 Welcome to the Ward 4 and 7 MPA meeting. So this evening, let's go over ground rules, listen to others speaking, respect the agenda and process, share your opinion politely, and treat people respectfully. Kind of the same old operating rules. So as a formality, we always like to hand around the mic. If you could introduce yourself, just name. If you serve on a committee or a board here in Rowlington, what word you belong with. So, Chris Trombly, steering committee for the MPA, and live in Ward 7. My name is Liam Griffin, I live in Ward 7. Linda DeLaDuca, and I live in Ward 7, and I'm on the steering committee. Erin Carpenter, Ward 4 steering committee. Erin Carpenter. Granny Seguin, Ward 4. Jackie Schultz, Ward 4. Jean Rook, Ward 4. Gabby Karsh, Ward 4. Kendra Sowers, Ward 4, also school commissioner, North District. Brian Davis, Ward 1. Nicolos, with public word. Bob Goulding, with public word. Franca Palio, Ward 4. Eric Bunson, Ward 4. Paul Bushner, Ward 4. Jeanette Williams, Ward 7. Steve Hamlin, Ward 7. Martha Friedman, Ward 4. Irina Parna, Ward 4. Zachary York, Ward 4. Arnie Krieger, Ward 4. Hi, Jenna O'Donnell, Ward 4. Jeff O'Donnell, Ward 4. Peter Ireland, Ward 4. I'm so proud, our brand new bike path is flooded already, at three inches below the record. Why did we spend so much money to build something that's flooded this easily? Matt Herlberg, Ward 7. Excellent, so we get the formalities out of the way. We do like to give the opportunity for any announcements. So if anybody knows of anything going on in the community, they'd like to make a quick announcement. Raise your hand and we'll all. So we'll go on. I just wanted to let everybody know that there's going to be, Parks and Recreation is going to put out a post within the next day or two about Dortmund's season starts on May 4 with a cleanup day. And the contact information and everything will be in there if anybody's interested in volunteering. The city actually gives the volunteers free parking pass for the season, which is a nice investment. So again, well, look at your front porch forum in the next day or two. The person is going to be the new head volunteer this year, should be coming later to this meeting. He had a class tonight. His name's James Schumann. And his contact information will be in the front porch forum. For something in the community that's on May 5, and it's from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. What it is is that the Loschul mural, which is housed at OZ, will be sponsored. The people who are the friends of the mural are sponsoring the event where Hennio Lewin, who is a Holocaust survivor, will be speaking, followed by refreshments and klezmer music. So it's free. It's at Ojavizetik, which is North Prospect Avenue. So I wanted to let everybody know about positive change. It's an initiative that's going to be a press conference on Church Street Monday at 11 down by Lunarix. And it's a way of trying to amplify the benefit of people's compassion and giving. COTS is going to be the main recipient of funds. And instead of having people just handing loose change to people who are panhandling in the community, and oftentimes those funds are going for reinforcing negative things in those people's lives, we want to try and make positive change. And so COTS is the primary recipient. These are going to be available throughout the community. And they also illustrate and provide information about all of the services that we provide as a community to those who are less fortunate in the community. Food, medical care, all these different things are all listed as resources here. And I would just say on a personal note, if you do see somebody who is begging for money, I would recommend not giving to them unless you know them. I have situations where if someone I know very well, I see them every day I'm setting up my business and I've got talking with them and asked them what was going on, and he needed his birth certificate. He had his IDs stolen. So I gave him the $15 that he needed for his birth certificate and he could leave and go meet the need that he had right there. I've had people that needed to do laundry so they could go to a job interview. And I've just given them the money so they didn't have to spend four or five hours trying to come up with $10 or $15 to do their laundry. And then they could go to the job interview. So if you know somebody and there's a specific thing and you trust them, by all means, be generous. But I also know people in our community who when they are sober will tell you, when you see me asking for money and I'm high, don't give me any money because I'm struggling and I'm just going to go to a bad purpose. So bring them a hat. Get them some food if that's their need or if you know them, meet their need. Otherwise, we're trying to encourage people to positive change. And there are a bunch of those over at the table available. And you can also text a donation now through this program. So if you don't have money with you and you feel that compassion and want to meet that need, you can just pull your phone out and be able to make that donation. Thank you, Paul. All right, so the next business on the slate is an actual kind of an annual event. We have to reelect the steering committee. And so it's interesting that the injury bug or not the injury, the sickness bug has fallen over much of the steering committee. So the way we'd like to propose this is two ways. First, we're going to present the existing steering committee members and we're going to propose them as a slate for your approval. The opportunity to say yay or nay. And then if there's anybody in the room that would like to nominate somebody to join the board, we currently have four vacancies in ward four and three in ward seven. So it's a great opportunity if you miss this opportunity to get on, if there's a vacancy later on, it usually is, you can join on later. So I would like to formally present for your consideration Jim Hallway, Jeff Clark, Alex Farrell, Eric Corbman and David Driscoll for ward four. So ward four only residents, if you could indicate aye if you support or nay. All in favor? No, voice of voice is fine. Oh yes, absolutely. So ward four, I think only Eric is here this evening for ward four. Woo, I know Jim, Jeff, Alex and David are all in dispose this evening. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Excellent. Ward seven, Linda Deladuca, myself, James Loop, Matt Hobert, Jeff Comstock and Ryan Frank. So Linda and I are representing ward seven this evening. Oh and Matt, I'm sorry. So ward seven members, all in favor, say aye. Any opposed? Excellent, the ayes have it. So at this time we'd like to open up the floor to nominations for any new members. I'd like to nominate Jenna O'Donnell on ward four. She's a new resident here in the New North End and I've known her through her day job where she works for Hunger Free Vermont. It does some really good work in coordinating groups around the state when fighting the issue of hunger and we've attended a lot of meetings. She's run at the Hunger Council and I would heartily endorse her for this position. Thank you, Eric. So hi, Jenna O'Donnell, ward four. My husband and I moved here last year for our first house and like Eric said, I'm newer to the community but also like you said, thank you for the intro. I coordinate over 40 community meetings throughout the course of the year so I'm not coming with any intent agenda but more a lot of the skills of how do you set up agendas and meetings and hopefully try to help facilitate. So I'd love to get involved in the community. Ward four members, all in favor, say aye. Any opposed? Ayes have it, welcome, Mr. Hartnett. Thank you. I'd like to nominate Erica Bundy Redick. She's not here tonight but many of you might know Erica Rand, put her name in for city council in the North District seat and then she withdrew because of time restraints and just moving back to the neighborhood. She runs her own business but wanted to stay involved so she wanted me to put her name up. I think it would be great, always great to have a strong, particularly woman's voice on the steering committee, keep some of these guys in line. She'll do a great job and I think it's great that we have new people that are wanting to get on the steering committee and new people that are just moving in to our neighborhoods that wanna participate, it's incredible. And I know just a few minutes ago when we nominated the ward four, particularly there were some ones that are missing, Alex Ferrell just walked in. Well let me just say this, they have so many commitments and they do so much in our neighborhoods and they do so many positive things and difficult for them to be here and on every single one that we have but it's not because they don't put the effort and time in, each and every one, four and seven. The steering committee in the new North End is a very strong committee, well four and seven, we ought to be proud of them and so I wanna thank them also for all the work that they've done but and by saying I'll put Erica's name up unfortunately she couldn't be with us tonight, thanks. Very good, so all in favor, ward four? Ward four. So all in favor of adding Erica to the steering committee for ward four. Any opposed? Excellent, you guys have it. I've got another nomination to add here, I'd like to nominate Eric Monson. Eric do you wanna do your own intro, do you want me to? All right. Let's see, so Eric, early new to ward four? Four and a half years. Four and a half years, so Eric was a professor of mine over at UBM, his background's engineering but he's recently started teaching a little bit more in entrepreneurship, maybe more in your engineering background, what? All right, oh this is loud. I generally work without microphones at the university. At the one hand, there's two sides to my life, one I'm a avid dog owner, you might know Willy Wonka, our chocolate lab. We lived up on 92 Curtis Avenue for the past four and a half years now and I plan to stay there for at least the next 15 until I go into retirement, so it's time for me to get into all the local politics. As Alex has mentioned, he was one of my more successful students from the past and at the University of Vermont, I teach entrepreneurship and help people build their own businesses. And one of the things I'd love to see up here in the new November 10th is their own farmers market. But one step at a time, first step to get on the board and get involved with politics. So hopefully you'll support me. Thank you and welcome. All right, so ward four? All right, so a lot of ward four tonight. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Anonymous, this is fantastic. Local politics. All right, so any other open nominations for steering committee? You can nominate yourself. All right, we'll close that. If there's a change of heart or you think you know somebody who might be interested, we do have vacancies and we would welcome any new voices who I think they wanna contribute. So we're gonna move right on to DPW and they've got a presentation for us. We have a little slack time, so I think we're running a little over, but I think we can definitely make up that time for ya. I'll turn it over. Thanks a lot. If it's okay, I'm gonna turn Sports Center off and put the presentation back on. I'm happy to turn it back afterward. So while this warms up, I'll get started just to make sure we don't lose too much time here. My name is Rob Goulding. I'm the public information manager at Burlington Department of Public Works. I'm here with two of my colleagues, Nicole Loesch, our senior planner. Brian Davis, senior planner from the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. They're gonna take an opportunity after I speak to talk about a couple foreign transportation items that we wanted to update you on. So we were interested in coming tonight. We wanted to come talk to you, give you a preview of our upcoming and really ongoing construction season as it already has started. I know we were here last month, a couple of different folks, our director and a couple of engineers to talk about the crosswalk projects. We wanted to take this opportunity to kind of broaden out what's up for the construction season in your neck of the woods for the coming months. First, I always share this resource at the end. I just wanna share it up front. It's the Burlington Construction Portal, burlingtonbt.gov, backslash construction. It is a one-stop shop to learn about all the projects that are planned for this year that have been completed since the bond votes in 2016 and really anything in the pipeline that we know with a degree of certainty that's upcoming. A variety of maps and lists for you to kind of take a look. We are always happy to answer questions if there's anything on there where you want some more kind of specific details. Just to zoom out really quickly since the passage of the bonds in 2016 that funded the Sustainable Infrastructure Plan, the kind of cities plan to reinvest in our core infrastructure. I wanna share with you some of the overall city-wide progress we've made as a demonstration of implementation of some really significant bond votes. Fortunately, we are a little cut off here. That top line is paving. We're essentially doubling the normal paving. Oh, okay. Sorry about that. So paving, we're at about 12 and a half miles over the last two years, effectively doubling the annual average of paving that we would normally hit. Sidewalk reconstruction, we're almost at triple the amount we normally would hit. Water main relining and replacement. We're essentially pulling out 75-year-old, 100-year-old pipes out of the ground. This is really the first time that a comprehensive effort has been launched to replace or reline water mains across the city. Really important, obviously, for public health and public safety as these pipes often kind of have reduced fire flows or increasing fire flows while we're also providing better structural integrity for the pipes. That's one positive measure we want to share, but we do want to put this in context and step back for a moment and share. We do have 130 miles of sidewalks, 95 miles of roads, 110 miles of water mains, and we get about 2,500 C-click fix or customer service requests a year. So while there is ongoing year-round capital planning to determine how to invest our resources and your dollars wisely, we're also trying to balance that with taking care of some of the important reactive work that we need to maintain up to proper city standards. We had an original paving list that we were presenting to the city council, which you can kind of see on the left. It does have Curtis Ave and Ethan Allen Parkway on that list. Midway towards the end of the winter, we saw that the roads were really deteriorating much more rapidly than we had anticipated. We kind of saw this for about two or three years now. So what we did was pivot toward the end of the season, towards the end of the winter season, add about 12 segments of streets and see James Ave and Shore Road are on there. There's obviously been significant deterioration on those roads. So segments of those two streets are also on the paving list. One thing we are aware of is this is not just the Burlington problem, it is a regional problem and it's a national problem. Freeze thaws have been increasing. And I think anecdotally we've noticed this certainly over the last two or three years we get these early freezes and thaws, throughout the winter. I think traditionally, we've been used to kind of one big thaw in January and another thaw to end the year. We're noticing more of that. When you get freeze thaws, you generate a tremendous amount of ground movement from expansion and contraction. And that puts a lot of pressure, a lot of movement on pipes and on roadways. So we are noticing some advanced deterioration between last year and this year with the increase in paving, the increase in water main projects that we've undertaken. That's one measure to kind of get out in front of that. We've had two years of pretty successful preventative maintenance where we crack-sealed roads, invested about $100,000 in preventative maintenance on sidewalks. But of course, as we pointed out, there's a lot of work to do and it does not end. But it's important to keep note of this. On the left here, you can see the last two years of investments in the New North End. On the right here is a quick map of what we have planned for this coming year. We'll quickly drill down into some of those details. Here's a quick map of the original paving list and the witcher deterioration paving list. So the full, almost the full stretch of Ethan Allen Parkway here, all of Curtis Ave and two segments on Shore Road and James Avenue. We have two water main projects. They're relining projects planned on Gezzo and Rosé Parkway. Yes, ma'am. Do you have a list of sidewalks? We do have sidewalks planned as well. Yes. I don't have specific sidewalks here. I do have a list of sidewalks. Are you happy to go over those? Or if you wanted to talk afterward, are you happy to do that? I'm happy to do it. Absolutely understood. Absolutely. Oh, absolutely. So this last question was, can I point out what I'm speaking about when we talk about these projects? And the prior question was, are we gonna talk about sidewalks? And we do have some sidewalks planned and some spot repairs planned in the New North End. So I'll run down that list as quickly as possible, but always happy to follow up afterward. If you have questions that maybe aren't addressed. So on Gezzo Avenue and on Rosé Parkway, we do have two water main relining projects planned this year. They are not as intensive as a replacement project, but we essentially will dig some pits on those streets, reline the pipes over the course of a few weeks. Work is expected to start mid-May and go for a couple of weeks. There isn't anticipated to be major traffic disruptions if you live on those streets or commute through those streets, but be mindful, there will be a project. Workers will be out about seven to five every day. Keep moving here. Last month, if you were here, you may have heard from our director and a couple of our engineers on staff who talked to you about the five North Ave crosswalk projects. They are still planned. I believe they are actually set to begin construction this week and then go on kind of throughout the summer. Some of the early construction is quick and then we have to wait for BDD lighting to be upgraded. Which point we can finalize those projects by I think right about late July. We will come in and work on finalizing that project. So I'm quickly gonna mention the sidewalks that we were just asked about. And on Rivermount Terrace, Sunset Drive, we have sidewalk segments planned, Lakewood Parkway, spot repairs on Lori Lane, spot repair down south on North Ave, Institute Road, Oak Press Drive and a spot repair on Pleasant Avenue, our sidewalks we have planned. If there are specific questions, I'm happy to talk to you afterward and we can point out on the portal, maybe some of them are on the 2020 list, some of which are already uploaded. We'll read through these three next slides. We are running wastewater plant tours on the third Thursday of every month. Always important, but I'm bringing it up specifically because we'll be at the North Plant in May. It's right up at the North Ave extension for anybody that's interested in seeing some of the infrastructure we are maintaining. Operation Clean Sweep starts tonight on the east side of North Ave and goes to the west side of North Ave tomorrow night. Please be mindful, cars should be off the street so you don't get enforced. And for more information, follow on our website, front page of the EPW site and okay, park your cars off the street. Good luck. And then finally we wanna end on one really important transportation item, which is right now there's a regional bike share that consists of about 105 bikes spread out across the region through a partnership, a regional partnership and a partnership with the universities, Champlain College and UVM. We're working through a proposal right now with our regional partners to transition this 105 or so bike network to about 200 electric bikes spread out across the region. This adds a little bit of predictability and stability to the network for folks who have differing abilities or kind of getting around the ability topography of the region. Working through this proposal right now, we think this kind of needs two important priorities of the city, which is continuing on the path and the recent legacy of building on a sustainable city and building a sustainable city and also providing alternative and equitable transportation choices. E-Bikes and the E-Bike program will have subsidies for the owned banks, qualified low-income individuals and just in general it is a rather cost effective proposal that you chose to use E-Bikes in substitute of other modes of travel. We think this is a really good approach to transition the existing bike share network to an electric bike network. With this proposal that's currently on the table being evaluated and we're really interested in hearing input, we've had a couple public forums now with our oversight, we at the city council to give this a little bit more air time, is a potential for a pilot program to bring E-Scooters to the region as well. This wouldn't tell kind of a fixed location system of E-Bikes and E-Scooters, other cities have rolled these out and a bit less of a coordinated, bit more of a random approach. We're taking a much more coordinated systematic approach, certainly evaluating E-Bikes to transition the current network and looking at E-Scooters as a very potential next step to expand transportation choice for