 I'll start the meeting or actually I shouldn't even say meeting because it's not a meeting it's a public hearing. Good evening. Tonight is January 17th, 2023. The time is 6.10 p.m. Thank you to those of you who are joining us in person in Contoy's Auditorium as well as those that I see online for the public hearing. And this is the first of two such public hearings. Just to give you a little bit of background, the reason that we're here this evening is due to 17VSA, Vermont Statute 2645, which says that a charter change can be proposed by the legislative body of the municipality that's the city council, or by 5% of the voters as is the case with two of the charter changes that we'll be considering. Among the other aspects of 17VSA 2645, the legislative body shall hold at least two public hearings prior to the meeting to vote on the charter change proposal that is fancy talk for town meeting day. And again this is the first of two hearings. The second required hearing will be on January 23rd. With that, we will begin our agenda for a motion to adopt our agenda. Councillor McGee. I would move to adopt the agenda. Thank you so much, Councillor McGee. Seconded by Councillor Barlow. Is there any discussion on the motion to adopt the agenda? Councillor Bergman. I just want clarification in terms of the motion that any motions that we may make after public comments as to we don't have to, it's actually a question, I hope it's a rhetorical question, we don't have to amend the agenda to make that happen, do we? No we do not. So we can just do that after that. Thank you. That's correct. And the other thing also we don't have on the agenda is an item that says discussion, but hopefully we will all assume that that is part of after the public has spoken and there are general communications that you can look at. Then we will have a discussion on any items that are brought by the public during the public hearing. I look for the President's Council in that regard and thank you very much. No problem. Seeing no other discussion, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion to adopt the agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. We have an agenda and just wanted to note for the record that we are joined by Councillor Hightower and Councillor Travers who are joining us via Zoom. So we have our agenda. The second item on our agenda is the item number 2.01, the public hearing. But before we go to open the public hearing, I'm going to look to Assistant City Attorney Jared Pellerin. As customary, we've always in the past had our city attorney provide a brief overview of each of the charter changes before us and the voters. And Attorney Pellerin, thank you so much for being here this evening. I'll hand the floor to you. Thank you, President Paul. Good evening, Councillors and members of the public. As President Paul said, my name is Jared Pellerin. I'm an Assistant City Attorney here at City of Burlington. And I just want to briefly run through the six charter proposals that will be before the voters in March. And they are in no particular order and do not, I do not attempt at this moment to give you full in-depth word-for-word analytics on each proposal. But as President Paul said, just a brief overview. So the first charter proposal to talk about is a proposal that will allow for mayoral school board and election official contests to be decided by rank choice voting. Rank choice voting is an election method that allows voters the option to rank candidates in order of preference, first choice, second choice, third choice, and so on. Currently rank choice voting, it only applies to the election of city councillors, but this proposal, again, would make it applicable to mayoral school board and election official contests. Second proposal before the voters is all legal resident voting. This measure would allow full-time residents of Burlington, age 18 or older, on the day of the election, who do not have full U.S. citizenship but are legally in the U.S. and live within the city limits to register and vote in local elections. They would not be permitted to vote in state and federal elections. Third is a proposal for the siting of polling places and qualifications of voters. This charter change proposal would amend the charter to allow the city council, in conjunction with the city clerk's office, ward clerks, and inspectors of elections, to determine the number of locations of polling places at least 30 days prior to a local, primary, or general election. The polling places would need to be located in each ward unless a more accessible facility is available outside of the ward, but in such case must have close proximity to the ward. Additionally, it amends the charter to clarify that a legal voter may cast a ballot for local officers and public questions specific to a ward or city district, only if that legal voter resides in that ward or district at the time of casting the ballot. Fourth is redistricting. The charter change proposal seeks to amend the election boundaries to provide for four city electoral districts and eight city wards to reduce the deviation among the most populated and least populated election boundaries so as to ensure that there is no more than a 10% deviation in population from the most to the least populated district. The 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution requires electoral districts to comply with the one person, one vote doctrine, and this proposal would align the electoral districts to comply with this constitutional provision. The next two provisions come to the city by way of voters. The first is known as Proposition Zero, and this charter proposal would allow residents who obtain signatures of 5% of the legally registered voters of the city of Burlington through petition to place ordinance changes and advisory items directly on the ballot, removing the current requirement for city council and mayoral approval. The proposal also includes a provision allowing voters to demand that the council reconsider existing ordinances. Last is the sixth charter change proposal, which is a police oversight body. This charter proposal would create a new police oversight board with the power to fire and suspend officers for misconduct. The proposed board would have seven to nine members with an investigative office and access to police records. Staff would issue regular reports and detail the findings of internal investigations. Thank you, President Paul. Thanks very much, Attorney Pellerin. If there are questions that are from the council regarding what Attorney Pellerin has just said, if we can hold off on that until we get through the public hearing, and then if there are questions that you wish to direct to the city attorney, you're welcome to do so. Hope that's OK with everyone. Just keep track of your questions. We'll go on to the first item under item number two. Thank you very much, by the way, is 2.01, which is the first public hearing regarding charter changes for March 7th, 2023, annual election, annual city election. There are effectively two ways to participate in the public hearing. You can complete a form inside con toys, which is right on that table over there to my right and fill that in and give that to the clerk and she or he will give that to me. You can also participate remotely. The easiest way to do that, and you can certainly do that during the meeting, is to go to BurlingtonVT.gov backslash, city council slash, it's actually forward slash, public forum. And when you do that, a form will come up. You populate the form and those answers come into a spreadsheet that is right in front of me and then I can call on you. The way that we'll work this, and you do need to be on Zoom in order for me to find you, we'll go to residents in con toys first and then to those that are online. After we've gone through all community members that have either filled out a form in front of me or filled out a form online, I will then ask if there is anyone present in person or online that did not fill out a form and wishes to speak anyway, just raise your hand and we will go once, go twice, do as much as we can to make sure that every member of the public has the opportunity to speak this evening. With that, we'll open the public hearing. And the first speaker is Amy Malinowski to be followed by Sarah Scorantino. And Sarah, when you do get up here, I notice that you've also signed up online, if you're here in person, you're welcome to speak. In person, if you are not, I will go back to you online. So the first person is Amy. Thank you so much for being here. And just did want to also mention that there is a timer that's here. However, during public hearings, they are not public forums. So there is no time limit. However, we would appreciate it if you could try to be concise and not go on too long, but there is no two-minute time limit. Please go ahead. If you just press the button in front of you that says push. Okay, I got it. Beautiful. Okay, so I want to speak to the ballot item about the Independent Community Oversight Board. Public safety is a big concern for people in Burlington right now. And we deserve to have a public safety system that keeps all of us safe. And I would really love to see our community have more dialogue about this and what we imagine that looking like. And also, what is super clear to me right now. And I say this as someone who is one of many people who has spent hours and hours and hours out on the streets in our community, talking to people across the spectrum in our community. It's really clear to me from all those conversations that we can agree on the fact that police cannot and should not be the ones overseeing themselves. The mayor said it himself really well. He called the chiefs quote monopoly of important authority and aberration in our democratic system. So let's be super clear. This is not about showing how much we do value the Burlington Police Department or community and it's definitely not about handing quote exclusive authority over the department to the people of Burlington. Let's be clear about what this is about. It's a very basic idea. The police chief should not have sole authority over discipline in cases of misconduct. Police can't oversee themselves. And while the mayor and chief will talk a lot about all these improvements that they want to make, let's also be very clear that none of these improvements address changing the charter to fix this issue and issue the mayor himself called attention to. If city leadership will not make progress on this, then we have to. The stakes are too high. And if you look at the city's own data, use of force incidents increased by 18 percent between 2020 and 2021. And those use of force incidents are disproportionately affecting black people in our community. Of the 348 subjects of force in 2020 and 2021, 116 that's 33 percent were black, while only 6 percent of Burlington's population is black. Over 2000 people have demonstrated that they believe this is an important and urgent change. Burlingtonians want to feel confident that there's oversight ensuring that their police department is truly operating in alignment with the city's standards. And this proposal is a path to ensure that. Thank you. Thank you very much. The next speaker is Sarah Scorantino. Sarah, are you here in person? Okay. And to be followed by Lena Greenberg. Welcome. Sorry, wrong mic. I think my name is Sarah. I'm a resident of Ward five. I'm here kind of last minute, so didn't really do much preparation, but I am in support of a majority of the charter changes. I guess I'll just start with the thermal energy charter change. I mean, I think Burlington really does have an obligation and a really unique ability to really lead the way on climate justice and, you know, there should be a lot of requirements in place, just kind of allowing us to lead the way towards a just transition away from fossil fuels. So I guess the rest of the charter changes are really just about democracy and improving the democratic process. The first and I think a really obvious one is rank choice voting. You know, rank choice voting has been proven to work so many times. I know one common critique of it is just that it makes the voting, I mean, the counting of the votes a lot more difficult, which I don't think trumps the way that it improves democracy in such an astounding way. Prop zero is also a really big thing. I think it, you know, really highlights the fact that just electing one person to represent, you know, however many people, like thousands of people, does not improve democracy. You know, I think regardless of political affiliation, allowing for decisions to be made by voters is really important. I'm not sure how much time I have left, but I also support community control of police. I know that that's a pretty difficult one for a lot of people, but I think Amy put it really well and in my opinion, it really comes down to putting the people that have been impacted so much by our police in charge of, or not necessarily in charge of, just letting them have some sort of accountability system over the people that are supposed to be keeping them safe. And then, yeah, I mean, in terms of redistricting and all resident voting, those sort of also have such huge implications on our democratic process. You know, we have so many folks that haven't had a chance to go through the path to citizenship. They should have a voice and we need to fix word 8. It's incredibly gerrymandered and I think we have a great opportunity to do that by adopting map V26. So yeah, excuse my jumbled words, but you know, I think we have a great opportunity to do a lot here, improve democracy and lead the way on climate like we should and totally can do. So thank you all. Thanks very much, Sarah. Our next speaker is Lena Goldberg, sorry, Lena Greenberg to be followed by Tyler Pastorek. Hi, good evening. Glad to be here. My name is Lena. I live a couple blocks away. And in my day job, I run a food access program. I give people food for free. It's very rewarding work. The reason I bring it up is that I spend a lot of time thinking about how to make sure that people are able to meet their basic needs and after months and months of working with people every single day to make sure they have food. I've had some time to reflect on what I learned. And what I learned is that people actually know what they need better than I do. And when I run a good program, I'm running a good program because I'm trusting their needs. And I'm here tonight because it's been so wonderful to see that Burlingtonians know what we need. We need public safety that we can trust. And the voter support for the community oversight board of the police shows me that Burlingtonians know what we need and what we need is to be involved in this process of overseeing our police force. I would not trust a medical professional who wasn't licensed with my life. I would also not trust a lawyer who had not passed the bar exam. And I think the same goes for the police. Every high stakes profession has some sort of oversight, some sort of accountability, and the police carry weapons. We rely on them to protect us from dangerous assaults, but who is gonna protect us when they make mistakes? We are all people, police make mistakes. Those mistakes should not go unacknowledged. This is really important. And the people of Burlington have spoken and said, we wanna be involved. I think that's a tremendous opportunity, and I'm really excited to vote yes on Town Meeting Day. Thank you. Thanks very much. Next speaker is Tyler Pastrak, a Pastrak, to be followed by Sinead Murray. Good evening. Hi. I hope I have your name right. Yeah. Yes, good enough. Great. Yeah, my name's Tyler. I'm a resident of Ward 8. Before I get into my prepared comments, since I have a little extra time, just wanted to express my support for Proposition Zero. Yeah, every other town in Vermont has some sort of process for residents to