna have our potentially final TIF bonding question to the public for March and then potentially the Bartlett Bay. This is no news to us and Tom will talk to us about that and I we encourage them to figure out where they are on their spectrum so we can work together and not crush the public with even though our TIF bonds doesn't cost the public money it's difficult I think for the public to say oh we need you know five million dollars for this for city for the TIF and then we need X for 29 million or whatever it is for a new update to Bartlett Bay treatment even though we have the money for it and then the school comes forward with whatever they need so it gets a little overwhelming so we're hoping that they will come forward with a plan but it probably won't be until 2024 is what they think really they have an enrollment committee that's on the school buildings 2024 yeah so that their enrollment committee have met a couple times they have are working on coming up with some options and have developed a scoring rubric and then they need to once they have the options develop a cost layer so what do the different options cost and then consider the timing so they really didn't think they would have anything until 2024 and then on top of that is the uncertainty with the PCB testing with all the schools they don't know the outcome for that and that could be a whole nother challenge for education so did they know when the results would be coming from that because that's been going on since at least a year right yeah I think that's coming soon but they didn't give us a date so I don't know if they know I don't know is anyone do you know Tom so that's actually before the Senate Education Committee right now and the state is actually asking for an extension there's a good there 412 public school buildings in the state and based on when they were built and likelihood 302 of those are identified as needing to be tested each test takes about eight weeks and a certain amount of money and there is concern that if we test them all right at the same time a we don't have enough resources to do so and be if all of those are determined to be very serious what do we do but the point I raise is if they're serious we need to know as soon as possible and so what we are pushing back on is I'm only going to support a delay or an extension as long as we have some prioritization so that we're focused on the schools of those 302 based on their construction time period and known materials that we do those first and foremost that we if we have to go slower in order to actually have the resources to do so I don't know where Chamberlain falls on that prioritization list that's something that we are asking for more details on and how they will go down so is it related to when they were built because you were just talking about Chamberlain I don't know yeah no I was but is it the issue when they were built and then if you know what materials were used and how much ventilation improvements have been done over the years so there's a bunch of criteria I thought she was at Chamberlain all our schools I didn't mean to I didn't hear Chamberlain from Helen but I missed it no no I said them around okay all right shifting gears here and we talked about a steering committee and we thought maybe late summer as kind of an opportunity to welcome the new superintendent and meet with them and talk about you know his or her issues and our issues and how we want to work together we thought that might be a good time for the steering committee we also talked about the joint demographics that we are demographer demographer I guess you pronounce it that both the city and the and the school board would like to consolidate work together and they're developing or no we're developing the RFP and they'll hopefully join us with that and we talked about three sectors sort of the priorities for the demographer looking at AARP ARPA money decisions and how these two need to connect with the comp plan and that the data that we identify could be really useful for that analysis so I think both the the school and the city need to identify what kinds of data that we want to gather to address really all of our questions is that fair to say what kind of questions is this something that we as a council will work on so well the conversation we're having very very close to that is we're doing these three different planning efforts the ARPA effort rebuilding or updating the comprehensive plan and doing the school planning and so there are a number of data points that we would jointly like to collect and look at that would inform those three processes so for example for the comp plan update we're going to want to know a lot about housing trends type of housing that's being built type of housing that the market is demanding and the school is very interested in that as well to help inform how the school demographics are growing so while we're looking at it in this one place let's use the same data to inform these other conversations so was the school going to hire a new demographer or is it not been selected I think we're going to try to do it together but with a new consultant or well we'd RFP it and you do okay because they weren't very satisfied with their last one I believe right so because they weren't satisfied with the data that they got because they didn't match reality right that's right so that's when Bridget yeah he like shown like a star right so it sounds like a good idea so anyway so that's what we talked about it was a long meeting it was good though yeah we got through a lot let's see what else did I do well that's probably oh I'm yeah I'll do the task force later because I have a lot of information on that too what sounds like lots happening on the school board side though it's interesting work good yeah they well they're laying out the questions and what the challenges are I'm you know I think they're slowly stepping into this large bucket of work and with a new superintendent coming on I mean the timing has got to take that arrival into account yes it's very shun and yeah it's it'll be challenging for the new superintendent but I also think that's what encourages a lot of really good candidates to apply because that's what they want is a challenge or like the library for our librarian yeah yeah exactly or just before the city you know it you get a motivated and then they produce but it was off the ground when Jesse got hired where is the library yeah okay city center is still going yeah very true very true all right thank you I have a couple of updates tonight I've been asked to talk a little about planning and zoning staffing so a few months ago Paul Connor our planning and zoning director and I started to talk about our staffing capacity in the department really driven by three kind of three big motivations one we are working on several big projects that are going to require significant additional staffing capacity in the next say three to 24 months those being updating our permitting software so we have a very transparent place to go and track permitting progress to the development of the climate action plan and how we are going to implement that three obviously the comprehensive plan update and then a real interest through our planning process of increasing our public engagement and how we're bringing all South Burlington voices into that process so based on that we started to engage our staff here as well as CCRPC to think about what's the best model of that of adding that staffing capacity is it a new staff person is a consultant is it a team of consultants we learned last week that CCRPC does not have the capacity to support us with additional staffing hours through their UPWP program and then we also are anticipating at least one leave in that department in the next year so we're trying to come up with some kind of mid-term to long-term solutions here and anticipate coming to you in the next month or so with a kind of mid-year budget request plan to do that so more to come just wanted to preview that for you so we submitted a request to CCRPC through the UPWP program for general staffing support and they are not able to fulfill that this year additionally we have a staff in-house that will be on leave for some of this year the people they have are dedicated elsewhere can probably both I mean if they had lots more staff they probably do lots more things can you remind us of how many people are in planning and zoning I would love to so we have Paul we have Kelsey who's our city planner we have Marla who is our development review coordinator we have Delilah who is our ZA and we have Betsy who is the jack of all trades supporting that team and they are working they're doing a fantastic job working incredibly hard on all of the really exciting priorities we are working on in the city and then I guess in some to some extent Alana who does the TIF I mean that's kind of city planning too isn't it yeah so she offers a lot of support or leadership in that yeah yeah she's doing I mean we didn't have her doing that the planning department would do it yes that is true so she's kind of quasi-planning I think just a medical leaf Matt can I just one last tag off of that so Jesse does a fantastic job on the VLCT so I was on a call today I don't know if you were you think you were on the call today but the advocates that we have we're all members of VLCT from all these cities in town the advocates Karen Horn and Quinn Zachoff who do a amazing job you know I brought it this question up which is what do other towns do I mean in any profession right we're all having trouble finding people I don't know what it is if it's just Vermont if it's the Northeast what it is but car dealers to grocery clerks to planning and and the same problem that is throughout the state so that was good to recognize that we have what I would call a good problem and that we still have we have a great staff great core staff and we have an amazing response from those people that want to invest in our community and that's fantastic that's not so in other communities and it's our responsibility to make sure that we appropriately allocate resources and that's what we depend on Jesse and the planning and zoning staff to do and it's gonna get even more complicated it was just a purchase of the University Mall if we want to transform that area and I think we all do that's gonna take staff and we want to make sure we're prepared and so yeah thank you for what you do yeah if I could jump on there the form-based code which is gonna govern the you mall site was put in place in order to facilitate and I truly this is where you know the rubber hits the road it did with Market Street but you know you mall will also be kind of the testing ground for the form-based code which my understanding having been through that whole process with the consultant that took us through that form-based code that this would really facilitate that process because it was predictable and therefore less negotiation with staff as opposed to here are the rules permitting is that not something that not what I'm hearing that's not what you're hearing and I think form-based code it doesn't involve the DRB so it does speed up that process where you don't involve the DRB but it takes an enormous amount of staff time and we need to support staff and if doing so is thinking about not the taxpayers paying it but the developers themselves paying fees we choose the consultants we choose those that people that hire but we act we have access to this resource which is a willingness to invest in our community we need to guide that in a way that is responsible that that builds the way we want to construct our community but we can't do it if we don't have the staff if we don't have that is it more than prior to form-based code I mean this is really good for us to know and maybe this is worthy of a separate conversation but since you brought it up I just was curious well you're going to come back with some proposals so maybe just keep that question tucked in your mind I would be very curious to know you know whether or not that theory is in practice true Tom I love that you're talking about the CCRPC South Burlington will be the second largest city after Essex splits and that's gone through the legislature and there's so many in economically viable important part pieces of South Burlington that the whole region should support so I don't necessarily want South Burlington taxpayers so I love that you're reaching out to CCRPC we have the airport here we have the U mall so we need to find the resources to support the planning and zoning necessary to keep this economic engine driving so I look forward to future discussion yeah and it's important for us to remember that the state's population is less than a major city right so when we think about you know staffing needs and reduplication is something that you know has driven us to think about shared resources right shared services for stormwater for dispatch and and so I just want to echo that yeah I would just add to this this is only my first update I have more so brace yourself just remind the council that you have reinvested in this team in the last year I'm not saying we won't we won't happily accept additional support for staffing but this is a team that you also brought back a position for with ARPA dollars so we have invested in this team in the last year and we will continue to do so because you know this community has very high ambitions for ourselves and we to your point Councilor Coda need the staff to make that vision happen so more to come that's where we are right now a question came up at recent legislative forum about public waste receptacles along Williston Road Dorset Street and Market Street historically we have not had those because of the lack of staffing to pick up that refuse on a daily basis however we are working with Ginning County solid waste to get outdoor receptacles here on Market Street at 180 that our building staff can maintain so motor come on that and working on that in partnership with CSWD just quick heads up to the council and again more to come on this as you know we are transitioning to office 365 for the security and resiliency features that that brings it is rolling that out actually started last week that will change how anybody with an at self burlington VT dot gov or s burl dot com email address interacts with their email you will be required to do multi factor authentication so heads up to the council that at one of your meetings in May RIT director will be here to walk through how to do that who also do that with the DRB and Planning Commission public work staff is also as you know we have some of our rapid flushing beacons the cross signals of the hardware and those was fairly outdated so we have started replacing those throughout the city so far we've done the crosswalks on Dorset Street with Spear Street next it takes about a full day to replace one of the hardware for one of those systems so we will as schedules allow get out to the rest of the city I noticed it coming here oh good yeah it's very bright it's very bright I'm blinded still wear sunglasses but the pedestrian safe right you didn't stop you were blinded and stopped Tom has also put up the paving list for this year on the city's website folks would like to go check that out just for those on the call now for the spring and early summer list we'll be paving Gregory Drive the entire length from Kebolav to Elston Road Swift Street from Spear to Dorset Mountain View Boulevard for the entire road length from National Guard Ave to Country Club Drive Victoria Drive from Helen Ave to 38 Victoria and Whiteface Street the entire road length from Marcy to Butler for the fall list we will be doing Dorset from Garden Street to Aspen Drive pending your approval and v-transaction on a consent agenda item if we had we if we do get a grant for Dorset Street that list may change with additional funds brought into that budget and then just end on some fun notes there's a community hike this Saturday at Wheeler with Ethan Taper who's the Jenton County Forester so if folks are interested in that they can sign up online summer camp signups are open online and we are also working on new series of after-hours adult classes fitness classes at the senior center so keep your eyes out for those as well good night yeah like I said when I come in here I have to to announcement I went to Jason Chin's talk about him as an illustrator and he signed copies of his books and I just wanted to say that the library's event was just lovely it was I thought a really good coordination with with the what is that the flying pig bookstore and he did a fabulous job I just I can't say how how positive his message was to all those young people aspiring artists and and the public asked really good questions I just also wanted to talk about you know the messages that we received from our police chief in response to the incident on Williston Road which hits very close to home for me since I'm often on that road and I thought it was important just to repeat to the public what he wrote in his response to to my query about is this an outlier and tell me more about the self-defense classes that you know the police might be offering it's an outlier but we must not be complacent right we have to follow up and really they thank goodness it's they will be following up and really solving this crime but also that the staffing levels in our police force are not allowing them to offer the self-defense classes so I just wanted that to be known to the public that they they are doing an amazing job with 28 officers which is below the staffing levels that they need and they've had to of course cut these frills which I think you know when I unfortunately had to share with my daughter why we had to be careful going to the library and on Saturday with Jason Chen you know she said well mom they must teach us how to how to protect ourselves and she's 11 years old right so she she's already aware as an 11-year-old about what you know the police can do and these aren't frills these are things that I think really serve the public and and make the police force an integral you know part of of our community and I just wanted to to state this that it's it's just that thought went out of my head but all right I'm sorry I will come back and I'm sorry I'm sorry yeah but oh yes that what he said in his response was specifically that she made noise and she struggled to free herself it was 5 30 in the afternoon and so even though he couldn't say here's the training time come and join us he gave a I thought he gave in his response really key steps that she took this victim in order to bring attention to what was going on and so I wanted to say that in the public that she she made noise and she struggled to get free and the witnesses were there and therefore and she threw her keys saying if you want my car take take the keys take the car and instead of taking the car he flat on foot he panicked because she made that noise and so I just thought that was a public service announcement that shouldn't just remain in our inboxes that that should be put out there on the airways and thank you it's been amazing two weeks for me I thank you for your patience as a my my brain and it takes in here at seven o'clock on Monday night in school I know I just remembered I had a that I wanted to report I had a wonderful probably 45 minute conversation with Andrew Hayes who is the project director for the they're changing the name they haven't gotten the name yet but what is we know as you mall will at some point have a new name I trust but it was wonderful to he's very candid I think he answered a lot of good questions of mine release I thought they were good questions the questions of mine whether they're good or not I don't know but I'm excited about the future and the possibilities and I'm very impressed with his willingness to really reach out and ask answer questions and describe sort of what they are thinking about doing without to the extent that they can so it seems like they'll be great partners okay is that it all right that was a lot of updating it's been a busy to it has been item six is the consent agenda we have four items the disbursements minutes from February 22nd March 3rd and March 21st as well as a steering committee minutes from February 28th approval of a grant application requested by the natural resources and conservation committee to submit in an association of Vermont Conservation Commission's grant and then finally to approve the v-trans grant application for the paving of Dorset Street that Jesse mentioned so I'd entertain a motion to approve so moved is there a second second is there any discussion yes okay so concerning the paving of Dorset Street I think everybody recognizes that between Kennedy Drive and Aspen Drive is just as bad as between Aspen Drive and Garden Street so the question is why aren't we doing the whole thing we just don't have the money this year that's what it is okay so then the question is what resources do we have to take care of the unpaved portion because it's starting to delaminate itself and there are some large potholes near the high school and I mean we can get by but it's you know they've taken the the gutters right the gullies and they they