 Alright. Good evening everybody. My name is Nelson Martel. This is the Ward 6 NPA. I'm here with other steering committee members. Joe Fitzgerald, Matt Grady, and future steering committee member Dale Azaria. Thanks for coming everybody. We have a few other folks here in attendance in person at the Greek Orthodox Church. Thanks for hosting. And yeah, this is a hybrid meeting obviously. So some of the folks will be joining us virtually. But I guess we'll start the night like we always do with kind of open public forum open for comment. So anybody here. Raise your hand if you're in the in the zoom meeting. Otherwise, we're open for comment. Yeah, Dale Rafferty, please go ahead. Thanks. Hi everybody. Just wanted to make a brief public comment similar to last month, there's a group of neighbors around Smalley Park that just want to bring people's awareness to potential ordinance changes related to camping in parks. It's a great effort to come up with good alternatives for folks who may want or need to live outside in the warm months. We are concerned about these proposed ordinance changes because they would eliminate language that says camping in parks is prohibited. And that would end up being true for anyone camping in a park whether it was for recreational reasons or due to houselessness. So the ordinance also has a stipulation in it that there would be a 30 day period, if people were in areas they shouldn't be to work on what their alternatives are going to be, which does just not seem super workable to us. So if anyone is interested in it, you can find the ordinance at the CEDO website under the Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee. You can find it there in their documents. And also if anyone is concerned about it, you might live near a park or have kids who typically play in a park or school teams that are using parks. And some of this we think would interfere with it as it did last summer in Smalley Park. So the next meeting of the Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee, it's a bit of a mouthful, is going to be on April 21st at 5pm. That I believe will be a Zoom meeting and you could hop on that to learn more or speak. So the three councillors on that committee are Sarah Carpenter, Joe McGee, and Soraya Hightower. You could also email any one of these if you have an interest in this ordinance and want to learn more or express an opinion. Okay, great. Thank you, Gail. Welcome. In a few more minutes I can see that council member Shannon is with us already. And so we'll give it a few more minutes for public comment and then if there aren't any we'll move into the agenda. About one minute. Yeah, sure. Yeah, let's let's go ahead. So, so, so Joel and and I are sharing the moderating duties tonight so Joel take it away. So next up is the Burlington City Council update and Joan Shannon City Council, South District is with us. And go ahead, Joan, and since you're here, we can start off with you. Thank you. I was, we were asked to talk about a few of the things that have been happening recently at City Council, including possible next steps for short short term rentals. Removal of minimum parking requirements and plans for the pods on Elmwood Ave. So, specifically to those in terms of next steps for short term rentals I had taken a stronger approach than some of my Democratic colleagues and aligned with the progressives and really trying to implement an ordinance that is common across the country. It's, it's an ordinance that they have in Portland, Portland, Maine and San Francisco and communities all over the country where when you live in a community with that kind of housing shortage that we have, allowing our regular rental units to convert to short term units for Airbnb has a real impact on availability of housing. And this is a worldwide problem. So the proposal that had the past at the City Council was to, to only allow it in the unit that you reside whether you are a renter, or you are a property owner, you can rent out rooms in your home. You cannot rent out whole units except for renting out the whole unit that you live in like if you're going on vacation for two weeks to rent out that whole unit. This was vetoed by the mayor, and we did not have the votes to override that veto. So what we revert back to I think there's there's a lot of confusion about this. Basically, we have always had an ordinance that regulates bed and breakfast whether they're booked online and called Airbnb's or whether they are booked by the mail or by telephone or by any method, we regulate bed and breakfast. And so for some reason, the city not decided not to enforce the zoning regulations on bed and breakfast. And so what's happening now that we passed an ordinance the mayor vetoed it we didn't override it is that we are going back to the ordinance that has always been on the books has always required owner occupancy in order to have a permitted Airbnb. Anybody who wants to have an Airbnb has to go through a permitting process you have to go down to the permitting office fill out the forms and and go before the development review board and ask for a conditional use permit. If you don't have a permit, and you're advertising on Airbnb, you're operating illegally. And that is not a change that has been always, always been the rule. So that's where we are at this point in time I think that we'll probably be talking about taxing. One of the things the mayor said in his veto statement was that we were missing an opportunity to tax the bed and breakfast, which, no matter whether the bed and breakfast we passed the ordinance that we passed or we have the existing ordinance or whether we can always add a tax on to that so I imagine we'll be discussing that but I don't know what else may be coming forward there but I think that there is a misperception. In the community that somehow these things don't require a permit when they do, and they also you won't get a permit unless it's over occupied parking we had quite a night of parking. So I think that those notes are the last meeting of the prior city council in March. So in one night, we eliminated, I think it was 40 parking spaces on Elmwood have for the pods. We eliminated 70 parking on street parking spaces on North Windows the Ave for bike lanes, and we eliminated, or we move forward a ordinance to eliminate all minimum parking requirements. That isn't really just for new construction if you're applying for a permit to do anything you generally have to generally have to apply, you have to comply with parking requirements but there would no longer be any parking requirements. And all of I did, I did support the pods I did not support removing the parking spaces on North Windows the Avenue we heard from. We heard from immigrant business owners on North Windows the Avenue we heard from residents we heard from the Community Health Center, we heard from the President and his title, but he works with the immigrant community at the Community Health Center, and they really begged us not to remove the parking spaces but we removed the parking spaces on North Windows the Avenue for bike lanes. And that won't go into effect for a year. And there is a commitment from public works to continue to try and reduce demand for parking, but in fact, one way of reducing demand is for businesses to leave. And I've recently heard that the Community Health Center will be moving some jobs from that site to to Essex, because both employees and patients need need places to park, and they don't have enough parking on site so you can see how there's kind of this, these conflicting things that we're doing we're not requiring people to build the onsite parking. The bike advocate said to me that they didn't want to see us reduce our minimum parking requirements because it's very hard to remove the on street spaces on on street parking for bike lanes, when you don't have enough off street parking. If you want bike lanes, it's better to require that people, you know, when anything is developed that they have to have the parking there so we don't have we will soon not have any parking minimums but we have a parking maximum so we won't allow people to build more parking spaces than what the city determines they need. There's no minimum requirement there. So, I'll leave it there. It's a lot of information maybe people have questions or other topics of interest. Any, any hands from the virtual attendees or anyone. So, go ahead. I don't think for that information. One thing that you mentioned was about not doing anything to reduce the need for parking and I was last night at GMT's meeting about the reduction in service and root six and seven, as well as the reduction of the link expressed to this year. But I think that root six and seven, they both converge at the bus station, not that far from North Manuski Avenue. And does the city council have any role in that at all. We have rep the city has representatives on the GMT board. And I have been asking. I'll be honest, I'm just in the last few days kind of getting up to speed on this GMT proposal to reduce service. There has been concern both about reducing service and about eliminating fair free, fair free rides. And I am, you know, from, from what I know from what I've read the fair free aspect is really not nearly as important as the service aspect and fair free rides and Chittenden County costs us over $2 million. So, if there's a trade off there it seems to me like we should be increasing our level of service increasing frequency increasing roots, so that if you work at the hospital late at night, you can actually use public transportation to get where you need to go. So, these are conversations I believe happening in the legislature now about funding. There is a resolution coming forward to the council to advocate for fair free, fair free rides as well as not reducing the service and I'm in a little bit of a quandary I'm not sure. So I'm going to vote on that because I think that you know what I'd really like to push for is more of the service and subsidize certainly subsidizing anybody who needs help with the fairs. But to me the larger problem is having a system that works because we don't. And I know I used to be a bus rider and they discontinued the service in my neighborhood. And consequently, I never ride the bus anymore. But I was, you know, I'm fortunate