directly propose changes to city laws, and that's what Vermont has built on, town hall democracy, and this would bring Burlington into alignment with that. And as someone who has spent many, many hours gathering signatures in the same sort of process here, it's not easy at all, and so it's not something that's gonna blow up in our town, and it just allows the community a way to step in and directly propose changes. Yeah, so the main reason I'm here is I've been working with my neighbors for over two years to bring sensible police oversight to our community. Public safety is a big topic in our community right now and rightfully so. We deserve a public safety system that keeps everyone safe, and a big part of effective and just systems is accountability and oversight. In 2020, black members of our community led a movement that brought into focus the fact that our city charter gives the police chief unchecked authority over disciplinary decisions in the police department. The mayor himself acknowledged that this is a problem, as you just heard. In 2021, he said that the current charter is problematic and there is urgency to amend it. He further stated that such monopoly of important authority is an aberration in our democratic system, and we are likely to face continued disputes over future disciplinary actions until this issue is addressed. He's right. The community brought forward this proposal for a community oversight board. The city council passed it, but the mayor said no. At the time, he promised to address these issues with our charter. Since then, racial disparities and policing have persisted. The police department is eight months behind on releasing 2022 use of force data, but in 2021, we still saw an increase in this, and use of force against black people accounted for 71% of the increase. That's on a population that makes up only 6% of our community. Here we are two years later, and even the mayor's latest public safety plan has no plan to address the fundamental issue with our city charter. That and he continues to push misinformation about this proposal. Look over it for yourself at peopleforpoliceaccountability.com. In the meantime, we have talked to thousands of our neighbors and have found overwhelming support for this proposal from individuals and local and statewide organizations alike. We as a community put this on the ballot together, and we have a rare opportunity to decide for ourselves to make our current policing system incrementally better for all people. I hope everyone will join me on March 7th in voting yes for community oversight of police, and in telling our elected officials that we deserve public safety systems that will keep everyone safe. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Sinead Murray to be followed by Robert Bristow-Johnson. Hi. Hi folks, I just wanna quickly say thank you for being here and listening to us intently. That's a great way to run a government. My name's Sinead Murray. I'm VPIRC's Democracy Associate. I'm also a very proud resident of Ward 1, and I'm here in support of the Ranked Choice Voting Charter Change for Mayoral, School Commissioner, and Election Ward Officer Elections. Ranked Choice Voting is a simple pro-voter, pro-democracy reform giving voters the opportunity to extend the use of Ranked Choice Voting to nearly all local elections because we do have it for city council elections now. We'll help continue to empower Burlington voters in more elections. There's benefits for candidates too who don't have to worry about joining a race in the first place for fear of the so-called spoiler candidate effect. We've already seen strong evidence from the December 6th election that voters loved our CV, that they found it simple to use, and that they liked being able to rank candidates. And based on our surveys, most folks found it easy to understand. Ranked Choice Voting ensures a stronger democracy by necessitating a winner to have both broad support and strong core support. And that nobody is elected with less than a majority of the vote. Those who represent Burlington, whether they are city councilors, mayors, school board members, or ward clerks, should be elected in the most democratic way possible. Ranked Choice Voting will get us to that goal. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson to be followed by Lee Morgan. Well, there are three things that I'd like to weigh in on three different charter changes that I'd like to weigh in. And I'm gonna leave two for tonight and save the other one for next week. So on redistricting, I was on the redistricting committee and I'm gonna repeat this. I said this once before to you. I had a takeaway of four big things from the redistricting committee. And some of them were rather blunt. Some people said, get rid of Ward 8. At least they wanted something different about Ward 8. They said, we don't like the council, or the district councilors. We only wanna have Ward councilors, the same tier councilors. There was some calling for a downtown ward, which I thought was a good idea. And there was at least twice, there were people asking that the King Maple neighborhood not be broken up. And that I have to say from nine years ago is my biggest regret was putting a line right down on King Street dividing that neighborhood. That shouldn't have happened. Anyway, it just feels like we're hitting zero through four on that. But I don't speak for Ward 8 and Brenda speaks for Ward 8. And so I can't, I don't understand everything, but to me it appears that we took off some of the edges of Ward 8, but it's still basically the same thing. It's a ward that exists solely to be a repository of students. And it doesn't have any other reason to exist. And I think that that's a problem. I think that that, I think that there will be always people wondering why they're in that ward and why they got stuck with all these students. And so I had been in the past advocating for a downtown ward because I believe that in 10 years what you're not going to hear are people saying, what are you doing with the gerrymandered downtown ward? We hate this ward. I think that you're gonna have people that are gonna like being in a downtown ward, that are gonna like having that identity and being able to have their own representative on council. And I think that since the King Maple district is very close to downtown, I think that it would empower the King Maple district if we didn't divide them and run a line right down Maple Street and then King Street. But if we united the King Maple district, King Maple neighborhood, excuse me, it's not a district, including Bob and Mill in the same place and give them some representation. Okay, that's redistricting. And I helped out Earhard in both the version 24 and the version 26 and the version 27 map. And I just wanna say it's Earhard's map and but I support having a downtown ward. All right, the other issue is about the police oversight board. And some of you know this, that I had a little bit of a run-in with the cops last year in 2021 and cops not doing their job when they needed to and then not doing their job well when it involved me. That got resolved okay, pretty much okay. But, and I know that police are a different kind of an employee than a regular employee because they enforce the law and they might have to enforce the law on you, on the mayor, on somebody who's their boss. And so they need protection in their contract so that they can stop somebody who's in government for traffic violation and not get any kind of official reprisal for that. But that doesn't mean that they should be able to break the law with impunity. And I'm gonna bring up this up again. I know it's getting a little bit stale but the bell events issue. And anybody who sees that video of that, officer bell events just clearly assaulted, criminally assaulted somebody just upon arriving on the scene and there was no good reason for it at all. Now, if you're a regular employer, let's say that you have a company and you hire somebody to maybe manage your inventory and over the years or over the months even, you figure out, geez, stuff is disappearing. What's happening in my inventory? And you kind of suspect that that employee is stealing from you and then you go to the police and you say, hey, you know, this guy, here's the evidence, this guy's stealing, this stuff is disappearing and the cops maybe investigate and it goes to the district attorney or the state's attorney and then they say, well, we just don't have enough evidence to charge this guy with stealing from you. So we're not gonna charge him. But as an employer, you're not obligated to continue to have that employee in your employment. You can fire his butt. And what we did as a city, what was it three years ago now was essentially a moral hazard. We rewarded somebody for bad behavior with $300,000. I mean, who can I assault that? You can give me $300,000. I'd like to know that. And so we really do need to have, I don't think we should have dueling commissions, but we really do need to have authority in the city to be able to identify when employees, whether they're cops or anywhere, any other department aren't doing their job, are doing it poorly, are doing it harmfully. And we should be able to fire them, not bribe them to leave us alone. And so only Councillor Jang got that vote right three years ago. And so I'm for a police oversight board. If that's the only way that we can do that to assert some control over the people that we pay to serve us. So that's the two issues that I'm gonna talk about tonight. I'm gonna say one thing about issue three and then I'm gonna leave. So about ring choice voting, I asked Lori Oberg and she put it on the agenda. I finally got published and I've been published before, but it was an electrical engineering and audio engineering, but I got published in the journal, Constitutional Political Economy. It's a Springer Verlog journal. It's not on Beals list. It's a real journal. And it's about Burlington and RCV in 2009. And I invite any of you guys to read that paper. I put on other documents on the same place, including a letter I wrote to the governor last April when the H744, which was our RCV charter change was being considered by the Senate government, Vermont State Senate. I'd invite you to read that. Now, I'm, well, oh, I'm not gonna talk about it tonight. I'm gonna save that till next week. So thank you for listening to me. Thank you, Robert. Just also want to acknowledge there was a meeting going on downstairs, the racial equity inclusion and belonging meeting that just got out. And so welcome very much to counselors, Jiang, Brandt and Freeman for being here. Our next speaker in the public hearing is Lee Morrigan to be followed by Daniel Montenoux. Yes, okay, you'll correct me when you get up here. My name is Lee Morrigan. My pronouns are they, them. I'm from Ward 7. This might be a little disjointed. My notes are rather messy. So I do want to acknowledge all the hard work of people who went out and collected signatures for a couple of the different measures. Collecting petition signatures, as someone else mentioned, is not easy or fun. It can be pretty exhausting and discouraging. And I'm grateful for the people who put in hours upon hours of work. So I'm here to speak in support of community oversight of police. I recently watched a recording of the wards two and three NPA. And if you're looking for more information on community oversight, there was some really, really good information covered there, especially around the selection process, which is not something that I had previously known about. And I was really impressed with the selection process. And I don't really want to go over it because I'm probably going to get it wrong. But there's like multi-steps. I feel like it's going to really guard against building a board that has a specific agenda. I feel like it's a pretty equitable process, which I was really impressed with that process. Yeah, I think in general we're all better with oversight. It's why any job I can think of that I've ever had, including when I worked retail, which has a pretty minimal public-facing component, and then that position, I had monthly supervision. I think every job I've ever had has a level of supervision. And I know police officers obviously get a level of supervision, but jobs that I've had where I have had the authority I have had the authority to physically restrain other people have had a more equitable oversight process. So for a long time, I worked in the field of developmental disabilities. And when I was working in New Hampshire, this agency I worked for, I really liked their process of reviewing any time a physical intervention, large or small, took place. And so your case would be recorded like you would write your account, the client was interviewed and their account would be put down, your supervisor, their account would be put down, and then somebody removed from the review process would go through and make all the data anonymous so like take out names and pronouns, ages, any like even the specific disability to really try to make anyone reviewing the process as far removed from it as possible. And this, so it ended up I think being a, like your physical interaction would be reviewed a total of three times, one by your supervisor and then your supervisor, supervisors, and then this board made up of like I think it was like an executive, a board member, a client, a parent of a client. It was like a very like broad board and was that nerve wracking, especially in a job I worked, the specific demographic that I worked with had a heavy level of physical intervention at the time I was working with people who had developmental disabilities and were also adjudicated through the criminal justice system and had a high level of physicality. And so pretty often your interactions were being reviewed by a lot of people and it's nerve wracking, but I mean it should be. Like being both in the position of being able to put my hands on somebody against their will and then also the position of the people who for whatever reason were in that place to be receiving that. I mean we both deserved that interaction to be looked at under a magnifying glass and you know I was very well trained and I was very careful and I never got written up as a result of any of those interactions and I even learned a lot. Typically you would get the result and then whether what you did was absolutely fine or not you would also be offered different suggestions like oh here's maybe like you could throw in this de-escalation step and there was like you know and you could always like voluntarily retake de-escalation training or review and it was just a really great equitable process. And you know I've heard some comments and seen some comments by our mayor that you know having a community oversight board could deter people, let it. Like let's let people who are deterred by accountability to the public be deterred. I guess I, you know I can understand and you know in part of it it's like a culture shift because you know there are occupations where it is very closed and it's you know a culture unto itself and it's built these perceptions that like only people in that profession could ever understand. And I guess I just don't understand how that gets limited to certain professions and there I mean there's so many other professions where it's just it's part of the culture that they're independent boards and there are boards with people in the profession outside of the profession. I was even you know I used to work independently for a man who ran the animal research at Dartmouth and he asked me to be on their review board because he knew I was absolutely opposed to animal testing and they have half their board is made up of people who are completely against animal testing because it helps you know with perspective. Anywho I don't want to get too riled up. So yeah and then you know and with