 Agenda item is the agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? Councillor Drenge, is there a second? Councillor Pine. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. The motion passes unanimously and we move on to the. The motion passes unanimously and we move on to the consent agenda. Which are the draft minutes from our last meeting. Are you prepared to make a motion? Yes. Um, Rich, you are on mute. Unfortunately. It's already happened to me once tonight. Public forum. Yes, I'm so sorry. I completely skip public forum because. Um, I've already talked to, um, President Tracy and we confirmed no one signed up. Um, but thank you. Um, is there anybody who is in attendance? Um, who would like to, uh, Be recognized and speak at public forum. Please raise your hand. Thank you. Thank you. It's very good. I'm glad you bring these to my attention before councilor Pine does. Um, now the, let's move on to the consent agenda. Um, and we have draft minutes from our April 26th meeting is the board ready to make a motion and adopt the consent agenda. Okay. Thank you. Excellent. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. Great motion passes. Um, and with item. 4.01 removed. We will move on to item 4.02. I would like to move on to item 4. We have a motion to amend the annual action plan. And amended 2020 Burlington annual action plan from CEDO. How would the board like to proceed? Councilor Pine. Uh, I would move to recommend the city council approve the attached resolution. Excellent. Is there a second. Councilor Jen. Any further discussion. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed, please say nay. And the motion carries unanimously. And that brings us to item 4.03. Um, approval to accept the transfer of, um, a few different, uh, grants all in support of permanent supportive housing. Um, and all in CEDO. Um, we have a motion to amend the annual action plan. Um, and with item 4. How would the board like to proceed? I see that we have, um, Marcella from CEDO with us. Um, it might be helpful. Um, I spent some time talking to Marcella a little bit about this. And it's a pretty interesting opportunity. For the city. So Marcella, why don't you give us, um, a little bit about the motion. Um, I think it's just joining us. Um, so that might be helpful. Before we make motions. Sorry, my apologies. Okay. Oh, not a problem. Hi everyone. I'm really happy to answer any questions on this. We did submit a memo with the proposed motions. Um, with the information, but this is basically, um, the proposed motion to amend the annual action plan. Um, the city of Wellington housing authority. That support. Um, The, uh, Uh, permanent supportive housing vouchers. That we have available to us in the, in the city of Wellington, or in Chittenden County. So these four grants are, um, four grants that are within the funds that come through the continuum of care to Chittenden County. Um, and they provide, I think they provide up to a maximum of 500,000. Um, And that, um, those vouchers are really, um, supporting housing for some of the most vulnerable members of the community. They have to be put towards, um, housing for folks who are chronically homeless, um, and also disabled. Uh, and the value of the vouchers in total is I think a little over 500,000. Um, but the value of the grants kind of as a whole with the match that comes in with them for the supportive services. Um, And the value of the vouchers in total is around 150,000. Um, They are fairly complex grants to administer. I think that's part of the reason why. And BHA doesn't find this often a position to continue administering these grants. Um, so, and we won't really have a clear idea about the cost of administration until we've been through the round of the first year. Um, we are looking at, uh, with HUD. Consolidating the four grants into one, um, And we're not allowed to make any substantial amendments to the grants this year, other than changing the grantee. Um, but, but that's really kind of what we're looking to do across the year is to consolidate them and really kind of streamline them and, um, And bring them much more back into action because they've been, they haven't, we haven't been, um, issuing as many vouchers as had been possible overall with them for the last few years. So we're really looking to, towards kind of getting them back on stream and getting those really needed vouchers, um, into line as much as far as as possible. Um, are there any questions that anyone has about it? I guess. Councilor Pine. I wondered if, um, Marcella or, or Katie could talk about the, uh, impact on staff and whether there's, um, adequate admin funding to cover the impact on staff. I'm so glad you asked because there is not. And this is really something that I pushed them on because, um, and you'll see there's an explicit statement, uh, because we didn't want to hide it from any one of you. Um, That it's. We are going to need to create a, a, um, that it's, we are going to need to create a position, um, in CEDO that we will bring to you, um, as a part of the upcoming CEDO general fund budget presentation. Um, it is not all because of this grant. Um, Katie reminded me this is a conversation I had with Luke before he left, like, please, please, you need to get Katie some help. Okay. I'm out. Um, but then adding these grants really made me, um, say we, we have to be honest with the, with the board that as much as we are happy with. This. Take this money. This will be a service that we are providing. And it unfortunately the way HUD reimbursement is, um, it doesn't adequately cover the expenses. And that's essentially how we're winding up as the default grantee. And Marsala, Katie, anything else you want to add to that, but that's the. Financial picture from my perspective. Yeah. And the only thing I would add to that, we tend to fund things, you know, after the fact, make sure that we only have a position when we have 100% grant funding available for the administration. And where that's put us, um, in the recent past is that we don't really have enough staff capacity to administer the grants that we've already received. And there are significant financial consequences for not administering our grants in a compliant fashion. And so with this opportunity and other grants that we anticipate coming, um, further with the recovery, we really wanted to get ahead of it and say, if we really want to be in a position to administer this grant well as well as to be in a position to be able to do administration for future grants, we really need to staff to where we're going to be in six months instead of staffing kind of where we were six months ago. Um, and then when you add in attrition and just turnover, that's more, you know, a part of the organization. It really puts us in a position where we are not able to, um, have the resources to administer what are quite complex grants. So happy to go into more details with that, but, um, can leave it up for questions as well. And if I could just add to that as well as this, this kind of line of work fits very well with, uh, our role within CEDA as being the collaborative applicant for all of the CAC grants. And kind of bringing this into CEDA gives us actually, if the funding works out for it and, um, and if we are able to access the administrative funds within it, kind of gives us the capacity to have, um, a much larger role within kind of working on homelessness. And this is going to be something that's going to be key. I think over the next year or so, you know, as we're going to be working on that, it's going to be something that's going to be key. I think over the next year or so, you know, as we're coming out of the pandemic and as we're dealing with, um, uh, the impact that the pandemic will have on housing. Let me just close by saying the, um, fact that our senior senators, the chair of appropriations, which controls the HUD budget should not be forgotten. And that we should be clear with them that they should be providing municipalities with funding to provide a more robust response to homelessness. I think that's going to be something that we should be aware of. And we should be aware of that. And we should be aware of that at the local level. So thank you. Yeah. Good point. Yes. President Tracy. Thanks. Thank you so much for. Funding and hearing was that question about. President Tracy. That takes place. And so I'm just wondering. Um, yeah. President Tracy. Did you lose your. Your internet was very glitchy. Yeah. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You started over. I don't think I was the only one having problems here. Sorry. Okay. Sorry about that. I apologize. So I, what I was saying was that I, we had heard from a member of the couple members of the public, just wanting to understand how. In the context of CBG, but I think just more broadly, how individuals experiencing houselessness are involved in the, the, the, the grant process. And I guess I'm just wondering. How would you, how would you, how would you, how would you personally, how would you personally, how would you personally, how would you personally, how would you specifically outreach to, to individuals experiencing houselessness will take place as a, you know, indirect. As a direct result of this grant or in the process of administering this grant. Yeah. Sure. So these, these grants all come through the continuum of care. And part of the structure of the continuum of care is, it's very careful to include the voices of folks who I have with me. So actually on the steering committee of the continuum of care, which is the body that reviews all of the applications and kind of oversees the. Oversees the way that the grants are administered. Voice, voices of folks with lived experience are very good, you know, consciously included. And then based on that feedback, are you able to sort of shape programs and be responsive? Or is it similar to CDBG where it's very, where in some ways it's very prescriptive and limiting in terms of the definitions of the grant. Yeah. It's, it's hard funding, it's federal funding and it's, and it is very prescribed. So there are kind of, there are very limited things you can do, but, but, but. But in terms of kind of the way that the thing that's really interesting about these grants is that they come, that they're for supported services along with the vouchers. So I think that the, the place where, where the voices of folks who, who have lived experience or the, you know, the voices of folks who are using the services are really important. And, and yes, we would always be looking to ensure that kind of services are reflecting needs. And that includes, that includes looking at, looking at, listening to the voices of people that are using the services. Okay. All right. Thank you for that. I appreciate your explanation. Again, thanks for all your work on this. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. My question is simple as why this grant is going specifically to BHA and not. Cuts or not CV or your, why is it going specifically there? I can try and answer that. So this grant was. Previously administered by BHA, but they specifically came to the city saying, and to the continuum care more specifically saying that we don't have the capacity to administer this grant. I don't want to get into the details, but essentially the rigor that our department at CEDO has to go through to prove that our administrative costs are eligible. They just didn't have the organizational capacity to do that. And they said, like, we don't want to see these, these vouchers be lost to the city, but we just can't administer them anymore. And we had spoken with the continuum care and none of the other partners that would be eligible. We're willing to take this on. So the city taking it on was really a strategic decision based on our experience administering HUD grants as well as just the necessity that if, if, but for the city taking on the administration of these vouchers, the city would, or sorry, would say Chinden County because it is for all of Chinden County, not just the city, we would lose these vouchers. So that's why the city is administering it instead of BHA or another community partner. Okay. Thank you. I think that that makes it even more clear to me. And on the memo, in one line, you specifically said that maybe in the FY 2022, there is a possibility that general fund will be needed to supplement the cost of this administration. And do we know specifically how much and also has that been communicated to BHA, maybe to pick up the tab on that. So it's a little complicated to explain here, but essentially we're taking the grant over from BHA midstream, even though we're having these conversations in advance to their grant year because HUD, the way they awarded them, they're not allowing changes. And so we can only pay for our administrative costs in the first year out of what's called cost savings. So the residents and any of the units where they have vouchers, if they have social security income or other income, the city pays less for their rent, or if they have absolutely no social security income or other income, we have to pay more. So it's a bit of the savings that can be achieved through the contributions from the individual. We can reallocate for admin costs up to 10%. But because of the way the grant is set up right now, we don't have a guarantee of that admin. So that's one dimension of it. The second dimension is the fact that when we start a new grant, it just takes longer to get something up. Even though we have a partner in BHA and they're handing over and we're working in tandem to make sure it's as smooth as possible, we acknowledge that in the first year of pretty much any endeavor, including administering complicated grants, that it takes a little bit more time. So if we had to put a price tag on it, it would be probably around $50,000, about 10% of the value of the grant is kind of what we anticipate the general fund need would be for us to essentially access the $550,000 of vouchers and then set ourselves up in the future so that we can have this program entirely self-funded through the administrative cost. But we're just not in a position right here to come to the board of finance and say we can take this on with absolutely zero assistance from general funds. Marcella, is there anything you want to add to that that I might have missed or overly simplified? I think that was a very good summary. I think so too. And to finish, just thank you so much for providing additional clarity and thank you. I want to make the motion now. Excellent. That's a first from Councillor Jang. Is there a second City Council President Tracy? And I see the mayor has joined us. Are you ready to vote on this mayor? Okay. So we have item 4.0 3. Accepting it the CEDO, the BHA grant into CEDO. And we have a first and a second. All those. All right. All those in favor. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say nay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor to the mayor. Thank you, Catherine. Let's move to 4.04, which is reclassification of the lead program specialist. One. This is going from a part time to a full-time position. The floor. Is open for. Motion or questions. I am happy to make. A quick question, but before I have a quick question, Mr. Mayor. Go for it. The question is specific when we talk about the lead. It is a, yes. A federal funding that we receive from the federal government, but it's managed by the CEDO. And was wondering if that. Grant specifically has, I mean, How do we pay someone part time to basically administer this, this program? Thank you, Councillor. Katie, are you able to speak to that? Sure. So in the past, we had, you know, not exactly work for full-time professionals. So it was with a smaller grant side, this size that we had in the previous years, it was, you know, it was a good fit for about, you know, 3.6. So we, we have a slightly larger grant this year that we received and accepted last fall. And as we're really gearing up for the, the summer construction, the summer construction where we are doing a lot of the abatement projects, especially the outdoor work. We need to transition the part-time position to full-time, just to really keep our enrollment going and to meet our benchmarks with, with our funder. So essentially we have a slightly larger grant this year. So we're able to transition that position from part-time to full-time, entirely funded by the grant itself. Thank you. I initially thought that it might just be a staff turnaround. But, you know, I know that millions of dollars coming for this specific program and having a part-time. I could not understand it, but. Just to clarify, the position is vacant. We had to ramp down our program significantly due to COVID, but HUD was very understanding and did something unprecedented by allowing us to reduce our benchmarks and just allowed us to restart with a new grant. And so we're just really starting in full swing to do the work on the households into, in order to reach those expectations within our grant, we need to fill this position and not only fill it part-time, but fill it instead full-time. Thank you. All right. So that said, I want to make the motion to approve and recommend to the city council approve reclassification of the lead program specialist, one enrollment, a regular part-time, no extent to non-union grade 16 position to a regular full-time, non-exempt non-union grade 16 position in the community economic development office. Thank you. Thank you. Seconded by President Tracy. Further discussion. Okay. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Katie and Tony. And we now have 4.05 reclassification of the director of racial equity inclusion and belonging. I think we're all aware that. I think we're all aware of that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Since we created this position and created the department has been one of. Substantial expansion of the. Roles and responsibilities of the. Racial. Our first ever REIB director. And. Because of that. To acknowledge that expansion. We had a review. Of. The position was initiated and. With the kind of clarification that we made. With the clarity we had when we articulated last week. With the budget summary about. The size. And scope of the REIB department. So we have. The expansion of it. Have proposed a substantial expansion. And I think now is the time to also. Reclassify that position. So. With that, the floor is open. Present Tracy. I just want to say that I fully support this reclassification. I think it makes total sense. And as appropriate, I also appreciate that it is backdated to October. When. Significant work was already taking place. What I guess I'm curious about is how. I, I see there, there's still a lot of ongoing evolution taking place within REIB. And so I think this is in, in many ways, recognizing work that is already taking place. But I'm just wondering how you see. This kind of. The classification specifically of this position evolving as. As we kind of go forward, like, I guess what I mean to say is that I very much see this as, you know, we're creating a new department, building that new department. And it seems like that in that process, adding continually adding additional responsibilities. To their purview. And so I just want that to be. Something that doesn't get lost and think that we're just kind of doing it now and not, and that, that we won't have to reexamine this potentially. Even in the near future, because this, it's, it's evolved. You know, it evolves. This department has evolved very much even in the last six months. So. Yeah. I think I understand your question and I think I can answer it. The. The scoring of the. Position before you tonight. Includes the expectation that all of the. Positions that were laid out last week. Are going to be. Approved by. By the council. If there is a further. I would like to add to that. I think that the material expansion of the department. Or change in the department scope beyond. What we laid out last week. Which was essentially going to. An eight person department. Plus in the upcoming budget year, having these substantial additional. Training effort that involves. A number of part-time staff. That could be. Further resquad. Okay. That's helpful. Okay. Appreciate that mayor. Thank you. Thank you, president. I think I saw. Maybe I've seen other hands or maybe. Paul, are you ready for motion. I am. I didn't know if president Tracy wanted to do that or if not, I'm happy to. You can go ahead. I'll second. Okay. Then I'll recommend that the council approve the. The. Okay, then I'll recommend that the council prove the attached resolution. Okay. Thank you, Councilor Powell and President Tracy discussion. Okay. Seeing no, no hands, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Director Green for your service. 