I'm a choice rider. People who need that service are, you know, they're not being well served really by any of this and we were also told that, you know, even people who don't have cars for the community health center they're getting a ride to the community health center from a friend or a neighbor they're borrowing a car to get to the community health center. You know not having a car doesn't always mean that you're not driving. You know because you're potentially driving with somebody else because it's so hard to get where you need to go using the services currently available. Exactly. Thank you. I noticed. Well, Joe speaking. Councilor Paul is with us as well. So we can find a little bit. Don't read this on the short term rental changes as well as talking about the parking. So respond to any of those topics or. Please do. Can you hear us. I can hear you. I'm not sure you're, are you asking me a question or. Yeah, yeah, sure. If you want to add anything you want to add any news or updates or respond to the topics that we're discussing currently from the city council. Well, I didn't hear anything about short term rentals. I had a, I had a meeting that didn't get over until past 630. So, you know, we are going to be talking about short term rentals. So at the next meeting, and effectively are going to be trying to bring back the amendment that is commonly known among us as the carpenter amendment that did receive six votes, but did not get seven in order to move forward at the last meeting that we had this conversation. I heard from a lot of people who are very supportive of the carpenter amendment and have been, you know, heard, heard the conversation that went on at the council meeting, you know, with accurate figures being used as far as how many or how many short term rentals really are in Burlington and how many of them are actually being used close to even close to year round on such that the number of short term rentals that would actually even have a chance of being converted into longer term rentals year round is very, very small on and that would assume that all of them would want to convert to a long term rental or might choose to do something else with their property and also heard from a lot of people who, you know, have some sort of arrangement where they have space in their home for a short term rental, and most of the time or at least part of the time are using it for a family member, and when the family member is not there, or is not visiting, they will use it as a short term rental for some additional for some extra income. So, this will be coming back to us, and that is on the agenda for Monday evening, as well as the GMT resolution will also be talking about the livable wage and update on the livable wage ordinance and how that's been going. There will be an update as well on the Champlain Parkway, which is, believe it or not, yes, I know we all talk about the Champlain Parkway like it's going to happen in two more years, but it actually really looks like it actually really is going to happen and they have a bid. The bid is significantly higher than the engineers estimated, mostly due to all the things that we all know are happening right now. And if this were to go through it would start for the first phase to be completed in 2026. So, that's, that's sort of where we are going into the next council year at least for the first meeting. Well, you're talking about, I think there was a question from Tommy about what is the Carpenter Amendment, would you explain that? Basically the Carpenter Amendment would be, is a less restrictive version of the ordinance that passed, and would allow greater latitude for people who have an accessory dwelling unit, or, you know, some such arrangement to be able to rent out that space right now. Well, right now what we have is not a short term rental ordinance because we don't have it right now. We passed one, it was vetoed and the veto was sustained. But I think everyone knew that going into the next council year we were going to try to figure out a way to reach a compromise and to find something that was less restrictive than the ordinance that was introduced and something that did not allow some of the, you know, did not allow, say for example, you know, an investor to come in and buy up a house, never live in it, never intend to live in it and just rent it out as a short term rental. So trying to find a middle ground is basically what I hope we will be able to find, because right now what we have is not good either and there's very little enforcement, so we're not in a great place with what we have. I mean, I actually think what we have works well and that when we enforce it, the problem has been that we chose not to enforce it, but since the, since we passed the other regulation it has been being enforced and people have been coming in and getting permits at every single DRB meeting. Bob, do you want to go ahead with your question? Yes, relative to the parking, when I go to other cities in Europe, I see the main thoroughfares that are traveled park free because that makes them safe to bike, walk and drive on, but then off street parking and on streets that are not part of the main thoroughfares, there's dense parking. So I live on right here on Route 7, South Prospect Street has few cars on it, but Summit Street has zero cars on it, right Karen? Yeah. You know, that's where the parking needs to be is we have privileged out parking from all the spaces where parking belongs, where it's safe to park. I think that the city should do an audit of not just looking at the thoroughfares and how to make them safer, but also the unused areas and try to figure out how to get more parking there. Well, I'm not sure, I hear what you're saying Bob, I mean the issue in the area that you're in and in streets off of main thoroughfares near where you are, many of them particularly as you get closer to the university have resident only parking and resident only parking started near Centennial Field to help the people who live there when there would be ball games. It, it sort of blossomed and sort of got a little bit, you know, everyone who wanted resident parking was able to get it. And we created a situation where once you have given something to someone is very difficult to take it away. And if you want to, if you want to, if you want to start a lively conversation, talk with people who live near the university about moving resident only parking. We tried that about three, four years ago. Don't know that I've ever seen so many people come to a meeting. It was, I mean I grew up on Robinson Parkway I know what it's like to live in an area that's right next to the university and jammed with cars. And that is, that is the conversation that we had. We did make some changes to resident only parking, but they were not huge changes. They were the ones that we were just able to do without it becoming without it just becoming in completely impossible to make any changes at all. So I hear what you're saying though. So parking on route seven makes sense, and not parking on Summit Street is okay. That's, I don't get it Karen that just makes no sense. That's, that's the system that we have right now because people on, you know, I mean, privilege, come on. Yeah, well, we, we, you know, in some areas Bob, I, you know, there certainly is an argument for that. There are places there really isn't. I mean, for example, if you go, if you go into some areas where they have resident only parking, they have it for, they have it because they live in a very dense area. And if they didn't have it, they literally would have college students who would park there and never, you know, move their car once every three, four days, so that they didn't get a ticket under another ordinance, they would effectively never be able to ever be able to park on their street. And as I say, I grew up in that neighborhood so I know what could happen there. But as I say it, it's sort of took on a life of its own, and it's very difficult to take away resident only parking. We've tried, we've tried to accommodate that and it's very, very hard. We're still complaining. We, in that process when we're talking about it. We started requiring people to pay for their resident only permits and people still are complaining about, I think it's only like $10. There aren't too many people that complain about a $10, a $10 permit. They do complain when they get a $75 on parking, parking fine, but given the there's was a change to that as well. Everyone who has a permit gets a free pass if they get a, if they get a ticket they get one forgiveness and I have to tell you that has been a game changer. I can't even begin to tell you the number of hours I spent a year working on helping people get tickets addressed when they got a $75 ticket. I mean, I'm talking, I'm talking several a week. And I'm very happy that they are able to get one free one forgiven makes a big difference. Yeah, hey, just on the parking thing. I mean, not to belabor it, but we're a street on Elm terrace that it's a short dead end street that moved to resident permit parking. Actually, a lot of us were kind of opposed to it because we weren't sure what it was going to look like. But one of the reasons, first of all, I think it's $60 now just to just to throw that out there. One of the issues why we did it here were four blocks from downtown similar to Karen what you may have been talking about very congested student area. And one of the issues that was happening was people surprisingly, we're parking in illegal spots right up to the top of the street, you know not not pulling themselves back and emergency vehicles couldn't get down, you know, in the winter, because in the snow in the banks, you know, the snow banks add up, you get people and we so we had an issue where somebody on the street had an emergency called an ambulance the ambulance couldn't get down here. So sometimes this is for, you know, reasons we might not be considering and having lived here for a long time and having seen what it's like when you you pull down onto a short dead end street and there's absolutely no spot versus now I've got to say, you know, I'm glad some residents on our street pushed for resident parking and, and because also some of us don't have drive wheel driveways I mean we there are driveways but I mean we only