any review board there's an appeals process and you know the review board that I had been a part of did people lose their jobs? Absolutely and those people absolutely deserve to lose their jobs. You know so I think something that has been like really even getting skewed in the public is that you know this like this or that I feel like the past few years have been really polarizing for a lot of the community and we've seen that even down to like council elections where different wards are like ripping themselves apart based on like one or two statements or votes and everything's becoming very like faction-y and being for oversight doesn't mean that you're like anti-cop or you don't respect cops or you don't or like you're it's you know so I through my life experience as a domestic violence survivor being formerly houseless and being in recovery and one time not being in recovery I've had a lot of interactions with police officers some of them have been good, some of them have been bad a fair number of them have been neutral. My you know one of my probably most impactful interactions with police was good. I was a police officer who was integral in my recovery because the night I relapsed he gave me a choice of checking myself into a hospital or going to jail and I chose the hospital and that was the last night I drank and you know many good things came from that hospital visit and then the next day and the next day and I mean who knows who knows if I hadn't been given that choice and I went to jail but it was you know the experience and the discretion of a good officer made a great impact on my life. There have also been really dangerous choices made by police officers particularly particularly involving my abuser that the most dangerous I called 911 and I had the phone snatched away from me and that officer came eventually and made no effort to make contact with me and just trusted what my abuser told him and that was a very bad day for me and I'm lucky to have made it through that day. You know so it can go either way and an accountability board is not just to like well let's get all these cops kicked out of here like it's not that it's to give citizens who have had really bad life altering situations some form of recourse and to protect the community from cops who either are dangerous or need some more training and it always doesn't have to be a situation where they're just gonna be fired it could just mean more training and so I guess I'll just finish up with I really feel like Burlington is experiencing a crisis of community and accountability and trust is a way out of that, thanks. Thank you so much Lee. Next speaker is Daniel Montaneu and he will be followed by Erhard Monke and you'll pronounce your name for me please. Certainly will. My name is Daniel Muntanu. Thank you. Number three, I've lived in Burlington for two and a half years. I'm a student at UVM and I'm addressing the whole public in this public hearing and council are Burlington residents so I'm addressing you too. I study biology at UVM and sometimes I can't help but look at the city as like a living organism and just like I do at work I want to understand how the different characteristics of the city come to be and how all of the different parts interact to like really make it alive and I've kind of made that one of my goals since I've moved to Burlington. But of course this is a charter change committee meeting, charter change public hearing meeting so I'm gonna talk about charters that one particular thing that cities have dates back to the middle ages and it granted the city certain privileges under an otherwise feudal system and there's obviously a lot of relationships that have changed since then but there is many similarities. Humans are still human, there is still domination and we're still aiming to address these things that get in the way of living together and growing and making the most of our time and our spot. I think people should be empowered to make decisions that impact their lives and I believe the way to do that is through organization and people working together and finding what those ways are is the best way to do that. That's how we're gonna enrich each other's lives. I mean, I imagine a city or a place that's free from violence and perpetrated by anyone in the name of the state or for any reason. I'm not sure if I'm ever gonna live in a city like that but I'm hopeful that we're gonna take steps in that direction. This hasn't stopped me and countless other brilliant residents from really envisioning what a world might look like and we practice it every day for 10, 1,030 days today, free lunch at the marketplace garage and I must say it is the best free restaurant in town, the best free buffet in town and sometimes I'm just passing through and aiming for a quick bite to eat on my way up to work but other times I could sit and talk and meet new people and there's always new people to meet. It's a tremendously complex organism we have here. People are always moving through but as you see people again and again you're able to build relationships and this is really the basis of mutual aid. You have a long-term exchange, it's reciprocal, sometimes you give, sometimes you receive and that's really a big part of being human and sometimes you don't think of interactions in that way. Take an election for example, what does it mean to exchange a vote to actually vote for a candidate for city council? Do we all really understand how the city charter itself came to be and really what it means to serve on such a body and really where we are at this moment in time with this public safety crisis and truly people suffering and I think being able to see that clearly has been one of the biggest things that I've noticed in repeating this activity and then really getting to know people that otherwise I wouldn't come in contact with and it's not like I wouldn't see them on the streets, like we live in the same city, it's just we wouldn't have talked, we would not be developing a relationship and it really takes time in kind of learning, learning to unlearn the ways that we don't watch out for each other and you could read the newspaper, read any one of our local publications and it's clear that people are suffering and reading about it or watching it on TV where you get just a very small snippet of what's going on, never tells the whole story so the city is a complicated beast and really I'm finally gonna get to the charter changes I'm aiming to talk about because really the point of all of this is we as the people who live here, we as residents all together and collectively can and should make the decisions that are best for us and we need to practice all together in really teasing apart these conditions, really like meeting people where they're at, this is immensely uncomfortable for me right now, like I never would have thought that I could find myself in this position but it's also a privileged position to be in, to be able to come up here and feel comfortable, how do we ensure everyone's voices are truly heard, it's really the conditions that make the individual and it's not we as individuals that make the conditions, it's like collectively all of us have the power to change the city and that's basically my rationale for supporting these two charter changes that were initiated by the people, written by the people and sent to the people to ODOT. I disagree with the mayor's rhetoric about both proposals and this isn't gonna be an existential threat to the Burlington Police Department. I believe that they have a role in the city and they're taking on a certain task that is difficult. It's difficult for any one person or any group of people to truly understand all that's going on and we have amazing expertise in kind of understanding all these different parts, dealing with mental health crises, de-escalating situations, really understanding and providing kind of long-term support for people to change where they're at because a lot of people don't like the positions that they're in and wish for nothing but change and that's been another really thing that I found in practicing this and there's so much we could be doing for one another and I'd encourage you all as elected officials to just get to know your not-wored constituents, just really come together in different places and hear people out like community control of police and Proposition Zero, their tools, like they'll be written into the Vermont State Statutes one day if they pass and they go through all the state's different hurdles, apparatus, and they're neutral. It's how we choose to use them. It's how we interact with each other, you as elected and just us, all of the different kinds of interactions that we have, like it's how we're people. It's how we built this city. Church Street is an amazing place and if we all did more for the good of everyone and maybe not certain interests that get a lot of time in these kinds of discussions that we could all be in a better place and address these issues that a lot of us are facing, like fear of crime, that's the worst. Like no one should be afraid, no one should feel unsafe in the city and if we make that a goal, I think we'd be in a better place. I think all together we need to change our conception of what politics is and Burlington has a long history of that kind of creative thinking about what does it mean to be part of the city? What can we do as a city to make things better for one another? And politics is about people acting together, right? To chart a rational future and if we all sat down and agreed, yes, that's something that we want and here is just a skeleton, a framework, right? To keep these discussions moving ahead that we'd be in a much better place. So thank you, people's, I hope you'll support these two people-powered initiatives and we keep this thing going to really chart kind of a collective vision for where we should be going. Thanks, everyone. Thank you, thanks so much, Daniel. We'll go on to Erhard Monke, to be followed by Kit Andrews. Erhard, welcome. Thanks, President Paul. And just I'm here to testify about redistricting. Obviously, I appreciate everybody's really hard work on this. It's been a challenging process, a lot of different factors to balance and I can understand that having voted on a map before the holidays and approved a map that you probably reluctant to relook at any further variance, but I do ask you through this public hearing to do that. Earlier today, I submitted two maps that are posted on board docs for folks who are listening remotely on the council's agenda, meeting agendas. And my understanding of the public hearing process is although you have voted on a map and approved a map to put it on before the voters as a charter change, you do through this public hearing process have the opportunity to make changes to that based on comments submitted. So that was why I submitted those two maps. One of the maps and neither of them, as I think you know, have been vetted or drawn up by city staff. But as Robert mentioned before, he and I worked on those together. We're both fairly experienced map makers and there may be some issues with some of the numbers that might come out differently if you choose to have the city staff vet them and draw them up formally. But I would say that I stand by the numbers I think they're pretty close, if not totally dead on. So of the two maps that I submitted, one is the V26 map, which is a very small tweak on the one that I provided to you folks back in early December. And the small tweak merely moves one census block from wards five to wards six and thereby reduces, slightly reduces, by one percentage point, the percentage of on-campus housing in wards six vis-a-vis the map I gave you guys in early December. The point of this map is to do something, to fix ward eight, which was as Robert mentioned and as many have mentioned, a high priority. It's hard to really fix it in a way that doesn't hurt other wards. And as I mentioned in my last testimony in December, the way you all fixed ward eight in your approved map, I think really does a lot of disservice and harms ward one. So I don't think it achieves the kind of balance that the redistricting process should try to achieve. It's the V26 map is far less gerrymandered for ward eight. It also serves the purpose of creating a downtown district that is largely consists of downtown but also continues to have students in it, both students for Champlain College on campus as well as some of the athletic campus. It does maintain the integrity of the King and Maple Street neighborhood and draws the ward eight southerly line at the southern backyard lots of Maple Street. So it includes all of King Street and Maple Street and no longer divides that neighborhood in half. It maintains two distinct old North End districts wards two and three. And also like your map maintains the new North End and its boundaries where they currently are. The ward eight residents that are in the Buell and Bradley Street neighborhood that really have most vocally opposed or wanted to be rejoined with another residential district that you rejoined with some of what is currently ward one in my map puts them in with ward two which is where that neighborhood was historically and rejoins them with a more residential neighborhood. The V26 map also maintains the integrity of ward one with a small exception which was one of my primary goals. The deviation is less than your approved map. Your approved map is actually just a slight bit according to my numbers above 10%. This brings the deviation down to 9.2% overall. And it distributes on-campus housing in three different wards and makes an effort to balance that recognizing that ward one is about to receive over the next couple of years somewhere in the vicinity of 600 additional on-campus housing units. So ward one is disproportionately lower in the percentage but in recognition of receiving additional on-campus housing. Ward six has a larger percentage of on-campus housing which some might consider unfair or not balanced but ward six frankly does not have the same kind of off-campus housing that wards one, eight and wards two have. So there is an attempt there to balance that as well with the other wards if you look at both on and off-campus housing. And then I'll just also note that 10% of the student on-campus housing that's in ward six in that map is actually redstone apartments and lofts which though they're on the campus they're actually managed by a private company by redstone and not really managed as student dormitories the way the University of Vermont does. And a little bit of a hybrid and are a little bit different than your classic on-campus dormitories. The second map just briefly speak about that was developed in conversation with Councillor Shannon and some other conversations over the weekend. It basically takes the V26 map and makes it in the east in the ward eight and ward one and ward six areas where they kind of join in the east side of the city it makes it look a lot more like the map that you approved. So if you don't like V26, I would and are not open to reconsidering that I would urge you to at least reconsider V27. V27, like I said, it's closer to your approved map. Ward eight extends into central campus so takes a significant section of ward one the hospital and university heights. It also puts ward one goes south of Main Street to include living learning and Marsh Austin Tupper dormitories. Ward six takes Harris-Millis and redstone. All of the wards have either 50% or less of on-campus housing. What it also does though is it creates a ward still creates a ward eight that is focused on downtown. It also maintains the integrity of the King Street, Maple Street neighborhood and the two separate old North End wards. And lastly, one of the reasons that I did put this forward is it rejoins some of the ward one residential neighborhoods that are no longer included