evidence. The email address that you would normally submit. Yes. In expanding the program, do you anticipate including the new North end because right now the bike program doesn't or at least a large portion of it is not included? Yeah, absolutely. And so one quick next step, you do have a map in the back of the room if anybody wants to take an opportunity with an interest in sharing with us preferred locations for sighting hubs. You can help them here if you're willing to do that. I think that's absolutely on the table. Part of the approach here is to make sure everybody's got needle access. You have to work on that with a potential vendor that would be supplying the citizens model. You need to figure out how to find the best practices and where the needs are, but I think that's absolutely on the table. What kind of liabilities are they gonna open up regarding the city being responsible for anybody in an accident? That's a really good question. So I think the first thing to recognize is that anybody that's on the public right of way is required to follow the rules of the road. And it is a matter of all of us working together on enforcement. Public works, obviously. Works on the regulations, on operating on the right of way. This department enforces the law. But anybody on a bike, anybody in a car, anybody walking, we need to be mindful of the rules of the road. I believe as it stands, the company is essentially a liable participant here. I think people operating me is if they're operating them unlawfully or egregiously would be personally liable. I'm not aware of how the city becomes a liable for this thing. You know, an unfortunate situation would occur, but. Not likely something they wanna consider before they go down this road. Well, you are absolutely right. I mean, that is certainly being considered in our city attorney office will be a part of the process that formalizes and finalizes that approach to where to happen. So I'll just jump in. I'm Dave Hardner, former city councilman. I was on the TOOP committee that took this issue up. Councilor Tracey, Councilor Bush and myself have really pushed back here on this rollout right off the bat here. Just to adjust a couple of your concerns. And we've had quite a bit of public input at these meetings about people coming about being very skeptical on how dangerous these are. And they go 30 miles an hour and sure they've rolled them out in other states. I would encourage you guys to go do some research about the problems they've had in other states. It's not been, it hasn't been very successful. These are gonna be very controversial. And I would encourage everybody to stay engaged. I'm not gonna say we shouldn't or we shouldn't, right? That would be my own personal opinion, but I would say to stay engaged, be part of this conversation. There's no doubt that the city wants to push these things. There's no questions coming from the administration and coming from city hall. So I believe if there wasn't pushback from the two committee, you would have seen these things here in April already. That's how fast they were gonna roll these things out. I would be very cautious moving forward on these. Thanks. We did learn a lot from Councilor Harding, Councilor Tracey, and Councilor Busher. And that's part of the process that we try to let unfold that feedback. We've been to a couple of NPAs right now. We are happy to say that there are speed restrictions on the fleet. But I think scooters are gonna be maxed out at 15 miles per hour. Likes I think probably maxed out around 20 miles per hour. We have further ability to kind of restrict, add restrictions as we work through the proposal about where it may be allowed or not allowed and what the max speed limits in certain parts of the CR. We're working through that technology now and kind of that process. And there's gonna be more of a process underway before we just whip these on the street. So that was a great process we did undergo with Councilor Harding. I saw a handle. Is there any consideration of doing a health impact assessment of this to look at the pros and the cons of it? Hi everyone. My name is Brian Davis. I work for the Regional Planning Commission. And as a part of this proposal from the current vendor and working with the other partners, the bike care program, Regional Planning Commission is doing a study of the current existing system. And as a part of that, I've been in touch with the Health Department and we had a conversation about whether a health impact assessment was the appropriate tool for this. Given the process that's in place right now, we're taking a slightly different route but they are currently putting together some resources for us and other considerations as a part of that report. So we have sort of two things happening at the same time. We've got the proposal to expand the current system and change that slightly. And then we've got the Regional Planning Commission doing a study of the existing fleet and system operations and how these will align. Because we also wanna know where do people want stations? Are the current stations in the right place? Are we meeting the needs of everyone? So that's part of the reason that map is in the back there. We do wanna hear from folks tonight. Would you describe a scooter? Is it a sit-up on a stand-up? Is it a two-wheel? Yeah, it's a great question. And normally we'd have more pictures where you're struggling with the presentation as it is. Scooters are a stand-up only option. They, as I said, would be speed restricted. It would be a pilot. If we go forward, it can go down that path. Two wheels. One person is meant to travel on them. No more than that. I think they are a 350-watt motor. They are a device that can get us around a terrain like ours, but they are not, you know, they're not what we might consider like a 150cc Vespa that really should be competing with cars on the road. They're not that dramatic. They're more of an enhancement to the transportation network, a bunch like bikes can be. Helmets, you know, that is a safety decision users have to make. And as of now, we're thinking through the best practices that we would want to work through. But as of now, people get out on their bikes. They choose to or not to work with their bikes. Definitely something that we need to consider. In lieu of registrations, license plates, will there be unique identifiers to each one to at least identify a user that's misusing? Good question. I don't know if the proposal, I'll let Brian fill that one. Better work on that one. Hello again. Yes, each bike and each scooter has its own unique number, just as the current fleet has a number on it. And each user that takes a trip on it is identified. So none of that personal identifiable information will be shared, of course. But vendor would be able to identify whether someone has misused that vehicle. But is that recognizable by the public with a number on the bike, like a registration number? Yes. User0543. User, you would be able to see that I'm user0543 on it. But if I were to leave. Is the right identification on the vehicle? Yes. Yes. That's identifiable. Yes. Cool. Am I on, explain what the big white ballerds are on the corners of the white ballerds. The white ballerds, yeah, absolutely. Those are part of our transportation system. They're a quick build project that we're stood up in kind of in support of people who have expressed an interest in safer walking conditions and safer biking conditions. It's an opportunity. It's a great question. You're asking how does that allow that? In a lot of cases, they've created shorter crossing distances. They've created different turning movements that push vehicles away from pedestrians. We've got a really successful one. At the five corners intersection, that's transitioning to our first quick build to a fully constructed quick build that maybe offered in a coalition. I don't even say that. But essentially what it does is try to look at, study the best way to build these things in the future as permanent, potential permanent infrastructure. Ballerds are not permanent. They're kind of a flexible material we can use, implement quickly, adjust quickly the feedback and determine was that the right design, how to enhance the design, or perhaps remove the design. I just see a show of hands who would like to, that's one question we're about to wrap up on this segment. I have one in the back, anybody else? One, two. We can get them and we just have to be brief. So my understanding of the scooters and the bikes is they're supposed to be last mile lengths. So you get off the bus, you need to get to your office, you need to get down to the waterfront, up the hill to the UVM or something. You can get one of these. So two questions. One, are they geolocked? And two, to meet the needs of people that do want to actually take something, they're in town and they want to go up the bike path or they want to go to South Burlington or they want to go more long range, not just last mile. Are we trying to coordinate this program with the commercial enterprises like Ski Rack and I mean we have local motion, the places that try and meet that longer range need through like rental. Have we considered how we can coordinate this to allow people to actually hand off something that would meet their need? It's an important question. I know I have to be quick. Let me just say that absolutely part of the implementation of this is to encourage them to be used first mile, last mile and allow people alternative equitable ways to get to work, to home quickly around the region for their kind of daily first mile, last mile trips. We are encouraging a different pricing model to ensure that we're supporting, which is a priority of our supporting local businesses to ensure that this competition is reduced if there were to be competition between the two. You do want to make sure this fleet is part of that first mile, last mile approach and allow local bike shops to continue to successfully rent folks trying to take longer trips. Are they geolocked so that people can't save them longer? Geofencing, geolocking to your point, an ability to kind of restrict where these things go is a technology that is accessible to us and we have to work through, I think, as a department and as a city, where does geofencing take place? And that's part of the process we're working through right now with you, which you do want to hear that from back. Next slide. So they would be allowed on the bike path like they are now? Right now, e-bikes would be allowed on the bike path. That's really frightening when you're walking on the bike path we've had. Well, what I would say is, with the vendor we're looking at right now, there is a speed restriction, there's the ability for further speed restriction as we work through this. I do hear your concern, thank you. Just wanted to ask, what's the construction schedule for