filled those in a couple years ago they haven't been plowed out yet but oh somebody's coming closer so I mean that's a heavily doesn't matter heavily traveled section and it's it's a lot of people avoiding a lot of holes between Kennedy and Aspen right now yeah it's the light on in the green light okay just please identify yourself for the public yeah who are you I'm Tom DePetro I'm your newish director of public works so the Dorset Street paving those so that's in the FY 23 budget it uses all of the paving budget available and then striping as well included there so and then with the set aside thirty thousand dollars I think we set aside for rec path paving it's used up so that's that's the big reason as far as resources go we've got our normal resources to patch potholes and the highway crew will be out but yeah it's it's no better or worse it's just had to get broken up in phases for budget reasons and the state has a budget too right that's not an unending pot of money either darn it okay thank you Tom you ready for the vote okay all in favor of approving the consent agenda as presented signified by saying aye aye that carries five zero we tabled number seven so we'll go on to item eight which is considering approval of a resolution condemning the invasion of Ukraine by the city council and you were sent this afternoon a hopefully final draft well we'll find out we'll find out so I would I guess ask for a motion to approve this final draft well first can we just make a couple of you want to discuss it but we would have but what's amazing is that you know in the two weeks that we've since we last discussed this right the situation Ukraine has only gotten worse and I don't think anybody can argue with me about that and and just as I think a lot of people predicted you know the atrocities have started I think that we're really seeing apart from the fact that there was an invasion in the first place and and complete destruction of infrastructure and people's homes above and beyond that they're seeing indiscriminate killing of civilians now bodies left in the street bodies left in mass graves I can't I can't say how strongly that this I think has affected I mean every democratic country in the world and others as well in in their opinion of of Russia and and its president right now and I think that a lot of people are at a complete loss for how NATO should respond and how the US should respond and how all the other countries they should respond but I think that the ball is starting to roll and hopefully it will get rolling hard so this resolution is a drop in the bucket but it at least expresses our sincere solidarity with the people of Ukraine the soldiers in Ukraine right Ukrainians living abroad right in how they protect their or attempt to protect their democracy and their borders against an invading force so I hope that we can have a discussion and come to some agreement tonight because we make it I went back several times and made some small changes and so I want to thank him for being open to the changes that I and Helen I want to thank him for bringing this forward I was reticent because as someone who in my research I specialize in wars I'm wars war and so why speak on this one war and I want to thank Helen really who said because democracy is at stake and that struck me as the reason why we have to move forward with this resolution which as I said at the last meeting is the first resolution or action that I'll be taking as a city counselor in response to a war and usually city councils unless you live in a war torn country don't have to deal with this topic unless of course you have servicemen and women who are needing to leave your town or city so I just want to thank you both because I think it is an important resolution and I particularly thank you for including the therefore clause where we ask for us to provide what is necessary for them to increase their capabilities for self defense because I truly do see and hear resonances with World War two and what is happening on the ground in Ukraine Russia was a player in World War two ethnic kind of nationalistic sentiment sentiment is also very much you know at play here and and we see the attack on national identity you know in the attack on on cultural institutions and in addition to to civilians and innocent victims who are horrifically being murdered this is something that I've studied in detail I got I've got many pages on it and so I thank you for bearing with me because it it's something that means a great deal to me just given you know what I've worked on so so thank you very much for being a really good listener and for being open and I do hope that this is heard in Washington as well as in Kiev when I hope they receive it that they know that we support them and we stand with them okay any other comment all right are you ready to approve the one that's not in our packet it's very close to the one in our packet but was sent out at the end of or mid-afternoon we ready for that all right all in favor of a motion yeah I'll move you move oh I'll move that we approve the resolution in a second second okay ready for the vote now okay all those in favor of approving this slightly revised resolution signified by saying aye aye that's five zero well thank you both for all your work I think and thank you Helen oh you're welcome thanks it took it took a team yep okay item nine we're gonna receive a presentation on a declaration of inclusion and consider adoption and Andrew you put it in our packet good evening counsel so I see Bob it looks like you're you're online is Al is also joining you understand yes he is I expect him momentary we're a little ahead of schedule which is all right very rarely the case Robert is my audio on yes yes it is and just just a second Bob just by way of table setting so Bob harnish from Pittsburgh and Al wakefield of Mendon approached Jesse and I and I think they had discussions with a few other community members over the past several months this is an initiative that started back in January of 2021 and they've been going around to different municipalities and asking if they will kind of sign on board with this resolution that they that they drafted there is a copy of the res of the declaration excuse me in your packets I think with that Bob if you want to kind of outline a little bit more of your history and and where this request is stemming from I think from a management team level we've as identified in the memo have started to have this discussion with staff and have had some good kind of introductory discussions there along with a lot of work that's sort of already being done and our overall recommendation from stemming from this discussion as we love counsel to have an opportunity to weigh in and maybe give us some feedback on sort of big picture priorities and goals and things you might like to see in a final declaration that's a bit tailored to South Burlington so thank you yeah very good well I was going to start first anyway so hopefully Al will come on by the time I'm finished yes thank you Andrew for making time on the agenda I much appreciated with the large town like South Burlington and I'm delighted to know that you already have I believe an equity committee or something similar to that and and that's a great way to start yeah I'll be here my name is Bob Harnish as as Andrew said with Mike with my colleague Al Wakefield I came here in 64 Al's been here for 30 or 40 years as a as a businessman both of us were and I was in the hospitality business associated mostly with the Killington ski area and Al came to buy a restaurant but decided that wasn't for him but he then he then he decided to reopen his executive search business which is Wakefield global and and you know and brought many many dollars to the state of Vermont so why are we here our goal is to have Vermont become known as the place the great place to live and raise a family to bring your skills and maybe make your mark there's a great restaurant tour in in Rotland a black man who who and who bought a beautiful establishment and made it into the best restaurant in town and he or any royal was name he was on the he was on the board of the National Restaurant Association and and and on the board of the American Culinary Institute so and it was it was Ernie who said that you know bring bring what you know and and and make it make it suited to the Vermont environment and so that's what that's what Al did and that's what I did and I know many others can do it as well we hope to make this statement to the world by asking every town to adopt a declaration of inclusion and then to implement it but what is the declaration of inclusion but briefly it is the act of a city or town to express its desire to be open and welcoming to all people and so more specifically for a town to make a statement condemning discrimination against any and all minorities or people of disparaged groups and to welcome these groups into their town the declaration of inclusion that we suggest is is in the packet that Andrew distributed to you and that many of the towns of the 42 towns are approximately that have that have adopted a declaration of inclusion have used our recommended wording but some towns have have started from scratch and done their own some some towns have taken our our declaration and and modified it slightly but and that's fine with us as long as as long as the the concept and the intent are intact so our you know our senses have been sharpened by images around the world at the death of Congressman John Lewis a couple years ago and and along with his work in civil rights and we begin to realize that this country has been trying to come to grips with equal rights for over 200 years and we're not there quite yet even so USA is the most diverse country but still many classes are subjugated and yet and even so we're the most economically successful with increasing equality the United States will be even more successful and of course just we just have to look right here at Chittenden County the most diverse county in Vermont and by far the most dynamic economy in Vermont and I don't believe that that's a coincidence I first learned of the declaration of inclusion from my cousin who was a chair of the select board in Franklin Vermont and he we were having lunch in a year or so ago and he told me that his board had just adopted a declaration of inclusion and I said what is it then he and he gave me a sample which we basically have kept intact slightly modified as you will find it in our in our packet Franklin may have done it for for moral reasons but there is an equally compelling economic reason as well and towns want to be economically successful so we think it's the we think it's the right thing to do and the smart thing to do so just look at the results of the 2020 census it shows Vermont having grown barely 2% in 10 years and in fact some counties like my own Rutland County down here actually lost population so it's rather a frightening prospect when you think about a state like Vermont barely maintaining population and the population that's here is an aging population by and large so that does not bode well for for the future finances of the state for maintaining infrastructure and services we need people in this state and you know I was happy to hear just yesterday on the Vermont news that that there's an effort to bring to keep graduating college kids here in Vermont after they graduate and that you know that would be an excellent move if we expect to be achieved so I would I would be turning it over to Al at this point if he's if he's with us but I I'm not hearing a I'm not hearing a sound from Al so I guess he isn't so Robert if I can interrupt you for a minute we do have two folks on the line who are just on the phone and listed as callers if one of those is Al he can press star six to unmute he normally comes on with his computer so we'd be visual as well it's because we're early yeah perhaps eight minutes ahead of schedule I did tell him 715 it would be would be the proper time to come on and that was Andrew's recommendation so I can continue a bit or I can answer some questions well maybe it would be nice to hear Al so let's let's if there's questions by council members well we have those and then maybe Al will join us and be able to add to the conversation so Megan Emery yeah the declaration of inclusion you would recommend that it be visible where in all of our documents in certain locations would it be something that would be front and center I would imagine as policy is being proposed and of course conceived of mm-hmm yeah yeah I mean it certainly I know here in our town of Pittsburgh the town manager put it put it right on the website and in a very visible place and that we certainly appreciated and and it's it's available you know framed in the library and so those are two quick and easy ways to start another would be to act if a town hasn't done this to activate an equity and an inclusion or and diversity committee to which which probably would be handy for the city council to to to look to to to implement the declaration in what ways Mr. Mr. Harnish well yeah well again we have a an implementation guideline which which is available so some some towns I think Middlebury for example started by by hiring a company to to a consultant perhaps the right term to conduct a implicit bias training for the staff and and that was in in two or three different sessions but I see Alice has joined us how can you hear us hmm there he is well it looks like you're you're muted yep I think I'm on now okay yeah thank you okay yep yeah now I have finished my portion of the presentation so perhaps you could pick it up okay well I'm not sure exactly where you stop but since we've done this how and Bob show you know before perhaps just pick it right up that we've we've been at this for about a year now and for that year we've managed to have 40 towns and cities adopt I presume I'm right where it should be Bob yes and that includes not only those 40 towns and cities but the governor of course is issued a proclamation and is designated actually two proclamations designated the the second week in May is inclusion week and working with the governor now working with his office to decide what kind of activities will occur during that during inclusion week but we feel good about where we are obviously a long way to to go most towns have adopted the decoration as as we suggested to them some have amended those and revised the description to that place rather to be more applicable to and pertinent to their own unique communities and we said go ahead and do that as long as the spirit and the intent of the decoration is maintained is preserved hello yeah you you you you you mute it out there for a minute oh okay all right I'm hopefully I'm still here you're hearing me okay yes yes we are okay okay and I apologize for being late I spilled a cup of coffee all over my keyboard and I'm glad it's still works working at this mouse is a strange little instrument but it's working and so as I said we're working with with the governor to decide that the governor's office to decide what happens during during inclusion week we've been we've been very I suppose honored is the word to be supported by the Vermont cities and towns that have adopted the staff has adopted a declaration of inclusion the NACP has has has helped us along the Ron Chamber of Commerce has been very very helpful in fact they furnished the website on which the declaration of inclusion appears you might have had an opportunity to take a look at that and we're working with forming a new relationship with the Vermont interfaith action group and our hope is that with them we'll be able to move the message along across the state at a at a faster clip that Bob probably said to you our vision is that all 251 towns will have adopted the declaration and the Vermont will become as the become known as the most inclusive state in the country that's a slow process as you can imagine 40 in the first year that means you know 60 or 60 years or so rather to get this accomplished or get accomplished sooner than that so hopefully our relationship with these organizations and as I said more recently with the interfaith action group will help to to move that along so I'm not sure what else I should say at this point but to let you answer rather ask any questions Bob coming in at the middle is there anything more should hit before we turn it over no we we got to one question just just before you came on and otherwise yeah I think you filled in nicely out okay I'm glad that the interfaith is involved that's good to hear other questions yeah sorry no no the faith community is really really important and and while we know it to some extent successful with towns and cities they cover you know school boards corporations and other organizations as well our primary objective and thrust has been to to get this through towns and cities that that's a big enough challenge as it is but we think having them as partners will be will be a great great asset may I ask have you worked with any school boards and and adopting a similar kind of statement or have you focused on town government if it's been town it's been the state and and the town okay we do know of some some school boards that have it that have adopted a declaration of inclusion a spring field for one and I know there are days but is it the same as the town government I'm just curious because we have some a dev is it called the diversity equity here in the school equity equity office equity officer equity officer that has been hired and so the school is become active in this and I'm just curious if spring field has the same language for both the school and the city government if you know I think it's a little different but and I may have a copy of it somewhere if I do I'll send it up to Andrew okay that would be I would like to see that any are there other questions I really like the statement I think it's simple and it captures really the essence of what we have to do to be a free and inclusive and integrated society that affirms everyone that chooses to live here and visits us and etc etc etc I really like it there are two pieces to that to that declaration the first part being adoption the second part being implementation some because we think about what some towns have done they spent a lot of time on wordsmithing and not that many quite honestly but spent a lot of time on on wordsmithing what the deck what the adoption piece of it should look like and really where the emphasis after you've passed it needs to be on the implementation what are you going to do about it once you've said yes words are one thing as Bob will say teeth are another thing and the implementation part is really the teeth part how do you get stuff done how do you bring about about real change in your communities exactly that was going to be my next question but I mean I don't have a problem I mean I would support adopting this but I think as you point out the real work is the implementation the education and implementation and and you know generating the support across city government potentially the school and then really aligning it with the values and goals of the community in a way that you can measure or you can see change and not just have a statement that's posted nicely framed in the library or our new City Hall but really I mean we would do that but that's to me just the beginning of the conversation it's the statement that the council agrees with this believes that this is appropriate action and then we've got to make sure we do something and the conversation continues and the real work yes we would recommend you know that this that the schools be challenged to to build it into the curriculum in some way you know art poetry drama there are many ways to to do that and and and the libraries to can can perhaps put together a lecture series or a lecture and discussion series so as you say there are many many things that they can be done and should be done right well we have a brand new library that lends itself I think to this kind of outreach and provides a really nice facility to promote that kind of dialogue it's if I could it's sounded from what your first response to my question about implementation Mr. Harnish was first trained staff in terms of the implicit bias training that that you were talking about is that the first step that you would see I I didn't see the necessarily guidelines for an implementation plan unless you can point it out to me I mean I see goals here right and thoughts it's a separate document and I thought I had set it up to Andrew but if not I certainly can tomorrow okay well it's probably on your web website I did not I have to admit I apologize go to your website prior to this meeting I mean I read all this stuff but I assume it's on your website your training or is that a different document it's brand it's brand new and it and it should be on the website up but I'm not sure it okay well if you send it to Andrew we'll get it yeah yeah it'll eventually be in the website it's designed to go on the website we just haven't gotten it on there yet but it's a full page and a few more items on another page to help you get started okay well we have to change the language a little bit since we're