in ward your approved map rejoins them with ward one. So sorry to get into all the weeds but I wanted to make sure that was in the public comment and really appreciate all your hard work on this. Thank you. Thanks very much. We'll go on to Kit Andrews to be followed by to be followed by Aspen Overy. Kit, welcome. Good evening. Kit Andrews here. I wanna make several general comments on redistricting. It was 10 years ago that we switched from seven wards to eight wards and four districts for council and school board representation. In the days leading up to and in the weeks after town meeting day, 10 years ago, I spoke to a lot of people, almost all of whom were rank and file citizens as opposed to elected or appointed officials or active members of any of our three political parties. When I say this, I am reminding us all that in Vermont we all are registered independents. So I talked with lots of independents who tend to vote democratic and who tend to vote progressive. I talked with a handful of independents who tend to vote Republican, not one of them liked the districts. Not one of them was neutral toward the districts. Everybody I talked with intensely disliked the districts. The reason is obvious, isn't it? You don't need a weatherman to tell which way the wind blows and you don't need an elections policy wonk to know that the four districts plan is less democratic than the wards only plan. I'm not gonna expend words and time explaining any further that point because it is so obvious. The voting citizens of Burlington prefer strongly hands down ward based representation for our city counselors and school board members. So why is our council looking only at proposals that maintain the four districts when you could have got rid of them this time? I don't know the answer to that. What you're looking at to put on our ballot is an anti-democratic move and there's nothing about it that is the districts part of it that I approve of. That said, I believe the old North End has always comprised wards two and three going back to the earliest city history. I am a happy and proud resident of ward three. I moved to ward three 38 years ago, excuse me, 38 and a half years ago when I moved back to my home state and there I still am. Through these decades, the state rep districts have shifted with demographic changes but the old North End has remained primarily wards two and three. Now, apparently a number of you want to break that up. Why would you want to do that? I can't imagine why but I'll tell you, it's not a good look. If you look at the history of Burlington, where the mayors have resided, where the acclaimed great leaders have been from, the old North End has never held a lot of power in this city but we have a lot of heart. We are a strong cohesive neighborhood with a lot of heart. Now, ward eight is the brand new ward so I'm asking you tonight, please, please approve the number 26 map. It is good for the old North End. It is good for ward one and it makes ward eight a downtown ward which I think is good for ward eight and for the downtown. I think that map makes a great deal of sense regarding neighborhood integrity. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Aspen Overy to be followed by Annie Lawson. I'm not a particularly talented speaker so I'll try and keep this brief. I'm here to speak about two proposals, Proposition Zero and Community Control Police. The first one, and sorry, the Community Oversight Board, the Proposition Zero I supported because it simply puts power back in the hands of the people. Is every other town in Vermont has some form of this system whether it be the direct democracy and participatory budgeting of smaller towns or a mall that is really similar to Proposition Zero in Winooski. Burlington deserves the right, and Burlingtonians deserve the right to have a greater say in the policy that's like the day-to-day lives. Our local, as I'm sure everyone here knows, our local policy has such an impact on people's day-to-day lives and to put it in the hands of, and to put it in the hands of just one small city council and one mayor with a psychotic veto power is harmful to our democracy. And then the other proposal I'd like to talk about is the Community Oversight Board. The Community Oversight Board is a really valuable step because Burlington has an issue with its place. When the President of the Police Union has been caught on camera with harmful use of force policies and nothing has been done about that, that's not okay. And to solely rest power with Chief Mirad, who has a history as the mentee of Bill Bratton, the pioneer of broken windows policing is not okay and it doesn't make our community safer. In fact, it makes our community more dangerous. And we, and this is a first step to starting to rebuild the trust that needs to be built between our police and our people. Yeah, thank you so much. And yeah, have a great, thank you so much. Great, thank you very much. The last speaker who has signed up in Contoy's is Annie Lawson and then we'll go to the people that have signed up online and then we'll come back and just ask one more time if there's a show of hands, anyone wishes to speak who hasn't submitted a form. Please go ahead. Hi, thanks for having me here. My name is Annie Lawson. I live in Ward 4. I've lived in Burlington for 10 years. I am a community member, a mother and a social worker. And I'm here tonight to voice my support for the Community Oversight Board in regards to policing. I got involved in this work because of many reasons, but one of them is the importance of trust and the way that I believe trust is an important part of having a healthy community. So as I said, I'm a social worker and at this point in my career, I do mental health counseling with individuals and families. And I want to explain why I think community oversight is not a radical idea because all other professions and public institutions are governed by this type of structure, including mine. So I think that asking police to engage with this kind of oversight board is completely reasonable, but furthermore, I think that it's productive and that it's important to the overall health of a community. So in my work, my work with clients begins with trust because even if I would like to pretend otherwise, I'm in a position of power in my relationship with clients. Folks come to engage with work with me because they're looking for tools and support and new ways of thinking and doing when they are encountering challenges in their lives. So they're placing some trust in me from the get-go. And when I start work with a new client, I start every first session by explaining to them how my field and people like me are governed by oversight boards. I am accountable to the Office of Professional Regulation, which is part of the Secretary of State's office. And I explain to folks what their options are if they experience any kind of abuse or misconduct by me, and I tell them how they can file complaints. So this is something that I'm legally required to do, but I'm also happy to do it because I feel that it's critical to establishing a relationship of trust. Therapists have a lot of power. We support folks to process some of the hardest parts and moments in their lives. We support them to work through experiences of abuse and past trauma. We sit with them in their grief and their loss. And in very, very rare cases, unfortunately some therapists do abuse this power. People who experience this type of abuse can bring their experience to oversight boards, who can then investigate and if needed, they can discipline clinicians who abuse their power. So clients know this and they feel more comfortable placing their trust in me when I explain all of this to them. So the same thing should and can be true for police. People call police in moments of crisis when they are at their most vulnerable. They need to be able to trust that the people who respond can be trusted. In my role, I am entrusted to use words and actions for good and people trust that I won't use them for harm. Police are given authority to use force, to use weapons, and we trust that they're not gonna use them for harm. But if I, as a woman sitting in an office, using words to work with people and accountable to oversight, so too should be police who are holding weapons and are capable of doing lasting and lethal harm in ways very different than what I do. So the idea of community oversight is not a radical one. This is something that every other professional field already engages in. Every other civic institution engages in this. I mentioned also that I'm a mother and I have a young daughter, she's almost three. She's not yet part of Burlington's school district, but when I send her to school, I'm gonna trust that she's gonna be safe in the hands of her teachers. I can trust this because there are such institutions as school boards, teachers who abuse their power are subject to investigation by people other than the one single principal in their school. And so the idea that we would extend accountability for police beyond the hands of one individual who has an agenda to not make more work for them or for their staff by letting someone go, this is just not a radical idea. We see it everywhere else. And so I'm very excited that Burlington is on the verge of extending this same reasonable expectation to this extended arm of our civic government. Thanks for taking the time to hear me. Thank you very much. We will go to those people who have requested to speak that are joining us via Zoom. The first, there are four people in the queue. The first is Solvei Overby. And Solvei, I have found you and have enabled your microphone. Please, please go ahead. Hello, my name is Solvei Overby. I will speak specifically to the ranked choice voting ballot item, but I do support the other charter change ballot items with the exception of the proposed ward boundaries item because I believe there really should be a downtown ward. And so the maps that have been discussed that have that I think should absolutely be considered instead of the one that is now in the ballot item. I wanna also commend those whose efforts to collect petition signatures resulted in the petition, the Proposition Zero and the Independent Police Oversight Board being on the March ballot. I thank you guys for making that effort. You're modeling what Proposition Zero is all about. Having served as a Ward II Inspector of Election official in Burlington for many years and having observed many of elections, including several runoff elections, I wanna speak in support of the charter change ballot item to expand the ranked choice voting beyond just city counselors what we have now to include elections for mayor, school commissioners, and also the ward election officers which is the ballot item we're going to be voting on. My reasons for this are that the existing system when runoffs do occur results in candidates being elected by a minority of the city voters. Runoff elections have low turnout and as a consequence, runoff elections do not result in elections by the wished for percentage of the 40% or more of the regularly voting voters. It's just not very democratic. Next, the existing system of holding a runoff election costs the city money and also the extra effort of election officials to manage those second elections. Also, people do understand the concept of prioritizing preferences among things which is what ranked choice voting is about and they can learn to prioritize their preferences for candidates in elections. With ranked choice voting, voters will be encouraged to learn about all the candidates. Candidates will be motivated to appeal to all voters not just those in their own political party. Voters will learn the value of ranking all candidates not just voting for one that they've been told is the one they're supposed to vote for. Also, diversity of candidates is encouraged by ranked choice voting. Voters can feel comfortable voting for their actual first choice even if they consider their candidate to be a long shot. Voters don't have to feel forced to kick between the two major party candidates to avoid throwing away their vote by voting for their preferred candidate. Importantly, and I'll wrap up, importantly though, the tabulation method needs to be credible with the voters when we have ranked choice voting. The proposed charter change states that the instant runoff tabulation shall be performed by the presiding election officer and also that the city council will be able to adopt the ordinances to implement the standards. I recommend that Burlington's instant runoff tabulation method should carefully take account of the extensive research and recommendations that were written and filed by Robert Bristow-Johnson who spoke earlier in this presentation and who will be speaking as I understand at the next hearing. He's done a lot of work to explain the methodology that is generally used and also the methodology that should be used that makes things happen in ways that people feel like, well, it wasn't fair or something has happened. And he goes through his documents, which I recommend that you look at, talk about what happened in the past. We had instant runoff voting in Burlington. We had an election. It wasn't people weren't happy with the outcome. And he discusses why that outcome was uncomfortable for people and what to do in the method we use to do the tabulation that will improve the outcome to be actually what people feel is fair. So I recommend that everybody take a look at the documents that he has posted and so that the counselors can understand at the point when the election officials need to make the decision about how to do the tabulation that the fact that those methods are considered. Thank you. Thanks very much, Sylvie. Our next speaker is Jake Schumann. And Jake, I found you and have enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Thank you. And if you would like to turn the camera on, I am also amenable to that. My name is Jake Schumann. I am currently running for city council in the East district as the progressive endorsed candidate. But that's not the capacity that I come before you on today. I am just Jake Schumann. I am here remotely, but everyone that has spoken before me has really moved me because I have worked with them over the past months, years. And it was a labor of love. It was an effort of our community. And it began as just neighbors and different people who had loose affiliation or just signed the petition and said, wow, that's something I'd like to get involved with. And the bonds that have developed among this group are amazing. Again, it was a labor of love. And I am so proud of these people that I get to identify and associate with and that I get to be a part of. I got involved first with Proposition Zero. And so I'll speak first to that. Proposition Zero in my mind is so foundational, so fundamental, I don't understand. Honestly, I do not understand how anybody can be opposed to it. Democracy is good. The ability of people to participate to the greatest degree in how their government functions, that is a good thing. Proposition Zero is not the same as what California has. It is not the same as what Brexit did. Proposition Zero is empowering our neighbors, our friends, our family in a small city where we know what's going on and we can engage each other in a meaningful way. I think that there are no risks with Prop Zero. I don't think that anybody should stand in opposition to it. Another democratic ballot item that I would like to speak to is all-resident voting. I support it. Unequivocally endorse the all-resident voting ballot item. But it causes me to question another item, which is the redistricting. All-resident voting is meant to empower those members of our community who should be able to participate, but because of some bureaucratic time delay that their citizenship is pending or they don't want it for valid