the fireproof stairs in the first place? Don't know, I can check in with our folks at Parks to see if they have a better timeline and I'd be happy to give you my card. I think so, yeah. So we'll be happy to connect you to it. All right, and the last question. I just wanted to seek up, because I am an e-bike user, so I just feel like there's a lot of negativity and I just want to tell you guys, I can do this out Burlington in only fair weather. But I am often routinely passed by regular bikers because you can, it's pedal assist, it's totally quiet and you can only go max of 20. I'm always passed. I think it is about rules of the road. So I would hope that part of this plan is to tell everybody, pedestrians, bikers, people with strollers and kids, what the rules of the bike path are because I think it's dangerous for everybody on any type of, you know, however they're using it. So it's not an e-bike problem, it's a rules problem. Thank you, enforcement, rules of the road are important. All right, any last thoughts from DPW before we turn it over to the next segment? I just have a quick plug. Part of this presentation was gonna include an update on the Wanooski Avenue transportation study that we're doing. On the back table are some big sheets. I saw some people pick them up, they're 11 by 17, with the first initial draft concepts. We went public outreach in the fall. The project team did some work to develop a host of alternatives over the winter months and we're doing this road show to present these initial concepts and get feedback from people on specific elements of those, what you like, what you do, what you like or don't like, what you think would work or not. My name, contact info is on the top of those sheets. So if you have any questions, I'm happy to sit down and walk through people and talk through that. Yes, sir? I think it needs to be universal teaching. You know, in section number one of these meetings, I can't understand except the color you want to call. Understood, we had four more time, we do what we could in the 20 minutes, but I'm happy to sit with you and be with you separately. And you guys are great for coming back. Happy to come back. You have a lot of time and come back. Happy to. That's very good. You know how to fill up. I'm good at filling up more. Thank you very much. All right, we'll turn it over to the mayor for kind of a presentation. We'll open up for some questions and answers when we walk around the room tonight. So yeah, turn it over. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. It's working. Thank you. Thanks to see you all. Give me back. I think the last time I was here was in March. Every right, maybe just before town meeting day vote and one of the things I thought I'd hit on that got voted on that day was a possible municipal property tax increase in the upcoming year, FY20. Something that happened after election day that is helpful to our finances is we, after years of effort, were able to complete the Burlington Telecom transaction such that the city has seen $7 million flow to the city. So we are gonna have a discussion over the next year about what's gonna happen with the full total of that money. But what I am gonna propose in my budget when, here we go, I think I got it now. The budget that I'm gonna give the city council the next few weeks here before they approve it in June will not have that tax increase even though it was approved by somewhat, as I think about 60, 40 vote. We said at the time we would not use the full taxing authority if we didn't need it. And I am proposing that we use about $600,000 of this $7 million so that we don't need to implement that tax increase in the coming year. Another thing that I'm gonna propose for about $1.2 million out of that new revenues to the city is that we upgrade our old, valuable, that aging fleet of sidewalk plows. So we have, I believe, 11 plows and most of them are over a decade old and they are in rough shape. They get a lot of wear and they're complex. Machines that are expensive and that break down a lot. In this past winter we really saw that happening. One of the reasons we had slower responses to clearing sidewalks than we'd like at times and that I know impacted this part of the city is because some of the older plows were actually in the shop during about 50% of the time during those storms. They were just out of commission, we'd have to go out and I think Rob, we had sometimes had to put them, pull them back to the shop and work on them and there's a frustrating situation for everybody. So over the next couple years, with about $1.2 million, we're gonna be able to fully bring on eight new plows and largely replace the fleet. Kind of an interesting related thing that goes to the city's response and provide provision of services in this part of the town that I think is exciting and I saw Cindy White, our Parks and Rec Director walk in a moment ago. I see her husband, Keith, this year and she may have disappeared for a moment. A proposal that Parks is bringing forward and that there are, here's Cindy. Does anyone have that? No, no. Yeah, I believe there was a town hall a couple weeks ago about this topic, about the future of the Letty area in the years to come and one of the elements that's under planning and that is a pretty exciting change that will go to the city's ability to provide services in a number of areas is the replacement of the kind of maintenance shed that we have there with a larger and a better outfitted facility as well as some fuel storage and refueling capacity there that will mean that some of those sidewalk plows, right now it's kind of amazing, those sidewalk plows that don't drive that fast when they need to be replenished with fuel or with salt if they're out there salting the sidewalks, they need to drive all the way back down to Pine Street to be serviced. Same thing goes for our fire vehicles and similarly for our plow trucks. When this facility is built, and I think we're working out a lot of details, I don't think we have a delivery date yet established, but this will give us additional capacity right out here in Letty that during those storm events or during the refueling of fire trucks means that we are out of service for less time and the responses can be improved out here. On that theme, another thing that's happened in the coming months I think really is exciting for the new North End is the fact that we just negotiated a new contract with our firefighters. We actually negotiated all four of our public employee contracts and for the second time in a row, thankfully we were able to come to settlements with, come to agreements with all four contracts without going to arbitration. We don't allow municipal employees to strike. It's an agreement, they won't strike, but still going to arbitration is a disruptive process leads to a lot of ill will and a lot of extra expense hashing out these contracts. For the second bargaining round, the really the two bargaining rounds I've been responsible for, I'm proud to say we were able to come to an agreement on all four contracts without resorting to arbitration and these weren't just sort of caretaker contracts, they took on a number of big issues. We've gotten with our public employees, we are making progress with reforming our pensions, with sharing the healthcare costs between the city and employees. We've taken on a number of other big operational issues. One of them in the firefighting contract is that we have an agreement after years of kind of debate about this and rising requests for this. The city will get to decide whether it wants to add a third ambulance this upcoming next town meeting day. So there'll be a lot more about this in the months to come, but it would be a third ambulance that would be added in the station out here if it's approved by the voters. And so that's, you know, something else that is where the New North that has been very much in the discussions recently. And then a final thing and then I'll open up the questions is just a volunteer opportunity that's coming up this weekend and the Stratford community. We are having the first of several community tree planting events this year. And this is kind of an exciting initiative from our silpreen new city arborist, Vijay Komai, who basically has come up with a series of things to do differently this year, innovative ideas that will mean, for I believe approximately the same budget, Cindy, right? Like we are going to be able to, instead of planting about 100 new street trees in a year, we're going to be able to increase that to we're protecting 350 new trees this year. And the way we're going to do it is in part through volunteer labor and through focusing the new tree planting efforts in kind of contiguous areas. So we can have a community event, get out there and do this together and hit and not be running all over the city to plant these trees. It can be, it will be in a focused area. And the other thing, and this is kind of cool, is in the past when we have planted these street trees, we planted that the whole kind of root ball with the tree has been planted at the same time. And you need specialized equipment for that. The trees can be up to 250 pounds. And it's a difficult thing to do is with volunteer labor require special equipment. There's another way to do it that VJ is proposing and they were excited to see how it works, which is called, I think it's called a dry root method or a bare root method, bare root method. And basically you don't have that root ball, you have to be kind of coordinated the time from which you take the tree out of the ground and when you put it back in has to be fairly focused period of time. But we can do that if we plant it right. And so in any case, if you want to be part of this, the first of these amounts is happening this Saturday in the Strathmore area. The reason that we're going there with this one is that has a very high concentration of ash trees. And we are anticipating the ash borer arriving in Burlington and having an impact on what amounts to about 10% of our tree canopy in the years to come. And so we want to, in those areas where we know are likely to be impacted in the years ahead, we want to get in and start planting new trees and anticipate that. So that's, you want to be a part of that? Go to the Parks Rec and Waterfront Facebook page or website and there's additional information there. Great. Just see a hands of wealth, I want to ask a question. This question is from online and it's, are the sidewalk plows also used to plow the bike lanes and the bike paths? So we do maintain the bike path in the winter now. Our policy has been as we've replaced, rebuilt the bike path and widened it that we have been clearing either all of it or in some cases we, at least for some time, leave snow on part of it and clear the other side of it. And I believe the sidewalk plows are used for