not a town but we're a city and we're a city council not a select board but other than that I think we can if the council is amenable we can adopt this language do we need a motion to do that you're gonna bring it well they'll bring it back to us I think filled in with is that correct yes and then we can set aside some time to really think about implementation and certainly support the work you've been already doing with the staff and then of course we have all our committees you know we have a lot of public members who are involved in city government in South Burlington lots of committees and lots of very active members wonderful just now I I think you know something about the Vermont Community Foundation having a new fund that could make grants to cities or towns that that may be slightly cash strapped although maybe nobody's cash strapped in this in this era of COVID money but but I believe I understand that someone has started a fund which is designed to to provide money for towns to implement the Declaration of Inclusion yeah I'm not sure where that goes Bob we've been we've been asked to to render some insights and comments into that by the Vermont Community Foundation I'm sorry by the Vermont League of Cities and Towns and I'm not I'm not sure what form and what shape that will take but I think the number that they mentioned to me was somewhere around $10,000 or so which may I may not be enough to do what needs to be done but that's a start that would be the the average amount of a grant you mean that's all I know Bob I don't know we can follow up with them they have a good website Tim you I think had a question or a comment no I think this is great and you know I support it fully you know I'm just thinking you know at the top of my head it's like you know we have a pledge of allegiance we say to the flag right the beginning of every meeting right and even though these words you know if we were to like put it in you know in the front of the the annual budget put it at the you know the top of a page of some document right it's like you have to say these words repeatedly you know in some form of a pledge a pledge of inclusion right to really have it sink in so that people understand what it is that we really mean so you know I because it's great that we're going to look at ways to to have this you know declaration sort of like permeate through the town but I just keep thinking how it's like you know we have a pledge of allegiance to the flag we should have a pledge of inclusion to this to the city as well just as an aspiration I don't think we can do that but that's the kind of sentiment I think that you know that we should have because you got to speak these words often in order for it to really take hold I think so you're absolutely right you know once because we've talked about this so many times you know we started to refer to it as a DOI and I think I just said I don't want to refer to it that way I think declaration of inclusion because it forces me and it forces the rest of us to think about you know what that really means you know we've had conversation about BIPOC what BIPOC means it becomes a synonym for meaning almost nothing who we really really really talking about so I I urged even without a little group of three to talk about the declaration of inclusion and you know it obviously has a moral aspect to it but also has an economic aspect which Bob probably mentioned to you and that is with Ramon's population aging Bob and I excluded leaving the state with the state having a greater need for people as the governor said in a state of the state message in a bit as Betsy Bishop said in her Ramon Chamber of Commerce beginning of the year message the state has a need for people and the only way you get people diverse people in in the state which has to be a part of the of what has to happen is by ensuring that every message that goes out says that we're welcoming our doors are open we need people we want people to come here bring their talents bring their skills bring their families set up shop shop here rather because it's a great place to live I've been here I've been here hard to believe 30 32 years and so I'm new originally from New York City I've lived around the country travel fairly extensively and given a choice as a place to live and I guess I still have that choice I'm right here in Vermont because I want to be I think Vermont's got a long way to go but in terms of being a place where people can achieve their goals and can raise happy families and also survive economically I think Vermont's in a very competitive position but it needs to continue to improve that because every state in the country has a need for people their jobs that are going without people their companies that want to relocate but they can't find they can't find people so I think our messages is very strong and as I said I think if I were the governor every time I open my mouth I would I would say that because I think includes inclusion really is the umbrella for almost everything else in terms of economic development that occurs great okay and then I want to wrap it up make it well not wrap it up well kind of I want to suggest the next step for us okay just the word inclusion is is that something that we could potentially change to for example welcome I the reason I ask is I was listening to a report on this topic but with regard to eating disorders it was on the PBS news hour and a woman of Hispanic background said that inclusion to her means that someone who does not normally belong in the group is included in the group and she preferred the word affirmation and that made me think because I teach these kinds of things and myself about the word inclusion is it mean that you know it's that people from the outside coming in and is that what we intend as you said intend to do in fact bring people from outside of the state to come into us and I don't know if there is a connotation there that we should be aware of that's why the word welcome came to mind declaration of welcome which is something that Al you said several times when you were talking just three minutes ago yeah I think welcoming is a part of it I would have to think greatly about that I don't know as I go back to you can word Smith then change the words but what do you really mean you're really talking about bringing people in this into the state making them feel comfortable while we keep while they hear belonging has been used by you know by some people making them feel involved to the extent they want to be involved in in the community it's one thing to welcome them here it's another thing to retain them here there's a fellow happens to be African-American he's an officer well the vice president at one of the major hospitals in Vermont and he's a guy we are pretty well probably came here and inside of six months he was ready to leave because he did not could not whatever his strengths and weaknesses were in terms of meeting people but he felt it could not meet people and he just didn't feel like he belonged here and he wanted to meet more people of color and there were no people of color that he met finally subsequently things happened he met that folks and he's now feeling very comfortable at least more comfortable than he was you know in the first six months or so so I don't know I haven't thought very much about affirmative affirmation I read I go back to my corporate days back when I was an officer with a very very large company you know there was affirmative action and we moved away from affirmative action to a whole lot of other words so that bears a lot of thinking about but as I said as Bob and I've said it's a spirit I'm maintaining the spirit and the intent that really is really really important you're probably going to have to explain and that's not a bad idea to everybody what you really mean it gives you an opportunity to really talk about what you really mean thank you I also believe that this is really important for the people who already live in Vermont have decided they do want to live here but may not feel included so I appreciate the focus or part of the issue being we want to be open and welcoming so more people will move to Vermont and immediately feel connected and appreciated but I also think that's a challenge and an issue with our current populations and that's sort of most that would be the initial practice of this if you will with our staff and our committees and ourselves is making sure that the public we serve all feel included and then a side effect potentially is that other people see that and see Vermont as a welcoming state and and move here and choose to add their brains and talents to to our state so I think it's a little bit of both I was going to suggest that the the staff is having another meeting on the 6th to sort of continue their conversation I would suggest that we not necessarily adopt this tonight but that Jesse or the administration come back with a using this as the template but just change it so it's self Burlington the city of and and maybe not wordsmithing anything but then at the same time perhaps be able to report to us some of the initial steps funding maybe we can look into getting some funding to really do the training that we probably all need and I also think in addition it would be important to connect with the superintendent and see what if the school board or the schools have adopted anything that's similar so we can be working together and if not maybe they can invite you to their school board meeting to provide the same kind of presentation or we can provide it to them as an option to join with us so that's logical next step and we could be ready for the next council meeting which is the 18th is that amenable to everyone yeah okay thank you very much for taking the time sharing this and please do send that outline of implementation to Andrew so we can look at that as well and do something with this we we will follow up with Andrew and thank you so much for the time and and for your excellent questions great well I appreciate what you're doing thank you thank you thank you good night good night good night okay we're a little bit ahead but we we have some candidates that we can start to interview we get yes a couple tables any things here yeah yeah so tonight I left a little cheat sheet at all of your tables about the applicants that are before us tonight we have one opening for DRB one for planning commission and one for the public art committee so I suggest you interview them in public session and there's an executive session warned for the end of the meeting and we would like you if possible to come out of executive session and vote at the end of the meeting as we are having some quorum challenges you answered my question okay so just a reminder specifically for the DRB interviews that is a regulatory body that has active cases a member voted in tonight would attend their next meeting so you should not ask them about any active cases before the DRB otherwise they will be disqualified from those conversations and their next meeting is tomorrow isn't it or is it the next is the DRB tomorrow so I guess it would be important to make that would they start tomorrow they could although we will also do some orientation for whoever's appointed so they may choose to start the next meeting okay the parenthesis indicate their first choice so what that is no just what other commissions they are committees they've applied for it's on their application okay okay okay and there are two names here that we don't have in our box right we do now I'll be in the box two came in over the weekend and we're added oh I didn't Ryan I did they didn't get into the box till right before we started the meeting or at least I couldn't bring them up all right can I do have a question I'm sorry yes just to confirm so one vacancy each but these are vacancies caused by someone resigning correct we'll do the regular terms in July and June the reelection or reappointments so this appointment will be to complete the empty seat thank you yeah exactly so sorry and do you know exactly what that is I don't know if all the candidates know if they're if it's a one-year or two years left or I can look that up as you're going that would that might be good for them to know okay and well shall we start with the DRB go down our little cheat sheet I I do want to I do have a few comments around the Planning Commission that I had a good conversation with Jessica Luizos and in the past like when we normally do it in June the committees will often identify for us what are some of the skill sets or what they're looking for what they need to kind of round out the committee she opted to share that with me the other night and I told her I would it's not extensive but I will share that but nobody else has identified the what kind of skills that are they're losing with the person who has resigned but so if we start with the DRB and this is a position that would be filled through June 2023 so it's a year and a couple months okay so is Cindy Freeman in the audience oh would no no please come up to the mic yes please and you may if you would like take off your mat your mask so we can hear you better and you can sit at the table if you wish just remember to turn the mic on if you go to the tables really so those online can hear you it's hard for them to hear the audience well I'm Cindy Freeman and actually applying for both the Development Review Board and the Planning Commission and actually I just have been wanting to be more involved in our beautiful community and a little background about me I have I grew up here my kids went through the school systems I did I went to central middle and the high school and my kids went to Chamberlain middle and the high school as well and my parents owned a business and my husband and I are both self-employed and my husband used to work at University of Vermont so we have quite a love affair with Vermont and you know basically I wanted to just be involved and I saw these two positions opened and thought why not so here I am and you know I realize a little bit about it and that is that you know there are zoning for the developers and that those zoning need to be complied with when developer brings their plans to the Development Review Board and beyond that I would be learning a lot but I'm a good study so okay have you attended any DRB meetings or watch them online I want you know I don't to be honest with you I don't think so no but I've read I've read a lot about things that are going on yeah it's been in the practice yeah you guys I mean this is amazing to sit here for this many hours you guys are like oh I think the DRB spends a fair amount of time we got two former members here to do it their meetings are a lot more exciting than ours their meetings are yeah yeah I bet they are that's what the action is we're planning commission I'm not sure which yeah yeah okay and are you aware of the time commitment yeah me twice a month and it's how many hours usually depends on the chair yeah when you were chair how many hours I kept my meeting short to the point but you know you'd go four hours a night okay but you get packaged that are pretty dense with a lot of schematics and plans and details and comments by planning you know the staff and there's a lot to go through is a lot of so is that a couple hours of prep before each meeting more for the chair too okay all right so do you have that kind of time yeah you're interested in that okay some other questions I'm sure I don't want to ask all of them yeah I'd like to know what skills you would bring and if you because they're very different committees of course the DRB and the planning commission as as Tim and Matt said the DRB you're looking at architectural sketch plans engineering plans you're you're looking at the comprehensive plan goals you're looking at the different language from our land development regulations so it's very technical the planning commission you have to think about that technicality but you are also trying to see I don't know you're coming at it from a very different angle you're not applying you're having to vision what ideas could come to look like right as opposed to taking the language and seeing what it could look like you're you're on opposite sides of you're seeing that structurally on the plans yeah I I think I would understand you know the architectural definitely the engineering I might need work on and I am a good study and you know so I don't think it would take me too long to learn it what kind of skills would you bring to those positions well one is I suppose that you need to actually know what the zoning regulations are and be familiar with those when the development plans are put before you and then seeing that they actually are adhering to those and also I'm assuming that it also there might be some economic you know concerns about the development and how it can be created and also I would imagine that conservation would also be a very much a concern as well and following what the present regulations are and so I think I'm just I am a visual person I've been in photography since film days so I I do think spatially that is the way I think I I am very talented at that I can think very spatially so I think that's you know when you're looking at a plan you have to see it beyond the flat surface Tom so Cindy thank you for applying we I get these packets of information your application and I don't see a lot of your background so maybe that's where counselor Emery is coming from could you tell us a little bit about your professional experiences and your you said yourself employed so some of the skills you have yeah so we I like I said I've been a photographer since the 90s and we also own Vermont rolling pins the business that we've actually marketed quite well but beyond that I'm an English major of German minor I was magna cum laude or cum laude not magna and I was on the mortarboard I also have been on the restorative justice board that was at Dorset Street for the most part for good six shares when you are you done okay I just would like to learn a little bit or understand how you see yourself working in a group and what kind you know what kind of leadership or what role would you play or what do you bring to that I don't think I would necessarily be the leader but I would be the one that would help out with information and get that information I'd be more of the background person probably and in terms of working with people with the restorative justice we really worked hard we had many different backgrounds different people working in that group and we all did very well together so I am a team player I would say and I think as a wedding and portrait photographer you have to be able to work with people to make them comfortable if you don't make them feel comfortable there you know so I think that that has helped but I don't see myself as the leader of the group okay other questions we got two DRB people what is from your experiences what is there more information you'd like to hear from Cindy well the same thing I would say to all the people that are applying the DRB the role the DRB is to rule on projects that some you may like but you can't approve because they don't comply with our land development regulations some you may not like but you have to approve because they do comply and having that type of mindset I think is important for any DRB member I hope you have that if that if that's what you want to do to serve on the DRB yeah I would I would have that mindset yeah absolutely okay Tim anything else just that I'll add on to what Matt said that sometimes on the DRB there there is a little bit of room to get the developer to do something a little bit different that you think would be advantageous and sometimes that requires an eye right for aesthetics so as a photographer that might be a bonus for you as it was well as because other people in the DRB are gonna be more technically oriented or legally oriented you know so it's good to have a little bit of diversity of perspective about the way buildings present themselves to the community and how the community should respond to them within that wiggle room where you actually can change something a little bit or offer that advice so yeah I would yeah I would hope I could bring that to the table is there anything else you think we should know about you what should we have asked I think actually thank you asked the correct questions okay yeah questions for us did you say rolling pins yeah okay I thought I heard rolling pins was that in the paper recently or a seven days a few years a couple years in yeah it was not seven days it was in one of the not other paper gosh what was that paper it was I mean we've been in a few presses we've been in Bon Appetit fine cooking so these are so yeah good advertising anyone listening in it my mind was that it was some kind of bowling like the pins for bowling I thought oh I didn't realize there's a company around here that made those but it's rolling yeah it's a whole other world it really is the water water glass the wood wood yeah they're all hand turned yeah yeah yeah cool yeah all right yeah well thank you very much I appreciate oh are there other questions do you that you anyone wants to ask about the planning commission or are there other applying