reasons. They should still be able to participate. They should still be able to have a say in the school board for the school district where their children attend and learn and grow and develop. All-resident voting is a great thing, but I don't understand how we can support all-resident voting and also draw a line that disenfranchises and divides the most diverse neighborhood in all of Vermont. A working-class neighborhood in downtown Burlington, the King Maple neighborhood. I would like to express my support to Air Hard Mountain and Kit Andrews. And I would just say that part of the reason why I like Air Hard's map is because it's very similar to the map that I drew. But I think that it's the best possible map because it takes care of the most people. I'm trying to recall my transition to the next item. I cannot, but so it might be a bit of a non-sequitur. So I will say that, oh yes, I recall. I recall. I think a problem with the redistricting proposal as it is written right now and before council is that it was deliberated upon by a council that was not fully seated and it was voted forward by a council that was down one counselor and had one counselor who was brand new. This then transitions me to the next point that I hope to make, which was completely irrelevant to this discussion, but Acting Chief Murad should not be appointed until there is a fully seated city council. Because of the contentious nature of that appointment, I just want to express that. And I will use that to transition to the ballot item related to a community oversight board. I have to say the things that Lee said and the things that Annie said really resonated with me. In 2021, I embarked upon the adventure of becoming a licensed EMT in Vermont. And subsequent to that, I joined the inaugural group of the first responder care support network in Vermont. I have friends who work in the Burlington Police Department. I have friends who work in the Vermont State Police. Before I became an EMT, I worked at the Holiday Inn for CBOEO. It was at the time, the largest homeless shelter in Vermont with over 200 people at one point. In that role, I provided crisis response. I did one half of what Kahoot's model does. I just didn't need to travel because it was a full-time job on one site. But in that capacity, I developed relationships with the South Burlington Police Department and officers. And I developed the trust to successfully intervene and de-escalate and take over situations that were not appropriate for police intervention or could not be de-escalated by police intervention. So what I would say is that I have experience working with police departments in a trusting fashion. And the fact that I stand with the group and help collect signatures and submit petitions for a community oversight board, that doesn't mean that I hate cops. That doesn't mean that I am ACAP. That doesn't mean that I seek to harm the officers of the Burlington Police Department. I don't think that those two things should be equated. And I think it's quite disingenuous. It's a very false equivalency. And it's offensive to me because I support the community oversight board in large part because I think that it is a way to heart to begin to heal the relationship and de-escalate the tension in our community. When I worked at the Holiday Inn for CBOEO, I worked under the supervision of a social worker and just as Annie said, I can tell you that oversight is not something that hurts. It is something that helps. When I had the oversight and the supervision of a social worker, a licensed social worker, it helped me develop professionally. It helped me to be better, to do better, to help people more. It helped me to know where I stood, where others stood, what people's esteem of me was. It just helped me in every way that I can imagine. It was a mentoring relationship. It was beautiful. It also allowed me to develop trust with my colleagues, with the folks who were residing at the Holiday Inn because it helped us in every way that we needed help. So I just have to question the narrative that has been put forward. I have to ask, why does a community oversight board make it harder to recruit and retain officers? If anything, it should make it easier because then you don't have to worry about walking the tightrope of disciplining officers or upsetting the union. So I just say that instead of speaking in such vitriolic and absolutist terms and vilifying this group and these wonderful people who are doing good because they care about their community just like many of the officers of the police department. We need to start our discussion of what a community oversight board looks like in actual practice because we do still have to decide which organizations will get to play a role. So we need to start from a positive perspective. We need to trust each other. We need to develop a relationship and trust that it will actually make recruitment easier and the retention will rise. A couple final things. I just want to reiterate and underscore something that Lee said. Lee is one of the only people that testified that I don't have a personal relationship with. Lee said something that I think often crisis of community. That's what we are experiencing, a crisis of community. So if I may, I'm gonna read a little thing that I had written last night. I don't know that it's perfectly there but I think that it speaks to that. I believe in our city and its people that our community already holds the deeply intrinsic knowledge, skills and compassion necessary to meet the moment and achieve our shared goals. Burlington's problems have always been discussed in ways that sometimes leave opinions divided but now it seems that we actually find ourselves divided. So instead of continuing our small group discussions I propose that we restart the dialogue entirely. One that includes the whole community beginning in a place of unity. Our humanity is our most vital bond. So the first step in reframing how we engage with each other is to focus on our most deeply ingrained social agreements and all these norms. Those that are baked into and facilitated our evolution. This includes defining a shared understanding of what we need instead of arguing about what is wrong. We depend on our social problems. Why then do we treat each other so poorly so often? Why is it that we struggle to trust one another? Our individual and collective needs are so basic that we often struggle to name them unless we have experienced what it feels like to have them on that. Basic or exceptional, any sterile list of definitions would fail to convey a true understanding of these dynamic emotional relational notions. I believe that explicit and personal conversations about our community's needs and our community's norms are valuable in whatever format so long as humans are connecting meaningfully. If they are safe and genuine, then these interactions will propagate like ripples and waves through our social networks and they will break down barriers and they will build bridges. For me, the most exciting part of campaigning is engaging in and facilitating these kinds of conversations. They provide a template for understanding each unique and deeply complex individual. These experiences are humbling and they affect our willingness and our ability to make assumptions. They teach us to seek understanding where it doesn't yet exist. Regardless of how unmet needs should be addressed, it's the role of our government to ensure that unmet needs are addressed. The city of Burlington does not have the resources that the state and federal governments do, but local government is the last line in protecting and providing for our community, especially where the others have failed. So we must take responsibility for helping those of our neighbors who need help. In this context, we might refocus how we talk to each other about solving all of the various crises that we face. Instead, we might say that there is only actually one crisis. The needs of our people are not being adequately addressed. Ebbing and flowing over time, unrelenting in spite of all our efforts, we see the signs and hear the cry that these unmet needs persist. We can and we must do better. Finally, I just say that, again, I am Jake Schumann. I am running as the Progressive Candidate in the East District for City Council. As a Progressive, I would ask that you also support Roan Allison for Ward 8 and Milo Grant in the Central District. Thank you. I yield the balance of my time. Thank you very much, Jake. Our next speaker is Barbara Hedrick to be followed by Maddie Posig. And Barbara, I have found you and enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak now. Hello. Good evening, City Councilor. Good evening. I'm here. Barbara, we can't hear you. Go ahead, if you can start again, please. Yes, is it possible for me to do a screen share? No, however, if you have an item that you would like us to look at, please let us know what it is. I'm sure we can all find it. Was this under general communications? Yes, it is. And it's the last item listed under general communications. It's a map that I drew just recently. Okay, thank you. Sure, go ahead. So I would like to basically, it's about redistricting and there are two different ways that I would like to present information to you. First, I'd like to comment on Earnhardt's map. And then the second part, I would like to discuss them a better map, in my opinion. And before I do all that, I just want to thank everybody for all your hard work on this redistricting. I was hoping we were done in December. And so I had to dust off those files and dig back in like all of you. And I know it's really been a very trying process for everybody. And I wanted to thank you very much for listening to me through the months about redistricting and for looking at my maps. So first about Earnhardt's maps. In versions 24 and 26, there's a large difference in the student population on campus between the wards one and eight. In Ward one, only 24% of the population is on campus. And in Ward eight, 49% of the population, the wards population is on campus. And that's a pretty big difference between 24 and 49%. In other words, Ward eight has 16 more, 1600 more on-campus students than Ward one. So the 500 that are going to get added to Trinity isn't going to make Ward one student heavy. Ward one has too few on-campus students in the Earnhardt maps. And I've heard Ward one say, well, we have a lot of off-campus students. And I know they do. But Ward two has more off-campus students than Ward one and Ward eight has more off-campus students than Ward one. So Ward one actually isn't carrying its fair share of on or off-campus students. And the off-campus student data comes from the city. The city and UVM work together to create a heat map. It's in the neighborhood project report. And it shows that most students who live off campus live downhill from North Prospect Street. Also, my concern with Earnhardt's map, maps plural, is that Ward eight stretches from the lake all the way up Main Street to the far Eastern border of the city along Spear Street. That is not a compact or concite or cohesive Ward. When we were starting off this redistricting process, we said, let's have a downtown Ward because right now Ward three stretches from the railroad tracks to Maple Street. And because of that long distance from the railroad tracks to Maple Street, the old North End gets more attention and the downtown gets less attention. So the idea behind of having a downtown Ward is good, but it's good if you make the downtown Ward compact around the downtown. It's not good if you stretch the downtown Ward all the way up to the hill to include the athletic campus. It just mimics the same problems we have now with Ward three being too long, capturing neighborhoods that are too different because you have the old North End and the downtown which are distinctly different, different problems, different concerns, just like downtown has different problems than the neighborhoods that are near UVM. So if we have a Ward eight that stretches from the lake all the way up to the athletic campus, the people who live near UVM are not going to be the priority because a priority is gonna be on what's happening downtown. And so the people that live near UVM are gonna get less representation. They're gonna be disconnected from their Ward just the way downtown is in Ward three right now. The December 12th map that the city chose has a downtown Ward. That downtown Ward stretches from North Street to Maple Street. It's called Ward three. It doesn't matter what numbers assigned to the downtown Ward, there is a downtown Ward in that December map. If you wanna add the bobbin mill to it, that's an easy tweak that you can make and improve that December map. The version 27 map that Earnhardt showed you tonight is horrible except for one aspect. And that is that University Terrace gets to stay in Ward six. That's very, very important. But the map is still horrible because Ward eight is encompassing Hill neighborhoods and the downtown neighborhood. And really the downtown Ward should be just downtown. All right, so I would like to switch gears now and talk to you about a map that I drew just in the past couple of days. And it's the one that's attached to the board docs. I don't wanna first talk about Ward one. First the downtown is downtown. You can see that when you look at it. But I'm gonna talk about Ward one because that's the ward that always gets upset when boundaries change. Ward one right now is more than 10% too large relative to the size of other wards. Because Ward one has South Burlington as one boundary, the river is another boundary. There's only a few ways to change Ward one to make it smaller. It's very hard to do that and also keep everybody happy. And I've worked very hard in the past six months to draw maps that try to keep everybody happy. This Ward one configuration that I've included as a document on board docs. Even though all of the athletic campus except for Redstone Lofts has included Ward one, Ward one is only of its population, only 40% are on campus. Also that green area, according to the city has fewer off-campus students than the yellow area, which is Ward two. Because again, most off-campus students live downhill from North Prospect Street. In the map, Trinity campus goes to Ward two as well as all the blocks between the Trinity campus and Winooski Avenue. And all the blocks between College Street and the railroad tracks. So the whole North Hill section is kept whole, both sides of South Prospect, both sides of Mansfield. The streets that are between Mansfield and Trinity campus get included in Ward two. It's a very cohesive, very well-balanced constituency. You have a mix of students, you have some point campus, you have long-term residents. It's a very sound mix of people. Same true for the green area, that's Ward one. They have 1,200 more long-term residents in Ward one than they do in the Ward eight, that's in the Arnhack maps. You can't see it, but the new North end is designed exactly how those city counselors want it. The intervails attached to Ward three, Ward eight is downtown and it's compact and cohesive. Edmonds ends up in Ward six, so we get to keep our polling location. And Ward six includes the Redstone lofts and the Redstone campus as well as Champlain College. And, you know, the population in Ward six will be about 50% on campus students or those living in the Champlain College. So overall, this map balances on campus students, balances the off-campus students in a fairly good way. It doesn't put them all in Ward one, a lot are in Ward two, and it works for the city overall. So I think that I just wanted to say this map, contrary to what Ward one believes and will not harm Ward one, nor will it harm the North Hill section neighborhood because both of these neighborhoods are compact, cohesive, and whole. Their population makeup is balanced and equitable as