that, though I'm not sure, we use an ATV vehicle for that or we use one of the trucks. Okay, all right, so that's a wide enough section we bring a truck out on one of the smaller trucks out there. The protected bike lane area maybe is what the question is focused on on Union Street, yeah. And frankly, there on the protected bike lane, we have tried a number of different things and there's been a real struggle keeping those well maintained in the winter and something we're still figuring out what the right way to do it is. Two days before you were re-elected, you ran into a Kurt Rider. I remember, I remember well and you were unhappy with me. You were still waiting to hear from you or your office or somebody in city hall regarding what you're gonna do about Cottage Grove. So, remind me that the Cottage Grove issue, you'd like to see a change in the circulation pattern there. It was at that end street, it opened up two ways to traffic. People were coming through our neighborhood to get over to Star Farm Road, to get to Curtis Avenue, to get to Pleasant Avenue and we have no sidewalk. And the street is five feet an hour than it is on Gracie Drive and they got a sidewalk. So, it would cost the city a great deal to put a sidewalk in there and I'm well aware of that. Just make it a dead end street again. Rob, we do owe this gentleman a response on that and I'm not sure we're gonna be able to satisfy you, sir, but I don't like that we have never given you an official response to that, we should do that. Rob from DPW will help me make sure we get that done. As far as adding sidewalks, we do continue to add sidewalks when we can. We have made, we have them in our capital plan to continue to incrementally add new sidewalks on the, I think there's about 12 miles or so of streets that don't have sidewalks on either side. Is it Rob, something like that? And those are the priority streets and the thing is they often end up being quite expensive projects and quite disruptive projects that there is limit sometimes the neighborhood doesn't support them because, you know, see taking back it's right away can have an impact on private properties and so we do those as federal funding becomes available for them. We reserve the rest of our sidewalk budget for the replacement of existing sidewalks, which is something we've lagged badly behind historically and we're doing better on now. We're up to about three miles of replacement sidewalk a year, maybe you just heard it before I came on as opposed to the one historically and that's a priority. Go ahead. Out of that seven million, maybe you could split the little money for the three and four and we have, so we can have more than one street. Last year, we needed to have a white, last year, last week we had weeds and grass growing in the suburbs. There was so much self-reduce. We need one student speaking, I know that. If it's not going on the problem. All right, okay. Right, the question was, yes, more street sweeping. Which, I have to tell you is the second time today I've heard that request, there's out here the New North End Bagel Cafe for breakfast from eight to nine. I'm there just about every week and invite everyone here and online to come there to continue this conversation. And that topic came up this morning. And I think it's a fair point and I think it's something we are kind of reviewing those policies from a couple of perspectives in that one of the things that may be the most cost-effective way that we can, I think a lot of people have heard about the additional pressure we're getting from the state and federal government and from you properly to better protect Lake Champlain from stormwater runoff and from phosphorus going out into the lake. Obviously that's a big complicated issue and the city's contribution to that is a very small part of the overall problem but we still are going to be required to do substantially better. One of the most cost-effective ways to do that may well be and we're analyzing it right now more frequent street sweeping and more frequent cleaning of the catch basins from sediment. So that's one reason we're looking at it more and it's actually this morning, I know it was from the bike advocacy community wanting to see more frequent street sweeping because of the impact of that on the bike lanes or the areas that we paint for bikes. That's a powerful movement so I'm sure something's gonna get done. So I do think, as I and Rob, do I have this right? We have one organized clean sweep where we require people to move their cars. That doesn't mean that's the only time we're street sweeping the whole year, right? We have one street sweeper that we have. We deploy, we have two that we deploy. Outside of that, we do a fair amount of street sweeping as well so we don't inconvenience people by making them move except during that time. Is that? Doing well. So I guess I opened Pandora's box before asking about the bikes. The reason I'm really excited about the bike program is because I used to drive a Prius and now I drive a truck and I like it because I get to do truck things with it. But it's not very efficient and environmentally friendly. And so the thing with bikes is I can't afford a pedalysis bike because they cost out $2,000 to start now. So I am really excited about the pilot project and it is a pilot project so that I can try it out and see if it works for me. And I'm curious how this stuff tails into your 2030 net zero city plan. I imagine BED might subsidize some interest free loans so that I can afford a bike like that or something like that. But what I'm really curious about is how are we gonna be net zero in 2030? That's a really ambitious goal. Excellent. So a couple layers of questions there. I mean, first of all, for anyone here at home who is interested in owning an e-bike, BED does, first of all, local motion has some programs you can try it out and you can, I think you can borrow one for a week and understand whether it's something that makes sense for you and fits into your life. And then BED has a, these aren't expensive machines. I thought I'd heard there's some as, down in like the, what's that? The incentive's $200. Yeah, the incentive's $200 and I think the cheapest one might be $1,200. I thought that's where they started. So $200 incentive is, you know, not, you know, it's a significant part of the overall cost but it's still yes, it's expensive. This e-share, z-bike share program should make that, you know, open up the accessibility to using those vehicles. How are we gonna get to net zero by 2030? Great question. We're actually studying that question really hard right now. We will be releasing probably in July, what we're calling a roadmap document that will lay out what we would need to do, the interventions we need to make over the next, you know, 12 years to get to that goal. They'll probably have a 20-40 scenario as well and there's gonna be a business as usual case is what they've been actually working on so far. So things are already, believe it or not, somewhat headed in the right direction in the heating, the thermal sector, which is one of the big sectors already. We are, buildings are getting more efficient and we're finding basically ways to heat and cool our buildings with substantially less fossil fuels and if we electrify, go to electric heat pumps we can accelerate that even further. The transportation is clearly the hardest part of this lift. And if we're gonna get there, I think it is going to require a combination of first of all dramatic electrification of the private automobile fleet or maybe we may be moving in this direction. I kind of think what's gonna happen. I know it still sounds sort of crazy futuristic stuff but I think it's closer than we realize these autonomous self-driving vehicles I think are only a few years away from being here in a mass way and if those can be electrified vehicles you could see a pretty dramatic shift away from gasoline cars to electric cars if we are able to power them with 100% renewables the way we are doing with our electric supply now that could make some real progress relatively quickly especially if like shared vehicles becomes the way the future unfolds. But I also think the other element of that is I don't really see us getting there without more people living in the downtown and getting around with walking and active transportation and that's where I'm thinking having good pedestrian and bike infrastructure is a big part of the question whether we can actually get to those goals. Hey, Maro, I've had a couple of people ask this week what the statuses are what and what they did going on with the mall. Great. Well, we're gonna hear on Monday at the city council meeting from the developers themselves again for the first time since January I expect them to say that they are on track with what they said back in January that they are gonna get this project going again and back on track this spring. What exact, how you define spring this was a lot of talk of early part of May being when you can expect to see construction activity happening there again. City, you know, this is the private development at this point, the kind of public parts of this public private agreement are largely complete at least until towards the back end when everything is built and the private improvements are in place and then we will, the way the transaction is set up is when they rebuild those streets build those streets to the new streets through the property when it's done and when the new tax base is in place to pay for them at that point we will take title to them and we will take on this debt supported by the future taxes from those properties to do that. But right now we're in the situation where really we're waiting for the developer for field to do what they are supposed to deliver in this and I guess I will say there's quite a bit of communication and engagement with Brookfield in this period we have weekly meetings with them the design team and the construction teams and we are encouraged and optimistic about the fact that what you would expect to be happening in those meetings if they were serious about getting this project back on track in the coming weeks what you would expect to be happening is happening in those meetings there's a lot of details being sorted out there's a lot of resources being brought to bear on the effort to get this moving forward and all that said I'll be a lot happier when I actually see the concrete being poured when the steel is being driven and I think the reality is they're out to bid right now and there's always some uncertainty about exactly how things are gonna get nailed down until the bidding comes in and contracts are signed but everything I can see is that this is a project that's getting back on track are there big zoning and building department hurdles still? no, no, all that is done there's a little confusion about this