for both I am applying yeah for both is applying for both your first choice is the DRB yes do you want to or do you think the what we learned so far will apply what will be your preference the DRB yeah yeah that was the first choice okay all right well thank you very much awesome thank you now the next year be are the only other DRB I think oh no we got Cindy no that's you I'm sorry is John Stern is he in the audience I don't see him is he online are we early we're just 805 okay well if he shows up we'll we'll clearly interview him all right so let's move on then to the planning commission I guess we're doing this sort of alphabetical at all let's saying the last time I was here I think I applied for an engine committee and it's just you know observing how much you know really how fortunate I feel to be able to live in this wonderful place and just to let you know my enthusiasm hasn't waned it's just been a great four years and just great great community and great place to live so I you know love to contribute more since I've been here I've been on the energy committee for four years as a member and as a chair I was part of the IZ TDR committee I'm presently on the climate action test force as vice chair and I was saying that I attended many of the planning commission meetings during the three years of IZ and followed pretty closely the development of the LDRs during that time and wrote some letters which you've probably seen so I have good familiarity with those regulations and I think I'd be able to hit the ground running on further you know changes improvements and areas to that need to be worked on going forward okay since what's your engineering degree in I have a bad science and a master's in information science computer information base you're also a lawyer yes Jay law in 1992 and you're in sector run global Morgan for 20 years we have a spectacular experiences and and skills and hey what I'm at question I wanted to ask Andrew have you thought about the year how you can further ball I prefer the with regulators and at the DRB I know matured scientists and I think I'd be able to use in the vision mission just be more in that role sir thank you or I'm sorry you answered the question any planning commission many understand the time commitment that you didn't thank you he does any questions okay go ahead I would say the you know the same question you and about your role in which you would bring to knowing it as you do I think I'm a good folks that with on this together tend to leadership role that just my training years business I forgot to some of the Jessica Louisa shared with the first candidate can address them but things Jessica said what she thinks they are losing the designation of Bernie another with his expertise on the mission is construction and also and sort of that approach with a level of feasibility just how feasible something and another I guess or quality trait is to Cali so I'm wondering can three in terms of what expertise have to deal with those provide that many I have ground in in red a lot of the I guess personally pretty handy hold a lot so amateur perspective I don't I don't have you know kind of form in the construct I can't offer that bowl solutions as a consensus did what I've learned in so I think I would bring that to this position one other question partly for for Andrew which is a year be and the city I've tried if you can serve on both committees and would like to do if determined to a commission I would probably and serve on the energy to much I think see about that I don't think we typically I mean the committee doesn't like we've had people are also on another committee that seemed to conflate either of them the number of time commissioner DRB duty committee I would like to continue with the but I don't do both I personally you serving on three at the same time so much for your time first you know there's volunteer yeah energy committees pretty yeah I guess oh they don't you're probably yes as well particular lens I take into planning how we can incorporate those different oh this This one works, great. Is how we can incorporate all of those different modes of transportation that people want to or have to use to get around and to share the spaces that we have available to us, whether it's the sidewalk infrastructure, the bike paths, or just how densely we're developing certain areas of the city, like our downtown right now. I feel like when I was sitting in the audience, I had a ton of stuff I wanted to bring up. But maybe I'll let you guys ask me some questions, and that might trigger some of those thoughts again. OK. You have brought up a lot. You have brought up a lot. I will just ask you, what are your thoughts on the climate crisis and what our community should do? I mean, we have a task force that's working on it. We have an energy committee that's been literally hammering us for quite a few years to do something. I think the council seems to be ready to do a little bit more. Where do you sit on the spectrum of, is that an important thing? And how would you translate that into your work on the planning commission? Sure. I specifically wanted to seek out a lifestyle where I could not have to drive a car so much. And I was really fortunate enough to get a place so close to where I work and close to shops where I don't have to use my car as often. It's a personal choice I make, and I try to do as much as I can and promote it, certainly to my students, who I'm trying to convince don't have to drive everywhere. It definitely becomes a conflict when we're looking at, we have several different boards trying to look at it from perhaps different lenses and also with the state trying to take different approaches. But I'm of the opinion that the more we provide really good infrastructure for people to not rely on cars, the more they will make those really good choices that are good for the environment, but also water, but also really good for their health and the longevity impacts that that makes on people and a community that walk places instead of jumping into the car all the time. OK, thank you. Other questions, people? What do you teach Ryan? I teach everything. I'm the building sub. So it's kind of like course roulette. You show up in the morning and you see what the boss tells you to go teach, and you teach it. What's your favorite one, and which is your least favorite? I like eighth grade social studies the best. But I taught, it's great, isn't it? Right, yeah, we're diving into the Constitution and the Federalist Papers. And I find all of that stuff really fascinating in spite of my really heavy STEM background. What's your least favorite? Eighth grade English, of course. I can jump into a sixth grade English class and teach it really well and relate it all to our communication skills that we're developing. But the eighth grade English, I'm just not a big fan of fiction, I guess, yeah. All right, do you have some more questions? Your time in St. Albans that you worked with, Mayor Gommash and Mike McCarthy? Exactly, actually. So well, I'm friends with Mike. And we served on a different board. We briefly overlapped on a different board before he was on the city council. I was off of it before, I think there was about a two-year gap before he ran. Yeah, but Mayor Gommash, yes. I was elected the same year she was. Excellent. OK, Tim, any follow-up? Are you aware of when they meet and how long they work? I believe it's next Tuesday. And then the Tuesday after it's second and fourth? Yeah, it's typically Tuesdays a month, although they've been working many more times. Maybe it'll slow down a little bit. But they've been pretty active. Just one question. Did you work at the middle school before you moved here a year ago? I had actually applied right before the pandemic started. And then the school had bigger issues than onboarding people. So it just happened to work out that after a half year of trying to move to the area, I was able to line it up to the week. It was really excellent. All right, well, it sounds like you've had lots of committee experience. Just one last question. What kind of role have you played on these committees? Yeah, I like being more of a liaison and a connector. I don't really go for top leadership. I'd rather be assistant and catch the pieces that get dropped or try to connect people together or between different organizations that can bring more valuable information into the mix. I mean, that's why we have boards. We're trying to bring a lot of diverse background into it. And sometimes the issue is just getting people to really communicate on the same page to bring all of the concerns out there in a healthy way that we can really get the ball rolling and meet as many of those needs as we can. OK. Yes, you have two interests, the bike and ped and planning commission. Do you have a first choice? The planning commission, yeah. I did go to one of the online bike ped meetings recently. It's really fun and interesting. I do try to be a pedestrian and viker as often as I can and definitely feel a concern for those issues as going to college in Philadelphia, I'm a lot bolder as a pedestrian than most Vermonters are. But I am very much aware of the general sensitivities to traffic by pedestrians. And so I figured since I was already submitting it, I'd put that on as the second, given that the regular round happens in June. Great. All right. Thank you very much. Thank you very much for your time, guys. Is Leslie? Yeah, she's on. So she lit up her light. There you are. How are you? Welcome. I'm sorry. We're hopefully. Whoop. Oh, no. No, he just changed. OK. There you go. I can hear you. I hope we keep connected for your whole interview when we apologize for the issues. So for the record, why don't you tell the public who you are and why you're interested in moving on to the Planning Commission? Sure. Thanks so much. I'm sorry I can't be there. And I really appreciate the opportunity to talk with you this evening, even though I'm not in Vermont tonight. But I'm Leslie Blacklamot. I have been in South Burlington for 23 years, been helping on the Affordable Housing Committee for, I'm not sure how many years. It's more than I can count. I think it's, I just, I've lost track six. And then there were a couple of years in its early stages. So been on the Housing Committee for a while. I work at Vermont Housing Finance Agency. I've been there for about 15 years. What I do there is lead the housing research and committee relations work. And I love it. But for that, I was down in DC. I worked in at the federal government level. I have a master's degree in public policy and an undergraduate degree in economics. But I'm really interested in the Planning Commission. I've been thinking about it for a while as a next step from the Housing Committee work that I've been doing in South Burlington because that Housing Committee work has given me such, it's given me such a great experience and some level of, I feel a little more comfort now with the land development regulations, the land use regulations in South Burlington than I did when I first started helping on the Affordable Housing Committee years ago. And then also at the HFA, actually, we've been doing a lot more focus with towns all across the state and trying to help make some tools and best practices available to towns who are looking to improve housing affordability there, which requires us to understand their land use regulations. And that intersection of the land use regulations and housing affordability at the municipal level. Okay. I don't know if you were connected or not when I had shared at the meeting sort of some of the characteristics or skill sets that Jessica Luisa as the chair had kind of identified. So I'll tell you again, I'd just like you to comment on how you might fill them. One of them is sort of your knowledge of, if any, and these aren't requirements. She was just saying this is sort of what the commission might need, technical construction expertise. Another was sort of an approach that could be termed sort of a level of feasibility in making decisions and sort of the practicality of your decision-making process, I guess. Could you comment on some of those or all of them, please? Sure. So that would be a little less direct than I think my experience with kind of regulations on the policy side, but at Vermont Housing Finance Agency, we do finance the development of affordable rental housing. Certainly many of the buildings that we are so proud of on Market Street in South Burlington and in other parts of the city, those buildings are built largely with funds that are raised through the low-income housing tax credit program. And so because we underwrite all of those projects, we do have opportunity to discuss with developers the challenges and opportunities that they're facing and some of the details about the construction process and the challenges that are inherent in that. So I would say it's not direct experience, but certainly has an overlap with the work that I do at Vermont Housing Finance Agency. Okay, and how about in terms of your approach to problem-solving or helping arrive at a consensus or decision-making? That's a great question. I would say that that experience is something that is critical to working on a team, which I have for many years in both of my roles, first here in Vermont at the state level, and then earlier when I worked down in D.C., we're always working on a team basically evaluating some public program and what that involves is identifying the problem and what the solution is and how to move forward given the respective expertise and information that we have available. Okay, other questions for people? Megan, I know just from knowing you, Leslie, that you spend some time in Boston regularly, would you say that you would be here for the times when the meetings occur? Cause I just know that you're often in Boston and I don't know what length of time you're in Boston over the course of a year, but I know it's, it can be a length, your whole family has virtually got two places, right? Yeah, yeah, we've been ironing out kind of our new, what was our next phase gonna look like with Peter's job being in Boston and mine in Burlington, and we've come to a kind of a split week and it's gonna work out okay if I were to need to be in South Burlington on Tuesdays, when my understanding is that's when the planning commission meetings are, but we've come to kind of a splitting up of the week and it'll be not a problem for me to be in town on those evenings. Okay, other questions? Just to ask Leslie, that's the same question I asked the previous applicant, have you shown any interest in the Development Review Board or you focus solely on planning commission? Yeah, I'm not sure I have the expertise that it would take to be on the DRB. I, since the, I guess it's the policy side of the planning commission that I'm a little more experienced with. Okay, thank you very much. I just have one last question because then I'll ask it because I really wanna know the answer and I don't know what it is. Can you imagine or would you ever think there'd be a conflict of interest on what the planning commission might be determining, deciding, discussing and your work with the Housing Authority? I mean, certainly you have, that's your career and you're really focused on affordable housing and housing. So that's certainly a mindset but the planning commission needs to do more than housing as you're very well aware. And we have potentially energy requirements or climate change issues and all the other aspects of all of the LDRs in our city vision that isn't just housing. So do you think that would be a conflict or how would you deal with that? Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about that. I don't think it's a conflict. I actually think that the housing lens is extremely valuable for municipal planning. I don't think I would want to parse that out of my decision-making on the planning commission because housing is why we are all here right now. It's because our homes are in South Burlington. It's extremely, it's intrinsic in the way we think about all of these other issues, about climate change, about energy. It comes down to our homes and our homes being in South Burlington. And so I guess I would offer that that housing lens is really important and that I would bring that to the planning commission work, but in an objective way and well-informed way, I really love learning from other people with different kinds of expertise and skills than I have. And I'm fairly sure that I would be able to help make decisions that are sound for South Burlington. I know that you all are talking about short-term rentals later tonight. And I think that's a great example of how, even though that seems like it may not be, that it may be a planning commission issue down the road, that the housing lens for thinking about that is extremely valuable because those short-term rentals do affect the availability of our year-round housing stock. And even though we only have 40 active short-term rentals today, we know that I know from my housing work that it is very important to create guardrails to prevent that from becoming a problem down the road. Okay, thank you. Yeah. All right, anything else you wanna share with us or need to or we covered a lot? Okay. We have. Well, thank you very much for all your service to date. And I guess I would assume that you would resign from the Affordable Housing Committee or not. Do you think you would do both? I think it would be hard for me to do both just because I work full-time and I really would wanna focus on the planning commission work. Okay. So we'll create another opening. Thank you. All right. Thanks. Sophia Babbitt, is she in the audience or is she online? It looks like she's online. Online, okay. And Sophia is interested in the planning commission first and then the, what's the pack? Public art committee. Public art committee. She had public art committee first. Oh, is that your first choice, Sophia? The public art committee. Good evening, hi. Yes, it is. And then, and even hearing some of the interviews tonight, I think the public art committee would even be my first and maybe even only choice. All right. Well, that makes our life easier. But why don't you tell us about your interest on the public art committee? Yeah. So, like I mentioned on my application, I'm looking for ways to be more involved in my local community. I grew up in Vermont in the islands for several years before moving to South Burlington, where I attended Orchard, as well as the middle school and high school. And I went to college out of state. I returned back in 2018. I had toddler at the time and wanted to be closer to family. So, I also, I grew up in a family of artists. My dad was a graphic designer for a local news station for many years and then became the art teacher at Mount Abe. And my mom was a photographer and taught black and white photography, developer class at BCA. So art has always been a big part of my personal life I remember when I attended middle school, the art and the music department was always probably the first to get a budget cut. So having two little kids, who also just have this love for art, I really just value the importance of a public art in all various forms of artistic mediums, performances, an art in general that I've learned is really shown to encourage economic growth, be able to create sustained cultural identity and a sense of belonging, which I kind of jumped in at that last part of your declaration of inclusion presentation. So that really spoke to me as well. Okay, thank you. I don't think the public art committee meets too often. So I'm assuming you can fit that into your busy life or you wouldn't be applying. Yes, I saw they meet like the second Tuesday of every month and yeah, I went online, I haven't attended any of them, but I looked at the minutes from the last one that was on there from January 18th and I went through the most recent agenda from February 15th. Okay, great. Other questions, anyone? Are you an artist yourself, Sophia? Let's see, I don't know. I've always been very artistic. I wouldn't say that I'm an artist myself. I value art, I value, I worked for Matt Cosmetics for many years in New York in the retail events department. So again, I like doing my own makeup, but again, I've never done makeup on anyone. I'm not a makeup artist, but I value the art behind that goes into that. As I mentioned as well, my personal life and my professional life overlap in that I am involved in an overseeing a project that's part of like this engagement arts fund. So again, overseeing a project called Stopping Stones where it's a historical reparations endeavor designed to memorialize enslaved black Americans with small brass memorial plaques. And we actually just had an installation back in September of 2020. I don't know if you've seen them, but they're actually, we brought together two different local religious institutions from a Havi Zedic synagogue and the Good Lutheran church in Jericho. So they together sponsored two Stopping Stones honoring Lavinia and Francis Parker that were enslaved by Ethan Allen's daughter right at the location of the Burlington ski rack. So again, it's another form of engagement art that involves the community and