have one car now but if you had two cars you can't get a man and so you're kind of you need to park on the street and lots of rentals and anyway that's my two cents on this it's a little more complicated than it seems maybe, although I see whoever is suggesting that we all go park on summit street I think that's an awesome idea so anyway. Okay. Can I ask one more question. So I know. Another good presentations to like the word two and three. You know, with cards. Just. Just. I don't know how that's going to go. I don't know that we really know how that's going to go I they're looking for somebody to manage it I have a lot of questions I on one hand I think it's a. I think it's a good idea but it's all going to come down to how well this is managed and you know we could create something here that's really a model community or, you know, there's also a lot of places where it could go wrong so. I've been talking to different people about the possibilities there, but I don't know Karen maybe you know more than I do about the details of, you know, I don't know how they're going to choose people I don't know exactly. You know what are the community standards going to be under what circumstances will people lose their housing there. What are the boundaries going to be both, you know, within the community and outside. So I'm interested to hear more on that but I don't have a lot of information. I don't, I don't either. You know, I mean clearly we, you know we made the decision. You know, and, you know, like many, like many decisions that we make we, we, we sometimes don't have every everything lined up, we do have a lot of faith that, you know, CETO is actively working on this and and all of those questions that were just asked. We'll have to have answers. You know, and we do have time. This is not going to happen tomorrow. But, you know, we, the mayor and his state of the city address the other night talked about, you know, the appointment of a full time CETO employee whose sole purpose is going to be to work to end homelessness. And the pods are not the ultimate solution. They are a temporary solution. Finding permanent housing shelter for people is what we really need to be doing and hopefully hopefully we can find a way that a couple of years from now these pods won't be needed because people will be living in homes. That is the idea. I have heard a stated goal of people living like three months at the pods and then moving to more sustainable housing. I don't know how realistic that is but one of the things that I have that I'm a little more concerned about is that there is an effort to change the the zoning so that this type of thing could go in go in with just administrative review and not go through the process that we're going through now which is quite honestly pretty limited like in Oregon when they did this they went through a two year community process and they started out with 70% of the community against it and they ended up with 70% of the community for it. So I don't think that cutting the community out of the process is going to be a good idea. And that's kind of another track that is that is happening so that aspect concerns me. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Shannon involved. We're going to have to leave that there for now. I see that Chris Pearson, Senator Chris Pearson, Senator Phil Baruch are with us, talk about the reapportionment process. So, Senator Pearson, Senator Baruch, please take it away. Philip, do you want to jump in? Probably better for you to frame it up Chris. Well, happy to do that. Good evening, everybody. Chris Pearson from over award one one of your Chinese senators in the Senate. We appoint a special committee seven people. We meet sort of in addition to our other committee so we had. I guess the sucker that put up his hand and had the rather fascinating experience of doing that I wouldn't recommend it. And we had just some context. A few years ago, the legislature passed a law that said next time we do this which we do it every 10 years, we will have no district larger than three members so there was a guaranteed divide happening in Chittenden County are six member Senate districts the largest district in the country by far in fact three member districts which we have throughout Vermont are the largest now. Philip and I there's six of us as I just said we have about 130,000 constituents we have no staff. It's not workable for really anybody involved and it's confusing for voters and you get that long ballots and you're supposed to pick six names and you know it's not been been great. I was glad to support that change we all did, but it meant big changes also more broadly in the state, the shift in population has been towards Chittenden County a little bit to LaMoyle County and Franklin County, and away from the kingdom and the southern parts of the state, and that was true 10 years ago when they did it, and they sort of didn't deal with that so in fact we were 20 years later, really having to adjust that Chittenden County really has even if you ignore Colchester which goes up with the islands. We had seven and a half numbers for for excuse me six and a half Senators, at least so so a lot of change, kind of an impossible task I sat down and thought at first you know I'm going to be able to figure this out this is a puzzle that is math and geography and and I'll be able to figure this out our friends from Huntington, Richmond, Jericho up there the MMU school district had made a very passionately keep us together we're a unified school district, make us a Senate seat. We can do that. You know, as soon as you did that though they didn't have enough people so you had to grab some of Williston, which of course means you're breaking up the CVU school district so you immediately got the very principle at odds with each other. Combining that with the challenge that you have in in Chittenden County Burlington which accounts on its own enough people for two Senators Essex enough people for one Senator all on its own and South Burlington enough people for almost one Senator on its own means that how you draw the lines creates the possibility of a lot of our smaller towns in the county being completely overwhelmed by larger towns and try to avoid that or trying to mix it up in a way that you know has some balance. These are some of the dynamics coming forward. And there we did sort of split it into two three seat districts and then in the north. There is a single seat district that single seat district is Milton Westford Fairfax from Franklin County and northern more rural part of Essex what we would think of as Essex town by large. Single seat member that in a way reflects the currently held by a Republican member over in Caledonia County, St. Johnsbury that area that's that currently has two Senators, they're down to one Senator that Senator moves in a way to the northern Chittenden if you want to just think of it simply. The rest of Chittenden County those six Senators are divided into two. You all from the southern part of town here in Burlington, the the your two House members if you live in Gabrielle and Tiff's house district that to two seats travels south and is part of the southern what we call now Chittenden southeast. Those neighborhoods of southern Burlington joined with Shelburne Charlotte south Burlington, Williston Heinsberg Richmond Jericho under hill to create a three seat Senate district. The northern part the great bulk of Burlington connects with Winooski through St. Mike's and for Ethan Allen and Essex junction for a three seat member as well three seat district as well. So you have in a way, kind of an urban district, and then the more spread out world district and and this ultimately got seven votes out of committee 30 votes out of the Senate was signed into law by the governor just yesterday. It's a compromise. It wasn't the map I wanted. But one of the dynamics that surface and I hope we'll talk about it because it's relevant to Burlington is, is just the very simple question of, should Burlington just be a straightforward two seat standalone Senate district. Very simple our numbers basically made that work and simple for voters. And I think I can say, speak for him and also Senator Rom Hinsdale who's spent a good deal of her time in Vermont living in Burlington felt very strongly and I grew more and more passionate about this that that was a mistake that we should not isolate two senators from Burlington, not because from the voter perspective that would be very straightforward, but in Montpelier. It may not surprise you to learn that there is some looking down their noses at people from Burlington, oh that great city next to Vermont right. I was on a radio show about in someone called and said, could we give Burlington to New York. This reflects some of the sentiment in Montpelier and and I became very concerned that we would be isolating those two senators in the Senate if they were only from Burlington it would also be very it would be completely unique to have senators just representing one town. The Senate prides itself on a kind of regional outlook that was in conflict with South Burlington, which was a very organized and very vocal that they did not want to be divided in the new map. Well, South Burlington surrounds Burlington, as you know geographically and and so the six of us that currently serve in the Senate sort of said well fine divide Burlington and leave South Burlington whole and I'm going guys. The geography here is very very limited, but ultimately the map did accomplish those two goals. I would just say in closing. There was not going to be a map that didn't leave some people frustrated. And there were a zillion competing interests that we were trying to balance and do our best to minimize the friction. So this map is, in a way, not great for Essex, who is after all a significant population center, and now the bulk of their population is joined and and you could argue overwhelmed by Burlington. And it's unfortunate for people in the very south end of Burlington whose senators are, you know, preoccupied or also working to satisfy Shelburne Charlotte South Burlington Wilson etc. But I will say that for Burlington itself for the council for the mayor for our charter changes for the policies and values that matter to Burlington. It's actually almost an