because they have not pulled their building permit yet but it is an administrative permit it is a permit they can pull as soon as they file essentially the paperwork that they need to pull that permit there's no kind of subjective discretionary appealable permitting still to be completed who else like that's a question here? are the final stages a chance? this is unusual for the New North Island on the streets sweepers why not just let us know what you're doing? it's so frustrating to see a truck come by and go around my car and leave all the mess there and I know when they were coming I'd have moved yeah, well, good point I think we are making a major effort to let people know they're coming during this annual time clean sweep in there I believe we will actually tow the vehicles if people don't move it so we certainly hope that's being communicated our policy otherwise and like I said this could change again in the future if there's a decision that we wanna pursue this definitely there are other cities that make it clear, have a much more frequent street cleaning schedule and require people to move their car as much more frequently as a result but right now our policy is just to do that once a year don't require but just offer needs that's an interesting point just sort of let people know that's an interesting point Rob maybe with our enhanced communication abilities and the outstanding Rob Goulding we can do that we do have tools this is sort of a changing the topic but something I'm proud of I think it's cool if you have questions about what kind of work Rob may have just said this but I'm gonna repeat it if anyways even if so I think it's a good thing for people to know about we have this construction portal on the DPW website that lays out in this interactive way you can kind of push buttons and you can have different layers of it if you wanna see what is the water work that's gonna happen this year you can push a button and see that if you wanna see what the sidewalk work is gonna be this upcoming season or what it was two years ago you can click boxes and see that it is a really interactive tool that is really helpful for keeping track of the tens of millions of dollars of infrastructure investment that we're in the middle of making and I encourage people to check it out if you have questions about what's going on or what we'll be going on well great thank you what's our question fight path is flooded and we're two inches lower than the record this is within years of doing this now we've gotta redo it why can't we predict this when we're building and fix it so the areas of the bike path that washed out in 2011 when we rebuilt those we did build them back substantially differently higher and with much more what's the word there kind of bent more hardened than they were previously and they can withstand water you know high water in a much greater way than previously and you can see that in various areas if you remember where those washouts were the section of the bike path that are currently underwater Sydney where I know it's high right at Perkins Pier is it actually is it in the kind of ferry area is it actually over the bike path there where is the bike path itself covered there right now that isn't a section that washed out previously so we didn't have to read we actually haven't rebuilt that recently if we do I think it's an interesting question our hope is we do get to rebuild that section frankly working with Lake Champlain transportation we want to move the bike path that's on the east side of the railroad tracks right by the wing building the hope is with the Amtrak coming that soon we will move that to the west side and when we do that I think looking at whether it's an opportunity to anticipate flooding there's an interesting question and no we're not at the design detail section for that yet but good point let's make sure we look at that if that does get rebuilt there all right I think that was a tough one to end on before an even harder question comes out I'm gonna get out of here great being with you thanks for the opportunity and see you soon thank you Murrow for coming out it's always great to have you we'll have you back soon so at this point we'd like to turn it over to the North Avenue co-op and some updates to the community, thank you first I'd like to introduce myself my name is Jay I'm here on behalf of the North Avenue co-op which is the manufacturing community on the North Avenue here here with me this evening is the board president Steve Hamlin we were here several months back to give an update since then we've done several things including removing some older structures and bringing new ones in and creating more affordable housing in addition to that we're in the process of creating three new lots we've partnered up with Habitat for Humanity to do this project so they will be starting the installation of those June of this year first two with the third one being completed by the end of next year this time in addition to that we've done some multiple interior stuff regarding infrastructure we're doing engineering at the moment our hopes are to in the next few years paying enough of the funding to do new water, new sewer, storm drains and new roads so those are the things we've been doing towards making the community more up-to-date and more appealing to the community in addition to that we've generated and created and drew some great attention and brought in some new folks into the community that may not otherwise have ever thought about being in there due to our efforts of the conversion of such a work we've done at this point so when I'm being said there's not a lot new to share with you but I'm here and open for any type of questions so the community garden is a utilized the gardens that were there prior what we do is we allow residents to use it they always talk about offering it out to the general public if there's some available plots at this point there's a garden committee and I don't recall whether or not there's any availability so they haven't made that determination yet so the way it works is yeah the residents haven't get to use the plot out there they get to grow their own vegetables and then without being said you know they can either share it offer it to their neighbors which they do in a lot of cases because they don't use it all so it's really become a nice community thing within the community for people to get together and do wonderful things farmers market so last year we had an idea and a concept to possibly host the farmers market so we worked diligently to try to promote that and get the word out through many different avenues unfortunately we haven't got a lot of feedback there has not been a lot of interest from the vendors to want to do that so at this point we're not giving up on it we still want to do it we just don't have enough people interested in doing the market so what we're going to do short term is my wife is going to set up there a couple evenings a week and offer her product just to try to draw some attention in the hopes that other people be interested in wanting to come in and do it in the hopes that eventually we can host and have that farmers market weekly like we intended to originally intended to do so where is that? so if you're familiar with the property it's the closest to the bank we've got a community garden and we've got a large green space we were going to host it right in that area it's a nice wide open area and it's invisible from Northampton some people don't know what you're talking about where the co-op is oh I apologize so Northampton co-op is pretty much located right across from Ethanow shopping Plaza so our property runs from the bank right down to Ethanow and residence so it's an 11 acre property we're housing 116 units and we will be looking at 119 by the end of the summer yes sir so it looks like what is happening June 1st I have three that's one, June 1st looks like you have a plan something happening at the co-op and what type of help you will need from the city that's one question the second question is about looks like every Wednesday now we will be having the those cars that sell food let's just deep touch on the good food truck and then I'll follow back and touch on it thank you so we have a good food truck that visits us on the second and the fourth Wednesday every month they come for an hour by 15 to 6.15 and they hand out free meals that are healthy made from scrap and this is a division of the chicken and emergency food shelf they also go to Northgate I'm not sure how often I think weekly and everybody's welcome it's not just for the co-op they set up in the same green space where we'd like to have the farmers market and like I said it's free they take donations and it's free and you can take as many dinners as you want away they post a different menu every time they come today was chicken wings with macaroni salad and strawberries and regular salad so they do have good stuff they had chicken and biscuits one time last year they had a Mexican dish once so they do have some good food and it's great for elderly people especially we have one guy that took like six dinners around and delivered them to people that couldn't get out of their house so we try and advertise it really heavily in the park but you know we haven't gotten a good response this was the first one today so they only as of the time I went they only there for an hour I went a half an hour after they got there they served 25 meals they like to serve between 50 and 100 so hopefully things continue and they come and they're coming into November so the second and fourth Wednesday every month I'd like to add to that Steve we're also open to the opportunity for our folks even if they're not residents of the co-op to come and join us during that time enjoy a meal as well so it's not just limited to the residents of the North Avenue of Co-op anybody who lives in the area is welcome to stop by and enjoy that as well so June 1st the June 1st gig is basically a community cleanup for North Avenue of Co-op we've gotten together with Councilor Hartnick in the past and others to make this happen and we're gonna do that again this year with the hopes of just bringing in a few containers and just letting the residents and the community be able to get rid of things that necessarily they wouldn't be able to do otherwise so basically we're just looking at some container donations maybe the possibility of some volunteers from the city maybe one of the city trucks maybe house some of the hazardous materials that may be around like maybe bank cans and such I can't go into the containers but then we're gonna try to bring in one metal dumpster and maybe three to four general construction dumpsters in hopes that we can just help remedy and get rid of this stuff as a community as a cleanup green up thing and we're gonna you know we're gonna