described. Thank you very much. Is there, and I welcome you, any questions if you want to email me? Thank you, thanks very much Barbara. Our next speaker is Maddie Posig. And Maddie, I have found you and enabled your microphone. Please go ahead. Sure, my name is Maddie Posig and I'm here speaking on behalf of my neighbors in the Beale Bradley Hungerford Terrace neighborhood in Ward eight. We've been closely following the redistricting process since it began way back in 2021. Our group strongly supported the map that you adopted on December 12 and we thought redistricting was a done deal. So it was incredibly disheartening to learn that several new maps are being promoted at the 11th hour. Citizens could have asked any city counselor to have a map made official through the regular process of redistricting. So I actually find it somewhat unbelievable that maps are being presented over a month after a final map was adopted. Our main goal, my neighbors and myself throughout this process was to create eight wards that were fairly and demographically balanced. We were also concerned that moving forward, no ward would face the obstacles we faced as residents of Ward eight. And I'm sure you're all familiar with those problems, low voter turnout, difficulty finding candidates for poll workers, et cetera. All the maps and there have been a lot of them kept our neighborhood in Ward eight. So we were very surprised at the 11th hour that a map appears moving our neighborhood into Ward two. And to my knowledge, no one asked for our opinion or input on this move and we feel this move doesn't solve anything. Although we are residents of Ward eight and we're looking for changes to our ward specifically, we were always looking at the bigger picture of how the wards contributed to the city functioning well politically. We feel the new maps that were presented by Earhart do not achieve that goal. In our opinion, Ward eight is still very much a gerrymandered ward and I didn't have any conversation with Barbara, but ironically, we both noticed that geographically in those maps, Ward eight extends all the way from the lake to the boundary with South Burlington and the Eastern part of the city. So this is certainly not a cohesive neighborhood as it extends from one end of the city to the other. And if you look at Ward eight's southern boundaries, it looks like a jigsaw puzzle where neighborhoods are just added randomly without thought to meet some numbers. The map that you, the city council adopted and we strongly supported took some areas of wards one and six that were adjacent to Ward eight and move them into our ward. And it's my understanding that some residents of Ward one are protesting loudly about this change and that is why these new maps were created. The reason that there is a need for redistricting at all is because the population of Ward one in the 2020 census grew too large in relation to the other words, particularly words four and seven. So it only makes sense that some of the boundaries in Ward one would have to change in order to follow the criteria of redistricting. This map once again also places a majority of on-campus students in Ward six and eight. The map that you city counselors approved on December 12th, more fairly distributed this population between wards one, six and eight. Additionally, we all need to remember that all those on-campus students are not accessible to candidates which makes campaigning quite difficult. This redistricting has been a long, drawn out and difficult process for all of us, for the residents and for you, the city counselors. I sincerely hope that you stick with your original vote and keep the map that you adopted. It's not perfect, but it was a compromise with all parties involved. The formation of that map was a give and take process and we, the neighbors in Ward eight feel this map is the best compromise for the city to properly function politically. And thank you for listening to me because it's been a long night of listening for you guys. Thank you so much, Maddie. The last speaker who has signed up is Sharon Busher and Sharon, I've enabled your microphone, you should be able to speak. Thank you so much. It has been a long evening of, but an informative one for those that are listening via Zoom. So my topic is redistricting. And I think that I have an opinion on which maps certainly I support or favor, I should say. But first of all, I want to acknowledge the process that led us to this point. There were a lot of maps that came forward and then there was a willingness to understand some of the concerns that were raised by members in some areas of the city, mainly Ward one, since I represent Ward, I live in Ward one, that had concerns about the harm that we perceived was being done to our Ward. And I think that when you go back to look at redistricting, you have to remember that you're supposed to create boundaries. And the goal is to do the least harm. You're not supposed to just throw the deck of cards up in the air and have new wards reappear. You're supposed to be keeping cohesive groups of people and neighborhoods together. And that was what motivated me to speak out to begin with, that many of the maps took out the long-term residential components of Ward one, an area which once now again is being proposed to be moved into Ward two, where all of our appointed people come from, all of our steering committee members live in, all of our elected officials reside in predominantly. It just seemed that it really was gutting a Ward. And I felt that that was an extreme measure. I think it's fine if you're in a Ward that is really unscathed by this process. You're kind of viewing this and saying, well, I can live with anything. But I think that what I'm hearing is, the goal is not to harm anybody if you can get away with it, but you are gonna have to displace some people and disrupt some neighborhoods. I concur, that will happen. I felt that up until our December vote, it was a process that tried to include as many people as possible and listened to the concerns that were coming forward from like Maddie, the long-term residents in Ward eight, from the concerns that were raised by residents of Ward one, from the concerns that were raised by you yourself, President Paul and members of Ward six about the issues of how many, what percentage of on-campus students were in your ward. I think, all of that was up for negotiation and discussion. How can we make this better? I think Robert Bristow-Johnson did a reality check for me and for hopefully everybody saying, what the redistricting committee before it got to the political process heard and what the goals were and how what the end product really didn't meet that mark so well. I think that was informative and disappointing. I was involved in another redistricting the one before and we didn't meet the goals as well as we could have or wanted to either. It's not easy. I agree. But having said that, I wanted to just say that the maps that are being, so you adopted a map and now there's a process. These are public hearings and there's an opportunity to say, we're gonna stay the course with the map we voted on or we can make changes because you are listening to the public's comments on the map you supported and put forward. And so it is up to you based on all this commentary to decide what you want to do, what you think is in the best interest of the people that you represent. And I'm hoping that you're open to making some tweaks. Now, as I heard from Earhart when he presented the maps to you tonight, there were two. There is EV26 and EV27. EV27 as I understood actually had some input from Councillor Shannon and was a minor tweak to the map that you supported but one that he felt was a good idea. So I would say moving in the right direction is always the course I'd want you all to take. So if that's better and it's a tweak and it's not gonna do any disruption, certainly I hope that you'll entertain that. The other map which is more interesting for me is the EV26 which happens to address keeping the boundaries of Ward 1 a little more intact, bringing in another neighborhood. And I tried to listen as carefully as I could without looking at these maps. It's challenging as you all know. But I heard that it also helps better delineate Ward 2 and 3. So it's not all about me that lives in Ward 1. It's all about what's best for the city. And I have no goal to do any harm. I really have a goal of trying to protect the neighborhood and the health of the Ward that I live in but also protect the health and the war of all the other wards in Burlington. I think that is really our goal as a community. I thought Kit Andrews made some really important comments about the people of Burlington and how they felt about districts. I do concur. I know that there's no appetite for eight wards and two counselors for Ward. I know the mayor doesn't want it and the council doesn't. I wish the council did. I understand why the mayor doesn't but I wish the council had decided to take that leap of faith and go for it because I think that would have been better representation. So let me see. There's just one other thing. Oh, the last thing I want to say is that, you know, I mean, Barbara Hedrick and I are good friends. I think she still considers me a friend after tonight, but, and I appreciate all the work she puts into everything and she has great insight but that doesn't mean, and I respect her, doesn't mean I have to agree with her. I don't agree with the map she put forward. President Paul, but I listened to her rationale and I think that for me, there are some flaws in that because of what I said before because it moves, it gets Ward one. But I do want to say that what I've come to realize in the last redistricting process, everything came together fast at the end. Why is that? Why does life happen that way? I don't know. Maybe we people need that external pressure of this is the deadline, this is the drop dead point and you've got to make a change and maybe that sparks more creative thinking and more ability to think more clearly and come forward with a better proposal. I'm hoping that that's how you see the two maps that were presented tonight, seeing more clearly and trying to make a better proposal for your consideration. So thank you so much for listening. I know it's been a long night and you're probably starving like me. Take care. Thank you very much. So we have come to the end of the public hearing of those people who've either signed up in Contoy's or have signed up and submitted a form online. Anyone who is in Contoy's who hasn't spoken, anyone who is online who hasn't spoken, this is your chance. Please come forward and if you could just identify yourself. Thank you. Hello everyone. My name's Ryan, Ryan Allen. I'm from another beautiful part of the land of the Abinacke, Williston. I do mutual aid here in Burlington and I also work for an early education center here in Burlington and the community oversight board to me, really, well, just seeing the process of my friends collect signatures and talk with people, it's purely amazing. Burlington is a lot of the things that I wish Williston was and community oversight, or like, yeah, the community oversight board to me is really about making sure that the police officers who do their job and do their job well and are really being a part of the community are safe and they can do their job well. And something that a friend brought up is that the signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot in March. Over 2000, we're not just all anarchists or punks. They are your neighbors, your community members, your friends. And so I wanna echo that, like, the Burlington people are asking for what they need and I hope that you all remember to listen to them because a lot of them have police in their families, loved ones who, yeah, make them feel safe and loved and have imparted wonderful values that have made Burlington better. And it's important to remember that those people have also seen how the policing system has negatively impacted their loved ones that work for the law enforcement. And that this isn't just a bunch of far left people who are pushing this. It's everyday Burlingtonians. And yeah, I hope that you all pass the community oversight board. Thank you. Thanks very much. Is there anyone else in Contoy's who has not spoken who would like to speak? There is one person who is online who would like to speak and Milo, that's Milo Grant. Milo, I saw your hand raised and your microphone is enabled. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. I just wanted to say I hate the maps too, but I won't go into detail because some of the reasons that I'm planning to vote against them have already been covered. So I am going to talk about community control of police. I originally, although I had gone to a lot of the meetings and I've listened, I participated in the conversation, I wasn't sure I wanted this to be something separate. As a police commissioner, doing a lot of different type of work than previous police commissions. And with the help of national oversight bodies that worked on best practices, just really learning a lot about where we are and where we could be. I felt it could be done by the commission. I felt the commission could work its way toward taking over some of this oversight in a nutshell. The way things are now and with the current chief and with quite frankly, the mayor's lack of leadership at times, it's not possible. The concept of the police chief being the only person to have this oversight is flawed. It's flawed because it makes certain assumptions about that individual that that individual will do the right thing. And that is not something that we are seeing. And so I support this ballot item now. I've changed my mind and I support this ballot item strongly as a way to not only protect the citizens of Burlington, but to protect the officers, to make sure that they get the support that they need, to make sure they get the training that they need. Sometimes discussing complaints is not about wanting punishment. Often it's not that at all. It's about saying, can we take a look at training? And if training was provided before, what needs to be reviewed again? What additional coaching can help? I'm in an industry that handles, it helps people with their health benefits. So we handle a lot of private information. We are beholden to privacy guidelines such as HIPAA, dealing with what's called PII, personal identifying information. We distribute credit cards that access these benefits. So we are beholden to the guidelines that cover these credit card laws. And every year we have to go through training to remind us about all of these policies because they are so important to protect people. And I can grown and I can say, oh, I got to do this again. Geez, I've been in this business for 12 years and every year I got to do this. But every year I'm like, oh yeah, that's a good reminder. Oh yeah, that's a good reminder. And if an incident happens, then you get reminders of the incident. Well, this incident happened because you failed to take the proper precaution, want to make you aware. And there's rules in place for if certain things happen more than once, you know, the department should not be exempt from this and officers have to be supported. If there is something that was unnecessary or avoidable, the public needs to know that this will be addressed. And that is not the case right now. There's a certain stubbornness that is really affecting progress. And it just deeply concerns me. I feel that we as a diverse group of people on the commission have skills and expertise that are different, but all for a contribution because they are meaningful. You know, we have someone who is an internationally renowned economist. We have someone who has experience in law. We have someone who has experience in social work. I myself, when I first started this work was a novice, but