embarrassingly good map. People look at me and think that I pulled one over and and to be honest, that is not at all true. Burlington now has six senators South Burlington in the new map South Burlington will have three Essex will have three. No other town has more than three Burlington has six senators if you're the mayor and you have a political interest in Montpelier, you will call six senators and they will advocate for your position. And that's actually not fair. But it was not a perfect map and not a perfect compromise but a compromise that people can live with. So, you know, I guess that's where I would stand and say, this was a weird process, not a great process to have incumbents, drawing this map but that is the law in Vermont. And I guess I would leave it there and and ask Philip what I've missed and hope we have a few minutes for questions. I missed anything but I just want to speak to the idea and it was widespread the idea that each region, particularly each city region felt that they should have their own senator so I did hear from Essex folks that they thought that it was a no brainer that there should be one senator dedicated to Essex Burlington. I didn't hear from folks in Burlington, but it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that two senators for Burlington would please a lot of people in town. But Chris is right, I and the rest of the delegation thought that was a bad idea. I go further I don't think it was a bad idea I think it would have been a destructive idea. And my thinking about that comes in part from the Vermont Constitution which it directs that when we redistrict we seek to retain the county boundaries. We might not be able to but you should try to get close to it. And to me that's in the, you know, absolute opposite direction from the process of starting to have single Senate districts in one city. So I wanted from Richmond call me, and they wanted a Richmond senator with enough of the surrounding area to allow them to have a single Senate district. So, you know, I want to give Chris great credit because he was dealing with lots of different inputs from lots of different people, including Supreme Court cases, including, you know, the map that had been prepared by the advisory board. And I 10 years ago, I was a big part of the redistricting. And at that time the hot button issue was there was an attempt to move Charlotte out of the county into Addison County. And I fought that very hard and got got knocked around a lot and ultimately was successful. But I decided I didn't want to be as involved in this process. But I did communicate to Chris that I really thought it should be a regional approach, and that if Burlington or or the bulk of Burlington could be joined to other cities. That would be a good thing. And I also think that a three member district is a good thing, as opposed to a single senator. Chris is right if you have six numbers to call in Burlington, you're going to get somebody. If you have three numbers, you're going to get somebody. If you have one person to call as they do in Caledonia, or Lamoille or other places. You may not get somebody or you may get somebody next month. So, I'll just add that. Awesome questions. Okay, this is not a facetious question. So I'm Charlie G from the old North and so to the suit senators that we have present today has there ever been a discussion about increasing the number of senators for the Vermont House of the Senate. So in other words, probably a consideration would be how many more senators could you squeeze into the current Senate chamber in Montpelier. Thank you. You might be the only person I've ever met that wants more politicians. No, there's not, to my knowledge, been that conversation. And if anything, the opposite conversation of we're one of the bigger legislators in the country with 150 House members, 30 senators is more standard. But, you know, I think part of what your question makes me think Charlie is, you know, a few years ago when the pandemic hit, we worked into July and then again in August and September and and it was shocking for all of us who signed up for this part time, and I think I made about 25 grand that in for that work. And, and, you know, I signed up for that I understood the pay but, but we have no staff personally that helps with the emails we, it's, it's a ridiculous ask in that sense. So, if anything, I would like to see a trinket numbers and maybe provide better support so that I'm not, you know, whoever sits in this seat is not ignoring emails and or missing them or, you know, forgetting to show up to a meeting like this. I think you could save a bit of money on salaries for legislators and beef up the operation in that way. Karen, I just wanted to say congratulations. I haven't gotten a chance to say so. Oh, thanks very much. Yeah. Yeah. And then I see that Joe has a question. And in fact, that's not really a question. I mostly just wanted to say that I really appreciated Senator Pearson's explanation of the logic and the thought that went into this decision. And I am sorry, as part of this district over here, that we will no longer have the opportunity to vote for the two of you or Senator Rahm Hinsdale, although, I guess she's running for something else but anyway, sorry that we will no longer have the opportunity to vote for the two of you and thank you for representing us so well. And if I could just say, you know, when Chris says that Burlington will have six senators, that's just going to be true. And if you invite me to your NPA, I will show up. So, there's that. The other thing I would say is that this particular NPA is probably the one I've been to the most over the last 12 years, and I really value it. So, again, I thank you for that, but won't be the last time you see us. That's great to know. Thank you very much. John, do you want to go ahead? Yes, thank you. I'm afraid as Chris well knows and Phillip as well. I was very disappointed that there was no consultation with with the city of Burlington at all on this map. It's completely different than what was recommended by the committee that the Senate had, or the legislature had asked to come up with with the map. With the house redistricting, we actually did have communications that did come to the Board of Civil Authority, which is the city council plus the mayor. And we chose not to act on it but we at least had an opportunity to weigh in, which we did not with the Senate map. And I'm very concerned because while you might look at it as we have six senators. As it is two of our senators live in South Burlington, and South Burlington was well informed of what was happening and did weigh in to say they didn't want to be divided which was an opportunity. We did not have. So, I don't know if that's, you know, how is that going to work with Burlington being still the the south end here, which is primarily wards five and six, I think maybe something a little bit shy of entirely wards five and six. Will we have enough influence over, over three senators when they live outside of Burlington and our interests when you look at, for example, the school waiting issue of Burlington are very different than the interests of our surrounding communities. I guess I would just answer for everyone's knowledge that the BCA is the Board of Civil Authorities are part of the law for house districts. And so that wasn't the courtesy that that that you guys were engaged there that that's the statute. I don't think South Burlington necessarily had had direct outreach they just were interested in it, you know if people weren't aware that the six member district was going to break up. And that's something we've spoken about at this meeting before and been on the on coming for a year so I, I, you know, we were meeting at 730 in the morning and and five in the afternoon and and on Mondays when the legislature doesn't meet and, you know, we were scrambling and it was a responsibility for not addressing the city council as a whole I did reach out to President Tracy, and was informed you, you all had not disgusted and didn't have a preference and I feel bad that I hadn't prodded you a month sooner but I guess I'm surprised that it was news to you that the six seater was going to be broken up that's been common knowledge for for people in political circles and, and of course you have now three senators. Well four senators that don't live in Burlington working for the city and, and I would say supporting the city from from where I sit and. There's no perfect map there's this is not the map that I wanted. But it is like everything we do a compromise and working together and and at the end of the day, even the small southern tip of Burlington. There's many people as live in Shelburne and and just about as many people as live in Wilson and it's pretty hard for me to imagine if somebody calls me from Shelburne I represent them. I don't go, that's just 8000 people in that town. You know that it's pretty hard to I think argue that the southern end of Burlington is going to be dismissed in this district, but admittedly Burlington right now in the six seat district carries a lot of influence. I think in the new map that influence continues. Maybe even more so compared to other towns. Well to be clear we we all definitely knew that the six person district was being broken up, but the information that we had was from that redistricting committee that Burlington had to to representatives. So the new information was that the south end was being broken off and going into Shelburne south Burlington Bolton under hill, all being lumped together, where if Burlington yes I don't think people are just going to write off the interest of 8000 people. And within their what is it a 65,000 something 6065,000 person district, unless it's competing with the interests of the other 55,000 people, which is possible. Can I just throw in, I think redistricting has a way of making everybody properly parochial for a moment where you're thinking about where the lines are where where your houses where your representatives are going to be. You know, anybody who is in the House or the Senate, you're there representing the state, and you're there, furthering the interests of the state, as well as your particular district. So I just want to make sure to to mention that it's, it's not as though in the case of people