separate things accordingly but yeah recycling as well and lastly looks like your board meeting has changed now and you have continued to thank Dave Hartnick because he let me know everything happened thank you thank you any other questions regarding the Co-op farmers market, et cetera when is your board meeting? the board meetings are the second Monday every month but I believe we're gonna try and move it to Tuesday this coming month so that the mayor can attend are these tied up every Monday? to the council meetings so you know I'd like to just speak on the farmers market you know if anybody knows anybody who's interested in like participating in that my contact number is located at the community we have these bulletin boards throughout the community and it's underneath maintenance manager if you I can give that to anybody now if they want it it's a 6-4 or a 5-2-5 if anybody's interested in joining that it'd be great to hear from them or have any suggestions for that matter we'd really like to see this thing happen we think it'd be a great thing for this end of the city and to be able to provide our green space and bring community together in a way that we've never done before so that's really the concept behind this whole thing so and like I said my wife's gonna set up a couple nights a week weather contingent no set days just a few hours to offer her product she does baked goods but she also does a line of granola stuff and this year she's gonna offer something new and unique to the area it's the closest to us as a New York City what it is it's an ice cream product but it's a high-fried ice cream it's made right here in front of you and served in a cup it's kind of a cool unique thing so I'm really hoping that you know that's something that people be interested in wanna try so we're really adamant about the farmers market at the co-off we really wanna see it happen we think it's a great way to bring community in to meet us and to be able to allow us to use our green space in a positive way other than what we get there you know we get a lot of use out of we use it for snow we use it for kids we do all kinds of things when we like to share that with the rest of the community as well I actually don't have a question for you but I wanna give a shout out for Kudos for what the co-op did for a lady that's passed winter who did you know who we sent her to you I know nothing about who lost her home from her roof that collapsed from frozen pipes inside she came to us looking for help I'm sorry us in referring to the city because I work for the city we were able to unfortunately condemn her home for her but then we also hooked her up with a co-op who were able to assist her very quickly in being able to her which was very distraught that she was gonna have to bear the cost of removing her home from the trailer park because it was no longer usable they took care of her very quickly within a day or two took over her trailer force and now she was under the burden for that and she was able to move on to a new home so Kudos to the co-op they did a great job Thank you so yeah unfortunately circumstances like that occur more than people realize our business is unique what happens is in these circumstances like Ted was referring to is the homeowner has no means to fix these up and they're uninhabitable so they can't be fixed up so as unfortunate as it is our goal was to make sure that residents took in care of first and foremost but that being said we take on the burden to remove that structure that structure to remove off our property cost us about $10,000 so we were always looking for ways to be able to help absorb that cost we've reached out many times many agencies hoping to try to get some help but today we've really gotten the city has been generous in many ways many departments they help us out but this is one of those ongoing things it's a state law whereas if certain circumstances are there it's deemed uninhabitable the city has to red tag it the homeowner has to vacate it and then here we are stuck with the structure on our property but you know we do everything in-house we're installing homes in-house we're providing affordable housing in-house and we're doing two bedroom units turnkey ready for $65,000 you can't find that anywhere else you know so a typical mortgage on something like that it's looking about $400 with the community contribution and factoring in taxes we're looking at homeowners looking at maybe $1,000 to be able to own something out right in the city of Brownington two bedroom brand new I mean our goal is to preserve this type of housing and to keep it cost effective and affordable and that's why we exist and it's one of the most crucial assets to the housing market I mean a lot of people don't realize that but it's the one case where people may not necessarily be able to own anything out in any other case so we're proud of that we're proud to be part of that we're proud to continue that and to continue to preserve that so thank you I think we're all set can you be quiet now? great thank you so much this is the segment where we turn it over to the elected officials so we'll invite up Kendra, Franklin that's it tonight oh there it is yeah so just a little bit of a format change we want to make the elected officials segment a little more interactive before it's kind of been more little bustering sometimes and so we want to make it so maybe a short presentation about what's going on maybe five minutes each we'd like to turn it over to Q&A so we can make it interactive I think a lot of folks stay because they really enjoy the interaction so quick update however you guys want to figure it out and then we'll turn it over for Q&A thank you for having me and sorry I came today late because of another meeting but since Mr. Day can Dan Cahill is here from the Parks and Recreation I think when an issue was brought up to my attention at Franklin Square right behind Dan used to be my boss Parks and Recreation and when I told him he just went to UVM brought some students and came and cleaned up the whole area then thank you on behalf of all World 7 residents thank you so much so now the council did receive new reorganization so now the committee have changed now I am still at Park Parks, Art, Culture committee I am also at CDNR community redevelopment and which we will take on the NPA resolution and will introduce it to the council is a wonderful thing and I am also chairing the HR and institutions so basically we will get busy working with institutions such as UVM, Champlain, the hospital in making sure we bring affordability and also strengthening the partnership that we have currently with UVM students and our local schools so in terms of updates that but there are also many other city issues that are going on right now not specific to us but I would want to touch on it a little bit thank you so to echo what Councilor Dank said as committee were signed on two so we will be dealing with the scooters and the e-bikes as well as other a couple other proposals and people are free to submit proposals to the two committee in May and to be involved we can look forward to agenda items being posted I am at the bagel every Saturday before every city council meeting or discuss items so I am happy to do that and get feedback as the new councilor I think it has been my job to sort of get up to date meeting with people and getting to know exactly a good lay of the land of what is going on and how I can be an effective city councilor in the different initiatives that are important to you guys that we heard while we were campaigning so I have been doing that as to city items there is up on the table there is going to be a proposal for the water resource department to reorganize and create six more positions essentially reclassifying three and creating two or three other new ones I think it is heavily needed in the water department and I have been a big advocate of that I think that is an asset that we can not sacrifice obviously the budget has to be passed and that is coming up so there are going to be a lot of things meetings about that and I look forward to going to board finance meetings to sort of as quickly as I can get up to speed on the important items that I feel we should all get together and advocate for so we have a council meeting on Monday and if you want to know more you can meet again at the bagel and talk about specific items once the agenda comes out tomorrow Hi, I am Kendra and I am the new school commissioner elected in March so thank you all we have been really busy hiring lots of principals in all of our schools so we have a new principal hey, that was a big process Champlain school has a new principal Joe from he is from the islands he has been an existing principal there and he came highly regarded so we are talking about him IAA has a new one Kevin Robinson and the current IAA principal left on is going to Flynn so she had requested to move still stay within the district which is great and she wanted to move to Flynn so we wanted to support her efforts and keep her in the district so she is now it is going to be at Flynn and then at the sustainability academy we have hired Nina or Apeza and she she comes with a lot of qualifications as well really interested in sustainability and they are very excited to have her so good stuff going on there Bobby Riley has asked to move to Verizon's on top program which is why that principal position at IAA came available and again we wanted to support him so he is now moving to that program and then at BHS Noel Green is going to be the principal again for two more years as an interim so that process we had a lot of candidates for that process until the very end when all of the candidates except Noel dropped out so then we were kind of in this quandary of what do we do now so we all agree that two years as an interim he could see how the position goes for two more years really get some momentum going and then we will do another search with him included in another two years so we also just approved the paraeducator contract so that was exciting you're glad to do that and we've pre-qualified a few construction companies to bid for the new BHS re-envisioning project so we continue to be really really busy we do have a community engagement committee that meets monthly we love really want to hear from you guys about things that you're concerned about any great ideas that you have also welcome and those are always posted online if you're interested in coming out and that is a dialogue well so thank you one more thing Councilor Wright wanted me to let you guys know that he's not feeling well in the last minute and he decided that he can't make it so he apologizes all right so this is the Q&A section so let's open up the floor Keenan, open it up North No, I just came from a meeting where it came to my attention that there is a business downtown