I've studied so much, so much and have gone to various types of trainings and have listened to the public as a lot of you have known who've worked with me over the last few years. So the bottom line is this, what you perceive as something that can be done solely by the chief, that is not a reality right now. Borrowing again on what someone said earlier, we are in a community crisis and we have to look at things differently to get past this. Thank you all for your time. Thank you, bye. Thanks very much, Milo. There does not appear to be anyone else who wishes to speak online and I don't see anyone else remaining that wishes to speak in con toys. With that, we will close the public forum. Just wanted to also note that the second item under item number two are general communications. Those were emails, maps, et cetera, that were submitted to the public regarding the charter changes. Some of them were from people who just simply couldn't be here this evening but wanted their comments noted for the record. So in line with this process, we'll go to the council for comments and discussion. Just one word of caution and that is to please try to limit your comments and discussion to responding only to the input that we've received during the public hearing. And for the record so that the public understands the process here, the same Vermont Statue 17 VSA 2645 item number 4A says, and this is the point of the public forum, is that if a charter proposal is made by the legislative body, the legislative body may revise the proposal as a result of suggestions and recommendations made at a public hearing. With that, I will go to counselors for comments and discussion, beginning with Councilor Berkman. Well, having, thank you, Madam President. Having wanted to consider similar maps to the ones that Earhard has proposed at this public hearing at our last meeting and been told that that was out of order and accepting that ruling. And having heard the comments in public hearing tonight, I therefore move to refer maps, eight wards, volumes 26 and eight wards, volume 27, I guess, or version of each, to the independent mapping specialist for review and analysis. With a report back to the council from the independent mapping specialist on or before our January 23rd meeting. Okay, so there is a motion. This is on two of the maps. And if you could just repeat, it's V, I assume the V is version. Yeah, I think. So version 26. And 27, and they're both eight ward maps. Okay, so that motion will need a second. Is there a second to that motion? Second. Seconded by Councilor McGee. We will, Councilor Berkman, did you want the floor back? Only to say at the last meeting, when we tried to discuss this, we were told that we could not because they hadn't been sent to the independent mapping specialist. And I think that that was an error in our process, that people didn't know that. I certainly was not on the special committee that we created. And I think joyfully decided not to wade into the swamp that is and was redistricting. And so as a result, when it came time for our meeting where we were gonna consider, I could not get those considered because I hadn't gone through a process that obviously I did not partake in. And I accepted that. This is a little different than the district question in that, although we heard comments tonight, I'm not asking to revisit that. I know where the votes are on that and I'm not interested in wasting our time. But I do not know. And having heard some different conversation about these maps, where the decision will lie, but I do think it is incumbent upon us not to just ignore it, but to actually consider it. And we've heard lots of comments and I don't need and won't because it's not really appropriate to get into the details of that. But we, I hope, can at our next meeting and slog through the big muddy at hope that we don't get as the Pete Seeger song referenced in regard to Vietnam up over our nose before we figure out how to turn around. Thank you, Councilor Bergman. I might be old for that reference. I'm sorry. Thank you, Councilor Bergman. Are there any other Councillors who wish to speak to the motion to refer these two maps of review and analysis to the independent mapping specialist? Councilor Shannon to be followed by Councilor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. And I do want to back up Councilor Bergman in that redistricting as a swamp. It's no one's fault. It's always a swamp. And I'm sorry. And thank you to those that participated in drawing a whole lot of maps before this. I think I served on three committees in the last go around each committee throwing out the work of the previous committee and coming up with nothing better. But we continue to try. And I appreciate at our last meeting when this map came up, I couldn't consider it. I really did not know what was in it. It was impossible. This gives us an opportunity to get this drawn by the mapping specialist and give it thoughtful consideration. I don't know where I am on this, but I wouldn't want to pass up an opportunity to make something better when this system is designed for us to have that opportunity now. Painful as that is. So I do have a question though, which is when do we need, what is our deadline here? I am concerned that in choosing two of these maps, ultimately we're gonna have to adopt something with meats and bounds, which is a laborious process. And are we asking that meats and bounds be developed for both of these maps? Do we have to adopt something with meats and bounds on the 23rd? I assume you're asking that question of me. I'm asking it of anybody who knows the answer. You can sort that out, President Paul. Okay. So I've now become a bit well-versed in 17VSA, 2645, didn't know a whole lot about it before, but sort of a rank amateur, but have read it a few times. The other thing that I left out of the item 4A is that we can make recommendations, we can make changes based on recommendations and suggestions made at the public hearing. But the rest of it says, but in no event shall such revisions be made less than 20 days before the date of the meeting to vote on the charter, meaning 20 days before town meeting day. However, there is one additional problem, and that is the good news is that the city of Burlington has made a decision to voluntarily send everybody a ballot. That's great. However, we do have to print them. And so there is a small challenge with the ballot language, which we've has already been written for the one that we approved, and the fact that there may be a change to that. So there is a struggle going on here. Attorney Pellerin and I and city attorney, acting city attorney Sturt event had a long conversation about it today. I understand that you've also spoken with the Secretary of State. If you could just let us know what the deadline deadline is and what would have to be done in order for us to meet that deadline. So as I understand it, in speaking with the Secretary of State's office today, I mean, the letter of the law does say that the council has until 20 days prior to the vote on town meeting day to make the amendments. However, again, that doesn't take into this the effect that practically that's nearly impossible because as President Paul has indicated, we do choose to send out ballots to all actively registered legal voters in the city of Burlington. And so while the Secretary of State recognizes that they still feel that we have to follow the letter of the law so we have until 20 days, but speaking to the clerk's office in order to get the ballots to the printer, they have until the 31st of this month so that we can have them turned around and mailed out by the 15th of February. So it's a bit of a conundrum. There's still some consideration here where this ballot item could hypothetically be moved off of town meeting day and look to be held at a special meeting which the council could consider at a later date in the spring potentially. So myself and Acting City's servant are still trying to iron that out. We didn't get that information. I got a call from the Secretary of State's office at 4.45 this evening. So it's some new information that I'm just trying to process and make sure that that is correct, but we're looking into that and hope to have a more definitive answer to all the Councillors by tomorrow. Does that answer your question? I think the answer to my question is that we need to have the meets and bounds by the 23rd in order to, when's our next, do we have a meeting on? It would be the 6th of February. Is our next schedule made? Yeah, so we do have to have the meets and bounds on the 23rd in order to make the deadline for the 31st. And if that's what we're asking, I'm reluctant to send two maps to the mapping specialists. I think that we should narrow down what we want. I'm willing to support. I especially don't wanna go through this with two very similar maps. I think that we should decide what we want to send. And it would be, I don't think I'm willing to support V26. I am willing to support V27. That is not a commitment to support it, but if I were to go with one of those, it would be V27. So I'll put that out there for further discussion at this point. Okay, thank you, Councillor Shannon. So we'll go to Councillor Barlow to be followed by Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. I will not be supporting the introduction of any new maps tonight. I would have entertained tweaks to the map that we did approve. And I think that's what happened back in, the last time we did redistricting, there were a couple of streets that got moved. But what we're being asked to do tonight is consider an entirely different map. And as Maddie Posig pointed out, there hasn't been enough public process around this. If we're going to introduce new maps, I think we also have to give the public an opportunity to weigh in again on what we've, what we're going to be voting on. And this has been sort of a surprise, I think, to many that we've come up with these maps so suddenly and so close to the time we need to get them out of the ballot. So I just can't support upending the process like this. I think we would need more time. Attorney Pellerin indicated that we could potentially vote on redistricting in a separate later ballot. I could potentially be supportive of that if that would give us the space and time we need to do more public process on this. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. We'll go to Councilor Travers and then if there's anyone else who wishes, Councilor McGee, Councilor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. Personally, I do not support either of these maps and so I don't want my comments here to be confused in any way with support of either of these versions. That said, I personally believe and respectfully say this that it would have been in order for the Council to consider these maps at our meeting on December 5th. I do think as well that under applicable statutes, regardless of the motion to send this to the independent mapping specialist that it would be in order again for any Councillor based on comments received at the public hearing tonight to propose further amendment to really any of the Council ballot initiatives at our meeting next week. And if Councillors are presumably intent on presenting a motion to amend on that ground, I think it would be important for us to have an independent analysis and numbers to support that. I don't think that we should be going at this in the blind. So I will be supporting this motion to send these maps for the purposes of analysis. I will not support these maps next week, but if Councillors intend on again making amendments next week, I think it will be important to have that information in hand. I will say that I will vote in favor of this reluctantly not only because I don't support the maps but because I know that there's been significant time already put into this by city staff. I know that this is staff that their job responsibilities, in my opinion, don't really involve the redistricting process. That staff has gotten involved with this because they are the city's mapping experts. They're not necessarily the city's redistricting experts although they've done a very laudable job in doing so. So I'm reluctant to do this because I know that they have other priorities and responsibilities at hand and we're not providing them much time to turn this around. That said, I will support this and if we get the information in hand, I think it will be important to are giving us a fair shake next Monday. The only other thing I would add is I agree with Councillor Barlow whereas I don't support these maps, I would be willing to consider tweaks to the map that we approved on December 5th. I've said along to a number of colleagues here that in particular I would be open to the Maple King neighborhood which is currently split between wards three and five being placed entirely within wards three. I am completely open to tweaks along those lines. I'll support these maps but happy to continue those discussions between now and next Monday. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Travers. We'll go to Councillor McGee and then if there's any other Councillors who wish to speak, you'll let me know. Councillor McGee. Thank you, President Powell. I'll be brief. I was one of the folks that was supportive of versions, different versions of the maps that were proposed tonight at the December 5th meeting. I have heard from constituents here tonight who are pretty adamantly opposed to the map that we passed on December 5th. I heard from constituents at our MPA meeting last week who planned to vote against the map that we approved on December 5th. And I think as long as we have an opportunity to consider changes to the map that more of our constituents can get behind, we should not pass up that opportunity. So I would like for those maps to be considered and look forward to discussing them in the week ahead. Thanks, Councillor McGee. Councillor Hightower, I see you and then we'll go to Councillor Carpenter. Right, thank you. I also can't say that I'm thrilled to be looking at maps again, but I think I know that I and several constituents of mine will be voting no and I think it would be even worse to look at this again in a couple of months. So I'd rather we'd be doing it now. If I could first just ask a clarifying question of Councillor Shannon, which is just that I didn't catch which version she said she could support versus couldn't, I think it might be the opposite of anything, but that's fine. I could support V-27, the one that keeps University Terrace in Ward six. Okay, thank you. So I support this. Moving to the map making group, I also support some version of tweaking the maps. Again, I do think that folks said that Ward one complained a lot, but of course very close to the end of the process we did do of gutting of Ward one, which didn't have a lot to do with needing to downsize Ward one so much as folks wanting Ward one to grab more of the on-campus student population. I'm not sure where Barbara got her data. The only numbers I've actually seen of off-campus students just to speak to that comment has Ward one as having the most students. She did say that it's downhill of North Prospect Street, but that is Ward one does bleed into obviously the old North end, but downhill of North Prospect Street is Ward one. And yeah, the only thing I've seen that has actual numbers on it has Ward one of the most off-campus students, and of course was a significant portion of on-campus students, and then also with a significant portion of the city's locked building communities, I think makes for a general difficult atmosphere in Ward one, but I do also think we wanna fix the Ward eight problem in any way that we can, whether that's eliminating it or adjusting it. I would also be supportive of tweaks to the current map. That wouldn't be my first option. I do feel like Ward