really addresses some of the social equities that we're facing today. Okay, thank you. I would love her to define engagement art for everybody. So yeah, so it's something that really, that we believe that like promotes and advances learning and educational activities that engage people with each other and aims to improve the overall wellbeing of humanity and society. Okay, great. Matt, you had a question. Oh, I just asked if you've been to marketplace or art that we have here at our city hall if you've seen, been to, seen any of that public art that we have? Yes, yep. The one at, which so... Where we're at city hall, have you seen the library? Well, we got the docs. We have, or the geese, yeah, the geese, sorry. And then we have the clock. I'm assuming that was our public arts committee that put all that together. It's wonderful, but so... Okay. Is there anything else we need to know? All right, maybe you're all in a group, like you have. Okay, so yeah, what is your role in a group? How do you work with this stepping stone group? I mean, in terms of the, either leadership or kind of your niche in getting a team to work together. So, yeah, first stopping stones. And, you know, so again, I'm the program manager. I, you know, we work with these sponsor organizations. So I am, you know, coordinating, leading the, you know, and working with the sponsor org as much as, you know, as much support as they might need or not need. You know, in overseeing the big picture to the fine details, it really, you know, our mission kind of depends as well on, you know, what the sponsor organization, you know, what kind of support they need, how staff they are. So my role and job kind of varies with that. So for example, the one here in Burlington, we were much more hands-on just in regards to, again, overseeing from just getting, you know, the public works department involved to getting, you know, the various zoning and permitting. You know, fortunately, we found out that the location that we actually had, it was a privately owned place. So we didn't really have to get the, you know, the department of public works approval for it because there was a private owned location where we installed it. But it's, you know, it's pretty much from the inception of working with, you know, the local organizations to the actual, you know, working with them to, if they don't already have a name of the enslaved person to research that information, then to actually put together the event itself to honor the enslaved individuals. And then, you know, our last step is really to work with the community and to, you know, to figure out how we can repair some of those echoes that exist today. Okay, thank you. All right. Well, I very much appreciate your interest in getting involved in a committee in South Burlington. Thank you very much for your time. Yes, thank you all for your time. You're welcome. Okay, let's go back to Planning Commission and Tyler Barnes. Let's have a technical difficulties over the phone so I figured it would. Oh, good. Thank you. Yeah. Come right back. Our apologies, but I'm glad you made the effort to show up. That's like nice living in the community. We're fortunate, yes. You're close. Yes. I wrote a statement that outlined and articulated my interest in the Planning Commission and the Development Review Board. I'd be happy to serve on either at the pleasure of the city council. Very briefly, a high-level summary. I'm a lifelong resident of the city of South Burlington. I've lived here for the greater portion of almost 28 years, I believe. Give or take a few months. I'm very proud to call the city my home and I'm very proud of the fact that I'm from here, that I grew up here and that I'm a product of our wonderful educational institutions. I also feel very privileged to call the city of South Burlington my home. I am someone who, being totally transparent and very candid, has been afforded a lot of, well, privileges throughout my life and I've had the opportunity to go to remarkable educational institutions to get a master's degree and to pursue, really had the flexibility to pursue a lot of different professional endeavors. And despite having all of those advantages, we have struggled mightily since returning to South Burlington in 2012 to care for an alien parent. We've struggled to make ends meet despite having, again, those relative advantages. And that's of concern to me as a resident. That's of concern to me as someone who would love to have their kids live here. And it's of concern to me as a citizen. If it's difficult for folks who have had, like myself, who've had a lot of those advantages, I can't imagine how hard it is for folks who may be a little less fortunate. And so my desire to serve humbly on either committee or on either commission is to help work together with other members of the council, work with other governing bodies and legislative bodies to improve the economic climate, yes, but also to reinforce the idea that economic development and the city's aims that it has, particularly towards environmental protection and towards affordable housing, that they're not mutually exclusive. And I believe that we can work together and we can collaborate to create and cultivate an environment where all of those interests can thrive. Okay. Questions. You gave us a lot of information. So, and I was seeing it for the first time. Yeah, no, and I skimmed it because we got it a little late. So your application just says planning commission, but I guess having listened to some of this, you're possibly interested in the DRB. I'd be happy to serve again at the pleasure of the council on whichever committee which I'd be best suited or where I could most contribute. Well, they're both kind of different. I know they're connected, but they're very different. So are you more interested? I believe I'm more interested in the planning commission. Okay. In the policy end of it and... Yeah, strategic planning specifically. All right. And then in terms of your technical construction expertise, is there any, I mean, have you... I learned to swing a hammer at a very young age. Okay. So that I have worked on a number of construction projects both as a general laborer and also, well, as a GC, we own a small business in town. And we were fortunate enough to secure a loan with Opportunities Credit Union. But as many of these projects often go when you're starting a small business, which you reserve for fit up and for construction expenses, windills very quickly. And so I had to learn a lot of things in the fly and had to learn a lot of trade skills on number one and number two, also learn about the planning and zoning process, particularly as we had to apply for rezoning for our space in particular. Okay. And then just remind me, because we don't often get three page write ups, okay? Apologies. And it's fine. It was very, very complete, but I didn't have time except to read it really quickly. You have an MBA from Babson. Is that right? Yes, ma'am. And then your BAs in economics, okay. Economics and econometrics specifically. Okay. All right. Questions? In you, we're for the solar installer, I son. That is correct. Are you up and installing or are you selling? Or what are you doing? No, I am not. No, they don't allow me near the panels. I run their PR and investor relations functions. Excellent. Thank you. Any other questions or thoughts? In terms of the other question, sort of the how you approach solutions. As Jessica Wiesos was saying, the sort of level of feasibility approach and kind of the practicality of finding a solution. Where do you, what skills or how do you, how would you address that? I like to consider myself, again, a formally trained, really statistician. I'm a numbers driven person. I like to see the data, the hard data. And I like to see that data examined a number of different ways. The data, I also, that said, I also recognize the data doesn't always tell the whole story. And sometimes that data may not be available. But at the end of the day, I believe that we have a duty to our citizens and to really do whatever project that I'm working on to make sure that we can validate the decisions that we're making with hard, fast data, particularly when, particularly in situations where it can affect so many people. Okay. Is there anything else you'd like to share with us? Or a question we didn't ask that you think we should? Or what questions do you have for us, I guess is the other? No, I can't think of anything that comes to mind. I, other than, I'm very excited and enthused to have the opportunity to serve this community. And I would welcome your consideration and thank you for your time. Okay. And you're comfortable with the time commitment for either committee, because they're considerable. Yes, candidly, no. No, I am not. But I also, I can't imagine how hard it is to serve on these committees and how much time it's going to take. And I don't, I think personally, I would not be well served to say that I can state comfortably that I'm 100% aware of what those commitments are. But I also believe that when something's really important to you, you make the time. And this is something that's very important to me and I'm committed to making the time. All right, thank you very much. And I really appreciate you coming. No, thank you for the opportunity. I read a lot of your stuff, but I'd never met you, although I think I know your father. I hope I'm less caustic in person. You don't look like I thought you would look. That's all I'll say. All right, thank you very much, Tyler. And our final candidate to interview tonight is Jessica Manley. Did John Stern ever show up? Pardon me? Did Stern ever show up anywhere on the? He did not. And I do have to admit, I learned that it was our administrative error. We did not confirm with him to participate. So I think we should talk in executive section about how best to move that forward. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry. Jessica is interested in the public art committee. So welcome. And thank you. Tell us a little bit about yourself. We're running a little over, but that's okay. And I didn't say that to make you not say what you wanna say. No, that's fine. My name is Jessica Manley. I've been a resident of South Burlington for four years, but I lived in Vermont for the better part of 30 years. I'm a graduate of University of Vermont where I have a major in art history. And then I did a master's degree at the University of East Anglia, which is over in the UK in museum studies. I work now for myself. My husband and I both work for ourselves. And primarily I work as a copy editor, however I'm still involved in the arts. Most recently with Burlington City Arts, where I worked for about a decade. And I have a lot of experience through BCA with both events and committees doing public art. One of my primary jobs while I was there was to form and then manage our art sales and leasing program. And I managed most of the acquisitions and sales for the collection at the University of Vermont Medical Center. And I know... They have quite a collection. Yes, they didn't when we started working with them, but they do now, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm hoping once we get through a little bit more of COVID, we can do some more work with them as well. So I'm very familiar with the art scene, particularly here in Vermont, from the south all the way up through here, through the north. I still do some private acquisitions and collections work as well, as well as fabrication and installation when somebody's referred to me. So that's in a nutshell. That's my experience. Yeah, that's a lot. What's your... Yeah, go ahead. Your medium. You are art history, sir. You're not an artist. No, no, I'm not an artist. I would consider myself creative, but in no way would I consider myself a fine artist. I like to just think I'm a better judge of talent. Well, that's a talent in itself, isn't it? Yeah. That's important. And again, I think I said earlier, this committee doesn't meet a whole lot, but it's very important in terms of our city and identifying the public art as we build out city center. And we appreciate that all they did, we value it very much. Any questions, Tim? Yeah, I was at the Boston MFA two weeks ago and I took a lot of pictures and I'm gonna quiz you on every single picture about the year it was painted and who painted it. Try them out fast, remember. You ready? Put a sergeant, oh darn it, I already just gave it away. Shoot, okay, well never mind. Okay, do you have any questions for us? No, I don't think so. I mean, I've read the minutes of the committee. I guess, no, it looks pretty straightforward. Great, thank you. Well, thank you very much for your interest. And we have quite a challenge tonight. There's a whole lot of really good candidates, aren't there? So we appreciate that very much. And our intention, although I don't know how we're gonna, what we actually will do, we might make some assignments, but not all, but we hope to make decisions tonight and announce them tonight. If folks don't wanna stay till the end of the meeting, we will, the staff will follow up first thing in the morning with folks. Yeah, you don't need to hang around, please. Okay, thank you very much. Moving on to item 11, is it 11? Yeah. And this is the, proving a fund balance allocation from the sewer fund for head works repairs at the airport parkway wastewater treatment plant. You certainly convinced me in the write up that we need to do this. Maybe I shouldn't say anything. I know, well, you don't for me, you got it. So I am Tom DiPetro, Public Works Director. With me tonight is Bob Fisher, our Water Quality Superintendent. I was gonna give a quick overview of what's in the memo for you. And Bob's here for any technical questions that might come up about the wastewater plant. Okay. So very quickly, we're here to request $300,000 transfer from the wastewater reserve so that we can repair some issues in the head works building. The head works are where the wastewater first enters the facility. We've got a variety of issues there. The first is a band screen. Needs about $100,000 worth of repair. It's got six millimeter holes in it and that's where the wastewater is first screen before it enters the rest of the facility. Also, we have a grit chamber after that. The grit chamber is filling up. We're unable to clean that out for a little while now because there's some metal gates, aluminum gates that have reached the end of their service life and they're large and they need replacement so we can kind of block that area off to get in there and clean it up. So once that grit chamber fills up, that grit will start moving through the facility and causing problems downstream. A lot of expensive equipment downstream of the head works. We don't want any issues with. And I think that's a very broad overview so happy to answer any questions. I will mention too, in the memo, I mentioned we have about $2.5 million in the wastewater reserve. That's for future fleet purchases. The Bartlett Bay plant upgrade, which I want to mention briefly after some Q&A here, just kind of other CIP items. And what's the timeframe? If we approve this, how soon can you make these repairs? There is a significant lead time on the band screen and also on the gates. I think we're out six weeks. Is that right, Bob, with the quoting? At least, yes. To order them, is that? Yes, if we get the approval, we can order tomorrow and then it'll be at least six weeks. And then installation is another couple weeks? We're hoping, hopefully, before fall. Before the fall? Oh, okay. But the band screen, I believe we can get going quicker. And that's probably the most immediate need. That's the most important, immediate need. If it would sound like it to me. It is, yes. Do we have to have a coordinated non-flush period during the installation? That would be nice. Just go somewhere else. Remember, don't. You work out of the community. There you go. That's why the gates are important, so we can divert things while we're working. Yeah, good. The three P's, P, poop, and paper, that said. So you make a very clear case that we'll actually save money when we do this by about $250,000 to $300,000 a year. So I think it's a no-brainer and happy to support it. The only thing I would make a plug for, for the whole council, I remember when I first got on in 2015, Chuck Hafter said, you got to take a tour of the wastewater facilities. We still have not done that. I love field trips. You did that. I've been to the headworks building. It's an important building. Well, I haven't been yet, so if you're ever having a tour or something. I couldn't get the smell out of it, I know, it was for about a week. I'd love to see what we're talking about here. Yeah. We'd be thrilled at any time. I'm giving a UVM class tour in a few more weeks. We give tours to many times. COVID restricted that, but this will be our first UVM tour again. Usually they bring multiple classes through there in about two years. All right, great. Any other questions? I'll just move to approve the transfer of funds. Second. Okay, any further discussion? Okay, all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Okay. I'll give you just a few sentences on Bartlett Bay. Yes, you may. Yeah, so more of a teaser. Bob and I will likely be back in a couple of weeks or a variety of meetings later to discuss the Bartlett Bay plant upgrade. That facility's up for its 20 year refurbishment. We want to talk to you about the cost of that project and planning a bond vote. We're looking to get all the information pulled together. There's a fair amount of funding in the future through either ARPA or IAJA. We feel like we've got the project through the 100% preliminary engineering phase at the moment before we get another real hard engineering, but also having that bond vote and showing a commitment from the community to fund this project would align us up well to get some of the grant funds that we anticipate coming in. Yeah, you're good at getting grants. We're hoping that, yeah. Well, you have good success since I've been on the council. So what does IJAA stand for? Infrastructure, Investment and Jobs Act. Oh, okay. It's the new big federal infrastructure bill. Exactly, yeah. It's sort of like ARPA. Yeah, okay. Tom. So timing-wise, were you thinking this bond would be town meeting day next year and the general election this November? The primary, are we talking further out than that? We're going to work that out with Jesse and talk about some other bond priorities. I'd love to do it as soon as possible. November, perhaps March, I would not want to wait till next November, but we have a couple opportunities that we really need to look hard at and kind of get our ducks in a row here too. Right now, assuming the timing works to get all the documentation and systems in place we need for the bond vote, we would hope to do this at the general election and the town meeting day TIF bond vote, so as we're not bringing them to the voters at the same time. But that's a tight time frame. We'll get that information in a couple weeks. Exactly. Okay, well, thanks to the teaser. Thank you, everybody. Thank you. All right. Okay, now we're almost back on schedule. And that was a great write-up. I mean, so I didn't need to hear it again. It was very clear, so I appreciate it. I kept it to one page, but I did cheat the margins on you. Well, yeah, and you didn't have much space between lines, but it was very readable in a major case. Thank you, gentlemen. Item 12 is receiving the draft amendments to the LDR regulations, the general plan unit development and site amenities, and we need to consider a warning of public hearing. And then there's a couple of proposed modifications from Councilor Koda. Did you all miss me? It's been like three meetings since you had a draft set of land development regulation amendments. Paul Connor, Director of Planning and Zoning, and Jessica Luizos is here remotely. Hey, Jessica. Hello. Okay. So super briefly, the Planning Commission and Council got some really excellent feedback during the adoption of the last round of amendments. Had started to work late last fall on a third PUD type to join the Infil, excuse me, to join the Conservation PUD in the traditional neighborhood. It was going to be an Infil PUD. Some of the, a lot of the feedback that the Commission and yourselves got was that there was a missing tool in the toolbox of what to do on properties in commercial industrial areas, what to do in properties that are zone institutional agricultural, what to do with pre-existing approved planning and developments and modifications that might exist to those. So the Commission looked at this and felt that the tool that was started to be developed for an Infil PUD could be expanded to be a, what is now called a general PUD applicable in all the places where the Conservation PUD and the traditional neighborhood are not applicable and provides a lot of the flexibility that existed under the old rules to deal with individual circumstances. So that's the crux of the general PUD. Connected to it, this round of amendments also includes a proposal for a basic site amenity minimum. So this is drawn out of the city center form-based code and would apply to new development and conversions to