4.06. This is request for, okay. So this is the, this is the request for ARCA funds to continue the city's COVID response in recovery efforts. Thank you, Cara for joining the discussion. Cara has been really on point. With a lot of this and I see Brian low, I think we have a lot of questions about that aspect of the memo. There were discussions through the weekend about some details of this and. I believe do we have the. The final version is posted. Yes. So. So the floor is open for emotion or discussions. Thank you. Thank you. I just want to, do you want to thank the car for her, her hard work leading us in pulling this together and being responsive to. The input that we've received up until now. Council Paul. You're on mute. Council Paul. Thanks so much. You'd think after a year and a half, I'd have gotten this by now. So yeah, I also wanted to thank you. You know, Cara, Brian, and as well, many others, I'm sure. You know, I think it's really. Multi-faceted and very creative. And the results of I'm sure a lot of work. In terms of the number of things that you are. Looking at not only the, you know, continuing some of the programs that have art that are already in place and have been successful. And also the public health response. You know, I'm thinking outside the box in terms of the number of creative approaches that you have to reactivating, not just simply the downtown, but really all businesses in Burlington. And wanted to thank you very much for all of your efforts on that. I know sometimes when you see a three page document, you sort of make it look easy, but I'm sure that beyond that three or four pages was a, you know, you know, And also I think, you know, one of the concerns that I heard from some people, some constituents was that we were maybe spending more money than we really needed to on graffiti. And I think that this is probably a more balanced approach. And if we find that we need more, well, then I guess so be it. But I think this is certainly a very good start. So thank you. Presentation. Yeah, I certainly echo that counselor Paul. And thank you for just being willing to take feedback even through the weekend. I really appreciated that willingness because I think that creates, I think a lot more buy-in and makes it a lot. I think just creates a lot more consensus, I think around the approach that we're taking here. One thing that I noticed that kind of stood out to me was the, the purchase of software specifically for constituent services. And I just wanted to hear a little bit more about how you found this program. What you think that what, what this is going to do that, for instance, like C-Click fix, what isn't already doing and, and really trying to just get wrap my head around that piece. Cause it is a significant expenditure, but if it's going to really enhance our constituent outreach and tracking and feed into some of the data efforts that we have. And you know, and then I think that makes sense, but just wanting to get an understanding of what this is and how it relates to existing software that we already use. Yeah, absolutely. So, um, let me start by saying that some of the concern that led to this having its own bullet point here is that, um, we are planning on having a surge of need from the community to be connected with resources and programs and grants coming down the pipeline from the state and the federal, um, government. And it felt that we needed to, um, this software while expensive, and we will obviously go and get competing bids. And we haven't done all of that yet. This software is sort of the market leader at the moment. It has a much easier user interface for the resident. And it can be done on the laptop. It can be done on their cell phone. In addition, it's easier for us on our end to track and distribute. I, for example, have been, um, I received whenever there is an RRC call about businesses, it comes to me through C-click fix. And I have been answering all of them individually for the past year. It's very clunky. C-click fix is very much made for physical problems with infrastructure, street, trash, things of that sort. It's hard for us to track exactly where the resident is, who they've spoken with already. This software is easier on both ends. And we're feeling that given the flow coming in, we'll be able to respond more quickly. We are expecting sort of a surge of constituent needs. The reason I put the link in the memo was so that you guys could maybe take a chance to look and see the look and feel. This particular software has, what we've seen from a lot of our peer cities is that many people have discovered that their constituent services weren't as robust as they wanted them to be given the demands that the pandemic has put on most municipalities. And this service comes with, what we really liked about it is it comes with a dedicated project manager, install setup, training, configuration, configuration of citizen data as well so we can understand which neighborhoods might need more or different things. And we do plan on diving in more and coming back to you obviously when we look to actually sign an agreement with this software firm. But I guess the short answer is C-click fix is clunky and it's not made for this. And sometimes constituents needs can fall through the cracks. And this one is a lot more streamlined and it's completely built for this. Okay. Well, that makes a lot of sense. And I do hear that. I mean, just from using C-click fix myself, I think it's really important that you know that that's, that you're totally right that it's really built for those other purposes. And I could see that as being the case. I think then, you know, no matter which one you end up selecting, I think it's just going to be, there's going to be some effort needed to explain that and clarify that to folks who may still, who are already in the habit of using C-click fix and. Absolutely. Yeah. A lot of what the city's been doing is the RRC is receiving information through primarily through email and phone. Then we're manually putting them into C-click fix just as. It's a really a rudimentary tracking system at this point, but it is rudimentary in the sense that some of the calls coming in are complex. They're people who need support from the department of labor. They're people who need rental assistance support simultaneously. And you can create cases that we can track from multiple departments. Okay. All right. And so would this be potentially something that you could use? Like if, for instance, a tenant was facing eviction or something like that, where they could use this to, to reach out to the city or to contact the city. And then this would help you to track their case and the particulars of it. It's exactly that. It's exactly that. And trying to connect them with, let's say there's a rental assistance program coming down from Montpelier, then connecting them with them and creating a flag where we follow up to see if they properly ended up connecting, you know, with Montpelier and making sure that their needs are met. So it's exactly for that. Okay. And similarly, similar to sort of C-click fix, is there going to be some sort of metric on the back end, just in terms of that you're monitoring in terms of responsive response time. Cause I know that department heads are very adamant about following sort of the, and trying to, to keep those response times low. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. There's, in fact, it's more sophisticated even in terms of keeping response times low, making sure that if it's a multi-departmental response, we need that we're all looped in on the same case. And we can all see it from both perspectives. And I envision that as we get closer to this, that we'll be giving a presentation so everyone can see the look and feel and assess whether they feel it's going to be supporting the needs of the constituents. But from my opinion, from having been doing it this whole past year, this would be a much quicker, more streamlined and in my opinion, more efficient way for us to react to constituents needs. And I actually, I feel, I personally feel strongly about it because I feel as I'm watching with the economic recovery, the programs coming down from the federal and state government, I'm sensing that there will be an urgent need for us to react quickly so that we don't leave any money on the table. So that our constituents are as well served as constituents in other municipalities that may already have systems set up. Okay. Wonderful. Well, thank you for that, that additional context. It's very helpful. Yes, of course. I just want to make sure that you've given plenty of thought to the fact that even the best designed and best laid out platform and programs don't always, aren't always, accessible to all members of the community equally. And so I just want to ask you, is this anything you specifically have highlighted in the way you're planning to respond to providing a little extra help for people, whether it's a language barrier, or they're not technology oriented or, you know, sort of what are you doing to, to reach folks that may not be able to access the services, easily. Yes. Thank you, Councilor Pines. So we have budgeted for increased trusted community voices hours. We've also budgeted for perhaps needing temps to answer phone calls if we should have a surge. We're budgeting for field calls if need be. And we've discussed, and I've sort of built it into this budget as well. Setting up offices in satellite locations to help connect constituents with services. For example, in the old North end community center. And so that's sort of baked into this last. Continued and expanded our C services is that we do expect we will need to be having. Extraordinary services. And so that we do expect we will need to be having extra hours paid for, as I said, trusted community voices, temps to get out flyers that are translated into multiple languages as well as satellite locations to connect people who aren't technologically connected at this point. And then lastly, just if you could. Are there any things that you, it needs that you identified, but either they just sort of fell off the list or they were too big to even be addressed. Like if you had another chunk of money, what would be the first thing you'd be addressing? That's a very good question. I feel that maybe we are plan right now is to address those through a more of a community process later. I think that's a very good question. And what I will say is. We're still not sure because we're still waiting to see what Montpelier is doing. For example, if Montpelier is going to be launching job training programs with subsidized child care. Along with it, then we won't need to fill that gap. Our plan is to be tracking what's coming down from the community to fill those gaps. I can tell you right now that as I'm tracking what's coming down from Montpelier, there's not enough specificity as. For services for the BIPOC community. So I can already tell, and I've been speaking with director green that we're going to have to set aside funds to fill those gaps. Great. Thank you. Are we ready for a motion on this item? Before Mr. Mayor, can Brian blow? Can you hear me? I believe we can hear you. Yes. Yes. You or Brian low, maybe you can talk about the history about the case. What it, what it wastewater treatment. Test testing. About its history and why do we now need, why do we, since we already have the. The technology, why do we need more funds for it? And bring also context about the history. Great. Thanks. I know Brian love talking about our waste. Our testing. Hey, thank you, mayor. Thank you, council. I'm happy to, happy to speak to it. So we, we do have wastewater surveillance monitoring in place. We've had it in place and functioning since August of 2020. There are recurring costs associated with it. Each sample that we take has a cost associated with it in terms of the testing that's done on it. That tells us the prevalence level of the viral RNA in the community. So we're currently pull between six and nine tests per week. Each of those tests is a couple of hundred dollars. So we're considering that on one hand, as we budget out through the remainder of the, of the calendar year here and into FY 22 with this proposal. The other costs here are about a couple of different pieces of equipment that we would need to continue to use this technology more effectively going forward. And one of the things that we're most interested in about wastewater monitoring is the application of wastewater testing beyond COVID. There's all kinds of different potential ways to use this kind of system now that we've kind of learned how it works and have it in place in the past. Some communities have used it to monitor kind of opioid levels in the, in the community wastewater. There are many other things that you could consider, whether it's COVID, the flu, or some of these other different potential applications. So for the testing and for the equipment that covers the entire process. And I'm happy to talk more about the wastewater program details. If you're interested, I just want to be respectful in the sense that I, I enjoy learning and working in this space, but maybe not everybody does. I'm happy to keep going if you want, but please let me know. Thank you. That's it. Okay. Floor is open for more questions or a motion. Thanks very much. So I'll, I will. Sorry. Okay, so. I'm sure it's not coming up. Okay. So I'll make a mend that the city council approve the attached resolution. Thank you, councilor Paul. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Jang. Discussion. Okay. So you know, for the discussion, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. All right. Are there any opposed? Okay. So the motion carries unanimously. Thank you again. I'm Brian and thank you to the board for the support of this important step. 4.07. Shiflity. Shiflity park shared use path grant agreement with the Vermont agency of transportation. Thank you, Cindy and Max for joining us. And for working on this brain for this important improvement for the city. I think that's a good idea. I think that's a good idea. Floor is. Is open. Max, you wanted you just. Or we're sending a quick summary of what we're talking about here in the history on it. Sure. I'd be happy to do a quick summary on this. So to get started with the history. This is a project that was initiated actually by our cities transportation team. Nicola and Maddie. Some of the other engineers worked on putting together a project. It's sort of a long, I'm trying to remember the name of the exact grant program that went through it. I think I believe it was the alternative transportation grant. They pulled that together back in 2018 for submission to the 2019 grant round. And we heard back. Back in February that the state had selected this project for funding. So the exact project is. The state has been doing it. It's done it. It's been doing it for a long time. And it's been doing it for a long time. So the projects that are coming to the end of Gos court. Right into the parking lot at the Miller center. You'll notice that there is sort of an informal pathway that's been there for a pretty long time that connects from a very short section of asphalt. At James Avenue. And sort of walks along some fence lines straight through the street. And then you'll notice that there's a parking lot. And it's a really, really common route. For. Middle school students who live in the James Avenue neighborhood and neighborhoods kind of to the. North and northeast of there, even connecting over to the 127 bike path. This is a project that is in our plan. Walk bike master plan. And it was on our five year short term goal list. And it's really great that the state has selected us for this because it will substantially. Bring down the cost to construct this pathway. And it's definitely an area that has. Some site conditions that make it a little bit more challenging. And on the expensive side to build, like. I don't know if anybody's been out there this spring, but it's sort of a mini floodplain in that field. We know there's some clay layers there. And some things like that. And this grant will help pay for all of the extra drainage and. New CBs and under drains and things like that to go in to. Really make that a much drier. Pathway. And so what is now a dirt pathway would be transformed into. An eight foot wide paved pathway. Potentially. Even including site lighting through the park. Thank you, Max. Questions or motion. Councilor Jang. Yeah. Just want to say first and foremost, thank you. Team. For interpersonal recreation for this. For getting this done for accessing the grant. And getting it done. And was just wondering now. After approval. You know, and what are the next steps? Basically, when can we see the construction start? So because this one is administered through this state program, the timeline is very extended. I have cons, this will be parks is first time administering a program or a project through this particular grant program. But I've talked with a lot of my colleagues. And I'm the engineering team. Who handle these types of transportation projects. And specifically through this funding system. And they've said it. You can usually expect construction completion after about three years. As you had the first step. We'll get started right away on an RFP for design consultant. To get to work on designing this. Because of the funding ultimately comes from the federal government through the state. There are mandated public meetings that have to happen. As well as a mandated right of way. Review process as well as mandated. Time periods to ensure we're doing due diligence. Ensuring there's no soil contamination or anything like that in the project area. So there's a lot of more red tape than there would be for a typical. City municipal project on this particular one. So we. Are hopeful. And I've. In some preliminary meetings with the state's project meat manager. And hopeful that we can have some of these processes expedited because this is. A comparatively simple project. For things that are typically funded this way. Because it's. It's primarily a transportation grant. And so they're usually looking at, like, okay, do we need to buy a street right of way through what might be private property to make this happen. And so I'm hopeful we can sort of skip over some of those things to some of them add. Pretty substantial six months to. Plus to your project timeline. So. Yep. Thank you. So thank you so much, everyone. I wanted to then make the motion to approve and recommend to the city council. Thank you. Is there a second. Thank you, councilor fine. Further discussion. Seeing none. We will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And Max, thanks, and Cindy, thanks for that. Sophie, thanks for that summary. And let's see if we can beat that three year timeline. I am hopeful that you're right that this might not be as complex as some of the ones that we just talked about. All right, excellent. Thank you, and that brings us to you. Sorry, just playing back up my agenda here at 4.08, the lease of vendor space at Letty Park, another park's item. Welcome, Melissa. Cindy, or Melissa, you want to do a quick summary of this in an ASL? Sure, this is a one-season proposal for a lease agreement with Outfront Foods at Letty Park to provide services mostly to Greenway and park users, but also potentially arena patrons. Their truck would be located adjacent to the snack bar entrance at the rink and would operate Wednesdays through Sundays, potentially adding Mondays and Tuesdays once school gets out through October 15th. Great. Thank you, Melissa. Sure. Floor is open for questions or a motion? Councilor Jan. Yep, I want to make the motion to approve and recommend to the City Council. Thank you. Is there a second? Second by Councilor Pine for their discussion. And can you just remind us, Melissa, how does this, is there an expectation that the Beach Bites program will also be coming back and how will this interact with that? They will be part of the Beach Bites program. The percentage that they'll pay us is the same as the vendors who pay for Beach Bites and they are eager and willing to be participants in those events as well. Well, that is a popular initiative and looking forward to that coming back as part of the reopening of the city, the SOAR. All right, if there's no further questions or comments, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Gil. Yeah, thank you both. And this brings us to, I believe, our final item. This is a BED item, Electric Vehicle Rate Amendments. I assume someone from BED will be popping on here, here's Darren. I think it's a pretty exciting further evolution of the electric vehicle rate. Welcome, Darren, and James, I turn over to you to give a quick overview. Thanks, Mayor. Joined by my colleague, James Gibbons. This item before you would expand eligibility for our current residential EV rate to commercial building customers and multifamily buildings around the city, providing a similar discounted rate for off-peak charging. It would also ensure that in taking advantage of this rate that commercial customers are not moved from the small general service rate to the large general service rate, there are protections in there that if they're using the EV charging off-peak, they wouldn't be penalized by having their kilowatt hours for EV charging count against them in that tariff calculation. And finally, would add a real-time control option for BED. Currently, we use a fixed window charging between 10 at night and noon the next day for participation in the EV rate. We have another option here with the real-time where devices can be approved and we can have customers able to charge more hours of the day at the discounted rate while still avoiding peak times through that real-time device. So the item before you would accomplish those several changes and we're glad to answer questions if there are any. Councilor Powell. I don't have a question. Other than to simply say that this is great news and thanks so much for all your work on this. I'm happy to make a motion to recommend that the council authorize the general manager of Burlington Electric Department or his designee to file with the Vermont Public Utility Commission, the BED EV rate tariff amendments and accompanying small general and large general tariff amendments as proposed. Second. Thank you, Councilor Pyn and Councilor Powell. Further discussion? Looks like we're ready for a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Good work, Darren and James. Thank you. Thank you. And great. We're gonna be able to adjourn in a moment with some time before the full council meeting. I'll just remind the board probably already, probably don't need reminding that we are gonna spend four more nights together in the next couple of weeks. There are, that schedule is all posted and hopefully you've seen the communications that we've made since our discussion last week to try to broaden and get, listen more feedback from the public about the FY22 budget. We have so far received, last I heard almost 400 responses to the survey that we sent out last week and so we'll be sharing the data from that shortly. And hopefully, I expect there will be, did invite the public to participate in all of these meetings over the next couple of weeks and to share further thoughts in the public forum. So given the response to the survey, I would expect that we would and then given the media that substantial media about the budget last week, I would think there will be engagement from the public in the coming days. So I hope that that is seen by the board as a step in the right direction towards securing greater public input in this process. And yeah, we look forward to kicking those conversations off. I believe the first meeting is tomorrow to Wednesday. Wednesday, we'll see everyone there. Councilor Paul. I just have a quick question. As far as the, you know, we've got, so we've got one on Wednesday and then we're gonna be spending lots of quality time together next week in looking at onboard docs for the Wednesday meeting. I'm not seeing any materials posted. So that's two days from now. I haven't, to be honest with you, I haven't looked for the, I've looked for a couple of them for last, for next week only because of specific departments that I've been asked about. But I'm just wondering when you, when you thought that those might be, I'm assuming that there will be materials and when those will be posted. Yes, thank you for asking, Councilor Paul. Of course, getting the first ones posted always take the most work. Those will be posted no later than midday tomorrow. And then ones for next week, I will send emails out. But given the volume, they will probably be up in a rotating manner. And Rich and I have devised a plan. I'd like to revisit it with him tomorrow to make sure it's realistic. But you'll certainly have more towards the end of this week because I am certain you would like to spend your weekend looking at these budgets as much as I like to spend my weekends creating them. But nonetheless, I appreciate your service and I know that it's necessary. So we will be in touch with more specifics. Okay, and then the other question. I don't know if it is possible, but I would be interested although it's by no means scientific the number of hits that are coming