eight, but I do think that there were versions of this that maybe gave Ward one just a little bit less of across the main street so that we could keep Brooks Ave, which was of course a big goal because we are splitting that hill section. The current map is not a continuous, it's not keeping that neighborhood together. And again, it's to give Ward one a section that it doesn't currently have. So I think dividing that redstone campus a little bit differently and also to keep the King Maple neighborhood, kind of making a whole like clock tick to keep the King Maple neighborhood together. I think right now I can't support this map because it does none of the things that I think were important to us at the beginning of this process, which was keeping some key neighborhoods together, getting rid of Ward eight, Jerry Mandarin as it currently is, getting rid of the districts. I guess the only thing it does do is keep the old North end and the North end separate. So I guess we made one, we did one goal. But so I would at least, and I don't have them ready proposed because I wasn't ready for that to be an option to see tweaks that get us closer to meeting more of the goals. But yeah, I would like to see us create a map that at least keeps some of the key goals we set out. Otherwise, I at least as a voter will not be able to support this. Thank you. Thank you very much, Councilor Hightower. We'll go to Councilor Carpenter. We'll go to Councilor Carpenter first. Go ahead. Thanks. It's more of an opening question. I am, as I said at the last thing, I think the map we voted on was a fair map. It's not perfect. And I went into the hearing process today, understanding that we would get input and then we could quote tweak it as opposed to looking at a whole new map, which is a fairly, more than tweaks. So my question is, if there are tweaks to be made, for example, moving Bob and Milne King, how does that happen? I mean, we're asking to consider one or two whole new maps, but how would we go about proposing, say looking at King and Maple Street? I mean, somebody could answer that for me. That's a good question. Not really sure what the best way to do that is. I know that that is certainly on the minds of others as well. Trini Pellerin, do you have any suggestions? And then we'll go to others just for one second. I mean, I think that the one possibility is that the council could try to hold a special meeting between the 23rd and the end of the month to create another opportunity for motion, vote and consideration of additional maps. Before Councillor Shannon or Councillor Bergman answer the question, is there anything else that you wanted to add as well? No, I just, I mean, I've heard a few, a lot, comments that neighborhood and University of Tarris, and I'm open to, because I consider those sort of tweaks, but I don't know how to get that into the conversation. Okay, so that's all I'm asking. Thank you. So we'll go to Councillor Bergman and then Councillor Shannon, if you have a response to that. So to answer that question, I would say that all changes have to come from public hearing comments. We're having a public hearing on the 23rd. So if there are tweaks to be made, then they should be raised at the public hearing on the 23rd. You have to have at least two. So when Attorney Pellerin says that we could have another one, that's a possibility. Just like having a special meeting after the 23rd, but before the 31st to be able to address any changes that we would make on the meets and bounds, if we're going to make any changes, then in order to be practical, we have got to either have the meets and bounds done on the 23rd for the 23rd or we need to have a special meeting. And since I asked for the floor before I was answering this, I would move to simplify our life in some fashion by amending my motion to delete the request for version 26. So it's only one version as was asked for by Counselor Shannon and hope since I think we're doing friendlies that the seconder would be also amenable to that. And yes, on this motion, I think we've talked and I'm not sure where I am on the maps and on actual tweaks, but I do think that we got to give ourselves a shot at doing the right thing. And so I hope that y'all will support this amended motion. I thought I saw the seconders agree by hand, so there you go. Okay, so what we have right now is a motion to amend the motion. That is yes, we do allow friendly amendments and the seconder has agreed to that as well. So the motion is now only limited to eight wards V27. And we'll go to Counselor Shannon. I don't know if you had anything further that you wanted to add in response to Counselor Carpenter's question. I think that your advice in the beginning actually that you sent us by email is good and correct, President Paul, that we need to ask at this meeting for, and we need to agree by majority what we're gonna map. Excuse me. Take your time. And we're asking a lot of staff, so I wanna be cognizant of that and work towards something that may have a majority to move forward. So I appreciate the action of limiting this to just one map because it's just one map. I will support this. I don't know if there was support for the map that Barbara Hedrick had presented. If there was support for that, that's a very different kind of map. So it's a little bit like between the V26 and V27. I know that there's an issue that I can only support one of those. I wouldn't say that with the Hedrick map. So I would not be opposed to moving that if there was other interest in that. But for the moment, I think my only interest is in the V27 map. And like Councillor Bergman, I'm not committed to this map, but I think it's worth further investigation. Thank you. Thanks very much. I don't know, Attorney Pellerin, you can correct me if I'm wrong, to answer also to just add to Councillor Carpenter's request or question. The issue of the Maple King neighborhood has come up tonight in public forum. So I don't know that we're not on that right now, but since you have mentioned it, if you so chose to bring forward a motion if you need a little bit of time, since it obviously does not fit into the category of the motion that I had given the council before, I don't think that that is out of order. Would you agree with that, Attorney Pett? Yes? Okay, so we won't do that right now, but just as an addendum to your question, Councillor Carpenter. Are there other councillors who wish to speak to the motion before us to refer version 27 to the independent mapping specialist for review and analysis? Just a point of information? Yes. Are we voting on the underlying motion as friendly amended, or are we voting on the amendment? No, well, the amendment was friendly. Okay. So that is the motion. Okay, thank you. So the motion is to refer version eight wards v-27 to the independent mapping specialist for review and analysis with a report back to the council from the specialist on or before our January 23rd meeting. If there are no other comments, we'll go to a vote on that. All those in favor of the motion is made by Councillor Bergman and seconded by Councillor McGee. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. No. Okay, so the no's are councillors Carpenter, Barlow, and Jang. That motion passes. Are there any other comments from the council regarding the public hearing and comments that we have heard in the public hearing? Councillor Carpenter. I think I'd like to move that we look at the version that we adopted and see the ramification of perhaps rejoining the Maple King neighborhood. Okay, so the motion. I'm not sure if I'm the right way to. Right. So the motion could be to refer the map that is, there's a name to it. I believe it's, I don't know. December one version. One three. Two, I think. One point three. One point three. To the independent mapping specialist for review and analysis and a report back to the council regarding the, regarding joining the Maple King neighborhood into one ward. And I'm open to any other wording that my colleague wants to hand me. Yeah, well, I don't know if that's the best way to word that. Do you want to, do you want to, two minutes to? Well, I think it's clear what the ask is. So I don't know that there's anything else that truly needs to be added to make it official or formal. Okay. All right, so motion, which we will work out all the fine, fine details made by Councilor Carpenter. Is there a second to her motion? Motion made, the seconded by Councilor Travers. Is there any Councilor, I'm sorry, excuse me. Do you want the floor back Councilor? Okay. So is there any Councilor who wishes to speak to the motion on the floor? Oh, yes, Councilor Hightower, please go ahead. This is just a proposal. I don't, if I will only do it if the two Councillors who made and second it, but I do wonder, I think it would make Ward 1 constituents feel a lot better if Ward 1 wasn't cut by Brooks Ave. So I wonder if a secondary, like as we're shifting things if Ward 1 can get Brooks Ave back, I don't know if that's possible. But if that could be a secondary goal for the map that doesn't need to be achieved, but that could at least be looked into. Would that be amenable to the maker and the seconder? It would be to me. Okay. So we will add that as well. Is there any other, thank you, thanks Councilor Hightower. Is there any other Councilor who wishes to speak to the motion before us? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion is made by Councilor Carpenter with the amendment as suggested by Councilor Hightower, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes unanimously. Are there any other comments that wish, Councilor's wish to make with regard to any of the, any of the items actually on our agenda. Councilor Shannon. I have a question about just, I know we've seen some feedback from staff that they're not gonna be able to, they have other things in the queue and they're not gonna be able to get to this by our normal timeline for warning meetings. So how does that impact, what's a realistic date for our staff to be able to do this? And if we don't have it until the day of our next meeting, how does that affect warning and actions that we should consider? And should we consider scheduling another meeting for that reason? So that's a good question. As you all have noticed, Megan Tuttle is not here this evening. And that's because there is a meeting going on with not one, not two, not three, but four commissions who are all meeting together this evening. On Thursday, the Director of Planning has another very significant meeting as well. And what Megan has told me is that she will do her best. And I appreciate the fact that we're, I'm sure she will appreciate the fact that we are limiting the motion on V27 to only one map. She will do her best to try to get us what we are looking for by Friday. It will not be ready when we post the agenda online on Thursday, although I'm sure that she will make every effort to do so. But my understanding is it will be ready for Friday. If that changes, then we will certainly, certainly everybody will know. I think that's about the best that we can do given the fact that it's already Tuesday. Is that, is that your understanding as well, Attorney Pellerin? As far as I understand, and again, I don't wanna speak for Director Tuttle, but I did have a conversation with her this afternoon regarding the possibility of a request such as this. And I think President Paul has reflected correctly what she indicated. Are there any other comments on any of the charter changes that we will be sending to the voters? Was it all? Yes. I realized the two valid items going by petition, we as a council can't change. Offline I was talking to Attorney Pellerin about some questions I have in terms of ramifications. So I sort of, a more public request that we get some more analysis, particularly on the citizen referendum item. For instance, how does that interact with state law on zoning ordinances? How do you undo an ordinance that might have been adopted to ballot? And I understand they're working on it, but I'm just sort of putting that out there publicly that I think it'll be important to have that analysis. I appreciate your letting us all know that you have done that. There are as well other counselors who have asked a number of questions, perhaps the same questions or a similar. So I know that this is all coming very quickly and both acting attorney Sturdevant and assistant attorney Pellerin are on the job with getting us those answers. I just want to clarify something I said, which is my understanding that we as a council actually cannot change the language. Okay, that's what I thought. Thank you. That is my understanding as well, though, is that your understanding attorney Pellerin? Change the language of the petitioner's charter change proposal. Yeah, unless there was minor technicalities. Did you want to add something, Councilor Travers? Well, I suppose my question to attorney Pellerin would be, and I have questions similar to Councilor Carpenter. And I should say that I am, I actually think if you look at the petitions and probably one of the people who signed on to the Proposition Zero petition in full disclosure, because I do think that there could be some value in our adopting a charter change proposal, like that you see in other communities. That said, Burlington is different from other communities in many respects. Not only Councilor Carpenter have you raised some good questions that apply to other municipalities with respect to zoning ordinances, but Burlington, unlike a number of other communities in the city, also has a different role for our mayor. Our mayor has as veto authority as an example, and I'd be curious, attorney Pellerin, for the city attorney's office to weigh in on how the sort of ballot initiative ordinances would intersect with the mayor's veto authority as laid out in the charter, which I don't think is something that exists in Winooski, for example. I think this language is largely based off of what exists in Winooski. I don't think the mayor of Winooski has veto authority. I think that authority is solely vested in the Winooski City Council. I may be wrong about that, but in any event, this is sort of a roundabout way to get to, I do believe and would appreciate your feedback on this, attorney Pellerin, that the way the ballot initiative is written that the petitioners have said that if there are illegalities or technicalities that need to be corrected, that it would be within our authority to make those changes. So I don't know if you have any feedback on it at this point in time on that issue, or if you have identified any issues that would require change, but certainly look forward to that feedback at our meeting on the 23rd. Yes, I'd just reiterate that I appreciate we have received a number of inquiries from counselors yesterday and today, and with the office being closed yesterday, coming back into the office today to tackle some of that, we are actively working on it and there has been already analysis to a number of those thoughts and considerations. And so we will hope that by the end of the week we will have something well in advance of the next council meeting to you all. And we can follow up with the questions that were posed by individual counselors so you're aware of what's being inquired into. Thank you. I will add that I took up a fair amount of time in the city attorney's office today and am grateful, so grateful, to Attorney Pellerin and to Acting City Attorney Sturdivant for their time and wise council. That I believe will bring us to the end of our agenda. And with that I'd ask for a motion to adjourn made by Councillor Jang, seconded by Councillor Bergman. All those in favor of the motion to adjourn, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? We are adjourned at exactly nine o'clock. Thank you to the community for joining us this evening. Our next council meeting and when we will have our...