residential for anything other than a single or two-family home and would set a basic amount of space that would be typically outdoor space, but in some cases could be indoor or rooftop, things like that to be an amenity for the users of that place, whether it's the residents, the employees or the visitors. And lastly, sort of connecting these two things together, there's a little bit of language that bolsters existing language in site plans about how the DRB can look at transitions from structure to structure from site to site. It puts a little bit of context for the DRB to use about what does it mean to be compatible with your surroundings. So that's really the crux of what's in here. There's a little change to clarify when a master plan applies. Otherwise, I think, did I miss anything, Jessica? No, I think that was a good description. And I think just, this is something that came up in discussions with you on the council that seemed like a missing piece. So, we tried to streamline this and get this back to you as soon as we can to kind of fill that hole that was identified in the PUD structure. I guess the only other thing I would say is that this is intended also to be the foundation and the building blocks for the commission's next discussion about how does the city support additional smart, thoughtful, compact development along our built corridors like Shelburne Road. So the commission is now beginning to look at under what circumstances could there be additional residential density, things like that. That would likely use the tools that are being put in place here. But as Jessica said, that's a more involved discussion and the commission felt like they could provide this piece of it to address specific, existing problems and opportunities and then add to it with once a little bit more of a robust discussion on density and that kind of thing took place and what the right tools are for that. Okay. Questions or? I didn't attend the planning commission meetings. Jessica, I would love to know what you saw as kind of the give and the take when you came down on this draft language here. Yeah, I think it's an interesting question. And I think the give and take with this was how much detail we wanted to or felt like we needed to get into this, the basic general PUD. So there was some discussion about can we change some of the densities and areas where we think it's appropriate and felt like that was a bigger discussion that we wanted to circle back to and in relation to the TDR discussion. There was also some discussion about maybe adding more detail and other types to the amenity, the site amenities list. But in the end felt like there was a good range of options there, many of which are already being used in the foreign based code districts and then added to it to make it a little more applicable to other areas of the city. But because we had already seen a draft back in the fall, it was very similar. Like we had already worked for some of those initial bigger discussion pieces back in the fall. So I think that there was really quite good agreement that this was something that we wanted to move forward and that we had the six zero vote that this was something we wanted to move on to your approval, review and approval. Thank you, okay. So Tim. Yeah, just quick question. So we just went through a regulation approval process and there was some criticism of the last set of regulations that we approved. And one of those criticisms had to do with the lack of changes around PUDs and ambiguity about PUDs. So are those, there's specifically two developers that were raising points, but are they satisfied that these changes will cover their needs? As generally as I can put that, are they generally satisfied? One of the perceived challenges of removing the ability to have a PUD along a place like Shelburne Road was that there's a pretty large minimum lot size on Shelburne Road as it stands. And so if somebody wanted to think creatively about putting two or three different buildings on a smaller footprint, the LDRs adopted in February, say no more than one building on a lot and then also a minimum lot size of X. And so you could do one quite large building but you couldn't necessarily say, well, I've got an idea and I'm gonna split this into two and build two more medium scale buildings. This would address that by giving the DRB the tools to say something like lot size can be modified. There's another way to also be looking at this that will likely eventually be on the planning commission list, which is to think about reducing the lot size period but in the timeframe of reviewing this, that's the kind of thing that could have unintentional consequences that the commission didn't yet wanna just say, we'll just do it. So from that perspective, I think that kind of thing is addressed. There was a lot of feedback on the last LDR so I'm not going to presume that everybody's concern in all areas has been addressed by this. That's probably wise. Yeah, I think to add to that, we got the most feedback related to this topic in just saying that they felt like they're needed to be a PUD that was applicable in the other districts. So this would create that missing PUD. Matt? Right, so back, just to reiterate what I think you said to me, Paul, which is in the areas where we hadn't named PUDs, the general PUD types, particularly those on Shelbert Road, that will be done with this concept and a private developer could take a parcel, redevelop it as a PUD in areas during that short time window could not, is that correct? That is correct. So it would be optional in this case. So they may choose to be a site plan. They may choose to be a PUD, but yes. And then the other circumstance where this could apply is to minor amendments to a previously existing or approved PUD. So whether it's a place like South Village or it's some development that already existed on Shelbert Road or it's something on Old Farm Road, it allows for a modification to a previously approved one without sort of becoming one of the much more precise types of a TND or a conservation PUD. I just wanna say publicly, this was, I wanna appreciate what Jessica and you, Paul have done. This was one of the ones that I was on my list of 22 that I wanted in the previous package. I appreciate the speed of which you have brought this back and got it done. Thank you. And it was definitely a group effort and lots of staff support and whole commission. Thank you. And yeah, you're welcome. Okay, so what we need to do, and I think we can do this before we deal with your amendments, Matt, or should we do those amendments and then have a hearing? I would recommend that if you're gonna modify the amendments that you're putting forward to public hearing, you do it together as well. Okay. City Attorney, do you agree with that? Yeah. All right, so we have, if you were ready to move on, Paul, we had sent to us after all the stuff went out, the final wording, I guess. Yes. And I just have it on my cell phone. I can bring it up on the screen if folks would like. So there's a definition and some general review standards and a change to the authority and limitations on the general PUD. Yes. No, it's in our packet, isn't it? No, there's a new one. Oh, that's right, the language with the... Yeah, 328. Can you put that up in this green? Maybe? I'm not going anywhere, but I'm gonna move off the screen here. Here we go. Okay. So I don't know, Councilor Coda, would you like to introduce the idea? Would you like staff to do that? I have to speak through the technical of it, but maybe... So the general points, and as someone who served on the Development Review Board, oftentimes we've got projects and we try to think creatively on how we can solve them. Some of the deal with landscaping, a lot has to do with parking. And we understand why we want parking in the back. We don't wanna see the pavement. We don't wanna see the cars. We wanna see buildings. Looks better, makes a lot of sense, except for sometimes when it doesn't and you just can't get creative. I know when I was on the Development Review Board, I was looking for more latitude, more ability to wave, to be creative when it's possible, when it's in the interest of the community, or the applicant, of the neighbors, everyone. This appears to me as a simple one, which is not always do we want parking in the front in some areas that we don't, particularly when we talk about redevelopment around the airport. I mean, you don't want parking in the back. Excuse me, parking in the back, right? It's okay to have parking in the front. Exactly, yeah. And not to say that we wanna see cars, but that there are opportunities to provide some give and take between the city, the DRB, represented by the DRB and the developer and the neighbors to ensure that it is a beautiful streetscape, but that we, and we've done, I know Tim has done some of these creative ideas when he was on the DRB. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, but providing flexibility for our Development Review Board when they apply the parking standards, I think is important. And that's why I came up with this amendment. Okay, great. Do you want Paul to take us through? Sure. All right. Or Colin, I don't know, who needs to do it? So basically, this is a pretty narrow description so that it's clear as to what its specific purpose is. So as described here, the building or portion thereof is being served by the parking areas contained within the layperson term that we use in the city is the fence. So we often use the term inside the fence, outside the fence. This is the federal term that is used for the fence, meaning everything on the inside of this requires somebody to, a person, a vehicle, or whatever to have been through the full screening of TSA. So you can't walk through the terminal, for example. You can walk in the front part of it, but to get to a certain part of it, you go through the security, the same thing on the National Guard side or wherever there happen to be entry points. These are secure entry points that are established by the airport with the FAA and the TSA. The idea here would be that if a building is wholly within the fence, which does exist, there's, for example, a building for maintenance of the airport and the plows that plow the runway. Everything is inside the fence. There are buildings that comprise they are, quote unquote, the fence, like the terminal, like some of the heritage aviation buildings where there may be office space in the front, but there is a hard line and beyond that point, everybody and all things need to be secure. So that's what this would represent. So the way that the language reads here is that would be one of the circumstances that the DRB can approve, parking between a public street and the building. It would need to find this and would approve the minimum necessary, which is the standard language that we use for all the exceptions. There's a definition to accompany it. The one that you had seen on Friday actually quoted the federal definition. In working with the legal counsel, we felt that A, the federal definition could change and we don't want to be in the position of overriding federal definition. B, by typing out a definition, it might imply, it's very sort of loose language, for lack of a better word than, points to a whole set of federal guidelines. It might imply that we have a decision to make about what counts as inside the fence and what doesn't and we don't. That is entirely established by the FAA, the TSA and the airport. So it's really just pointing to that. And then lastly, there's a little bit of tidy up language below to just be 100% clear as we were looking at this. This is in the general PUD, just to make sure that the authorization in there does allow for the exceptions that are contained within those, that language is just a little bit of legal tidy up. You mean the language in article 12? 12 and 14. So as we were sort of scrutinizing this, we thought the intent was very clear that in the general PUD, the intent was that you were given no additional authority to modify the environmental protection standards for article 14, but it wasn't 100% clear that the authority within those sections still remains. So there are times when you're allowed to construct on a steep slope, the PUD doesn't take that away, that's contained in the environmental protection standards. So it's just making sure that we're cross-referencing correctly. The applicability of this would be for anywhere that there's a publicly owned airport in the city, of which there is one, but it was, we stated publicly owned because it is possible for a private airport to exist in the future. We never know, so that's why it's publicly owned and it would apply to the entire area of the airport. And there are a number of examples where there are buildings that operate in the very close vicinity to the tarmac and the runways that if they were redeveloped, the circumstance could come up, so. And so this applies to the land, the Air Force zones? Or not? Well, in theory, yes, but anything that is on the Air Force, did you say Air Force? Yeah, well, the Air Guard. In theory, it applies to the Air Guard side, but in practice, they are completely exempt from our regulations. So if they chose to submit, then yes, but as a federal military institution, they're not. They can just build and park where they want. Okay, yahoo. Yes. It does not apply, just to be clear, to land that is outside of the fence and zone for other purposes than airport, because that would be outside of the fence that were not applicable. That's why fences make good neighbors, a tongue. So this makes sense to me, but I don't have nearly as much experience as two DRB members down there. But if we do add this, this just puts it on the public hearing and then if at the public hearing, we hear concerns that might not have been anticipated prior to now, we can certainly take this out then. So there's not really much risk by adding it for the hearing for whatever we've warned this for. Is that a fair statement? Yes. Okay. I have two questions. So are we implying that the beta facility is on the fence, is part of the fence, because they can roll their product out onto the runway? There's access to the runways from that facility? This standard would only apply to an application submitted under these regulations. So no current application in front of the city would just automatically be moved over to it. I believe it is an accurate statement to say that the current beta facility would be an example of it makes up a portion of the quote unquote fence. So one could go to the front door of beta and of the current beta and be a member of the public, but you can't go at the back door because the back door has doors and or loading facilities that there is an authorization to then go on to the taxiways and things like that, which is a secure area. Except for visitors who are managed by employees, all employees can't get access into the building unless they have a secure identification key, which is a badge or whatever to get in that building, which means that they can't get to the runway area unless they're authorized. Correct, just like the general terminal building. The general what? The terminal. I can walk into one part of the terminal, but I can't just walk through the terminal and onto the runway. You can't get to a gate without going through TSA, or you can't get into an airplane without a boarding pass. And if I were an employee, I also wouldn't be able to bring the materials, the gasoline, the skinny pancake, heavy toppers, there's a security portion. So in general, the airport except for the guard is surrounded by a so-called fence, right? And it's probably- Sometimes it's a fence and sometimes it's a building. Right, but it's a containment of which there are permeations that are based upon authorization, right? And it may be a building or it may be a gate or whatever it is, so if an entity, if some structure is part of that delineation and it needs a secure access, then that counts as being a qualified, qualified under this new regulation, right? Correct, so that would be the building or a portion thereof is contained within. So yes. Okay, yep. I understand now, all right. Okay, any other questions? Oh, I'm sorry, Megan. Is the goal to have a building on that main public street still being upheld with this language? This is just, I'm sorry. You asked the question, no, I'm sorry. I don't, Paul can answer. Well, I think, go ahead, Councilor Cronk. My point is that this is not retroactive. This is forward thinking. This is- That wasn't my question. Okay. Can you restate it? I don't think I understood the question. Yeah, because looking at the language on parking, now wait, I have to get back there, just a minute. What, well, it, right? You referred to a main street. What main street are you talking about? A public street, a public street, right? That's what we have here. Parking is supposed to be located to the rear or sides of buildings. Any side of a building facing a public street shall be considered a front side of a building for the purposes of the subsection. The development review board may approve parking between a public street and one or more buildings if the board finds that one or more of the following criteria are met. And so I see that there's an option there, but would there be a default? Would it be equal in the recommendations that the staff would provide the DRB? I guess what I would say is that it would become a case-by-case analysis. So there are some circumstances. We were looking at this, for example, but the first building, if you're going up airport drive from Kennedy Drive before you get to the cemetery, there's the depth of about one building and it's associated parking there. Which, okay, so you're coming up Kennedy towards airport drive. Let's see. I mean, there is parking on airport drive before in front of buildings, that's for sure. Is that what you're referring to? I'm just gonna bring it up on the screen here. So here's an instance right here. This is Kennedy, this is Lolliston Road right here. Kennedy Drive here, airport drive right here. So these buildings right here. In concept, if this site were to be redeveloped, if either of these buildings or their future versions were to become part of the security fence, then it may be difficult for the user of this building to identify a place to put parking except in front of the building. So that might be a circumstance where the applicant says, here's where I'd like to propose parking in front of the building. The DRB would, and staff would pose the question of what's the minimum amount of parking? Is there any portion of the parking that could be not in front of the building but ultimately if the applicant can demonstrate while we need 30 parking spaces, 22 of them, there's really no place to put them but in front of the building, that would afford the DRB the authority to grant that. That's not necessarily mutually exclusive from other goals if there was a lot of depth to a property. This one is one of those, not a lot. It could be both. It could be that parking is permitted and that maybe there's additional space to have more buildings. So I think that would be a case by case analysis. Thank you, that was helpful. Okay, so are we ready to set a hearing? And that's, right, the three week warning, is that what I'm understanding? Or is it somewhere in the... It's in Paul's memo. I believe we recommended May 2nd. May 2nd at 730, and I would just say approved as presented and modified if you want to do both. Say May 7th. May 2nd. Oh, second, yeah, okay. At 730. So I'll move that we set a public hearing on these proposed amendments to the land development regulations for May 2nd at 730. Including the modifications. Including the modifications. Second. Okay, is there further discussion? Yes, just one point. I just want to say that in the process of developing and redeveloping properties, commercial properties within any community, you are invariably going to run up against regulations that you did not expect. And I think that our staff has done an excellent job, especially with the Planning Commission, addressing these as they have popped up. We have a good example with the example here for the general PUD as we've gone through a three year process through YZ, right, to come up with some new land regulations, which we passed, right, and then there was criticism from the development community about the lack of PUD and general PUDs and that's been satisfied here for now, at least, right? But, you know, there are other projects ongoing where I've been hearing intense criticism of the city because they've run up against a roadblock, right? So I just want, and that somehow it casts our cities being anti-business, which is so far from the truth, I can't believe it's been said. We are taking steps here tonight to try and put on the right path the things that we need for the future to satisfy certain people. And I just want to say that out loud. So, you know, if anybody in the media wants to criticize the city because they don't, they think we're anti-business, you know, bring that criticism forward because I think what you're seeing here tonight is a cooperation between staff, right? Staff and everybody else in the city council. So I