waiting. It's pushing as hard as humanly possible, including authoring the bills to produce the, the people waiting. And I'm hoping that people who are representing South Burlington or Manchester or other communities around the state where there are very few ELL students and very few people in poverty will still do the right thing. And I think, you know, that's what's great about Vermont is that there's not a lot of partisanship, and I don't think a lot of parochial thinking. So, you know, it doesn't speak to your questions or concerns about process, Joan, and I get those. But Burlington is going to be very well represented. No matter who winds up there. It's just got so much gravity in the state. It's, it's impossible to ignore. So not, not that you might not worry about it, but I just don't think that'll happen. So can we get this here and move on to the next group, maybe some of us will carry on into the next group, but we want to the Vermont House. We portion it and update and then you can continue this in the next section. Thanks a lot. I'm going to have to drop off to go to our caucus, but I appreciate the invitation and see you soon. The next group we have test. Gabrielle Stevens, we have Barbara Richardson, representing the Vermont State representatives. Hi. So we talked about order, if that's okay with you. Yes. Okay, great. Wonderful. I'm a representative of Barbara Richardson and I represent currently chitin' in 6-6. And we, each of us will talk about something a little different. I'm going to talk briefly about how redistricting affects this district in terms of the House. I know we just heard a lot about the Senate. We're going to talk about a couple of changes to the House. And then I'm going to do a brief update on the, where the city charters are in the State House and in getting passed. And then we'll turn it over to my colleagues who each have, will introduce the topics that they're going to be talking about. So basically the good news is that the House district of that representative Blumley and Stevens represent is pretty close to unchanged with the exception that chitin' in 6-6, which will now be chitin' in, maybe it will not. I'm sorry, it will not be this 14th district is going to go from being a one-seat district to a two-seat district. And so the district is expanding partially by picking up a little bit of the district that is currently representative Blumley and Stevens district, and then largely moving into the downtown area. So basically, right now the border is Prospect Street, and chitin' in 6-4, I've got to get used to the new numbers, chitin' in 14 will now include the entire UVM redstone and the athletic campus. It will go down half of Cliff Street to Willard Street and then include half of Spruce Street, and I have, we have this in statute, so can send the map, and then go down to Union Street, and we'll go over to parts of what's in Ward 8 right now. So there'll be a little bit of change, but there will be two legislators representing the 14th district, and I forget the number of representatives of Blumley and Stevens district, new number, but 13. 13, thank you, I couldn't remember which direction it went in. So there'll be four state legislators in the house representing these parts of Burlington, so you'll have yet another, well, yes, what's covered in the MPA 6. So you'll have yet another legislator to invite to the MPA meetings. So, let me just pause there super briefly to see if my convoluted tried to walk you through it made any sense at all, or people have any questions. You said just 13's going to go with smaller in populations? I'm sorry, I did not hear that. Did you say district 13 was going to be called smaller in populations? I'm not, I don't know if you can get closer to the mic. Sorry, Barbara, I was trying to, can you hear me okay? Yes. Okay, sorry about that. I was wondering, did you say district 13 is going to get a little smaller? It'll be roughly the same size. It's just a couple of those streets got, went from being in, I'm just going to call what's going to be 13, and is currently in, Tiff, is it 6-5? Yes. 6-5? Yeah. Okay, so a couple of streets went from 6-5 to 6-6 in the old jargon and what will be 13 are going over to 14. So Tower Terrace, part of Spruce Street, a tiny bit more of Union Street. And again, we can share that map with folks the governor just signed it yesterday, I think. Thank you very much. I know it's hard to just talk about a map. I have the general idea, thank you. Okay. The other big thing is 14 will be the, as I said, the entire UVM Redstone and athletic campus where that was not in 6-5 before. It was in 6-7 the district that representative Coburn and representative Tina currently represent. So things got shuffled somewhat because Burlington is getting one other house member because of the population growing. So we're kind of losing a senator, it sounds like, despite, or a part of a senator, but we're gaining a house member. So that's the news on redistricting. Some movement has happened on the charter changes. The governor has signed the airport one. And let me just pull up my notes again. I'm sorry. I was trying to look back at the map. So today just cause past the Senate. And we'll be coming back to the House. Also, the thermal bill has passed the House and ranked choice past second reading today on the House floor. We also have a bill introduction coming out for the new charter change that just happened related to removing the charge of prostitution on the city books. That one will be out before session ends. They're saying session will end sometime between roughly May 7. We're budgeted to go through May 13th of Nivea. And that's basically what's happening with charter changes. And that's my brief report. And I can jump in. Next and, and I'm just going to say a couple of things because housing is such a critical issue. And, you know, really on any number of counts across the board. Middle income housing affordable housing for lower income from honors homeless people who are living in Burlington at any rate. We have waited Mike I serve on a committee of jurisdiction that that considers housing bills and we've been waiting for two bills to come over to us and we just got the biggest one last week and the other one came over a little bit before that we needed to have them both together though in order to understand kind of how they might fit together and what what kind of complex constellation of programs and changes we were looking at and we're looking at some bill as to 10 and it creates a rental housing registry Burlington already has one. If you are a property owner, and you've already registered a rental property in Burlington, you wouldn't have to do that with just that information would just go to the state but there are a lot of smaller towns and they have health officers who are charged with having to go and inspect homes, sometimes of their friends or neighbors. It puts them in a very difficult position and it's also very they're not necessarily qualified to do this and it's a volunteer position and so the Department of Public Safety has been advocating for a kind of and these towns for unified approach statewide and so that's one piece of this. There are certain exemptions from that rental registry. Units rented for less than 90 days. Total non winterized seasonal units them agricultural housing that's a condition of employment license lodging establishments and owner occupied residences if they are fewer than four units. The exemptions are complaint driven. The same bill established as a fund for first time home buyers. This was this was a this is a different form of a bill we passed last year but the governor vetoed so now we're it is it has been changed with the hope that the governor will actually put it in place and it also establishes a pretty sizable fun to bring offline properties back online and into compliance so they can be rented and there is with that the Senate put in a piece that would fund accessory dwelling units as part of that and I have we have just started to take testimony so I can't even really tell you very much more than the components of the bill. The next is a different bill and it is a more kind of sweeping omnibus bill it there are zoning changes that would allow for greater density in town centers, there are some towns that have, you know that require half an acre for zoning and, and, and there are a lot of planners that have advocated for this kind of change for a long time funding to support first generation home buyers, funding to support the creation of manufactured home communities. In the BIPOC home ownership. There is a contractor registry in this bill. That is a bill that never made it out of the Senate and so we they put it into this one. And it kind of safe. It's intended to safeguard people against contractor fraud and then development funding for middle income housing and the debate over that is really whether it's perpetually affordable or, or whether it will be a kind of a static subsidy that will decrease in value as time goes on. And again we just started taking testimony on this bill today. I want to just announce that Siba is having an affordable housing roundtable next week on Thursday from 6830 on zoom. And I can put the invitation. I'll put the link in the chat. If it's something that people want to go to but there will be. It'll be a really interesting discussion and Michael Monty from Champlain Housing Trust will be there. I'm participating in it as are a couple of other people, really to talk about the south end housing. I'm sure we'll talk about the barge canal I imagine that we'll also talk about other undeveloped properties. And the like. So, that is all I planned to impose upon you tonight. And I'll turn it over to Gabrielle. Go ahead and post that link. I will do that. Yep. Great. Thanks. I'm going to give you a rundown. And it was in the front porch form link so hopefully this won't be to redundant because it was a little while ago of a variety of bills that the house passed and has now sent to the Senate. I'm going to give you just a quick update in terms of I just Googled what came from the Senate and is now being picked up in the house. So mostly climate water environmental related bills. And then at the tail end I want to touch a little bit on what is going on with the conversation with