off of the city website that are going to the specific page on the budget. Do you have any way of being able to track that at all? Again, somebody could literally go on and hit the website and hit that page 18 times in one day. But assuming that it's reasonably, that there's something to be gleaned from that. I'm just wondering if other than the survey, if there's a way of knowing what the interest is on that website. And then the last question is we had talked at the last council meeting about doing some sort of a community town hall effort before the end of May. And I'm just wondering if, you know, where that might be. Yeah. Of ideas. So Councillor Paul, with respect to the first question, I do think we can get some kind of web metrics on that and maybe even what's the term, you know, unique users, I think is something that we can scrape. Or, you know, I think that is what we get. So we'll check in with the CAO and try to have that for you on Wednesday. You know, as far as having scheduling another evening, I, from my perspective, you know, we have committed to four budget meetings that we are pushing out and really seeking input on. I'm going to all of the MPA meetings over the course of this month as well to solicit both budget input as well as input on the police chief search and that there are more public meetings on the budget in June. I think we're giving, from my perspective, we're giving folks a lot, you know, an unprecedented amount of opportunities frankly to give input into the budget process this year. And I guess I was hoping that once the council had seen this additional step and the significant initial public input that's coming in through the survey and we'll see what we get in the budget meetings that that would be sufficient. I'm not sure I have the capacity of also organizing another budget meeting on top of that. Well, I know the, you know, so the ward six NPA meeting has already taken place for the month of May. I actually, I actually, okay, well, I actually went and abbreviated the May 3rd Board of Finance presentation and cut it down from whatever it was about 12 slides to about four. And people did find it to be very helpful. I think that, you know, if there is an opportunity on a Sunday evening, and again, I understand that there's a lot going on, but I think, you know, the, there are some people who are either not gonna fill out a survey, maybe not even know that it exists. I mean, I think that community town halls that you've done in the past to discuss different issues of importance of the day are important and have been well received by people in the community. So I would, I would just encourage you, not that you're probably dying to give up a Sunday evening, but if you could, I think that that would be a good use of time. So I'll just leave it at that. Okay, thank you, Councilor Powell. I hear what you're saying and we are, we're also contemplating further COVID communications as well as the police chief communications. Maybe there is an opportunity to bundle these together. I'll take it under advisement and we'll see what else we can do. Great, thanks so much. There's, you know, this was sort of an impromptu discussion. I'm excited about it. I'm sure you all are as well, the possibility of a little bit of a break between the, now in the council meeting for once. So if there's no further objections, I, there are no, not further objections, no objections. I am going to adjourn the Board of Finance at 6.30 p.m. and leave it to you, President Tracey, as to whether you want us to end this and restart it or just, I think we can just have folks turn off their cameras and mute for the time being, because this, everybody has these panelists' links. So we can just, folks just want to leave their, leave this meeting going. This will be the meeting that we'll come back to for the full council right around seven and we'll not do deliberative items before public forum, which will be at 7.30. If you are a member of the public interested in signing up for public forum, you may do so by going to burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum. And that'll take you to a forum that you fill out and submit, which feeds into the public forum sheet and we'll go off of that for the public forum. So I'm again, that's burlingtonvt.gov. slash city council slash public forum. And like I said before, we'll get that meeting going right around seven. So we have about 45 minutes until that gets going. See you in a little bit, folks. Looks like we have most of the city councilors. So let's go ahead and get started. Before we get into the agenda, we will start with the pledge. So we'll do that right now. Okay, that brings us into our first item on the agenda, which is the agenda. Councilor Stromberg may please have a motion on the agenda. Absolutely. So I move to amend the adopted agenda as follows, remove from the agenda item 5.02, communication DPW water resources division regarding approval of the 2021 water resources division rate, restructuring and affordability programs proposal per shape and Spencer. No proposed amendment for agenda item 5.04, resolution city councilor compensation, councilors Hanson, Stromberg, Jang per councilor carpenter, note revised version of agenda item 5.06, per city attorney Blackwood, no added written material for agenda item 5.07, ordinance chapter 18 housing change regarding energy efficiency and weatherization and rental housing, ordinance committee department of permitting and inspection second reading per Jennifer Green. Thank you, councilor Stromberg for that motion on the agenda. We have a motion is there a second? Is there a second seconded by councilor Pine? Any discussion of the agenda? Okay, hearing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting our agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. We now have our agenda. Item number two is the public forum. However, we are not at 7.30 yet, so we're gonna hold off on that for a little while. If you are a member of the public and you are interested in commenting at public forum this evening, you may do so by going to burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum, that's burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum. And that will take you to a formal minute that you fill out. Once you submit that, it gets you in the queue for public forum and we will call folks. We tend to prioritize Burlington residents in our public forums, but folks are welcome to sign up for that using that link. Before we do get to that public forum, however, we'll go in through and try and get to some non-deliberative items. Those are items that do not require a vote. And there may be items where we have to go back and accept a communication or something like that. But I do wanna try and get to some of the non-deliberative items. So some of the reports prior to public forum, I can often be helpful just to get those on the front end when more people are on the meeting. So we'll skip over public forum for now coming back to that at 7.30 and go to item number three, which are the climate emergency reports. Did any councilor have a climate emergency report that they were wishing to offer this evening? Councilor Hanson. Yeah, just to note that, and I didn't learn about this until just earlier today, but another reminder of the climate crisis there's a really devastating drought in Taiwan right now that's lasted I think over a year. And it's to the point where they're having to curtail even basic water use to where a lot of residents can't use water for two days out of the week. So pretty intense situation over there and just a reminder for us to continue working on this issue even though we've got a pretty stable climate here in Vermont that we're able to enjoy at the moment but other parts of the world are really feeling the effects of the crisis for sure. Thank you for that councilor Hanson, Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracey. I just wanted to point out that the board of finance took action earlier tonight and on your consent agenda is approval of expansion of the program where we charge a special electric vehicle rate to Burlington Electric Department customers. We were one of the first utilities, BED was one of the first utilities in the country to launch this special rate back in 2019. And for people who are able to have an electric vehicle and are able to charge on the off-peak schedule and enjoy this rate, it's really quite significant. It takes the cost of filling up, if you will, your electric vehicle from about $1.40 or so a gallon under sort of a normal electric rate down to the equivalent of 60 cents a gallon. And this action that is happening now will expand eligibility. Really who's able to take advantage of this rate to commercial and multifamily buildings. And it also will introduce new flexible load control devices so that instead of having to make sort of a blunt off-peak charging by a set time for a fixed window of time, this will allow BED to be a little bit more flexible in the way it administers that special rate as the off-peak situation can be somewhat fluid and this should expand the times of day which we're able to offer that off-peak rate. So I wanna just welcome this change and congratulate the BED team for continuing to attempt to innovate and introduce further financial incentives for conversion to all renewable electric vehicles. Thanks, President Tracey. Thank you, Mayor. Did anyone else have a climate emergency report that they would wish to offer? Okay, seeing none, we will move on from that item and go all the way through consent and deliberative to the item number six, which are committee reports. Are there any chairs who would like to offer a committee report? Point of information, President Tracey. Sure, Councillor Jang. Thank you. So on the motion to amend and adopt the agenda, it seems as if we missed to include item number 5.05. To include it, I'm sorry. Yeah. What do you mean? So the motion, we have almost all the items there, they sit 542, and then it skips 5.0.5. And we started again to 5.06. The motion that the Councillor Freeman just read. Right, so there weren't any changes to that item. I don't believe Councillor Jang, so that's why they were not reflected in that. That item is on the deliberative agenda, however. So we will be dealing with that this evening. Does that clarify for you? Thank you, sir, yes. Yeah, but I think those were just dealing with changes to each of those items. So that's why they were included. Thank you for the clarity. Okay, yeah. Any further, any committee chairs? Yes, the racial equity inclusion and belonging, we will be meeting on the 18th at 5.30 via Zoom. And I think the biggest agenda item is to outline the goals for this year. Right, yes. Thank you. Great, and just before I get to you, Councillor Hanson, if I could just be made host, and also if someone could please move Councillor Mason over to, from the attendees to the panelist side, please. Thank you. Councillor Hanson. Yeah, we have the transportation, energy and utilities committee. We've got our normal meeting on May 25th at 5 p.m., which I guess that's right after our next council meeting. But we also do have a special meeting before our next council meeting where we're specifically gonna explore the issue of pedestrian safety. And yeah, anyone who's interested in that topic is welcome to join. This is gonna be part of sort of a series of special meetings that we're gonna hold in that committee to take up particular issues. It's not a deliberative meeting, so we're not taking action, but it's sort of an informational gathering meeting and discussion of the issue. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. Chief of Staffordell, I see your hand is raised. Did you have something to offer? No, apologies. Okay. And again, if I could just be made a co-host, and if we could also get Councillor Mason over there into this meeting, I don't wanna just wanna make sure that Councillor Mason has that. Councillor Hightower, go ahead. Yes, for the joint committee of the Public Safety Commission and the Police Commission, just wanted to quickly update that the Tulitha survey will be going out. I believe Thursday of this week. So if folks can be looking for the Public Safety Survey, I hope to get lots of respondents on that and share with your neighbors and everyone else alike. Wonderful. Any other committee chairs with announcements? Okay, we'll move on to item number seven, which is the general city affairs. Did any councillors have a comment on general city affairs? Okay. Seeing none, we, I'll go, that brings us to city council, president council updates. I did just wanna announce to folks that just make sure that folks are aware that Board and Commission applications are due by 430 on Friday. So if you are, if you or someone you know is interested in participating in that, just make sure to get your application in by that deadline. One thing I do also wanna note because of the council dealt with this recently is that the council on aging, that application is also live on that. And you can, if you go to the city website at the top, it says boards and commissions. And if you click on that, you'll be able to pretty easily locate it there. So that being a new committee, just wanted to alert folks to that application also now being live. Did wanna also just again flag for councillors that we have in members of the public that we have a number of budget sessions coming up, all of which will be at 5 p.m. There's one on the 12th, the 17th, the 19th and the 20th, again at 5 p.m. And while those are, you know, board of finance and finance oriented, it's not by any means limited to board of finance members and certainly encourage all councillors who are able to join those meetings. And then the last thing I wanted to just raise is that I did hear from a couple of different councillors with concerns and in community members for that matter around the high school and just the developments there. And so just wanted to recognize that concern and just let folks know that I did reach out to the superintendent and chair wool and just to see if they might be able to join us and see what that might look like in terms of future collaboration. Cause it's certainly an issue that will be, that requires I think continued collaboration between our bodies. So stay tuned on that. And I will now turn it over to Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracy. I just wanted to thank you for mentioning the budget sessions that are coming up and that we are hoping members of the public will come and engage the board of finance and council on this week and next. There is a new webpage kind of landing page on the city website that has all the budget information that has been generated so far and that will be updated to include the additional documents that are generated over the course of this process, which will last from now to potentially the end of June. We will be adding to that shortly by midday tomorrow. There will be additional departmental budgets on the first departments that we'll be presenting on Wednesday night and each department that is presenting will publish preliminary budgets in advance of their sessions next week as well. We've also created a budget survey and have been circulating that through email from porch forum and social media and the response that has been significant so far we've received approximately 400 responses from the public to that survey. We, that survey remains open and will be open at least through the end of this week and we welcome any help counselors can provide and share that with your constituents and encouraging people to engage the process through that way, that tool as well. A couple of quick vaccine updates, COVID updates the, we reached a significant milestone on Friday in announcing our, in testing, we surpassed 100,000 Chinden County residents receiving at least one shot of a vaccine on this past Friday. That is, that means that something like as of the beginning of the day on Friday it's risen by now, I don't have an updated statistic but over 72% of Chinden County eligible residents had received at least that first dose that is one of the highest rates in the state and Vermont as of at least last week was leading the nation in terms of the response in terms of the vaccine administration. We are not done with this yet. We are definitely seeing benefits from this already. The number of new infections has dropped dramatically in recent days. We are now under as of today, we're under 10 new infections a day as a seven day average that's down from just over a month ago, a pandemic peak of about 70 a day. But let's finish the job and keep this up. Just even as we, the Board of Finance was meeting the FDA approved the Pfizer vaccine, I believe for 12 to 15 year olds, which I am past conversations with this state, I would expect very soon the state of Vermont website to be updated to allow 15 year olds and 12 to 15 year olds to get an appointment. I've been refreshing for our 15 year old since the beginning started isn't updated yet but I expect it will be soon. So parents should be on the look after that and let's keep this Chittenden County momentum going. That is what I've got for tonight. President Tracy, thank you. Thank you very much, Mayor, appreciate that. And what I'm gonna do now, since we still have quite a bit of time before 7.30 is I'm gonna go get us into our deliberative agenda but go to an item which is non-action related for a presentation. I communicated with public work staff for item 5.03 and I just wanna make good use of our time. So I've asked them to just move up their presentation so that we can hear from them and we'll have to come back to waive the reading and accept the communication and vote on that. But I did wanna get that presentation going for us just to again, make good use of our time. So I'm gonna ask that the public works folks join us for that update on the city place street parcels in particular. With us, we have Director Spencer and engineers Baldwin and Wheelock. So thank you for joining us this evening and being flexible with us in our agendas. Hopefully this means we get you out of here and you have a little bit of an earlier evening but I'll turn it over to you now and thanks again. Great, thank you so much President Tracy. It's nice to be having council meetings when it's still light outside. We are pleased to provide an update tonight on the concept design and development process for the public improvements associated with the street parcels to be acquired by the city. That includes the restored blocks of Pine and St. Paul Street and the other pertinent public improvements around the city place project on Bank and Cherry streets. Both DPW and DTC mall associates have updated the concept designs for these streets based on the revised zoning permit applications and the limits of work relative to the public improvements as outlined in the amended and restated development agreements and in working towards the settlement terms and schedule under the escrow agreement. So tonight's presentation is just an update but we welcome your questions and feedback and I'll turn it over to senior engineer Wheelock. If I could get permission to share I have a short presentation to walk us through. You should have co-host responsibilities or abilities now and be able to share. There we go, perfect. So thank you, Director Spencer. This is just an update really focused on the design of the streets. Kind of the work that DPW has been doing to support this project. Tonight, I hope to just kind of give a quick refresh of the Great Streets design standards that the council approved back in 2018 and how those get applied to the four streets adjacent to the project site. The Great Streets design standards focused around four primary concepts, walkable, bikeable, sustainable, vibrant and functional streets, looking for high quality pedestrian bike networks that are safe and convenient designs that benefit both air and water quality with smart stormwater, energy efficient and transit friendly. We want the streets to be vibrant so that they are attractive to use accessible, inclusive, diverse and supports the adjacent economic activities on the street. And of course, coming from DPW, we want them to be functional, easy to maintain, affordable and accommodating for all the uses that we do have on our street network. So this is just a very high level snapshot of Great Streets, looking at all the different zones that the Great Streets standards consider. It looks to create a balance amongst all of our users on our streets. Burlington has changed its focus over the last couple of decades and it was really looking to be a lot more accommodating to walking and biking. The standards provide unified materials and furnishings, not uniform. So it gives a variety of different options but really kind of sets the standard that our tree belts will be hard-scape and some material that our trees will be positioned in a certain area of the street but gives a lot of flexibility as to what that might look like aesthetically but just kind of provides that base function. For the project area, for the city place site, this is just to kind of get everyone orientated. The project is in the middle of the screen with Cherry Street on the north side, St. Paul Street, Bank Street, Pine Street. These are the two new street segments that are to be created with the rest of our standards focusing really on the Bank and Cherry Streets adjacent to the project site. We will start on St. Paul Street. So this is the north end of St. Paul Street. These are all graphics that came from information provided in the packet under this item so they can really go back and be looked at more closely just identifying how the clear concrete sidewalk is laid out, public seating, tree grates, on-street parking accommodated around the entire project site on all four blocks, bike racks, as amenities. The rendering that's shown is they're all a little bit older. They come usually from about the 2018 era. So some of the things are not as updated but this shows city place in the background looking north on St. Paul Street up towards Cherry. Similarly, continuing a little further south on the new St. Paul Street as it hits Bank Street, the street takes a small shift on the east side to better align with its connecting intersection to the south. Both of the new Pine and St. Paul are a little bit off their street grid alignment so they require some orientating to make smarter intersections and smaller intersections. There's the driveways for the parking garage but with the Great Streets aesthetic they really are not as prominent features and the street really remains more of a pedestrian scale. This is Pine Street. Again, it looks pretty similar which is our goal with the standards. This is the north end of Pine Street where we have the connection at Cherry, pervious paver green belts, clear concrete sidewalks, tree belts, benches, the entrance to their garage. This one has a feature on it with an overhead height bar and we'll see how and why that's important in our next