just want to say that out loud before we vote on it, because I'm going to vote, you know, in favor of this because we want to move it forward because we're looking to the future and we know the businesses that we want to have in our community. So thank you. All right, you ready for the vote? All those in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye, five ohs. So we will have a public hearing on the draft amendments and the modifications on May 2nd. Let me take a two minute break or five minute break. Yes, beginning at 730. It's all right. And then we'll have a, so thank you, Paul. Well, can you come to the, Can you come to the, I'm sorry, that's okay. No, I was going to do that. Thank you. As I was looking at the amendment, the new piece, it just wasn't clear to me the article 12 piece and I guess I'm still a little fuzzy on it. Does anything change with article 12? And if so, just clarify that because I wasn't sure. Would you like me to answer that? Yes, please. So we were giving the, we were checking cross-references here and the intent in the PUDs in general and the general PUD specifically was to point to article 14 and in this case article 12 and say article 12 applies exactly as written. As we were pushing and pulling which we do with all language, there was some concern that it might be implied that the general PUD takes away the authority in article 12 for the modifications that article 12 created within itself. So there are rare circumstances but there are circumstances when a wetland can be modified or when a steep slope can be modified. This is a little cleanup, a little legal cleanup to make sure that we're not taking away that authority. There's no policy intent in change. Okay, thank you. Can I make one comment before the break? Yep. Great, so just on the same point, I just, I have to say, Councilor Barrett, I really appreciated your remarks there and I think that is an important point to make that I too am very impressed with the Planning Commission as well as staff and how quickly they have adapted and focused on addressing these needs. So I hope that the community knows that South Burlington is an eager and willing partner and I also want to say, and I said this on the radio last week, I like that our South Burlington City Council is talking and debating a lot about land development regulations, these are the right things for Councils to be focused on. So I think we should all be proud of that. So cheers. Okay, thank you. One quick procedural note for you all that because you made a change this evening, the state law requires that the Planning Commission look at and update the report on the consistency of the amendments with the comprehensive plans. You'll see that in your packet for May 2nd. So just- Oh, okay. That will be welcome. Yeah. So just FYI that that procedurally requirement under state law. Okay, thank you. So we're going to take a five minute break. I'm sorry it's later than it usually is, but we had that other little break. So we'll be back in five minutes, I hope. Oh, you're welcome. I'll tell you better. Well, I took a D.K. just, I mean, I really took a D.K. And I never think about it till someone's alive. I don't think it's a test. I think it's an IV profile. But I don't think so. I'm not a guest at all. I guess what I'm saying is I'm recognizing that it's not going to be short term rentals. I just, I'm hesitant to push too fast and too hard, but I want us to progress on this. So I'm just wondering how you feel about me. Just so that the community can also have more time in order to hear about it. Maybe having a public hearing on it. Do you remember the noise ordinance when we had that discussion, that panel? I thought that was the great way to go on. There you go! That was my attempt at getting on here earlier. Yeah! So we didn't go in our rooms, it gets even better. We tried to contact several people but nobody was at their desk. It's been hours. They've been tense like, come on, let's go. Yeah, walking. I worked for a video. I worked for a video. I worked for a video. I worked for a video. I worked for a video. I worked for a video. I worked for a video. I'm just going to go to the restroom. I canceled my subscription a month ago but I keep it in my purse. We're fans here. We can try to amend this meeting. Yeah. We're all watching. It's like, I never shared with a Max. Yeah, I know. I was showing how you'd be at home. I remember that when I was supposed to do the teaching. I had everybody just watch the meeting. All right. Yeah. It's a community event. Remember Mr. Phillips? He's the old man. He was famous for rolling. He was doing martial arts. He was doing martial arts. And he tried to incorporate math into the brackets. I think I remember that. Yeah, I had him for advanced calculus. Yeah, right here. Yeah. I think those are the things we remember the most from school hours. Three weeks ago right before with UDM spring break. I canceled class. I got to teach on Wednesday. The competition was against UConn. I got to teach on Wednesday nights. I canceled class and I said I was holding optional office hours. We'd like to watch that game tonight. If our chair was a big basketball fan I bet you we'd have a shorter meeting tonight. I don't think she heard that one. Yeah. Did you like Collins' Tar Heel Blues? Put it in the background up in the corner. Did you like Collins' Tar Heel Blues? Did you go to school there? Yeah. I mean, you could totally go way forward. I wouldn't tell. I wouldn't ever... I mean, I don't... Okay. Can we come back to order? Because we have a couple more items. Just a couple. Not too many. So I'd like to call back to order the South Burlington City Council meeting of Monday, April 4th, 2022. We're at item 13 consider prioritizing adopting a short-term rental ordinance and associated implementation steps. And Megan Emery has done a lot of work on this, so... Yeah. Take it away. Thank you. And the reason why I prepared a cover letter is so that I wouldn't have to say everything that I wrote in that cover letter. So I just want to say that I was not alone in working on this. I want to give a lot of credit to John Burton who is on our Economic Development Committee. And he provided the two studies that are in our packets. The Dartmouth Study and the Washington, D.C. Study. I also want to thank Councillor Joan Shannon in Burlington. She and I had an hour conversation talking about the ins and outs of all sorts of questions that I was considering that the Burlington City Council considered. And I added on things in this final version of language. I also want to thank several of our committee members who I vetted this with. I sent this out to members of the Affordable Housing Committee. I sent it to John who was in touch with, I'm sure, members of his committee, but also he told me the Lake Champlain Chamber. I sent it also just to members of the public and the members of the Natural Resources and Conservation Committee and to housing experts that are local. Because I feel a sense of urgency and I'll tell you why. I explained some of that in my memo but so very briefly. I see that my neighborhood is some of the houses that are going up on sale are able to attract young couples or families moving in. But that's usually because a family who's lived in the house prior has worked it out so that their children can take over. There is a certain style that I've kind of uncovered where there's an open house that lasts for two hours and the highest bidder gets the house. Period. That happened on one week ago and that was after Burlington City Council could not override the mayor's veto and I went home and I got to work. And why? Because I have colleagues in my department who are not making six figures, far from it and who are not able to afford a house because they can simply not enter into this housing market and they might leave. We know that we have candidates to our city staff who have not been able to come here because they cannot find housing. They simply cannot enter the housing market. I am interviewing candidates for two positions in my department and I have to tell you that residency gives people a leg up because the fear of bringing people here then saying we can't live here is real. It makes people angry. It makes people feel hopeless because these are people who have a very serious position and they are unable to find housing. Basically to compete with people and this is not COVID related now. I am talking about wealthy investors who see housing as a safe haven for their money. And the short-term rentals has become a real investment for people because the return on that investment is so, so high. So one of the community members who was vetting this with me she pointed out to me an ad in the seven days for the short-term rental conference and trade show at the Capital Plaza in Montpelier from June 2nd to 3rd this summer. Just as an example today after my student took a makeup exam she came back with her exam and she I was just chatting with her. She told me that another student in her class who was a senior who should be of course looking forward to graduation and leaving with her diploma after just a little over a month she was evicted. Her lease was broken because her landlord had simply sold his building out from under them. This kind of stuff as my student said happens all the time. I had a doctor's appointment this morning and the doctor told me that she has friends in Essex. Their rent went up 65%. 65. 65%. This isn't the first story I've heard. As I was campaigning I met a woman in my neighborhood who just she almost hugged me and with tears in her eyes said thank you for doing market street. Thank you for doing the garden street apartments. We were in housing that was probably scouting us in Burlington. They finally got into those apartments and then they could find an affordable house. I don't know how long ago this was because since 2020 late 2020 early 2021 that's when the market really exploded but she had tears in her eyes to know the good fortune she had because so many people that have that good fortune are living in hotels or they're homeless. So we are truly in a crisis I see it happening in front of my very eyes in my neighborhood when I was campaigning I encountered it in neighborhoods off of Dorset street in my own neighborhood as I stated. Another of my campaign team encountered it on Heinsberg Road as well as Orchard. Right. These are our traditional affordable neighborhoods. Why? Because it's very lucrative. It's simple as that. And it's not only for the property owners it's for the cleaning personnel. They're making $60 an hour that's more than I make as a professor. Maybe I should rethink my career choice. I mean it gets to a point where capitalism has run amok and we rely on government when that happens in order to bring back this market that is not serving the public good. And so it is with urgency that I bring it forward to you. I did a lot of research I am an intensive researcher I love doing research fortunately and what I and again I have to give John written a lot of credit because he gave me those two studies but what we see here is the culmination of my research and I landed on pages that were very helpful. I sent all these things to you I think over a week ago and I give you the references within this text where there was a very nice synopsis of all the cities and what the various divisions were in their short-term rental ordinances. And some of them have conditional use permits for their bread and breakfast short-term rentals like we do. We have conditional use if I'm understanding the LDRs correctly we probably don't enforce it because to be quite honest we wouldn't be alone Jim Shannon said we didn't enforce ours either and now that's what we're going to do since we couldn't develop this ordinance. I know that's probably the case in a lot of places. The 40 active short-term rentals that Leslie brought up I can bet my bottom dollar that there are many many more at least triple that number because not all of these platforms are required to have a record of them like Verbo and Home Away do not have a record unless they are actually live unless they are actually advertising. Airbnb does have that record. The other thing to recall in my memo is that we're not collecting taxes on this. These houses are off the market and our hotels are really being left in the lurch and probably being affected in terms of their bottom dollar as well which is why this is an economic development issue because it affects housing as well as our hotel industry. I stand by all of this language. I do have just two things that I am not wed to. I wanted just to say I've truly vetted this and here are the two things and this is something that is my feeling but also has been confirmed with conversations with John Burton and others who I've been and Helen really also you see she's in a note. So renting out an entire home is illegal. There are neighborhoods along our lake and I'm reading from John Burton's email where this happens. There are homes in neighborhoods that have traditionally lent themselves over to be bread and breakfast in the summer and let people from out of town come and stay in those homes. The entire home not just a room but the entire home whereas in my neighborhood that would truly change the character of my neighborhood and I'm sure that's true for orchard and I'm sure that that is true for the homes off of Heinsberg or on Heinsberg and I know for fact that it's true on those streets off of Dorset that we were dealing with the parking area every call and the man who I he came out of his house and pointed Airbnb, Airbnb, Airbnb, Airbnb he just went down the entire block showing me tears in his eyes his own kids can't find a house in South Burlington and it's no longer feeling like a neighborhood. So some neighborhoods perhaps we should allow neighborhoods not and that would have to be something that we'd have to work out and this is something that I'm bringing forward you might have other things that you would bring forward to. Can I just ask the question about renting out an entire home is illegal. My understanding was that they're, you know professors and things who come just to teach a year do a sabbatical or something at UVM and rent a whole house but it's not an Airbnb kind of rental but it's I don't know maybe it's only a nine month rental. I don't know how long you're or a 12 month rental when you're on sabbatical this would make that illegal is that right that would be a long term rental so I would see that as not being a short term rental okay so a short time rental 30 days on an entire home is illegal. Okay I was just curious because there are people you know where they do house swaps they go to London for three months and London comes here. So 30 days are longer is not considered a short term. See this is where I got some feedback where this is a member of our planning commission who said you know some people they'll stay for 30 days then they'll stay in a hotel for one night and then they'll come back right and so they can just carry on like that for a whole year right and so it's a these are things that have to be ironed out I did not come with a final copy here this is truly starting the conversation but I do it with urgency. The woman who wrote to me and I forge you her email she lives in the orchards she talked about how there is a home just in back of her with pets jumping over the back fence that's a problem these are people coming from out of town we don't know if they're registered we don't know anything about these pets right so we really have to make the land owner and the person who's renting these homes responsible right and that again has to be ironed out and I do not come here with set and ready language and I will add the language to you know staff to give it to but for instance you see Helen's note 9 and I also have Michael Miteg wrote here pet should be allowed if the renter allows it meaning the person who is renting right it out the owner allows it I should say Helen's note 9 is okay dogs must have up to date rabies vaccinations hosts may not rent if the renter does not produce a valid rabies vaccination certificate hosts must post South Burlington's pet ownership and leashing requirements and ordinance on their website advertisements platform entry etc so what the question I'm sure is running through everyone's mind in this room is how are we going to enforce that let's go to Denver Denver has a short-term rental ordinance where the hosts are required in affidavit and the reports are is that that has dissuaded people who you know would be very perhaps you know easily attracted to to renting out their homes because it is a lucrative business but there are rules that I believe are rightly in place to make sure that we have affordable housing for and affordable housing is relative I should say that with quotation marks but that we have housing in a greater quantities and as we've been told by members of the affordable housing committee as well as by the executive director of the CCRPC that quantity right in our inventory makes a difference it's a supply demand issue so if we keep removing supply what's going to happen it's what's happened over the past year and a half prices go through the roof and people just cannot compete so that's my spiel I have worked very hard on this I feel confident that I've brought to you something that's solid this is not shooting from the hip at all I as I told you I did my research thoroughly I have vetted it there's support out in the community for this there's support on our committees for this and John Burton would love to have his economic development committee review this as well so just wanted to perhaps ask you if you would agree to let the staff vet it and get back to us with comments suggested language limitations if that's something that you would consider to be reasonable a question I know senator shitton is going to raise is S 210 I've been in touch about S 210 so has John Burton as short term rentals are exempt as our accessory dwelling units that are three or less to a main structure as our as our rental units rented for less than 90 days they're also exempt period and I don't believe that will be reopened I've been in touch with several of our legislators so thank you I would just raise with the context of S 10 which passed the senate in February 10th and now is in the house is it might not even go anywhere and the governor might veto it I am not against these discussions I'm against doing them on Monday night at 10.30 p.m. at this point because I just want to go home whatever time it is the point I would make is that I would welcome this as a thoughtful discussion sometime this summer when we have more idea because if S 10 doesn't get passed into law which it was the previous version S 79 was vetoed by the governor I'd want to broaden this and not just be on short term rentals I've been an advocate for a few years this is well worth our attention but I think the faster we push on this the more we're going to make mistakes the more we're going to create unnecessary friction and I also really wanted to hear from the city manager about staff availability I am fully supportive of moving this forward I just think we need to do someone a thoughtful manager I hear your urgency I'm not against any of this action I just want to do it in a thoughtful deliberate manner and I see more merit community sometime to react to what's being said tonight and making sure that staff can weigh in on what their availability is soon is well within my urgent time frame that would be pretty fast Jesse oh Matt? I'm not hip so I've never done an Airbnb before wow you need to get out of Vermont maybe but I did look on the website that Leslie Blackblum was sent and I see there's 40 active right now within the city of South Burlington 40 units for Airbnb and VRB what are the other STRs there's Home Away which owns VRBO I'm quite familiar with that because we have a summer home I think Matt you didn't read my cover letter let me read that part to you let me read that part to you there's VRBO Airbnb Home Away so there may be some others those are just for you I know so let me just read this to you that let me find it here just a minute why are you looking? Burlington just went through this whole process and the mayor vetoed it is that correct? so I'd like to know what they went through at some point in the summary of what happened not tonight but that's something that we should look at the other thing is I generally understand the emotion behind this and the reality for people that are getting priced out of rental markets and again this supply and demand issue that we have but to be closer to home it'd be nice to have Chief Francis come in that's part of this whole thing and talk about the requirements in the city for hard wired interconnected smoke detectors for rentals because we've had this discussion before where he said that the fire department commonly looks at Craigslist to see who's renting out their house as a long term rental and then they call them up and they say hey what are your smoke detectors like and they're like wait what and that could be a two to four thousand job to do all that drilling and have PEC Electric come and install that stuff for you so right away