regards to people waiting. A lot of bills from the house to the Senate. One of the challenges in the house to the Senate process is in the house we have two different committees who meet all day. We have the House Energy and Technology Committee which focuses on energy and technology. And then we have the House Natural Resources Fish and Wildlife Committee which tends to focus on water resources animals. You have two committees that are working all day every day except what they're not, you know, as a full body. And then they send everything over to one committee that meets for one part of the day. So a challenge is how many bills we send over to the Senate and how many that they can actually work through by the last few weeks of the session. So, it remains to be seen how many of these will get through. We did have a House Bill 492, which made modifications to Act 250. This is sort of our Ritlard land use planning bill, which for developers, the goal was to bring stability and predictability to the process. Having worked with a lot of businesses who developed renewables, a lot of times they didn't mind rules and regulations as long as they could plan for them, and as long as they didn't shift midway through a project. Meanwhile, the changes in this H492 for citizens were to try and make it more transparent, more citizen friendly to get involved. H606 set a goal of conserving 30% of our lands by 2030 and 50% by 2050. So, this is really looking at in tandem with actually a bill coming over from the Senate. Senate Bill 234, and nice to see that Senator Pearson is still here. Because this was really the Senate bill that one of our House committees is looking at right now is how do we encourage municipalities to plan for new and infill housing in the city and surrounding designated downtown. I think about 20 or 25 years ago, the catchphrase for this was smart growth. And, you know, we keep giving it new terms, but it's really not nuclear science. It's, you know, if you're not farming and if you're not actively using the land, maybe we could all live a little denser and and, you know, be more strategic and more efficient with our land development processes and therefore also our transportation issues, etc. H626 was focused on protecting pollinators. So that's really about adopting best management practices for treated seeds and incorporating an integrated pest management program. H697 was about reserving forest land. So basically this this is an essentially an attempt to provide additional incentive for forest owners who might have old growth forests or forests that are approaching old growth forests to choose to enter them into a type of forest that they would not actually actively actively like harvest or timber that forest and rather prioritize that to be longer term conserved old growth forests. It is voluntary, although it does require, you know, additional planning on behalf of the landowner, as well as, you know, there is a cost. So it's it's not without, you know, it's it's a balancing act for the landowner, but it does help them in the long run in terms of taxes and also provides a benefit to the state and Vermonters if we're able to secure some of those old growth forests. H715 you've probably been hearing about this one. This is the clean heat standard. If you guys are familiar with a renewable portfolio standard, basically the renewable portfolio standard requires our electric utilities to have a certain amount of their overall portfolio their their mix of their power resources to come from renewables. And a clean heat standard is a little bit similar in the sense that it says, hey, fossil fuel companies that provide oil or propane or Vermont gas. And actually, we still have some coal delivers as well. Folks, you are now part of this market that you can either help your customers reduce how much emissions they create by consuming and burning what you sell them. And you can do that by providing them with weatherization services, installing a heat pump, helping them switch to pellet systems. Or if you don't want to do any of that, you can pay into a compliance fee. And if you choose to actually make that business transition to providing your customers with an alternative way to heat their homes, then you can get credits for that. And if you do more and more than you need, then you can sell those credits. So, you know, there are folks that are unhappy with this because it doesn't go far enough and it doesn't do enough. On the other hand, we've tried carbon taxes. We've tried increasing the gas tax. And this is a market based approach that says everybody come to the table. If you want to be part of our economy moving forward. And if you want to keep serving your your customers, here is a path forward for you. So it's now in the Senate, it's getting a lot of heat as a clean heat standard. And I'm hopefully going to wrap this up soon so that maybe we can hear what Senator Pearson is hearing on his side of the of the building. But each one 15 just to just so you know, I mean, I personally really each seven fifteen, it's a market, the clean heat standard. It's a market driven mechanism. I love you, honey. And if if we can move that forward, it would make a big difference. We have yet to figure out how to regulate our fossil fuel heating providers and, you know, I still heat with oil, although I have heat pumps, but we have no tool in the toolbox and we can toss this out like the baby with the bathwater where we can say, OK, here's a tool in the toolbox. Here's a market economic approach. Each one 15 may not move forward. This was representative Mary Sullivan's bill. It's now made it through the House a few different times. It's an extended producer responsibility bill. That requires manufacturers of certain household products that contain hazardous substances to basically do their fair share and pay for the cost. I'd rather instead of the screens, but thank you. Instead of paying for the costs of right now, taxpayers are paying for the cost of dealing with these hazardous substances. And this would actually require the manufacturers to pay for them. So wouldn't be a huge tax decrease, but it matters. It matters that you pay for what you create. H 5 18 would be a great bill. It helps cities and towns with technical assistance, design support, funding so that they can actually make their municipal buildings a lot more energy efficiency, energy efficient and also reduce the fossil fuel impacts that they use for heating those buildings. We passed just under a nine hundred million dollar transportation bill, which had a bunch of incentives for electric vehicles, electric vehicle charging stations. We're still working on fair free for for transit in our region, in the Burlington region and in the Green Mountain Transit area. And we have H 703, which is a workforce development omnibus bull. It has a lot in there related to nursing, but it also has a lot in there related to trades, forestry, agriculture sectors, because we now have a climate action plan. And if we don't have the workers to do the heat pump installations, to do the weatherization, to to service our electric vehicle charging stations, then we're not really going to meet our goals. And so that is not all, but quite a few of the environmental and energy related bills. And yes, I have a helper here. The I would love to know what Senator Pearson thinks about and what he's seen on his side of things, because we get very busy within our own bodies. But I did want to just say before we do that, as many of you know, we have now gone through well over a year plus or even longer than that, talking about how we wait the funds and the financing mechanism for our students. There is quite a robust bill last year, actually four or five of them. They ultimately ended up in a task force that came out with a recommendation that ultimately the Senate, I think it's S 287. It could be wrong. I'm sorry, it's S 287 78 could be around there. But ultimately, the Senate really listened to quite a few. And I think the Senate, the Senate worked very hard and listened quite a bit to our constituents and to many of the folks who were really wanting to see the waiting standards implemented. And the Senate basically said for folks who want to do waiting, they can for folks who want to do the cost adjustment or the cost equity approach. They can do that. There are pieces that our community would prefer to see move forward more quickly. A five year implementation plan means that my older kid will be in college by the time this actually goes in place, which means, you know, a third of her a third of her peers who are mostly new Americans will not necessarily see the ELL funding that that bill would put in. But it's it's definitely with a five year roll in, you know, that's one of the things that I've heard from constituents that they would love to see improved where that bill is right now. It's actually split into two parts. There's a portion in the house education. There's also a portion in houseways and means. And I think for the portion that folks are most concerned about, which is whether or not it's waiting or whether or not it's a cost equity or cost adjustment factor, whichever terminology you prefer, that piece is in ways and means and it is currently being discussed. It's I sent an email to several several school board members today saying, how do you feel with where things are rolling out? Because technically, with the cost adjustment factor here in Burlington, and when you ski, the outcome of that would be potentially a lower tax rate. However, there are a lot of pieces there that people are concerned about with regards to a cost equity or a cost adjustment approach. And I do know that perhaps there was going to be a school board member here. I do not see that person, although it would be great if she was here, but she's on mute. And with that, I will be quiet because I have a fellow conspirator here. So I don't know if to Matt or whoever is hosting this, if you if you'd want to finish up some of the environmental pieces from Senator Pearson and then switch to people waiting, whatever makes the most sense. I can provide more information, but I I'd far prefer to hear from constituents what what your views are in terms of what you're hearing from ways and means. Gabrielle, thank you. Thank you so much. I