called Purkin Planet it's like a brand new coffee shop that's open that employs people with disabilities and the owner had invested his life savings into this business and had planned for the road closure for about a hundred days and that road closure had since gone on past that hundred days and he's not sure that he's going to be able to make it as a business and so I'm wondering if the City Council has put any thought into supporting this business and making sure that it can stay open through this closure to leave a shame to lose a brand new business he has a lot of closure My child was to the early learning preschool and it's on Maple Maple Street and I think we have been affected also as his parents speaking up dropping off and I believe we just came from the same meeting too it looks like that conversation was happening before the meeting but to me I do definitely believe that that building itself is a great for the city and I think people of Burlington in general we need to be more a little bit a little bit just a little bit more patient especially you look at that building how it will contribute to housing shortage in our city and also I think things change during construction season the weather was not that good I don't know the details but I do know the road is the building is done they're working on road and I think by maybe in the next two months things will get back to normal and I do believe also they did provide money to the city maybe the mayor can attest to that to provide more parking because of just that for that reason for the population who live around but it's not an issue that came to the console so far but I do believe that if we are a little bit patient I think we won't be having any issue thank you and for that business owner we really sorry and I don't know I answered your question I think that's a difficult question but certainly I'd be open to hearing more from that business owner about how what we can do I think one thing we could do sounds like that would be cost-effective is help with marketing to help people sort of navigate the way navigate their way to get there despite the road closure because I I agree with you that you shame to lose that and that those kind of businesses are really important to our culture down the mountain being able to get things done and have a reading and so forth with other people any other question sure or to me my question is any idea of why I don't know how many of you are talking about four or six people that were going to the BHS principles dropped out great question so we asked the same question of the superintendent and what we have heard is that our process it took a long time and by the time we were ready to choose our candidates they had chosen other positions that actually signed other contracts so part of our learning from this year has been to start the process earlier the process usually started earlier the board did stop the process a little ways in because we wanted a little bit of additional changes to the policy and how it was being done so they started again so it is a great learning lesson and I really do think that in two years when we're doing this BHS sensible position you will start early and also what point will we know exactly where the building is going to be on the property that's a great question I can't answer it for you and I'd be happy to try to find the answers to that I know that they haven't even the design and everything is not even finalized so the builder will probably have the major input on that right absolutely but we have design companies that are that are working on it and so that is it's we're not close yet correct but whether the footprint is exactly the same it's close but it hasn't we don't have the final plan right though we will keep you updated though this is not so much a question to you but to Keenan is the coffee place open and what does it actually have and whether it's ours because it would seem that one way all of us have helped is to patronize them so I think that they have regular business hours you know to keep the vibe and they're they're right in that new family and housing building around the new dormitory for definitely call it right down town right where that road closure is and it's a great organization and again the owner employees primarily focus with disabilities and they really really talk to you really coffee and it's a coffee show and it's cool I was by there yesterday and it's a lovely place but there wasn't a soul for blocks and I'm the first one around and I wondered how on earth did you manage yeah so if we can get the word out that it's open that would be helpful no it's not there is a facebook campaign I saw it like two days ago and I think I forwarded on to some people but I think maybe we can help in that way and can all forward that business on question for the city counselors what's going on with the public works water increase it was continued for some reason voting on that can you ask it again clearly what's going on with the rate increase for the water department there was restructuring and adding new positions reclassifying some positions you guys were going to vote on it but then you just kicked it down the road for a couple weeks yeah so I think all of us we did vote against delay we wanted for the council to take action on the spot but for some reason there were a couple of other city councilors who were who wanted to look into more the rate structure but under this proposal there won't be any substantial addition to your water bill it will be around one dollar and seven cents let's not forget the Burlingtonian overwhelmingly voted over 90% when that ballot utility ballot item was on the ballot last time so basically the people of Burlington want our lake to be clean want our the quality of water to come in our homes and I know that there are a couple of people who have friends from outside of the city who come to Burlington to get our water because the way it tastes tastes good and we want to keep it that way to me it is important water is life the lake we all here maybe because of the lake anything we can do to protect our lake so it's clean and accessible to everyone is very welcome one dollar and seven cents in addition to my bill will not hold me from delaying and the city I'm pretty sure they would continue in finding ways for those who cannot afford it to receive some type of discount and they're working on it and I think that's what the Progressive wanted to and that's what they're working on with Megan Moore and Captain Spencer to get it done I am confident when it comes back to the concert maybe Monday it will receive full support because everyone want to see it but now the first ballot item for the 30 million dollar bound we were told it will be around five dollars addition to the bill and now there is another 1.7 so basically in a year it will be around 80 dollars every single one of us 10,000 penetration in the city will be paid for water quality for the protection of our lake I did not vote for the 30 million ballot item I was the only city council and my reasons were very simple and very clear it did not give us any guarantee that spilling sewage into the lake will be mitigated it did not that was the only reason but now the voters told me oh even if you have no guarantee you want to see it true so now I will not vote against an addition of 1.7 dollars thank you so I I'll explain it well but I can't you know both your city councilors here voted against delaying it I think it's important the city council to move forward on issues that are non-controversial and that seemed like one as Mr. Dane just said that will be passed unanimously I think some councilors had reservations about the cost ultimately it is 20 dollars essentially a year on your water bill or $1.70 per month but the sense that I think we both had a chance to talk about and the deal is that the water department was working as best it can with the staff it had and could definitely need those resources and specifically what got me is that you know a lot of people wanted to take pay plant leave and waiting two weeks would affect posting those new positions hiring interviewing all that process and you know to be able to take the second you know you can take your leave as an employee it's a huge thing and for people that have already been burdened with what happened last summer I felt that was really important so that's that's what I can add to whatever Mr. Dane just said any other question really guys all right Linda we'll break the ice here I just think you gotta tell why the legislators are not oh yeah so normally we would have to pre-legislators as with the steering committee with our elections everyone was sick that also the case with Jean Sik I think Monica Sik some legislators got held oh yeah I think Bob's got held up you know stayhouses in session they have business to do and you know we try to accommodate them at the later half and sometimes they can't make it we understand that we appreciate your service yeah absolutely all right I think we have one issue in this community especially of people of the new north end that many people are not talking much about and it is the need of having an ambulance in the new north end three thousand homes two elementary schools one middle school we still don't have an ambulance and in terms of taxes the new north end along 05408 we paid over 26 million dollars taxes a year to the city and we still don't have an ambulance I think it's not right I think it's not right and what we've been doing is to work with the mayor in making sure that we have an ambulance tomorrow but things are not that simple what he's proposing is to put it on the ballot I think it will be on the 2020 ballot but to me it's risky when you put something on the ballot it might pass it might not pass but what we're working on with him because having one ambulance it requires having six new positions six because every eight hours you have three people to stop the ambulance so you do it 24 hours it's six but the proposition what we're working on him with him is to have at least to have nine thank you and yeah so we're trying you know with the mayor to work at least to have six so that at night the roads will be clear and it will be easier for an ambulance to come from the old north end is a new north end I think that any push we can get as 05 or 08 residents to the mayor to the administration would be very helpful because sometimes when we fight the fight we need support from you guys right just wanted to put that out there and to put it on the back of your mind make some noise on Facebook on Twitter whatever you can thank you so it looks like that's the conclusion not very often we finish early so I appreciate everyone coming out tonight one thing we do ask if you're able help us put away chairs and we can get out here thank you so much have a good night