if there are rental units in the city that are non conforming for smoke detectors the fire department should be very interested in that and those people who are doing that and it's in violation should be notified immediately that's one of mine the other thing is that anybody rental fees for short term rentals that is not paying the state rooms and meals tax on that means that South Burlington is not getting their 70% or 1% or whatever it is right what do you know for the and that is another distinct violation so if Airbnb is collecting it but Verbo is not and the other people aren't Verbo is collecting it Verbo is collecting it? he said that Airbnb was only collecting it Verbo was waiting Verbo doesn't list their homes they have contracted with they only list the homes that are being actively advertised once they are rented out they're off but it's up to the homeowner to pay the tax I don't know is that true okay well anyway some of these extra facts will come out but number one for me is right way is if there's a safety issue we need to look at that right away because I don't want any home that's being rented out that doesn't conform to our department's you know ordinances to be to be taken care of and the second of all I hate it when people get away with not paying taxes so and I don't know how to measure that because that's a problem because we've gone to the state before and said hey are we getting all of our tax money and they'll go we can't tell you so it's one of those issues so and I found my passages to get to that point unless you want to say something more Tim I'm done so according to the data and Leslie helped me on this too on the 2020 U.S. Census American Community Survey there are 122 homes in South Brillington and there are wide margins of error that are currently either rented but not occupied or for seasonal recreational or occasional use there are also 84 other vacant homes so I add that the Dartmouth report states and I hear I quote the state does not possess a comprehensive list of short-term rentals so the data that Leslie has provided us that 40 is likely just the tip of the iceberg and what with regard to taxes and here I'm citing also from the Dartmouth report as the Dartmouth report states since 2016 Airbnb has collected and filed meals and rooms taxes for people using their site as a rental platform however other popular rental sites such as Verbo do not perform the service the individual landlord is responsible for charging and filing the tax so that is and then I go on to say hosts who advertise on Verbo which is a subsidiary of home away which lists full units only are also avoiding South Brillington's local option tax I frankly don't know how they can do but whatever I think rather than that's Dartmouth you know me discussing this further I think the question before us is is this a priority I want to hear from the administration about the kind of staffing that this would require and is this a higher priority than maybe some other things I I totally support your intent here and I think your research is unbelievable and I think it's going on here and we're not collecting taxes and we don't have a handle and it's an equity issue it's an equity issue absolutely I mean I think all of those things are you know part of the conversation or discussion and they it would probably be smart to address that and you know use what other communities like Burlington maybe have put their heads together and what they have come up with and think about what could work here but I think at this point Megan the conversation is is this a high priority before we continue to you know debate the facts tonight yeah so taking full priority moving everything else that we're working on right now and focusing on this right now I just see much more merit and just factoring it into the availability on the year planning that great list you have there and having staff tells when you can commit some time to it but I'll stop there thank you so and thank you for doing all the research that is to me the question tonight is you know this is a new idea that's not on our plan so before we spent a whole lot of staff time I you know I wanted to understand the priority of the full council we will of course work on whatever three of you tell us to work on that is our jobs you know I think some of the things to think about as you're valuing this as a priority over other priorities are this is going to be pretty heavy on legal research for a little while pretty heavy on implementation research for a little while and then I there is a question mark in my mind about regional solutions versus municipal solutions and do we want to work with our partners we Paul and I both had conversations with the city of Burlington today when they saw this on our agenda saying would it be better if we were doing this together then separately we have work negotiating three collective bargaining agreements in the next trying to wrap those up in the next three months we're trying to move forward a bunch of permitting write a climate action plan deal with ARPA funding right in RFP with the use of ARPA money for affordable housing we have no staff you're kind of looking at the staff between Paul and I who are dedicated to housing in south Burlington period so to me if you would like us to drop one of those things or reduce one of those things we could put off for example the affordable housing RFP until June or July and work on this right now because that would be my time and what is the affordable housing RFP to put out on the street about how we're going to award the million dollars of ARPA money to incentivize housing development I still don't know what that so the council has said you want to use a million dollars of local ARPA money to incentivize affordable housing development and so I'm working with the affordable housing committee on crafting community value statements that would go into an RFP that we would release to the development community to say give us your best ideas about how to do that and that you know that's a finite project for a couple of weeks or months to do that work I think if we were looking at putting this on to the policies and strategies conversation in May or June to pick up as councilor Chen said in July and August you know hopefully we'd have negotiated collective bargaining agreements at that point hopefully we'd have RFPs out on the street and developers working on them we might be able to have some discussions with our regional partners about learning from others and what they have done and what's worked or not I guess that would be my request but but that's a just looking at the kind of runway of work we have to do if you say that this is more of a priority than other things that's that's your community policy decision I will say one thing about the taxation question about the 1% for local options tax I don't think we can resolve that at the local level I think that is a state regulate a state requirement to find out who we are collecting it from I happen to know a lawyer at the tax department and who we're not but I don't think there's anything we can put in local regulations that's going to fix that if there's some kind of state sales tax loophole I know it's not a loophole it's I think it's more just having them be registered I think it's going to be a situation where I don't think the tax department would ever look to South Burlington records about who's registered in order to know who to go and collect taxes from that's done on their business license and not on the not on a South Burlington but again that's something we'd have to research and find out if you rent through them they collect that tax and send it to the state if you rent on your own which we often do then I have to collect that and we have to report that on a quarterly basis that's because you're honest or is there some kind of incentive for you to follow that law well it's the law they did follow up one year because we were late so they know it happens they just don't know how many weeks let's say that we've rented so some of it is honesty but I don't know I think lots of people are honest I don't think the realies are the only ones and you know so it's but I'm just we don't need to debate that I think there's ways that we could probably figure that out I'm also interested in when we if we develop a program what the follow-through is what do we need to you know how many people do we need to staff this making sure that everything is wired properly that we keep we register we collect the money I mean that doesn't happen but they should be doing that I mean that's the thing is because we're not enforcing it doesn't mean that it's okay it may be just that the workload for that would require another person in the tax department I don't know I just would need to know that you know people don't like to pass laws that you can't enforce well the arguments we had on the masks that's why the affidavit is a really ingenious piece to this that Denver but someone's got to do it someone in city government I mean so that's part of the question for me I think it's from my personal perspective I think this is probably something that we should look into in a broader sense and I would like to have it somewhere on our priority list I don't know if we need to have it done by June personally I mean I know you feel the urgency and people are really concerned but some of the urgency is the whole conversation seems to me about housing in our community and it's more than 120 units that are rented this way that's a piece of it but it flips neighborhoods is what I'm trying to say when that man came out of his house and showed me Airbnb it was like it just flipped the neighborhood once and that's what happens it's a loss of community but that might change if we have something in place that makes it not quite so advantageous for someone to be doing that to be buying homes for the sole purpose of VRBOing them right and so I think it's worth looking into but I don't know as I want to and I'm not in favor of working with Burlington they're a very different animal we have a different kind of housing stock and I I think we would have more in common with Colchester or Essex even than Burlington just speaking with Councillor Shannon I just don't want to enter into that complexity of their political scene quite honest they already have a rental registry and the administration they have staff they have inspectors so they're going to enforce the conditional use permit is what they decided when they couldn't override the Mayor's veto well I just would like to I think our ordinance is more enforceable than our conditional use permit and I think that what we already have on the books we're derelict in our duties and I believe that what I'm proposing is more effective than our derelict land development regulations so I want to make that point well what's the pleasure of the council do you want Jessie to come back with or what's the priority she identified a number of things in the short term that they're working on July is fine with me what I like also about the language is that there's a date where things have to be like what was it hold on I have to wake up my various devices here oh it's 10.30 so it was that there we go existing short term rental contracts in breach of these provisions must phase out by January 1st, 2023 from another ordinance another city's ordinance so putting some kind of date on it I think is important too so I guess what I would ask the council for what would help me from the council is is this something you want to see a product at the council for in June or July which means we need to start working on it now or is this something that you would like to see me be sure we capture as we have our conversations in May and June about what the priorities are for next year so to me those are very different staff efforts so that's the direction I'm looking for the latter for me the former for me I'm in the middle always I know I hate to move I hear the urgency I feel like you just can't push this too fast because we're going to make mistakes and it's going to require a lot of work so what I'm concerned with right away is very simple are people violating the law renting out units that are not electrically up to code and that's something that Chief Francis can comment on immediately but he may not have enough staff to do the investigation to find out who's actually doing it but once you send a letter it says you're in violation man the people got to sit up and listen because you know you can start taking action and then they're going to have to hire a contractor and get somebody to drill a bunch of holes and interconnect all the smoke detectors in the house send the letter asking them if they're in violation and to prove it I don't know what that but he did so I would come down I would like to include this in our conversation for next year's budget for next year's budget so for 2023 so we're pushing it off more than a year so we're pushing it off for more than a year no we're pushing it off the next fiscal year begins in July 1 oh I thought you meant so the conversation is these are our priorities for FY23 which is part of 22 and part of 23 and we can have that conversation and they will have more information potentially with this is maybe the estimate of time and cost and where it fits in all our priorities with that I agree with so I don't want to tell them tonight you start tomorrow please well I agree with you so that's more than a concept though what you just described Helen well because that's what I would want to see in July too is what you just described when we go over our priorities I don't know every one of them is totally costed out but there's some sense of staff time or else how could you have priorities and say we can do all these things so what would be captured in that recommendation from the leadership team about the policies and priorities that you'll be having the conversation about in June is what's the staff time it would take to focus on this effort so not what's the staff time it would take to implement this effort which could be a budget decision what's the staff time it would take to build the ordinance and build the staffing models and build the enforcement strategies and build the best practices and all of that and we could make a recommendation in the policies and strategies about what we want to work on okay so is that amenable and you certainly jump started a lot of the process with a lot of your research and for that it probably will make some of the staff time a little less and I think I forwarded the Excel spreadsheet to you Jesse and Andrew and Councillor Shannon she sent I maybe did not so I will I can't remember if I did I'll send it again and it includes some other cities I'll forward it it's in my cover letter though the website that has all the different city ordinances okay models good let's move on to 14 we need to convene there Silver Palace and Walgreens second all in favor I move to approve all the licenses presented to us tonight second are you ready for that vote any questions all in favor say aye I move to exit the second all in favor I move to continue moving on to 15 going into executive session to consider appointments we did not see John Stern I don't know how we can we have two other committees Mr. Stern I know he applied for something because I remember his CV and some of his conversations we are coming back we are coming back so I move that the council we still have another agenda item here sorry okay so I move that the council enter the executive session for the purpose of discussing the evaluation appointment of applicants to the south city council and boards inviting Andrew Bolduc and Jesse Baker second all in favor aye and Tim we need your signature on the liquor control easier for the public to kind of say they organized them under big categories and it was great because just reading it even I don't know a whole lot about this I'm just listening for you guys and reporting back it was really helpful I think we started out with 13 buildings and thermal actions and we'll share this with you ended up being different colors and sort of three concepts one being building performance standards another was electrification of existing infrastructure and the third was net zero for new infrastructure those are headings that the state plan has but they organized a lot of different recommendations or areas within that context I think it makes it much easier for the public to respond so we're going to use that same they agreed to do that again for the transportation sector which is 26 recommendations but many of them you can consolidate into probably two or three categories so we're working on it, we'll get somewhere I hope by May I'm not sure but I'm hoping that we'll be finished these were the two really big sectors so it's at the next meeting we should be looking at this reorganization and that should be helpful and then this whole education with the public and us and everyone else about what we might want to do but as I said it's an extremely talented committee they know what they're talking about I mean it's really impressive and they do a lot of work a lot of homework, Srini is forever he's become the ray ganda for me, he's sending all these great articles that he's found related to these different topics we really have the right group of people I think working on this that's my report are there any other committee reports? I have the airport rezoning task force we have our next public hearing this Thursday at 7pm I believe that is it here in this room Jesse? I haven't looked at the place yet I've just looked at the documents without looking at the place these are here upstairs on Thursday? April 7th just as city hall it's not just me and the last meeting we had one absence and so we were hold on I have to think in my head for five, six members and of those six out of seven the one voted to defer the request and the five voted including myself to deny the request I just want to make sure that the one resident who made sure that he I made sure to the public that there was one member Chamberlain neighborhood in favor of having the rezoning and with the petition as it's been reported he represents .4% of the members of the public who are in favor of the rezoning request as I've stated elsewhere this is a neighborhood that is really to uphold the comprehensive plan which shows that the industrial uses of the airport are on the southeast and that the northwest has a more integrated design with the neighborhood and I do believe I've been quoted in the paper saying this that there is a way to accommodate all of the needed uses in that section of the airport hopefully that will occur okay one other business thing Avalon who was on earlier wanted to know who is doing the next counselor thing for the other paper I know I haven't I've been I haven't focused on that I'm sorry it's actually my turn but I actually felt so crappy for the last four weeks that that's been the least of my concerns is there anyone who would like to I would love to Avalon but I'm going to have to decline until for another I have some obligations over the next three weeks late nights and I get it and probably Tom won't want to let's volunteer Tom he's going to have something to write about I mean he's got two jobs just quickly for those that care about the service cuts at GMTA there is a public meeting tomorrow so for all of you watching this in the morning later April 5th at the Robert Miller Community Recreation Center on gosh street in Burlington and then on Wednesday at 5.45 p.m. at the GMT facility right there by Burton at Queen City Park Road there's also it's all on their web page and their Facebook there's also an online way to you don't have to actually be there but yeah the number six bus every 20 minutes instead of every half an hour you should say that in a public forum okay so I'll do the next one but let's sign up for the I'll do this month I'll email her I'm not running for reelection for three years so I can go ahead and write an article you sure can so I will do what are we in no because then it will be Frankie so Helen will do April who would like to do May I'll do May okay okay and would you like to do July and we'll have Tom do August mm-hmm okay so alright thank you I'm sorry I meant to I didn't mean to call you out I was just no they've been writing me and it was okay well let I'll I'll send out a email to everyone to remind you okay is there any further business yes I will not be here two weeks from tonight I will be on vacation in the District of Columbia the birthplace of our nation the birthplace of our nation more or less that's Philadelphia well yeah birthplace of a great great field of monuments alright so that just you know again is your summer plans and vacations in four years roll around let me know so and Jesse so we can make sure that we do the issue that you're really interested in the night you're not there so oh I'll take electrical inspection off of the 18th agenda ooh good point okay so let's adjourn hi Slava Ukrainian thank you I know it's late thank you all online tie score seven minutes to go really shall I see you again thank you 57 57 seven minutes to go who is this it is in the auditorium on Thursday the what game