think in fairness to our other presenters tonight, I guess I wanted we're running a little bit over on time. So if there is interest and people are willing to stick around kind of later, then then we can kind of revisit these things once we get through the other agenda items. But I do want to shift gears now to talk about the work of the Burlington Police Commission. We're joined by two commissioners, our own Ward six commissioner, Stephanie, we know is here in person and we're also joined by Susan Cumberford, the Ward five commissioner. And so please, thanks. This is so odd to have Susie on camera on Zoom and maybe here, but I hope it all goes well. Anyhow, thank you for having us. We have as a commission been really changing our role over the last year and a half. And we wanted to do the work of informing the community of just how our role is changing and to explain to you what we do do for work. The civilian oversight is there are over 200 civilian oversight bodies in the United States today. And numerous bodies are forming in Vermont as we speak. The role of a civilian oversight body is to be an independent, non sworn officer entity that does an ongoing review of the police, ongoing in terms of looking at investigations, audits, monitoring law enforcement in terms of policies and procedures, training, management and supervision practices. Our job is to issue recommendations on discipline with relation to complaints on policies and procedures. The goal is for us to promote accountability and to improve trust between the community and the police department. And part of that trust is built through greater accountability and transparency. And so our job is to to bring that to bear on the work of the police department. I think there are a variety of benefits. I think there is a benefit to law enforcement of having civilian oversight. And that is that in many cases, what can happen is that the work that the commission does can deter misconduct and it protects the city in the sense that it protects the city from lawsuits. If we do our job well and we provide the input that is necessary for accountability and transparency. We also have engaged, we have an educational component of commission meetings. So, for example, we recently heard from state's attorney, Sarah George, on alternatives to arrests. We've heard from Professor Neil Gross on how to reduce racial disparities. We have heard from Mental Health First in Burlington looking at alternative responses to mental health. And all of this informs not only the city and the community, but also the police department. So I will just let me just say another thing that we do do is to audit patterns. So there is an annual report that comes out every year now that analyzes traffic stop data, use of forest data and arrest data. And we provide feedback. We may also provide for we may also request further investigation into the data. One of the concerns the commission has been vocal about, for example, is racial disparities and use of force. We would expect that use of force would be proportionate to that is the percentage. The racial use racial composition of use of force would be proportionate to the population. So, for example, African Americans in Burlington are roughly seven percent of the population, but they are 35 percent of the people on whom police use force. And this has been something that we've been concerned about and have asked for greater investigation into. And so this is the kind of work we do. And I want to switch to Susie, who's going to talk a little bit more about the specifics of some of the work we're going to do. We're doing right now. Susan, I think you're muted. Let me just. She's had some trouble with her. OK, I'm OK now, I think you hear me now? Yes. OK. I feel like the Verizon commercial. Can you hear me now? OK, so I'm going to talk a little bit about policy review and policy revision. The police department works primarily under directives, which are specific guidelines that the police have to follow depending on type of call it is. And several of us have been looking at some directives that involve interacting with persons with disabilities and also interacting with persons with diminished capacity. One of the things that we found with our work so far is that many of the directives are fairly out of date and don't have appropriate language, etc., etc. So we're working collaboratively with members of the police department as well as members of our police commission and subject matter experts from the community to get together and talk about what the directives are currently, look at the language of the of the directives, look at the how up to date the directives actually are in terms of what the research tells us about the various areas we're talking about. And then we're going to bring it to the community and then it with the community. So right now we're starting with these two directives. We are also trying to bring in information and some of the wisdom from the CNA report from the city council's public service committee, and we also have documents that have been provided by commissioners that we know from other communities that have done some of this work that we can also kind of rely on. So that's basically policy review and revision. We've had a number of meetings so far, of course, like everything else in life. This is taking a lot longer than we thought it was going to, but we're on the trail. Stephanie. Yes, thanks. I wanted to just add a couple of things that I forgot to mention. Really, one of our main goals is to promote procedural justice in policing, that investigations are carried out appropriately and that all other processes that result in fairness of treatment of people in Burlington with regard to public safety are followed. And we have we have sought training from NACOL, the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. I encourage you to go to our website. Our trainings are posted online if you'd like to learn more. Not I know that watching videos is probably, you know, people have maxed out. But in case you'd like to. Another policy that we are revising is the complaint policy. We are going to work to make complaints more of the complaint process more accessible. We do review complaints when they come in. So when they come in, they immediately come to the commission and we review those complaints with the chief reports to us on how he or she would like to respond to the complaint, that is, is it founded? Is it sustained? Is it exonerated? Is there discipline associated? And the commission has the authority to give feedback on that, those recommendations and to recommend alternative discipline or responses to the complaint. In addition to that, the city and just to say what's going on now, the city, the Public Safety Committee passed a new resolution that expands our authority and really kind of concretizes the authority that we have to be an independent body and that is now been turned into a draft city ordinance that will be up for review. I would say just to end this, if I might, is that I think it's important for the community to understand what this has been, what this process is like. Police agencies have often not had oversight in the past. This is a new thing. It is therefore a bumpy road. It is often not welcome to have civilian oversight, but our experience has been, at least in working with NACOL, that many agencies actually ultimately welcome that oversight because its ultimate goal is to build a better relationship between the police department and the community and to ensure that policing reflects community values. So we, I think that this last year and a half has been bumpy and a new experience for the police department. And so I think that is to be expected. Nevertheless, we have received the support of the mayor. We now meet monthly with the mayor to share what our experiences are. And I'm hopeful that we can all move forward in a collaborative way. That's not to say that the commission does not represent the police department. That is not our job. Our job is there to represent procedural justice and to represent accountability and transparency. And so that is the work that we're doing. So I'd welcome any questions or comments and thanks for the opportunity to share our work with you. Yeah, I see Bob has his hand up. Yes, Stephanie, I was so lucky to see the price of safety documentary and the Mineral Berry Film Festival. How do you're totally brilliant in that documentary and what you do is so important. And how do we get that documentary shown here? It's so important and so clarifies the issue. Thank you. Erin Walcott at Middlebury College and her partner did this. Actually, I'd be happy to contact them to see if they'd like to host a viewing here and to have a public discussion. We did this in in the Virginians when it was first shown at the Virgin's Opera House several months ago, and it was a packed house in the middle of Omicron. People were very excited to see it. And we had a really generative conversation. There were a lot of different viewpoints in the audience, but I think it was really generative, so Bob, I'd be happy to do that and see if we can facilitate that to happen here in Burlington. Great. Thank you. I have a question. Yeah, so I'm I don't know that much about all the detail of what's going on. But what I hear you saying is that we is the commission. Correct. So instead of developing an external body, which I have always felt like the commission is supposed to be the representative of the community, but you're redefining the role of the commission. Is that is that what you're saying? Yes, that's correct. I mean, in the past, the commission didn't have access to the complaints and it didn't have access even when it saw the complaints, it didn't have access to videos and to be to be able to make an independent assessment. So this is becoming more institutionalized that we have an independent role. So, for example, there may be a complaint in which the chief declines to investigate and there was, in fact, such a complaint several months ago. And the commission determined that it wanted to do an investigation. And we sought funding from the mayor for our own legal counsel so that we could investigate the complaint and just to clarify, the city attorney represents the city and therefore the police department. So it has a conflict of interest in so far as we want to investigate a complaint. And so we have been given that legal counsel. And so we have the ability to act much more independently. We can use legal counsel to help us review policies such as the complaint policy or the new city ordinance, which is the legal expertise that we need to do our jobs. Well, yeah, so as someone who's been an employer, I always wonder about just this whole thing about how someone who's head of a department can supervise a staff if they don't have the ability to make decisions about it. So how do you how have you redefined your role in relation to the department or the head of the department as well as the union, which is a whole other thing? Right. Right. So I think that that that is in transition. And there are limitations on our ability, on our role based on the city charter and state state law. So we have the ability to review the disposition of a complaint, if you will. We then can ask for additional investigation. We also can agree with the disposition of the complaint or we can disagree and make our own recommendations, which we have done in the past. And if there is a disagreement about that, if the chief does not agree with us, as the situation stands, we can bring that to the mayor that right now there is no dispute resolution mechanism as it were. We don't have the authority to override the chiefs, the chief's decision, but there we are seeking some additional accountability. For example, we would like to request that the chief has to respond to our recommendations in writing and we would like to be able to make our findings public when we review complaints in part because we have to we in order for this to to be effective, we have to establish our legitimacy as an independent body and so we are trying to navigate the city ordinance, the union contract and state law and move forward as much as we can on that. But in the model that I think you're referring to, in which there is an independent body that makes the final decision on discipline, that's not where we're at. I think this is exciting. Good work. Thanks. Thanks. Thank you. And next up is the Burlington School Board update with Claire Wall and from she's our own board six representatives. Claire, are you there? She is here. Yes, I am. Thank you. So tonight I've been asked to speak on behalf of the board in regards to our Burlington High School, Burlington Technical Center 2025 conceptual drawing plans. Yes, Tuesday, excuse me, April 5th, we had our organizational meeting where we have sworn in four new board members. So the 12 person board on Tuesday night reviewed for the first time the five conceptual plans that have been put forth for the public to view. Those plans will be presented as well. This coming Tuesday night, April 12th, you can meet in person at downtown BHS or it will be a hybrid or on Zoom. And we will be presenting these five plans for the public to view and give feedback. They are currently live on our website. We are promoting them through front porch forum. And Russ Ehrlich, our communications director, is putting together also some more opportunities. We've been in the press and on the news about these conceptual plans, but the board is actively over the next six days getting the word out so that the public has this opportunity to come give their feedback. This has been three months worth of work. We started this in the first of the year in January. We created a steering committee made up of students, community members, faculty, staff with our design architect firms. I think I was here at the last NPA meeting, not the last line, but the one before that, explaining the process going forward and that the goal is for us to receive feedback on the conceptual drawings. So the conceptual is the broad layout of the campus at Institute Road on the north side of the athletic fields where the original BHS stands and from this conceptual drawing, come back to the board within three weeks to give direction to the design team on moving forward with these conceptual drawings to architects drawings so that we would then have an estimate, a real estimate. Right now we have cost estimates associated with the conceptual drawings, but then we would be able to implement the finer details with the goal of going to the taxpayers, the city of Burlington for a November 2022 bond vote on the project. So I'm here tonight to answer any questions that you may have about the school district as it pertains to BHS, BTC 2025 or anything else that anyone has a question on and happy to answer. We have a question. All these drawings for the the site, the one site which you've selected. Yes, they are all situated at Institute Road. So the decision was made a few months ago based on all the input and feedback that we received publicly for the site potentials throughout the city of Burlington. And we we've made a decision based on all that input to utilize the campus and the land that we own at Institute Road based on really a tremendous amount of student impact. They wanted a full centered campus next to the natural area and the athletic complex, which we had invested eight million dollars 12 years ago to create that complex. How much of a barrier is this zoning problem? So we have always known about this in 1963 when the building was built. It was not zoned correctly. In fact, none of our buildings, our school buildings are zoned for schools in the city of Burlington, so we're very familiar with this. And we have been working very closely over the last two years on our prior plan with the city of Burlington and the zoning. And so it it was a press piece, but it was not to us new news. And we are working with the state and with the city. This this is a city zoning issue. The city has had asked us to to pursue what it would what the steps would be to have it zoned correctly as a school. And so we will work with the city in doing so based on next steps. Once the conceptual drawings are approved and we know what that footprint looks like. But it is certainly something that we have to address, but it is by no means news. We've known this for many years and most recently over the last two years, knowing that anything we would do to the building would need to be identified and worked with with the city as far as zoning. That was a long answer for that one. Looks like Bob has his hand up. Bob, can you go ahead? Yes, as someone who went to a high school that it was the size of all of the graduates of Chittenden County combined and realizing that South Burlington just failed an attempt to rebuild their high school, wouldn't it make sense to build a joint high school with South Burlington? We have talked about that. The Re-envisioning Committee over the last five years had spoken to Superintendent Young and we really when we look at the housing market in South Burlington and there, I guess I shouldn't speak on behalf of everyone in these meetings, but we had looked at, not had, we had had those conversations. And a lot of the times we looked at potentially a better suit would be working with Winooski and our two school districts working together. And it wasn't something that we have, we have a robust population of a thousand students worried down a little bit because of our misfortune of having to move out of our high school, some families left, but we felt that both high schools in their size suited their communities with capacities that were growing. And so to put them together for the reason, the rationale of of creating one complex, the conversations I had heard were it, it, it is not, you know, you lose something when you have two school districts that can be filled based on population and growth that's happening, the city of Burlington housing growing and the city of South Burlington housing growing. And so to combine them just to have a massive high school where you could actually, it would eliminate more opportunities for students if there was just one chorus or one if numbers were an issue. So they in the end from what I had heard was that, you know, the superintendents at the time and we had talked about it as well, that these two communities are robust in and of themselves and that combining them wouldn't be student centered based on opportunities that exist to having two schools separately, if that makes sense. But it totally does not make sense to me. I my high school was eleven hundred in my graduating class and the diversity and the pay for teachers was way higher than what it is in these schools because there's far less administrative costs and it's a way cheaper environment. The more diversity, more ESL, there's so many more groups that could be served in a larger high school. We are worth a thousand students and they are too. So it would be creating a high school for two thousand, you're saying. Right, which is still half the size of the high school that I went to. But it's and it, you know, yeah, I don't agree with any of those arguments. You know, the cost of the high school, if we split it with them, maybe we'd build a three hundred million dollar high school that would be a phenomenal building and still save both Burlington and South Burlington's considerable amount of money. Right. Are there any any other questions for Claire? Imagine there will be more once people get a chance to look at the plans. Yes, most definitely. And again, hopefully if you're available to come to our meeting or attend our meeting on Tuesday, April 12th, excuse me, at 6 p.m. We've posted on front porch forum the date, but we'll also be circulating the link, the zoom link. So we hope that you are able to participate and listen in and thank you. Right. So our last agenda item is David Sheehan, I don't see anyone, perhaps somebody else from Big Heavy World is here that I'm not aware of, I guess not. So I I don't know much about the topic, but Vermont Music Day, Vermont Make Music Day, excuse me, is coming up. So if you're interested in making music in Vermont, then look it up online and we'll see you then. And I guess with that, any other questions or comments from the folks in attendance or virtually? OK, well, thanks everyone so much. Really excellent meeting, a lot of information. Appreciate everyone working with us on the agenda timeline. And we will see you next month. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.