slide. So this is the southern end of Pine Street shown in the plan view and then a rendering looking south along the new Pine Street. You can see 100 Bank Street in the background of that image. The new Pine Street will go underneath 100 Bank with a vehicle roadway between two of its columns and pedestrian sidewalks on each side. There will be a portion of 100 Bank that is not within the right of way that it'll be a Plaza type area or for their development. Now we're gonna move kind of similar to where the orientation of that image was up on Cherry Street. So starting at the intersection of Cherry and Pine. This will be a raised intersection so a curbless section for better pedestrian accommodations and accessibilities moving along and focusing mostly in the front of the building which is at the bottom of the page. Adding in rain gardens for stormwater features and stormwater mitigation from the street has against trees with soil cells, tree grates. It's picking and choosing of engineering drawings. So the clear concrete sidewalk is not as clear and obvious but that does exist still in this plan. And then moving over towards the other end, this is the intersection of Cherry Street and St. Paul's Street with the transit center at the top of the image. This is again a raised intersection to facilitate pedestrian movements in all directions. It's important to remember that the transit center's pattern is reversed and so buses are coming in this leg and out to the other leg of the intersection to better facilitate transit movements southbound on St. Paul's Street. This intersection is widened to accommodate those movements otherwise throughout the project sites, pedestrian movements are really tried to keep as narrow as possible to improve safety. Going down to Bank Street, I apologize, it's meant to be quick because it's kind of an overview of what's in the packet. This is the intersection of Pine, which is how Pine will come in. What's very different from the way it is right now, Pine Street existing and Bank Street right now. So it's coming out from underneath 100 Bank, changing the orientation to better accommodate the movement as well as intentionally slow vehicles so that they make a conscious choice to stay on Pine Street. It's the preferred vehicle direction for our more south movements trying to keep Bank Street to be more of a downtown scale with its use. There is significant improvements with the path connection with acquiring property from 77 Pine Street to connect into the multi-use path that the city of Burlington owns. Bank Street is proposed to be a curbless street and so all of the features across the street, there is no vertical displacement movement can happen from one side of the street to the other. Similar features that we've discussed before with clear sidewalks, on-street parking, tree grates and stormwater mitigation. And moving over to the other side, there is a rendering of the curbless section of Bank Street, really just highlighting that this street can be a place. It can be programmed flexible to events or other uses as the city progresses. This image over here on the side highlights the kind of shift in the alignment that needs to happen to make this intersection feel smooth from one side to the other. Again, this is all still curbless, so it's all at one height. There are also improvements that are happening at the NBT Bank as we move their existing driveway that connects on Bank Street will occur out onto St. Paul Street, creating more buffer space between the street and their building for other opportunities. And our next steps, we are really close with our property rights acquisition for 77 Pine Street and hope to come to the council in the next month or so with those options. The Bank Street acquisition for the easements underneath their building and the other surrounding challenges are ongoing at the moment, but they are still an active conversation. Intensive construction, which connects with the dates that are inside the development agreements and the DRV permitting and phasing that's construction just about of all the streets right around 20, 2024, 2025. Pine and St. Paul would be constructed with the adjacent buildings, Cherry Street. It's probably one of the first ones that'll be done and complete based on their phasing. Bank Street is currently the last buildings that they would be completing and would fall last on the schedule, although it is a two-year construction because they're still under grounding of overhead wires that needs to occur. And that is what we have. Awesome. That's great. Thank you for that. I really appreciate it. It hits 7.30 right on the dot. So I'm going to ask us to pause on this item. We'll go to public forum. We don't have a ton of folks signed up for public forum, so we'll be back to that item shortly for counselor questions and comments, but I do appreciate getting the presentation at this point. So if you have questions, just please hold on to them for a second. We'll get to that in just a moment. I'm going to go now back to the public forum since it is now 7.30. We'll get things going there. If folks could just please address any comments to the chair, try and keep items not personal, but rather focused on issues. That's very helpful for this. And we do prioritize Burlington residents. This evening, since we didn't have too many folks signed up, I'm going to give us three minutes for public forum. And I will, once we get the timer up, I'll go to our first speaker is Christy Delphia to be followed by Sophie Aronson, Chris Gish, and Christine Fleming. If you are interested in signing up for public forum, again, you go to burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum. And you'll sign up there and that feeds into the sheet that I read off of for public forum. So if we could please get the timer up. I can get Christy going. But I just have permission to share my screen. Sure, I'll make you a co-host. There you go. Perfect. All right. Christy, I've got you enabled. So go ahead when you're ready. Good evening, y'all. I'm here to speak on the weatherization of rental property units. As we all know, this is an environmental justice issue with weatherization of especially the most egregious buildings in the city of Burlington. This is New England and we are one of the colder states. Weatherizing units will obviously save tenants a bunch of money and we'll also save the environment. Weatherization will also save tenants in the way of code enforcement issues as we all know without properly weatherizing buildings that does not keep the structure as sound as it should because it is affected by the weather outside improperly insulated buildings have 70% more of a chance and further dilapidating than what they already are at the current rate. A little bit of our story here, weatherization not being in this building has caused this to have to deal with other tenants who are smoking in their apartments coming up into our house. That's why I sound the way I sound three quarters of the times on these meetings. The smoke is absolutely intolerable and makes it so that we cannot function properly in our house. We have also endured drugs being cooked in this building. We sat here last winter dealing with meth being cooked downstairs with our windows open 20 below zero outside freezing half to death. Insulation in this building would have stopped that atrocity and I wouldn't be sounding the way I am if all these drug and cigarette smoke was not coming into our apartment. Our neighbors would not be allowed to harass us with it if our building was insulated. We also wouldn't have to be dealing with leaks under our bedroom windows going into the apartment style stairs if this place was properly insulated. So, other than the odd so obvious of it being a climate issue and saving money it also stops the code enforcement issues from happening as fast. Regular rates of deterioration are slowed immensely by proper insulating buildings. Thank you. Thank you, Kristi. Our next speaker is Sophie Aronson to be followed by Chris Gish. Sophie, I've enabled your microphone. Hi, my name is Sophie Aronson, my pronouns are they she and I'm a resident of Ford one. Thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight. I'm also sure to talk about rental weatherization as someone who will be renting soon. I think that this is really important because I don't want to have to fight with my landlords over basic comfort and safety in my home. I'm also concerned about the climate crisis of course and feel that this is a really necessary step for us to take in order to reduce Burlington's greenhouse gas emissions in the thermal sector. And I think we really have no time to waste on that front. So, I also am advocating for a fast implementation timeline and hope that that can be narrowed down to three years if possible. And yeah, I just think this policy is so important because it's going to save renters so much money. And I think in addition to fighting the climate crisis, it will help fight the affordability crisis in our community. Thank you. I yield the rest of my time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Chris Gish to be followed by Christine Fleming. Chris, I've located you and have enabled your microphone. Awesome. Looks like hopefully you can all hear me. But yeah, my name is Chris Gish. He, him pronouns, I live in board two on St. Louis street. And I have rented at five different properties so far here in Burlington and they've all been really leaky. I think this is a really typical experience for renters in Burlington. Like all the people, all the other renters I know, and that's, this is not an exaggeration, but they all have kind of their own like almost horror story as it were of just really high heating bills and comically leaky houses, like laughably leaky houses. And in a house that I lived in for two years, it was a small five bedroom on the upper floor of a house and on the upper floor of a building and we paid over $300 a month in gas for our heat and the temperature difference between different rooms was over 10 degrees a lot. So we couldn't even find a good spot to set the thermostat dial because some rooms were so under insulated and you could just feel the air just blowing right out. And you know, I don't think weatherization is rocket science and the two previous people before us touched on a lot of these issues, but as far as the climate emergency, like we know it's happening and we know that energy efficiency upgrades are one of the most cost effective ways to lower our energy use. But just with rental properties, landlords don't always have the same financial incentive to weatherize their buildings because they're not paying the heating costs. So I think a sensible regulation like what we have on the table today would go a long way toward making that fair and making this common sense step. And then again, just thinking about the excessive cost that a lot of us are paying as renters towards these fossil fuel companies, which nobody wants to be supporting because we really don't have a choice as far as where we're living. I'll yield the rest of my time, but thanks everyone. I hope you support mandatory weatherization tonight. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Christine Fleming to be followed by Daniel Montiano. Christine, I've enabled your microphone. My name is Christine and I'm a resident of Ward 8. I am also calling in support of rental weatherization. Achieving weatherization for buildings needs to happen as quickly as possible in order to successfully address our climate crisis and provide comfortable housing for all of our neighbors. I will begin renting in Burlington later this year and I would feel comforted to know that if this ordinance were passed, I wouldn't have to worry about having drafts in the winter or paying an enormous heating bill. I think the people who have spoken before me have given very good reasons for why weatherization needs to pass. So all I have to say about this is please pass this ordinance and require weatherization as quickly as possible. Thank you. Thank you. And I'll move to our final speaker of the evening who's Daniel Montiano. Daniel, I've enabled your microphone. Hey guys, I'm Dan. Also going to be speaking about weatherization and I'll be super quick. I support the proposed amendments. I support the January 1st, 2020, 2022 deadline for the least efficient buildings. I think that's going to do a great service to the residents of Burlington to get this passed tonight and this enforcement to occur before next winter. Just as with every meeting, I think it opened with a climate emergency report or a call for them. It's clear that when a climate emergency and all of the city's resolutions should act swiftly in order to address that for the benefit of the residents of Burlington and everybody. That's pretty much all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you. All right, that now completes our public forum. So I'm going to go ahead and close that item and we will now move into item number four, which is the Consent Agenda. Councillor Stromberg, may I please have a motion on the Consent Agenda? I move to adopt the Consent Agenda and take the actions indicated. Okay, we have a motion on the table for the Consent Agendas or a second. Seconded by Councillor Pine. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the Consent Agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Having now adopted the Consent Agenda, we'll move into our deliberative agenda and item 5.01, which is a resolution regarding the Community Development Block grants, I believe. Councillor Pine, may I please come to you for a motion? Councillor Pine, go ahead. I would move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution. Okay, we have a motion from Councillor Pine. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Stromberg. Councillor Pine, would you like the floor back? Sure, I'll talk briefly about for the members of the public. I think the council is familiar with this as an annual process to allocate the federal funds that Burlington receives from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development under two programs, the Community Development Block Grant Program and the Home Investment Program. Both of those are formula programs, meaning the city gets funded based on our population and our poverty rate and some other factors as well. But the process for allocating the CDBG funds has always been allocated and driven by a citizen process, a citizen controlled process that considers over a period of a few weeks all the applications and ranks them and then comes up with scores and then discusses the funding for those applications. So that is a very, very involved process. The home funds are allocated much more sort of according to whether a project is or isn't eligible for use of home funds and that is done administratively because there's a, shall we say, it's an oversubscribed program, the dollars that are sought from the city, FARC see the dollars available and the process is a pretty involved one. But there will be, people have asked about how the needs of those who are homeless and the voices of those who are experiencing homelessness can be or should be centered in the discussion of allocation of resources. And just wanna point out that the resources that primarily focus on serving the homeless are really allocated through a different process. It's called the Continuum of Care and the Chin-Nin Homeless Alliance that does include and provides lots of public involvement and opportunity for folks with lived experience to help to shape those priorities and to direct the use of those funds to address homelessness. So I just wanted to address that because that's been raised in public forum. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Any further comments from councillors? Ready to go to vote? Okay. All those in favor of adopting the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. The next item was removed. That was item 5.02, which is about water restructuring. We will have that item on our next agenda, so the 24th. Just to flag that for councillors, one thing that I did wanna just note for councillors is that we'll probably have on the 24th that Board of Finance will have a more in-depth presentation. So if you are really interested in this item, I would suggest and welcome others to join the Board of Finance for that. That was part of the plan or that was part of the direction I had given to Megan Moyer. So if you are interested in that, more so at the 24th, we'll have a bigger presentation at Board of Finance. And we will also have a summary at Full Council, but just wanna take a deeper dive at Board of Finance before bringing it to Full Council as well, where we'll also hear an overview, but a more abbreviated one. So, but again, stay tuned on that one or we'll get that one on the agenda for next meeting. And now we will circle back to the item that we were dealing with prior to Public Forum, which was the update on City Place street parcels. We received the presentation and so just wanted to bring it back to the council and see if folks had any questions that they or any comments that they'd like to offer. Councillor Hansen. Thanks. I was wondering about the permeable pavers that are planned to be used for this. Is that for the streets or the sidewalks or both? The permeable pavers are really just for the tree belts. We look to collect the water from the pedestrian zones and infiltrate them that way. It helps keep the system a little bit cleaner than if we use it in the road or a lot of the street grit will be difficult to address. As we become more comfortable maintaining these systems, I would imagine that something like that permeable out in the street will be something that we try out but really we're still just trying to get our handle, hands around, maintaining these systems, keeping them in good working order and then expanding more slowly. The rain gardens are really, it's an easier system to clean. And this is the way that St. Paul Street, which is oddly in my background, looks to try to take the first stab at dealing with street water. Thanks. Okay, comes the time. I'm a little embarrassed to admit, I don't know, is this project, I assume this work still has to go out to bid? This part that was presented tonight is the public improvements, which is outlined in the amended and restated development agreement, I believe is just one that city place would take care of the procurement. But I would welcome either Jeff or Chapin to add on to that. That is correct. And so the amended and restated development agreement talks about city place, constructing the public improvements. And then there is a clause about constructing the modified public improvements if their project is not underway in sufficient time. So if you could just remind us what the time is for you. Yeah, Jeff. What I would add, Councillor Payne, is that the cost of the public improvements is subject to city review and confirmation. So there is a competitive process, if you will, pressure on those prices. Okay, thank you. And then I know timeline slipped, but what is our timeline right now for that work to be undertaken if you were to look at that crystal ball, what would you place that at norm or Jeff or whoever is really the one? Under the terms of the amended and restated development agreement, the first of the city street parcels is to be completed not later than July one of 2024 with the second of the street parcels to be completed a year later than July one of 2025. Those are outside dates, potentially could be improved upon. We believe based on the representations of the developer that their intent is to start with the construction of their Northwest Tower, the building that would front pine and cherry streets and therefore pine street would be the first street parcel to be completed followed by St. Paul Street a year later. Okay, thank you. Any other Councilor Mason? Thank you, President Tracy. Following up on Councilor Pine, my question sort of is one of timeline. I don't have Laura's presentation in front of me, but it's in terms of next step that talked about acquisition and easements. I'm just wondering in light of what appears to be a little bit of a pause given the litigation that's going on, does that impact the city's moving ahead on those or what sort of is happening in light of where the project stands today? I'll take that Laura, if that's okay. So we are moving ahead Councilor Mason with negotiations to acquire the 2000 some odd square feet necessary from the owner of 77 Pine Street, the former People's United Bank or still current People's United Bank location. So that work is moving ahead. The council has previously approved an agreement giving the city the option to acquire necessary ground from the owner of 150 Bank Street. That leaves acquisition of additional easement rights from 100 Bank Street as the remaining item. Sorry, Jeff, you're freezing up. Okay. Maybe... So I can try to finish up his answer. Okay, that would be wonderful. Thank you. The alignments of Pine and St. Paul Street are critical to have the easement rights from both 150 Bank, 77 and obviously 100 Bank Street. So even though the final implementation and opening of the streets does seem like it's a really long ways out, there are certainly areas that they may advance sooner rather than later. This is the same to enable... I think we're getting his late video. As well as the fact that, you know, if unfortunately everything goes south, you know that we still need those land acquisitions to make the modified public improvements work. Okay. So, sorry, if I understood, Laura, what I think you just said is regardless, even if the project, not that I'm suggesting it wouldn't, but we're not to move forward in accordance with the timeframe, there's still an obligation to build the public improvements in order to do so. We need these easements in order for them to line up. Okay, that is helpful information. Thank you. Great. Any further questions or comments from councillors? Okay. Seeing none, Councillor Hanson, can I come to you for a motion on just accepting the communication? Bear, I'll move to accept the communication and place it on file. Okay, we have a motion. Councillor Hanson is our second, seconded from Councillor Stromberg. Any further discussion? Okay, hearing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of accepting communication and placing it on file, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to our next item, which is item 5.04, a resolution regarding city councilor compensation. Councillor Stromberg. Thanks. I'd like to move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution. And I request the floor back after a second, please. So we have a motion from Councillor Stromberg. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Jang. Councillor Stromberg, you have the floor. Thanks so much. So, yeah, this resolution stems from an initial thought I had even before I ran for city council. This resolution requests that we explore the idea of further compensating city councilors, public servants. I remember when I first heard how much councils were paid, I actually thought it wasn't a serious fact because just from watching city council meetings in the past, I know folks are putting, you know, a lot of time into these positions. And now as a councillor, I can attest that, yeah, not only do councillors put in hours on end for council meetings and committee meetings, NPAs, another community held community viewed settings. There's so much time in the background with like communications and research and things like you don't really see from the outside world as much. And so, you know, no matter how you slice it, it's an enormous amount of work. And I'm bringing this up because I want systems of government to be reformed and to be, you know, made more equitable by the work of this current council. So future councils are opening and operating in more of, you know, in more of an economically and socially just way. You know, in a perfect world, right? Like I want everyone and anyone, regardless of background, to feel like they can run for city council, public office in general, right? I want a council that truly reflects that of the community and elevates voices that have been too long left out. And I want to make sure we're doing everything possible for that to be a reality. And fair compensation should be a part of this. That's something I've just always believed. And, you know, this is essentially a volunteer position. We all know that. You know, a lot of people calling in say that too. They're like, you know, a lot of you are working basically for, you know, it is volunteer position. And we are here because we love this work. We absolutely do. It's very clear. And in many different ways. And I respect each and every one of you for that so much. And, you know, this is something actually Councillor Hanson had said recently when, you know, he was reelected, as we know. And during one of his remarks during our NPA, this was a very simple thing, but it stood out to me. He stated that there's nothing he'd rather do with his life, that he's so happy doing this work. And I think many of us feel honored and privileged in that way to be in these positions that we hold. But at the end of the day, you know, folks still have to pay bills and eat. And we need to meet the needs of the people. And I don't think city councilors are exempt from that. You know, not everyone has the luxury of being able to volunteer hours and hours a week. And I don't think that having that luxury should be a requirement to run for office. Stepping up into a public-facing, high-exposure, time-consuming position is already like not for everyone. But then not really compensating those that do make it hardly a job for anyone. So the people of Burlington, in my opinion, and I think we all believe this, deserve the best possible representation through and through. The people of our city deserve our attention, our care, our quality, thoughtful work. And to ensure that these deliverables are met, I believe that we need to ensure, you know, councilors are able to have perhaps healthcare, childcare, monetary compensation, you know, whatever we figure out, right? There's no magic number in my head. I don't know what that looks like, but that's the whole point of the resolution. And I think these things are, you know, necessary because it helps prevent burnout, exhaustion, financial stress. And we are all individuals with different personal situations, but the things I'm mentioning should be offered across the board so that they are not barriers for people to run for office. It is the saddest thing in my mind to think about the fact that there are people out there that, you know, who are more than capable of holding office and more than, you know, have, you know, really great ideas and want to express them, but they don't because, you know, one of these barriers are in their way and time and money are, you know, a huge backbone of a lot of these barriers and I want to name that. So I'm proudly bringing this forward because this is democracy reform and we may send this to committee and find that it isn't even an option for Burlington for whatever reason, right? But let's at least learn that and not kill this before it has a chance to at least inform us. I think that that's like the beauty of committees. So, you know, we can explore and we can research and get public input and hear more from one another as this evolves. And I think that it being in committee gives it that kind of value of let's actually talk about this. This is not a promise that this will happen. Obviously, this has to be fleshed out and this is the most democratic way to try and get anything passed. In my eyes, that's absolutely true. I mean, there's so many different checks and balances when it can go through committee and then be on the ballot. I think that that's a great advantage to this as a body, we should believe that. And so, you know, when we start this process now we have plenty of time to flesh out the details and have a conversation as a council and really feel confident about what we bring forward to constituents for them to decide on. And for those of you who may not agree with this resolution, I want you to know that I very much respect your opinion. I just implore you to not vote against this because I do feel like there is a lot of, you know, a lot more further knowledge and exploration no matter what the outcome of this is, no matter what the committee finds and we will always benefit from that. And, you know, being more informed and hearing about, you know things that the public thinks about, you know? I mean, I feel like that feedback is invaluable. So I obviously will be voting yes to this resolution to be sent to charter change for further consideration and research. And I hope that the rest of you on this council choose to do so as well. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Stromberg. Are there other councillors? Councillor Carpenter. I thank Councillor Stromberg for her passion around this but I would intend to offer an amendment to her or this resolution, which I hope you've all seen. My concern is I don't think we've done the homework on this. There's a lot of presumption that compensation is the reason people don't run. There may be many barriers and time for one of them but we have spent no time doing that homework and I'm just concerned this resolution is written makes a presumption that for example we're gonna have something on the ballot in 22. I don't know what would encourage people to run more or not run, what kind of supports we can give for them and there may be many, some of them may be compensation, some of them may not be. So I am suggesting by the resolution that for councillors for whom this is a priority that we do the homework. I think too often we lay stuff and say city staff go and research something. And I don't see this as a broad policy issue. I think we're a difference of opinion. So I'm suggesting that we take the time to do the research localistically at what supports or doesn't support or prevents or doesn't prevent people from running and report that back to us. I suggested September could be October and November however long it takes to do that work. I think we need to look at other cities our same size, see how they get participation, what incense people and have a broad discussion. And I'm particularly sensitive about this because in fact it benefits all of us sitting on this council while the intent is to encourage future representation it in fact is personally beneficial to us. So if it's a priority, we gotta do the work. It's not necessarily something that the broad public I feel are begging us to do. And in fact they probably, many people will not want us to spend the resources. So the intent of the amendment that I've written is to ask that the committee do more homework, look holistically at all of the options and then bring the options back to us for a broad discussion. And not necessarily with a presumption that this has to go on a ballot in March of 22. Councillor Carpenter, are you gonna offer your amendments at this time? Yes, they will. So what I'm suggesting relates to the resolve clauses and I can read it for you. I can expand it here to say that one more. So and if you could just state it as an amendment please. Yes, so this is an amendment to item 5.04 and it deals with the two resolve clauses at the end of the resolution. And so I'm just having trouble expanding my own screen. Any point of information? Yes. Councillor Pine. I would just ask council president if you would be willing to, I don't know the proper procedure, but to separate these are two separate items that are on their related to the same resolution, but they could be voted on separately. And I'm wondering whether you would ensure that that be how they're presented. So we can vote each one individually up and down. Is that something you can do? That's up to Councillor Carpenter how Councillor Carpenter would like to make the motion. Understanding that Councillor Carpenter, I'll leave it to you to make your motion, but I'm not going to object to that. I appreciate that there is a concern that I have asked the council and the council members to do more homework themselves before burdening the city staff. I think we too often don't do our own homework. So I think that's what's driving the separation, but if that's the will of the council I'm fine to separate them. Okay, well, please proceed with your amendments. Okay, so the first amendment would be in the first resolve clause. They're now there, therefore be resolved. City council refers to question of the appropriate level and I'm adding in support and compensation for city councilors to its charter change committee. I am striking for consideration of a charter change to be considered and voted on at the 2022 annual meeting election and adding those members of that committee and other counselors shall conduct the research on the norm of committee similar to Burlington. That research shall include, but it's not limited to. And then I add in, in addition to consideration of amount of work, the need for more administrative support and office work, I add in researching dependent care stipend and add in looking at the impact of possible redistricting. So that is the first resolve clause I'd like to see amended. Okay, so I'm gonna go out of share mode now. Is everybody clear on what the amendment states? Okay, so we have a motion on the amendment. Is there a second to the amendment? Seconded by Councillor Paul. Councillor Carpenter, did you want the floor back? I don't believe I need it as again, I think the difference of discussion around my suggestion is primarily that I'm asking us as the council to conduct the research first before we burden city staff with that. Okay, thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Is there any further discussion on the amendment? Councillor Hanson to be followed by Councillor Paul. Yeah, I can definitely appreciate the desire to look more broadly at structural issues in our local governance. And I think, and I'm glad that we are doing that to some extent with reforms like rank choice voting or as well as looking at redistricting and that process. I know that that's gonna be up for discussion soon as well and the public financing of campaigns. I think there's a lot of issues that we need to address in order to make our local democracy function better and allow more people to participate. I see this resolution as addressing one particular issue that I find to be pretty glaring which is just the extremely low rate of compensation that a city council receives for the amount of work they do. I think there's plenty of other issues that we should work on with local democracy, but that one to me is pretty obvious in terms of the fact that just someone who doesn't, this is not just true of city council. This is true of any situation where you want people's involvement and you want their time and energy is that if you want folks from a diverse backgrounds and people who are struggling economically especially, if you want them to do a large amount of work and put a large amount of energy in, it's really important to compensate for that work if you truly want folks of all backgrounds to be able to access that work because not everyone has the privilege to be able to volunteer a lot of their time and energy if they're struggling financially or if they're just juggling a lot of responsibilities and other folks are relying on them perhaps to care for them if it's a family member, a dependent. So there's just so many situations where someone's not gonna be able to volunteer that level of time and I think there's a basic, there's basic roles and responsibilities of the council that take a lot of time and then beyond that constituents, I think expect a lot and reach out to counselors for things as well on top of sort of just the built-in responsibilities of the role and I feel like most people who would be interested in running for office want to be really responsive to their constituents, want to go above and beyond and try to do that, but that's just not feasible for someone who's working 60 hours a week or is just juggling so many things if they're not gonna be compensated for that time spent that's gonna create real problems. So like I said, I do appreciate the desire to kind of broaden it and look at other things. I do think there's plenty of things that we should work on but I don't feel like amending this resolution and trying to fit that in really makes sense. I think this is a clear issue that we should address and I think for a charter change process this is the normal process that it would go to the committee and the level of expertise that the full-time and this kind of ties back to the issue itself of the city council position but the level of expertise that a full-time city employee who is an expert can bring to the charter change process and developing that policy is just different than a council, a city councilor volunteering their time. So I think it's a better process to go through that normal process of the charter change committee and staff working out the details of the proposal together as they normally would for a charter change. So I'll be voting no on the amendment. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. I have Councillor Paul next and he followed by Councillor Stromberg in Hightower. Thanks, President Tracy. So I mean, I can see both sides of this in my years on the council, oftentimes when things have come to the charter change committee, they have been in the form of research that has already been done. That is not at all unusual. Oftentimes the charter change committee is really there to take further testimony, perhaps make some changes to charter change language, but it is not always a research body or asking city staff to do research. Oftentimes that work has already been done. I've only seen councilor compensation change once. It was just a couple of years ago and there were, for those who supported it, there were compelling reasons that were brought forward as to why we should increase councilor compensation. And I won't go into that at this point, but there were reasons given. And there are reasons being given this time, not meaning any disrespect for the sponsors. I know that I've spoken with two of them and I know that you have been thinking about doing this for some time. I think it is worth noting that you, and you councilor Stromberg enhancing it, certainly I don't wanna put words in their mouth, but I believe I've been thinking about this for a while and decided not to bring it forward given the economic uncertainty that we found ourselves in over the past year, which I think was certainly admirable and wise. I don't see, if you're gonna be talking about health insurance, I don't see why we shouldn't be discussing depending care. I mean, I don't think that either one of them is any more important than the other. So to put that in there, I think is important to note. There are many people for whom this is going to be a challenging way to be able to serve the city if you either have a small child or two or you have a dependent care of someone else, someone who's older, someone who needs dependent care. As far as possible future redistricting, that is certainly a very real possibility in the near future. And I think that it would be helpful to have that conversation, particularly if we are thinking of either shrinking the size of the council or greatly expanding it. So I think those things should be factored in. I'm happy to support the amendment because I think that it just enriches the resolution. Thanks very much, President Tracy. Thank you, Councilor Powell. I have Councilor Stromberg to be followed by Councilor Hightower and Pine. Thanks. Yeah, so I very much appreciate the amendment and the thought that was put into it. I just wanna make clear the intention of this resolution is not to give all of the details right away because that wasn't, that was clearly not fleshed out. That's kind of like the stage that we're in and why I feel comfortable bringing it to a committee. And I think Councilor Powell makes a really good point but there's so many different things that we're not thinking of, right? People have very like specific personal situations, right? So there'll be things that are gonna come up naturally from individuals that like we might not all have that in common as a barrier or what have you. So that's kind of like why I want to have that discussion in committee and kind of hear from the public and hear like why maybe we'll hear from people who like wanted to run and didn't for a unique situation that we didn't think of or something like that. I, again, the details were kind of left out because I want to put a lot of thought into it and I want anyone involved with this to put a lot of thought into it and I wanna get a lot of feedback from people. So I didn't wanna make the resolution so specific from the get-go knowing that it would go through a more thorough process. So I am very kind of torn because I understand the purpose of the amendment but I do want, I want the flexibility of using the resources around us when we need it because I am certainly not a professional in this field and I personally need that help. I do a lot of my research, a lot of my homework but I cannot do all of it and I need that personally I know that for myself and I know that my colleagues lean on other resources too. So it's just, I don't want us to be limited going into this process while I want to alleviate things from anyone who's busy, I don't want anyone to feel overwhelmed or overworked. I think starting this process earlier helps us kind of spread it out so that doesn't end up being the case. So that's kind of my initial thoughts on that amendment. So overall I'm really, I'm leaning like not supportive of it just because I think the resolution as is accomplishes what we need to do at this stage. Thank you. Councilor Hightower to be followed by Councilor Pine and Shannon. Great, and I just have I guess first a quick question to the maker of the amendment which is I think I'm having a hard time understanding what the like level of requirement is for the amendment. So are you saying you just want some interested counselors to write a two-page memo on what some other communities do? Are you asking to have like an exact amount based on, I feel like the argument for against this depends on what it means with conduct research. Like is it just some baseline in order to give more direction to staff or is it to have a fully fleshed out proposal by the end of it? Well, the original resolution talks about coming back in August and talks about setting a charter change. And I'm just saying I don't see how we're at all prepared to have that discussion without a more holistic look at what kind of supports do we give counselors? What's the package of stuff that might be out there? What other communities do? So it feels just very rushed to me. And I'm hearing sort of two things. I'm hearing one point of view which is let's just deal with compensation and get that off our agenda for me because it is city resources or money. I want to look at the whole package. Would we be better at giving a dependent care stipend? Would that encourage more people than hourly pay? Would administrative support encourage more people to run? Research support and I don't, I don't can't look at those in a vacuum. My concern was not that you wouldn't get any support from the city, but I just feel like I'm not impelled that just increasing our hourly pay gets us to the goals that are talked about further up in the resolution that we need to look at it kind of more holistically with all of those things. And so that's what I'm asking be done. One way to do it will be citizen input, but one way will be researching what other people do. Are there communities with more supports that have more participation? And we just need to figure out how to do that work. And that will take some time. I don't think we can get it ready for a charter change in September. I see. And I don't even understand, to be honest, what the charter, there's changing the charter and there's the substance kind of behind it, like for example, do we need a charter change to offer a city councilor a childcare thing? I don't know, but, and that is research that we've kind of figured out. It just feels, I want to look at it more holistically, not just an hourly pay raise, if we're going to look at it. Councilor Hightower, you saw the floor. Great. So I don't think, yeah, I think some of those intentions are in, I guess make a lot of sense to me, like the dependent care stipend. I guess I just don't think that the resolution is excludes those things from being looked at. And whereas, I guess I would just caution us of having the need to like have a, I mean, I think that there was definitely times where we want to reach out to wider constituents and understand, but I think to some extent, this will have to be a judgment call. And I think saying that we need to have a survey understanding like what is keeping people from running. It just seems like a lot just for a way to get more people to run. I feel like I have an understanding that this is a barrier to people running. And I think removing some of the barriers, I think health insurance and dependent care of course would be a great one, but I guess I'm hesitant to meeting this to be like a full understanding of what it is as a community. So yeah, I appreciate the spirit of the amendment, but I think it may be goes a little too far. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. I have Councilor Pine to be followed by Councilor Shannon. So this issue is always the 31. How do you avoid it when you're voting to compensate yourself? One of the things that I always thought would make a little bit of sense in that trying to address the issue that it's so self-serving is to have it only kick in upon reelection. So in other words, when this becomes in effect, no one who's sitting there at the time benefits, you have to actually stand for election in order to get the new salary increase. That's one idea. So it doesn't look as if this is just a way to sort of add a little money to our pockets, although that's not necessarily a bad thing. But I think it's probably, when I was elected in 1991, very long time ago, I think we were paid $2,000 a year. We didn't have a parking pass, which was one of those perks that I thought actually made us a little more distant and separated from what the reality of what most people have to go through. So I'm not sure that was always a good idea, but we always identified that there are lots of barriers to people participating that long ago. I think we were aware of this because it was the city councilor from the new North end, Kathy Connelly who pushed for counselors to be able to get access to city dollars to pay for childcare to attend meetings. And it was a really important step, but I would have to say, I don't think the result was that lots of parents with young children were able to serve. So there's so many other challenges, I think, that are in there, but you have to chip away at the barriers. You have to kind of find what they are, find the way to move the needle on removing barriers to folks to participate who are so often unable to participate. So I guess the, I have someone drumming in my house. So I'm sorry about the background noise. I think it's coming through louder than I thought. I want to just say lastly, the idea of having a research assignment given to someone other than the city staff is one that I think makes some sense. I think we can actually do that without this full amendment. So I'm not thinking that this amendment is what's needed for us to advance this issue. And I do have, I believe that Councilor Carpenter is intending to really gather as much information as possible so we can make the most informed decision here. But I also think that we can, I don't think it's actually binary. I don't think it's either that or this. So I think, I think we actually can get there with the current resolution without the amendment. Thank you. All right, Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracy. I do support this. I appreciate Councilor Stromberg's raising this issue. I think it's an important issue. But I also think it's much broader than just the pay issue that so many people have said to me, I can't believe you do that. I would never do that. And I think it deserves some investigation as to why they say that because these are certainly people who are very capable of doing the job. And what is it about this job that makes people say, I could never do that. And I can't think of a case where the reason they're saying that to me is because of the pay. So in the kind of, I also agree with Councilor Pine, we have to chip away of these things. But I don't think that that is the biggest impediment to service for most people. Is it the biggest impediment to people with less privilege? I haven't seen any evidence of that either. It may be, but I think it's worth asking the question as to what we are going to get if we pay people more. And with regards to this amendment, I'm concerned with the timing of when this is coming forward in two respects. One is that the city attorney's office has a tremendous amount of turnover right now. And we're looking at new leadership. I think that this office was very stressed prior to that turnover. And that's only going to get worse. So I'm very concerned about allocating city attorney staff resources to this right now. And the other aspect of timing that concerns me is the reassessment is impacting our tax, particularly our residential taxpayers in really adverse ways that asking for pay increases for us right now is it's not an opportune time and not that there necessarily is an opportune time, but this is just a particularly bad time for doing that. And what I would be more in favor of, I do support the idea that that counselors would be doing more research on this before getting to the assumption that we need to raise our pay, looking at all of those other things that may be contributing. But at this time, so while I support the amendment, I'm just concerned with bringing this forward at this time. And I'll just add the school board is very similar to the council in terms of the commitment of ours and they're not getting anything. So when we go to the taxpayer and ask for more money for us, the school board has felt they don't have the luxury of going to the taxpayer and asking for some, like any money for them. We don't control that, but we are asking the same pool of taxpayers to now pay us more when the school board gets paid nothing at all. So I will support the amendment and I do support the spirit of what you're getting at, Councillor Stromberg. If this does not pass, I'd be interested in further discussions on the topic, but I can't support this initiative now. Thanks. Okay, thank you, Councillor Shannon. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Councillor Barlow to be followed by Councillor Chang. Councillor Barlow, you're muted. Sorry, rookie move. So I've been on the council a little more than a month and I agree that the amount of work involved in this public service role is super demanding. The learning curve is also really steep, which has to the work for new counselors like me. But I also recognize that the scheduling challenges that presents both in time and in schedule flexibility are also big constraints. Based on my limited council experience in my four years on the school board, as Councillor Shannon pointed out, it's a public service role that gets no compensation at all for equally challenging work at times, especially during budgeting season and during collective bargaining. I believe for many who serve time is the most critical constraint, time and schedule. We raised the compensation to its current level, $5,000, $5,000, three years ago. And currently, Burlington Councillors are compensated more generously than our peers in other cities in Vermont. And I've actually looked around at South Burlington, Manuski, Rutland and Montpelier. And I'm fairly certain of this assertion that we are maybe the most generously compensated. Additionally, Burlington Councillors can be reversed up to $5,000 for qualified expenses related to council business, including hiring assistants to do research or draft communications. So I realize this resolution and this amendment to this resolution may very well past and I didn't get referred to charter change. But I don't support raising council compensation at all. So I won't be supporting either the amendment or the resolution. But I would like to find ways to help Councillors better use the resources that are currently available to address the time constraints we all face. And based on my limited reading, I don't believe we need to move a resolution to do this. I think we can do it just through the resources that we already have. I think you, Councillor Barlow. I'm sorry, are you also? Yes, thank you. Okay, all right. Councillor Jang, to be followed by Councillor Stromberg. Thank you, President Tracy. And again, Councillor Stromberg, thank you so much for bringing this resolution forward. I think this has been long overdue. And hearing my colleague City Councillors speaking about this, I can just simply see the power dynamic at play here. I can also hear definitely privilege, dynamic playing out here. I think we are all passionate about this job. We all love it. Reason why we're still here. But two, I'm just gonna give you one. This is my story, my story as a City Councilor. I am an employee of the Burlington School District. But since I became City Council, I mean, I could not have a 40-hour contracted job and still do City Council. It is all about what quality work means to the individual. I could not possibly stay 40 hours reason why I requested for my hours to be cut in order for me to simply keep my healthcare and also serve my community in a different level, which is City Council. Now, what I have lost as an employee of the Burlington School District, where is it the compensation? What is going to compensate that? I had to make a choice because I'm committed, because I love this city and because I wanted this city to be the best it can be. Burlington is not Montpellier. Burlington is not Rutland. We are the biggest city, the economic driver of the state of the month. Our elected officials need to be supported and we also need to make sure that we invite all the people into this work. 50 years from now, maybe a new generation of leaders will be sitting right here. We have to set them for success. You have to be focused. You have to be determined and you have to do this job right. It's not about sitting on the City Council and the committee. It's way more than that. Just the new North End, one issue when it comes up, you have to knock on every single door, bring people together and that's the time. For people who have children, for people who have full-time job, for people who do so much work, I think an increase of compensation, it's definitely needed. If you are privileged, you have all the financial resources that you need, then the City Council is for you. But for anyone like me, this is not a space for you. And even pay a particular attention as to how the City Council just recently approved the Boards and Commission to be compensated. This never happened before. Taisha Green, thank you and her team. Thank you for bringing that. Because that's most of the time, leaders who are sleeping on our streets, that's all they need. A little bit of stipend in order for them to have the courage to have the time, to find the time to come sit down and make this city much better. I do not think it is necessary for the City Councils to do the research themselves. We do research before bringing City Council Resolution forward. But once it's adopted and signed by the mayor, I think we have full-time staff that can help the City Councils get that research done, right? And if September is too early, the City Attorney's Office is not equipped or don't have the capacity to do the research, it's extended. But what I like more about this is democratic reform. It has so many components. This is only one of them. One of them, consular increased pay. Two, we need to also start to think about term limits. City Councils, we need to change. We need to have the rule of democracy to keep on running. What I like about this is we specifically focus on one item. Let's do the research in a committee where the community members also could show up and have their voices heard and be part of the conversation until we find what really fits. If you tell me today that we wanna increase the $5,000, we wanna just double the current salary, I will definitely say yes. But all the members of the committee, we're not bringing that proposal here. All we're asking bring this to a specific committee, do the research if the city attorney staff don't have the capacity, let's extend the date. I'm not supporting the amendment and thank you again for bringing this resolution. Thank you, President. You, Councillor Chang. We're starting to get into second round now. So if you can please keep comments brief if you're speaking for a second time so we can get towards a vote on the amendment. I have Councillor Stromberg to be followed by Councillor Hightower. Thanks so much. So a few things to respond to. One, I just wanna thank you all for the input because it's actually, it is informative. I've been taking notes and these are things that are very valid. And I think, especially if this passes, it goes into committee, I'll definitely be prioritizing them. One thing I didn't wanna respond to is that, there obviously will never really be a perfect time to bring this forward. It's kind of like an awkward thing to mention. Like, hey, I feel like we're undercompensated. That's just a fact and a feeling at the same time. And I understand that the reappraisal has been really stressful. I understand that there's a plethora of things that have been stressful financially for people, myself included. This isn't happening right now. This is, hopefully by March of next year, but we don't know. Like that's the whole point of sending it to committee so we can get at least an idea of how much work this is and what this looks like. This is not something that needs to be rushed. This is not something that needs to take years, but I'm amendable to pushing it to September. I'm amendable to that type of thing, but I do think that there will never be a perfect time. And often we find in this committee, or I'm sorry, council body, the argument of like, oh, things are a little rushed and there isn't enough time. The whole purpose of me bringing this forward is early on as possible, right after the committee was reshuffled, after everything's kind of getting more organized and we're having more of a trajectory of the year, is I'm bringing it forward now to make sure that we have the time. So there's that no rushed feeling that we're having like multiple committee meetings in a month or something like that. And then having multiple projects at the same time within the same committee. So I wanna avoid that at all costs because I feel like we don't wanna put that pressure on staff. We don't wanna put that pressure on ourselves and we wanna deliver on things that we need to do quality research on. And then I do wanna just mention, Councillor Barlow mentioned the school board. I am fully supportive of all elected officials being compensated and I think the school board absolutely does put in tremendous hours and I don't wanna undervalue that at all. This is not to exclude them, this is just to start getting the ball rolling in terms of what do we find? Because then we can build off of this and we can move from it but this is just to literally start the conversation. So I'm so supportive of that. And one thing I do wanna mention further, last thing I promise is there are really good points in those amendments. Really, I mean, I was on the phone with Councillor Carpenter earlier and I said, I agree with so much of what you're saying. I understand where it's coming from, I do and I value it. I do agree that we do need to have dependent care compensation for sure that should be added and obviously redistricting is gonna be something that naturally comes about because of the synthesis or because we kind of help bring it forth and really kind of delve into it. That is something that's gonna happen in unison more or less anyway I think. So I feel like that's something that we have to research no matter what because that's obviously gonna play a role in terms of the budget and what we can allocate. So I can guarantee that that's gonna be part of the research. Every single thing that you're mentioning, every single what everyone has said tonight is gonna be part of that research and that I can guarantee. I know that as a counselor myself. But so I hope that you trust that and I hope that you believe in that because I know that this is something that can be a really good thing for our community if we just really kind of delve in and look at it properly and again, we don't know what the outcome is but I think more information is always better especially for us, we're the legislative body of the city. So thank you so much. Okay, I'm done, sorry. Okay, all right. Again, counselors around please keep it brief so we can get to a vote on the amendment. Councilor Hightower. Great and I promise I will keep it brief which I think the first thing that I just have to say is we are not representative as a body of the city of Burlington. There are, I think, in the next month there will be two people in the council who don't either own the home or their partner owns the home that they're living in which in Burlington is only 40% of the population but for us it's the vast majority of us. I wouldn't have run for council if I couldn't have worked 80% time which the reason that I can afford to do that is because I had a very well-paid consulting job and if I had done that years before when I didn't have a well-paid, high-paid consulting job I couldn't have done it if I'd had to go because it is almost impossible to do this job if you're working in nine to five. And one or two of us who don't have their very flexible work schedule still manage to do it and that's amazing but I think that it is to say that it's not a barrier when we know that it's almost impossible to do it for the kinds of jobs that most people in Burlington will have without them cutting down their work hours I think it's just not fair or true. Comparing ourselves to the city of Montpelier like Montpelier has contested mayoral elections in the past few years. So it's like we're not the same city as Montpelier in terms of what it takes to be an elected official in the city. And so I just, I think that there are, I absolutely agree that I think city councilor should do as much work as possible to be as explicit as possible about what research still needs to be done and to do that research, like we need to do the work. I agree that this is something that may not help. I would say that there's probably people on the city council today because we did increase it three years ago. And so I think when you're a body that has so much privilege where most of us have so much more wealth than the average Burlingtonian to say that pay isn't something that will help just does not strike true at all for me. All right, I got councilor Hanson to be followed by councilor Paul and carpenter. Again, let's try and move us towards the vote on the amendment. Great, thanks. Couple of things. One similar to councilor Jang and councilor Hightower yeah, I've cut back from working full-time to working part-time in order to do the council role well and feel like I'm doing what constituents expected me. But that's just because of the fact that I'm able to do that is because of my financial privilege. And I think that just hits the point again. It's like, if we're saying that we can't do it while working full-time, but then we're gonna ask somebody else who can't afford to work part-time, like it just doesn't add up. The numbers just don't add up. I think on the point of dependent care, I think that's great. I don't think the resolution excludes that at all because it talks about compensation, not only direct pay, but also other benefits such as healthcare. It's not exclusive to healthcare benefits. So that would be looked at as part of this or could be looked at as part of this and I'm supportive of that aspect, but I don't think it requires an amendment to achieve that. And then, yeah, the other point that Councillor Shannon raised just about the reappraisal, I think is a good example of when a big issue like the reappraisal comes up, people call us, right? Like people call their city councilor because you might be the one that knocked on their door that they have a relationship with or they know that they can call when an issue does impact them. And folks, a lot of the folks that reached out to me about reappraisal and I was helping them, they were apologizing because they're like, look, I know this wasn't the council, I don't know how busy you are, I know how many things you're managing, but I really appreciate the help. And again, I was able to go out of my way to try to help constituents through the reappraisal process, but that's just because of my own privilege and being able to take on that work. But it just, yeah, this isn't, not everyone can do that. Like I think it's just pretty clearing that not everyone can do that. So thanks. Okay, I have Councilor Powell to be followed by Councilor Carpenter. Hi, sorry about that. I will try to be brief as well. I had said at the outset that I can certainly go either way with this mostly because of the fact that it's an amendment that isn't line by line. It's all one. And Councilor Stromberg, well, Councilor Hanson is not on the Charter Change Committee, which is where this is going, but Councilor Stromberg is. And I do have faith that the dependent care stipend will be discussed many years ago when I was encouraged to run for city council, I had three very, very young children and that dependent care stipend was still existed. It doesn't exist anymore. And I do think that it is important to have that or at least have that discussion. It may not be direct salary, but it is financial support. And I think it's important. And I trust that there will be a discussion about future redistricting. The administrative support, I think, is more ancillary. And if the members of the committee feel that they can do this work and do it, whether it's in an amendment or not, then just as I would hope they would take my word for it, I will take theirs. Thanks. Thank you. Councilor Carpenter. Thanks. Again, I mean, I think it's important to look what I've offered. And I appreciate people's saying or guaranteeing they're gonna cover these issues. My goal is that we look at this holistically. And I appreciate all the arguments people say. And one of the most important words that I added was, look at the appropriate level of support, not just commutation. So I think we've got to look at these issues. You've got to take the time to look at these issues. And the main thing I struck was in consideration for Charter Change on 2022. So what I'm asking is for us to look at the, look at it holistically and not presume we need a Charter Change, because some of these things we may not need a Charter Change at all, just look at the whole package of how can we support people? That's what I'm trying to ask. Okay, are we ready to go to a vote on the amendment? All right, let's do that. So will the city clerk please call the roll on the amendment? Councilor Barlow. No. Councilor Carpenter. Yes. Councilor Jang. No. Councilor Freeman. Councilor... Councilor Freeman is absent. Councilor Hansen. No. Councilor Hightower. No. Councilor Mason. Yes. Councilor Paul. No. Councilor Pine. No. Councilor Shannon. Yes. Councilor Stromberg. No. City Council President Tracy. No. Three ayes, one abstentia, it does not pass. Okay, so we are back to the original resolution, not as amended, Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. So I did not weigh in on the amendment because I didn't, I wanted to see, or I didn't excuse me on the speak to this. Well, the amendment was under consideration, but while I respect and I've heard the passionate arguments in terms of making this just, in isolation, I would be supportive, but the problem is we're not looking at this in isolation. We are, like it or not, and I respect that the timing may not have intended to come up, but it is in the middle of a reassessment. We have all, or at least I won't speak for anyone, I have heard from hundreds of Ward 5 residents whose assessed values have gone up 80 plus percent. And we all know that, you know, I can't tell them the specific amount that their taxes are going to go up, but they are going to go up. And every single one of them has come back, renter or homeowner saying, you know, we cannot continue to sustain this. This is not acceptable. So optically voting in favor of, and I appreciate whether it's a pay increase, healthcare or other, those are all expenses that we will be asking our fellow Burlington residents to shoulder and to take that vote or even consider moving in that direction in light of what's going on in terms of at least the emails and the communications I'm getting seems very tone deaf by this council and I cannot support it at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mason. I don't have any other Councillors in the queue. Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracy. I think it's interesting that so many Councillors in support of this initiative have talked about having to cut back work hours in order to do the job. And I think that gets at the crux of the barriers for most people to do this job. And yet that's not what we're looking at. We're looking at Councillor Perry. And while that can be related, many people do not have the privilege of reducing their work hours and then going back to the same job, their job just won't allow it. It's not merely a matter of money. And I don't know that we're really talking about enough money here to compensate for needing to reduce work hours, but that is a very important aspect of this. And with that, I would like to offer an amendment that I'm just going to send to everybody now in the hopes that the committee is willing to look broadly at barriers to service because I think that we do need to address barriers to service. And I had the benefit when I first started on the council of being able to tap into a fund that allowed me to pay for childcare, which I needed quite a bit of in the early years. And I think that there's a number of ways that we can support people serving short of increasing the stipend, but giving those who have other various barriers, the ability to overcome those barriers. So with that, I would like to offer the following amendment after the first resolve clause, which is be it further resolve that the Charter Change Committee will further research what the barriers to service are for potential candidates other than the stipend. And I hope that the makers of the motion will consider that. So Councillor Shannon, you're just inserting a resolve clause to be clear. Correct. So adding one, not deleting anything, just adding that language in. Correct. Okay. We have a motion from Councillor Shannon. Is there a sec seconded by Councillor Mason? Are you all set Councillor Shannon or did you have further comments to offer? No. Thank you. Okay. All right. So we have an amendment on the floor, Councillor Mason. Well, I guess point of information to the maker if you'll permit. Is other than intended to mean in addition to or to the exclusion of stipend? I'm not sure what your intent is there Councillor Shannon. Councillor Shannon, go ahead. I don't think that this body is interested in eliminating the discussion of the stipend. So I would consider it in addition to. I also haven't deleted any of the previous resolve clause. So that's still there. So it would be in addition. I mean, it's my hope that looking at it holistically like that, the committee may reach its own conclusion that there are more meaningful changes that could be made. But we don't know the answer until we look at it. Thank you. And Councillor Stromberg? Thank you. Councillor Shannon, thank you for this amendment. I just keep it simple. I support it. I think that that's fine. And that's a good approach to look at things. So thank you. Okay. Anyone else on the amendment? Okay. Seeing none, let's go to a vote on Councillor Shannon's amendment. All those in favor of adopting the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Oh, all right. Will the city, will the CAO please call the roll? Councillor Barlow. No. Councillor Carpenter. Yes. Councillor Jang. Yes. Councillor Hansen. Yes. Councillor Hightower. Yes. Councillor Mason. Yes. Councillor Paul. Yes. Councillor Pine. Yes. Councillor Shannon. Yes. Councillor Stromberg. Yes. City Council President Tracy. Yes. 10 ayes, one nay, one absent. Okay. So the amendment carries and we are back to the original resolution and as amended. Further discussion. Councillor Carpenter. Well, you had asked me to break up the two amendments. So there's still another amendment to be considered. Yep. For sure. Would you like to offer it at this time? Sure. Just going to find it. So that was a, what was the last resolved clause. And this was in the context of my concern about. Rushing this for the 22 ballot, but I think the word still whole, which is. Bring back. The information to the full city council. For its review. And my intent there is that. We can again have a fuller discussion of. Would be the pros and cons and what to go with and what not with. As opposed to just a specific recommendation. So that the work of the, of the charter change comes back to the whole council. I suggested September, if, if it needs another month, I'm okay with that. And, you know, the report. I think it could include all that whatever suggestions. Might be there for ballot items. Okay. Are you offering it? Yes. So I'm further be it further resolved the city council. Requested the charter change committee for this item back to the full city council. For its review. No later than the last meeting in September. I think the, the, the report may include any recommendations for a charter valid item to be considered at an, at annual. And I didn't specify a date. Okay. So we have a motion from councilor or an amendment from councilor carpenter. Is there a second to that amendment. Seconded by councilor high tower. Any further comments, council carpenter. No. Okay. Councilor Hanson. I just had a question for the maker. I don't know. Does this. Does this exclude or prevent, I guess. The committee from actually having a charter change proposal. Written out. Like, is the intention that it's changing from them coming to the council with a proposed charter change for the council to consider versus. I don't think it's going to exclude that. Well, I honestly think because of, of the previous. Paragraph no. So yes, you could bring a charter change. But what I really want is the research and the conversation. I want us. You know, sometimes you assign something to a committee. And it's pre. Ordained what they're going to come. Not preordained, but it. You're expecting them to come back with something specific. But I don't think it's going to be the same. I want an opportunity. For the whole council to talk about. Some of these broader issues. We just, we just voted on an amendment that said. Let's look at the broader impediments. I want to have that discussion. And have it. In the context of. What are the varied options. That we should. And could consider. I don't think it's going to be the same. I don't think it is. Relative to any of this. And so, you know, that is a worthy discussion. But I think more important for me is that this. And because it affects us personally, and this is a little bit different. I think than how we approach. Other policy items where. You have a lot of broad input. We're trying to understand. More narrowly. What would stop us. From being a good counselor, so to speak. So I guess the intent of that is. Bring back. A lot of the information to us. The pros and cons of which. You vetted out and. Have some thinking on. I mean, and I don't even know how. An example might be that. You decide dependent care is more important. And let's do that first. And that may not need a charter change. I mean, it really will depend on. Kind of the outcome of the conversation. And I think there's other, you know, it may. Be that we need more. Research time. And that might be. More helpful to. The time issue. The conversation. So I just want to see the whole. Package of discussion. That's what I'm trying to try that. Okay. Yeah, I just, I was just trying to understand. I just wanted to make sure that. This wasn't meant to sort of bar the committee from. It says they may bring a recommendation. So. I mean, I think I'm there's certainly that bar. And I think it says may bring a recommendation. I think I'm saying it with. The sense that there might not, they don't have to, but they may. Got it. Got it. No, I, yeah, I get the recommendation aspect. I just. There's a difference between in my mind, I guess the committee saying, yeah, we looked into this issue and we think it's worth. Moving forward versus saying we drafted. We actually drafted a charter change. An actual charter change for you to consider. And that's what I wanted to make sure it was still on the table. But I think. Given the other resolve causes and given what you're saying now, that that is the case. Well, I think we have time between September. Let's try not to do too much back and we're starting to get into back and forth here. So. Councilor Hanson, are you all set? Yeah, I think that that was my only clarification. And I think, yeah, with these charter change processes, I think that's the best way to get to that. I think that's the best way to get to that. And I think that, like, interested counselors, this has happened to me many times. Can go to those committee meetings and really be an active participant, even if they're not. On the committee. So hopefully. Folks that are interested in this. If it moves forward can, can do that and can stay engaged with this issue. Within the committee and or. Folks have other issues that are related to this that they want to address. So I think that's the best way to get to that. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. I have councillor Jang to be followed by Stromberg and Paul. Councilor Jang. Yeah. This is a quick question for the city attorney. Very quick. So I don't know. The past. Console increased pay. Did it go through a ballot item? Yes. Yes, it did. But the city councils cannot increase their own pace, but they can increase, they can pay, let's say the boards and commissions without the borders. No, I don't think they can pay the boards and commissions necessarily either, but. So this has to. This is, this has to go to the, this is in the charter, how much counselors get paid. It has to go to the, as a charter change goes forward and it goes to the legislature to determine. So basically you're saying if the city board of finance. Identified resources to be able to pay the. The boards and commission of the city of Burlington. It still has to go to the borders of Burlington. In order to be approved. I haven't prepared to talk about that issue tonight about other boards and commissions, but for the city, for the city council. Yes. The one thing I would say though, is that you do have these expense accounts. That are available and, and there are expenses related such as childcare that are related to service that likely. Don't require you to necessarily have to go get further. Charter approval to. To spend those kinds of things. So it's a little bit of a complex question as to what is payment to a city council and what is payment for us to assist a city councilor in carrying out city duties. Okay. Yeah, that was my only question. Yeah. Yeah. And I support the amendment from council. Thank you. Okay. Have counselor Stromberg to be followed by councilor Paul. Yep. Short and sweet. Again, I also support this amendment. I think that that's fine. It gives us flexibility and with something. That's fine. I think that's fine. I think that's fine. We, we, we should have that. So I am supportive. Thanks. Thank you. Councillor Paul. Thank you. I can be short as well. So the first amendment that failed. Means that the, the line that says for consideration of a charter change to be considered. And voted on at the 2022 annual city election. So I think that's fine. I think that's fine. I think that's fine. I think that's fine. I think that's fine. With the amendment. I was more than happy to support the second amendment. However, I just want to point out that we basically have said two different things. In the same resolution. We're saying. At. Ann. At an annual city election without saying which one. And we have said it earlier. So I'm not really sure how that. Is resolved. I just wanted to say that I also support this. Not least because I think it gives us a little bit more time after we do have the tax rates to figure out how this. Works in. So I hope that the charter change committee will consider that. When we do know the final tax rates with implications are. For folks. And then in terms of the contradiction. I guess just, just quickly. I'm not sure that that's because it's a vague to be an election. So it's not opposed. It's just not quite aligned. So I wonder if we can move forward as is. Okay. Councillor Schrumberg. Yeah. To me, it sounds like it's not opposing either. It's not two different gates. So I'm comfortable with it as is. But I understand that point. Okay. Any further conversation. The amendment. Councilor Paul. I apologize. So I just want to make sure that when you say. In the fall of 2022, I think we need to clarify that. I think we need to clarify that. I think we need to clarify that. I think we need to clarify that. I think we need to clarify. 2022 annual city election. That could mean in the fall of 2022. Is that correct? Good question. That. Doesn't, because if it doesn't, then it is only one election. There is only one annual city meeting and it is in March. Okay. So that is a contradiction. And I think we need to clarify that if we're going to. I think we need to clarify that. I think we need to clarify that. I think we need to clarify that. Unless, unless the city attorney says that that's okay. Okay. Well, let's, let's go to attorney Blackwood. Do you feel that the, that the language. In the amendment is in contradiction with that earlier resolve. With the language in that earlier resolve clause. I guess I'd say more that. I think we need to clarify that. I think that my job in looking at a resolution that you would adopt would be to try to reconcile it and I could reconcile it with, but what it would mean is, is, is it would make the second. Sentence meaningless because the first one already says you're going to do it. City charter change for the March 22. Election. Okay. Thank you, attorney Blackwood. With that. Councilor Paul, would you like to offer an amendment to the amendment? I would say that. Yeah, I mean, we've already voted on the first. So it would seem as though we would have to say. On the last line. Consider it at the annual city election. I mean, I don't really know how we can reconcile the two of, if they're, if they contradict each other, which the city attorney is now saying, I don't think we can vote on something that contradicts each other. One another. Okay. I'm open to others if they have, there's another suggestion, you know, and I don't even know if the, if the amendment will pass, but I've got to try to assume that it will so that we should vote in something that makes sense. Okay. Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I think it just, what, what doesn't make sense to me is if the, if the charter change committee is going to come back to the council in August or September. I just don't think there's a scenario where they're going to say, this is going to go on the ballot for town meeting day 2023. That's a, that's a future council's decision. So the decision, if it's really happening this fall, we're deciding about March 2022 election. That, that's what we're deciding. It's not ambiguous in my mind as to. Is this 2022 or 2023 because that's a future council that's going to decide what's on future, you know, ballots. So I think we should stick with that aspect. I think the September change, I don't have an issue with, but the other change, I don't think makes sense. Okay. Councilor Carpenter. Um, back to my original. Conversation is, and why I had proposed the other one is. We've. Presumed or assumed already that we're going to put a charter change on the ballot in March of 22. And I'm just not ready to say that I want to look at the package. I guess is where I'm coming from. And, um, I want to understand the options. I don't want to presume we're going to have to put something on a ballot. Um, because I want to see what the different options are. And there might be. The committee may come up with a plan and the plan might be, let's do this over time. Understanding we can't always bind a future. Um, committee, but I think it should be in the context of a. Um, an overall plan. How do we attract? Make it easier for people to run. What do we do to do that? What's the plan? And that was my first intent. By specifically saying we, we have to do something in. November or March of 22. I guess it's presupposing more than I want to presuppose. Councilor Hanson. Yeah. So I think the way to achieve. All of this is just, yeah, I'll just propose an amendment to the amendment, which is. That last sentence. The report may include any recommendations for a charter change or ballot. Item to be considered. At the 2022. Annual city election. And so. So I'll, I'll speak to it after a second if there is one. Okay. So. Councilor Hanson to be clear that you're only, you're adding, you're deleting the, the, the word and and saying at the 2022 annual city election. Is that correct? Correct. Correct. Exactly. And. Okay. Yeah. So if there's a second, I can just briefly explain. Okay. Seconded by councilor Stromberg. Go ahead. So I think councilor Carpenter is raising the point of we don't know if the committee is going to say that that's what should happen or not. Or we don't want to assume is the intention. This does that. But my point is, if they do say that, it's definitely for 20. 22. It's not for 2023 or whatever. That just isn't within the realm of possibility in my mind. So this leaves the door open. If the committee doesn't want to say that we should look at. A charter change for the ballot. But if they do, it's a specific year, which is next year. Okay. So thank you for that councilor Hanson. Is there further discussion on the amendment to the amendment? Okay. Hearing none. Let's go to a vote. Will the CAO please call the roll. On the amendment to the amendment. Counselor Barlow. Just to be consistent and clear. I'm just going to vote now. Counselor Carpenter. No. Counselor Jang. Yes. Counselor Hanson. Yes. Counselor Hightower. Yes. Counselor Mason. No. Counselor Paul. Yes. Counselor Pine. Yes. Counselor Shannon. Yes. Counselor Stromberg. Yes. Counselor Carpenter. No. Counselor Jang. Yes. Counselor Hanson. Yes. Counselor Hightower. I'm sorry. Yes. Counselor Mason. No. Counselor Paul. Yes. Counselor Pine. Yes. Counselor Shannon. Yes. Counselor Stromberg. Yes. City Council President Tracy. Yes. And again, we have. Three eyes. Sorry. I don't have my glasses on. We have. Two mays. One absent. No. Three mays. One absent. And. Eight a's. The motion passes. Okay. So yeah, we have the amendment carries and we are now back to the original resolution now as amended. Is there further discussion on that? Are we ready to go to vote on the amendment on the resolution as amended? Councilor Shannon. I just want to make clear the intentions of my vote. Are we ready to go to vote on the amendment on the resolution as amended? I don't want to get into this because. I can't in good conscience be spending. Be asked the city to spend a lot of resources on increasing counselor pay. However, I believe that this discussion is going to be broader than that. And I do fully support. Really looking deeply at what the barriers to service are. And I'm not going to make an amendment at this point. I'm just going to ask that the charter change committee. Bring forward a report that, that looks at all of the different barriers that people have. Towards serving. And also looking at other communities. And whether or not increased pay. And I welcome that conversation. I hope that the charter change committee will bring forward a report with kind of listing the different barriers to, I thought about making an amendment, but I'm not going to make an amendment at this point. I'm just going to ask the charter change committee. So I'm not going to make a amendment at this point. I'm going to ask that the charter change committee. If there is not increased pay. Actually has had a positive effect. On perhaps increasing diversity in some way. If there's any correlation between those things. And so. While I am not. Likely to support increasing counselor. Pay at this time for the, for the next. support, some of which would be financial support in other forms. So I will support this. Thank you, Councilor Shannon, Councilor Barlow. Yes. So I realized that this is very likely going to pass tonight. And I do support looking at barriers to service and also looking more deeply at the resources that are already available to city council, especially in the $5,000 it's available to every city councilor to supplement their research and aid them in their council business. But I won't be supporting this resolution because I don't support addition, the prospect of a charter change that would result in additional additional councilor compensation. So I won't be supporting, but I do serve on charter change. And I look forward to the discussion about additional supports for councilors to understand barriers and understanding barriers to service. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Are there further comments from councillors? Councilor Carpenter. Well, again, my goal is exactly to have those conversations. But now I feel the way this is sort of locked into having coming up with something for March. And I don't know that that's the answer. And that's what's sort of frustrating me. So I'm that's what I'm having hard time supporting this because I feel like it's prescribing something that we haven't spent the time to figure out yet. OK, thank you. Anyone else are ready to vote? Councilor Hanson. Yeah, I just want to kind of respond to that. I don't I think with with your amendment or it was your amendment, you didn't support it, but the amendment around saying they may bring a proposal. I think the purpose of that language was that it doesn't lock them in. But now I'm confused because I don't know. It seems like that's not your interpretation, but that was your language and it got in. So I'm just confused, but thanks. Let's try not to get into it back and forth here, councillor. All right. Any further comments from councillors? OK, all right. CAO, please call the roll. Councilor Barlow. No. Councilor Carpenter. No. Councilor Zhang. Yes. Councilor Hanson. Yes. Councilor Hightower. Yes. Councilor Mason. No. Councilor Paul. Yes. Councilor Pine. Yes. Councilor Shannon. Yes. Councilor Stromberg. Yes. City Council President Tracy. Yes. Eight A's. The motion passes. All right. So the motion carries and that item and that brings us to our next item, which is item 5.05, resolution on creating a dog task force. Councilor Zhang. Thank you, President Tracy. Yes. But first and foremost, I wanted to thank definitely City Council's Barlow, Carpenter and Shannon for their time and energy, including the community into this conversation. And as you all know, you know, the pandemic has definitely increased a lot of dog ownership. And in the new North end and particularly and the city in general, the state even in general, you know, many people do not know how to definitely handle their dogs very well. And this is also something that has been shared with professionals that work directly about dogs, with dogs and their owners. And, you know, we also definitely recognize that the City of Burlington through the Burlington Parks and Recreation has been doing an incredible job and have made a substantial amount of renovation, thanks to the mayor. And, you know, the staff for dog park used to be a big issue in 2018. And now it seems that it was evolved due to Cindy and all the volunteers that she worked with. Now, the issue in front of us right now has been communication from from porch forum, direct communication to us City Council's, you know, new North end Facebook group, Facebook in general, social media. And these issues include, you know, off-leash dogs in the city parks, natural areas and beaches. It includes dogs, increased amount of dogs attacking people or attacking all the dogs, you know, dog feces not being picked up. And we all know the correlation with, you know, the quality of our lake. You know, there are so many policies that are not being enforced, you know, and some dogs are unlicensed, you know, dog barking, contributing. There are so many issues that involve dogs. But what I know is people love their dogs. They feel as if they are part of their family, you know, they are part of the family. Some people choose to not have children because they have dogs. And you ask them about their family members, you know, I learned to respect that. Someone who's new in this culture and I love and I think whether you are an animal or a human, we should all learn to live together, work together. And among us, there are people who are capable, who are expert in this area and who are willing to help the city. But reason why this resolution was crafted by the four city councils with the help of Eileen to do the final edits and to put it posted. And in front of us, it is simply asking for the Burlington City Council is respectfully refer this issue raised this resolution and possibly all the related issues to the Parks, Arts and Culture Committee where Councilor Shannon is a chair. I am a member of there and I think we will be including people to bring the next steps. And we also expect for the PAC to report back to the full city council this relatively very soon by June 28 meeting. So I want to make the motion of this resolution and I don't need the floor back sitting with Councilor President. Thank you. Councilor Jeng has made a motion. Is there a second to Councilor Jeng's motion? Seconded by Councilor Shannon. Councilor Jeng did not request the floor back. Is there further commentary on the resolution? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. We are now on to item 5.06, which is a resolution regarding the city's COVID response and funding for that response. Councilor Paul may please have a motion on that. I'd like to move. Thanks, President Tracy. I'd like to move the revised version of the resolution, waive the reading and ask for the floor back after a second. Seconded by Councilor Jeng. You have the floor, Councilor Paul. Thanks very much. So I think one of the things that we heard at the outset of this meeting was the announcement by the mayor that we're really turning the corner in terms of the number of people that are getting vaccinated, the number of COVID cases that are on the decline of Vermont is leading the nation along with two other states, Hawaii and Massachusetts, in terms of vaccines and vigilance and addressing COVID. And certainly I think we're all growing weary and looking for brighter times ahead. At the same time, there are still people that are struggling. And this resolution is talking about the amount of funds that are needed to bring us to the end of the fiscal year, which ends June 30th, on talking about public health concerns in terms of wastewater testing, vaccination sites, helping low-income neighbors, locally-owned businesses, our youth, and our plan towards a post-COVID world. And not only that public health response, but also the Resource Recovery Center, which has done some amazing work that has helped to address constituent needs. And then there's also a very creative list of initiatives to reactivate the economic sector for all our businesses, not just the downtown, but all our businesses, our waterfront, and our community, particularly as we gear up for the summer. And so I also do want to acknowledge that there are a great many members of city staff that have worked on this. Kara Alnazwari, who is the Marketplace Director, although I believe there's been a title change there, because she's been doing a whole lot more than the marketplace. This, she, and others have worked on the ARPA plan that we have before us. There's a whole lot of different initiatives in the three-page document. One thing I did want to mention, and I give a lot of credit to Kara and the administration, is that there were a number of concerns that were mentioned at our last meeting about the graffiti response. And the administration, Kara, listened and balanced the needs of what was voiced in terms of graffiti response with the need to act with consideration for all, and just wanted to mention that. The resolution is very comprehensive, very responsive. It's creative, and will help our community not only recover, but move on to better times ahead. I hope that it can get our unanimous support. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Paul. I see that we have both Director Alnazwari and CIO Lowe with us this evening. Would either of you like to share anything with the council before we open it up to further council discussion? I'm happy to jump in. Although people have any specific questions about the public health response, I would encourage you to direct them towards CIO Lowe. As you know, he has been in charge of that for over a year now. So the city wanted to be able to respond to immediate needs. We saw these needs in three separate buckets as listed in this memo, the public health response, which we see as ongoing, even though the tide seems to have turned a little bit. In addition, community and economic reactivation, this is not just geared towards businesses. It's also geared toward our residents and towards welcoming people in our community back outside. There's concern about our residents' mental health, about people not having had enough community contact. And we want, as a city, to try and encourage that. And we plan to have activations in all neighborhoods of the city. In addition, we do envision sort of a surge need for our constituents to be connected with services programs, grants coming down from the federal, state, and our own municipal government in the coming months. And we want to be fully funded and prepared for that, including some additional funding for language resources and perhaps some satellite locations so that we can reach all our constituents, even those that are not necessarily connected to technology. Thank you, Director Alness-Rowey. C.I. Lo, did you have anything to add? No, I think Director Alness-Rowey said it quite well. And the public health focus is really doing everything we can to continue the work and outreach around vaccinations and set the community up for the next period of time where we will need to do some kind of surveillance to decide how and if we need to deploy different resources, testing, vaccination, as we have been based on some of these wastewater readings and other information. So thank you very much, President Tracy. Thank you both for your work on this and your work throughout the pandemic. It's been very impressive to watch and be part of as well. So thank you very much for that. Counselors, are there comments or questions regarding this proposal? Councillor Stromberg. Thank you. Yeah, thank you all for working on this. And this might sound weird, but it was actually like enjoyable to go through because it was kind of refreshing. We were focused on more like different things that I haven't seen us be focused on as a city in a while. And I thought that that was really great. And I also had some feedback about the graffiti ban. And I sent that to the administration and got a prompt response. And I felt like this was a very collaborative process, even though I had only a few pieces of input. So yeah, I just appreciate all the work that went into this and all the math that's above me. So I really do appreciate it. And I'll be obviously very supportive of this. Thank you. Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracy. I have first a question and then a comment. On the large public art mural projects, which has a $30,000 dedication, it says includes Juneteenth-themed mural on 339 Pine and additional art installations elsewhere in the city. And I thought that there was specific money allocated to the Juneteenth artwork through the REIB. And so I wonder if I have that wrong. And if this is going to be allocated for that purpose or if that's covered by other funds, which would allow us to use this $30,000 for other things. Yeah, so to clarify, and I think there have been some changes since the last wording of this. There are funds in REIB that Director Green is controlling for specific Juneteenth murals. The 339 Pine Street was selected with graffiti in mind because that building has been tagged quite a bit. And we are looking to creatively place some public art to deter some of the tagging that is viewed as vandalism. The timing of that mural, if you approve the funds today, would have ended up coming out in June. So at the time, the thinking was that we would add another Juneteenth mural. It does not necessarily have to be Juneteenth themed, however, but it is placed as a part of a graffiti deterrent initiative. OK, thank you. I really think that we should be considering dedicating a lot more money to this mural initiative for a bunch of reasons. People may think that the graffiti around town is not really a problem, but it's often very much a problem. There's a lot of hate that is spread through tagging, and it creates pain in our community. It creates pain because private property owners are victimized by this, whether it's on an old North End residential fence or a business owner downtown on their building. It really hurts people, and it needs to be addressed. And for a long time, we have felt that there needs to be a community response so that people who feel victimized by this crime feel supported by the community stepping up and restoring what was there. And I think it's important that we step up and do that for our community. The graffiti removal, sometimes graffiti removal is all that's needed, but sometimes the graffiti removal itself is causing detriment to the substrates below the graffiti, and it's doing damage to the building or the fence or the wall. And there's an opportunity to actually beautify our city here by taking these walls and allowing them to be used by artists to create beautiful works of art in our city that would benefit everyone. In partnership with the property owners. And I don't think $30,000 really goes nearly far enough in this, but I also understand that our funds at this moment are limited and we have a lot of other priorities that need attention too. But I fear that if we're just removing graffiti, we're inviting people to come back and do it again. And it's a never-ending cycle. And the more that we can take these open spaces and allow them to be utilized for beautiful artwork that really supports our community, both those that own the property and those that are looking at it and make us all feel better about our city and pay artists for their work. I think this is an opportunity. And so I hope that going forward as we go into the budget process, we are looking for a lot more money to beautify our city and to help support artists and make the city what we think it should be, not a never-ending cycle of removing graffiti. I think we need to move past that. So I appreciate everything that is in this report and all that you are doing to help us through these difficult times. And these are initiatives that we haven't had in the past. So thank you for all of that. And I will be supportive. Just wanted to put on the radar that I hope we can do more in this one area in the near future. I don't have anyone else in the queue. I'm sorry. Yeah, I just wanted to say I appreciate. I think if folks haven't seen the original proposal around this that came to the council two weeks ago, I think it's improved a lot since then and really strengthened and appreciate all the work that went into that and the responsiveness to some of the concerns that folks like myself and others raised around this. One idea that I didn't raise yet, but I just wanted to throw in there. I'm not sure if it's already been discussed, but around these first two items about the community reactivation and economic reactivation, the mobile place making kit and the storage, it didn't occur to me before. But I'm wondering if perhaps within that we can look into storage lockers for houseless folks. That's an issue that I've had constituents raised to me who have a lot of conversations with houseless folks and work with them is that over and over that need comes up of just having a place for people to keep their belongings that they know that they're not going to be stolen. So I don't really need a response right now unless someone wants to, but I feel like that could be an important initiative potentially within that. And if not within there, then maybe more broadly as we continue the process, because just to remind members of the public, this is just the first $900,000 out of over $27 million that we have access to now. So I'm really excited that we have this opportunity to use this federal money to really build up and support our community. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. I don't have anyone else in the queue. Okay, seeing none. Are we ready to go to a vote? Okay. All those in favor of adopting the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Thank you, Director Anasarawi and CIO Low. Again, for your work on this and we'll look forward to continued collaboration going forward. All right. Our next item is item 5.07, an ordinance change having to do with weatherization in rental housing, Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracey. I'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading, approve the ordinance as amended and request the Burlington Electric Department and Department of Permitting and Inspections return to the Ordinance Committee within 90 days to discuss scheduling of rental properties above 50,000 BTUs and ask for the floor back after a second. And we have a motion from Councillor Mason seconded by Councillor Hanson. You have the floor, Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracey for the benefit of the Council and the public. This is continued discussion of the weatherization ordinance that was brought before the Council at our last meeting. It was referred to Ordinance Committee for discussion about some of the changes that had come through at last minute. The Ordinance Committee did meet and the focus of our discussion was really relating to subsection A, which was the implementation schedule of the proposed, in essence, applicability of the ordinance as was alluded to in the memo. What we, where we landed was, in essence, putting in place a firm date for those that were the worst offenders, those that used more than 90,000 BTUs. The majority of the committee then felt that putting in other deadlines, if you'll recall, in earlier iteration, sort of stepped down from 90 all the way down to 50 with subsequent dates. There was a debate at the Council about whether the proposed five years was acceptable or three years was better. The committee, the majority of the committee felt that we would, in essence, neither run was accurate right now in light of the fact that we don't have data. So as this is proposed, we've put a place in the sand for the 90, those individuals will be, or those who are impacted will be notified with the expectation that with data in the next 90 days, the ordinance committee would then take up what I think is, we would believe would be a reasonable schedule for implementation down the further tiers. I will acknowledge there was a discussion in the committee about whether we should pick, go aggressive and put in place holders and potentially change them or go with just the one placeholder and the majority of the committee felt this was the prudent approach. So with that, there really was no, for the benefit of the Council, there was no discussion on any other points in this ordinance. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Any Councilor wishing to speak to the ordinance? Councillor Hanson. Yeah, I would just say, I think we've discussed many times in the public as well, just why this is so important and why this is meaningful in a number of ways. So I'm just really excited for the opportunity to finally, hopefully, depending how this vote goes, but to finally get this into place and really start moving forward on rental weatherization. And just wanna thank everyone who's been working on this, which is a lot of folks on this call and also people not on the call, but it's been a lot of folks working hard on it and I think we're finally making progress. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. Anyone else? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the ordinance, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to our final item this evening, which is a communication from Attorney Blackwood regarding recommended changes to, specifically to the designated accountability monitor as outlined in our level wage ordinance. I'm gonna go to Councillor Pine for a motion before coming to Attorney Blackwood. Councillor Pine may please have a motion on this item. Yes, I would move to waive the first reading and refer to the ordinance committee consideration of the proposed amendments to the level wage ordinance concerning the designated accountability monitor. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Do we have a motion? Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Mason. Councillor Pine, did you want the floor back? I am all set, thank you. Okay, I will then turn it over to Attorney Blackwood. Thank you. I gave you a little preview about this last week, but this is a recommendation from our office because the originally in 2014, when changes were made to the level wage ordinance, the designated accountability monitor was added into the ordinance. In the time from 2014 up through end of June of last year, the Vermont Worker Center had served as the designated accountability monitor. We had done an open RFP process and had regularly looked to whether or not there were other entities interested in doing this. And we have never received any interest from any other entity in serving as designated accountability monitor following the Worker Center decision at the end of the season last year that they did not want to continue in this role. We also talked to them about whether there was another entity that they could recommend that would serve as designated accountability monitor. They didn't have any ideas. We did go ahead and put out an RFP to which we got no responses. However, I was contacted by a couple of individuals who have served, have done investigations into wage an hour matters and said they'd be interested in doing something like this for the city, recognizing that it would not be a full time kind of position and we had some discussion with them about the kinds of things they could do. And it sounded like, wow, that actually sounds like an interesting way to go since we've been having difficulty finding someone to be the designated accountability monitor. In addition, over the years, what we found with the designated accountability monitor originally they started out doing a lot of education. We held some public meetings. They went around to each of the different contractors that they could get access to. They talked to workers. They did a lot of put outs and educational materials. They kept an open hotline available for people to make complaints. But the whole system was based on essentially someone reporting that there was a violation. And what we found was that as we went along we started making some adjustments. We had a lot of trouble because the city didn't have a centralized contracting system getting information to the designated accountability monitor on time and we worked through a lot of those issues and over the years we started adding in having audits conducted in which we picked larger contractors and asked them to provide payroll records and monitored those and went through and audited those payroll records. And those were the places that we mostly found complaints. A lot of times we chose contractors because the designated accountability monitor had gone on site and had found that there was an issue that they just kind of thought maybe we should check to see whether or not they were in compliance and that seemed to work fairly well. So it seemed from our experience over the last six, seven years that the most effective way to enforce the ordinance was to have somebody going on site to check in with workers and then conducting the actual payable audits. That's been a challenge for city staff because we don't have a lot of expertise in doing those kinds of audits and because we don't have a lot of time to do that as well. So what this proposal is, the way I've written it is a fairly modest change to the ordinance itself, but the idea is to say that instead of having to have a nonprofit organization, we could either hire folks or hire a business or do a consulting agreement with someone to assist us in conducting these audits and in doing some of the going around to workplaces and seeing if there are issues and essentially being a little bit more proactive in the enforcement side of this rather than waiting for complaints to come in. So that is the proposal. It does require a change to the ordinance and I've done a draft of a change. I'm not wedded to the draft at all. I'm hopeful that you'll refer it to the ordinance committee and we can have some discussion about the specific summit. I'm more than anything wanted to get some ideas on paper for you to get this discussion started. Thank you, Attorney Blackwood. Any questions or comments from counselors? Okay, hearing none, we will go to a vote on the resolution. I'm sorry, the yeah, is there all those in favor? Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Which brings us to the end of our agenda and having already done the committee reports and other items at the end of the agenda, a motion to adjourn is in order. Move by Councillor Pine, seconded by Councillor Chang. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none, we'll go to a vote on that. All those in favor of adjournment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously and we are adjourned at 9.53. Good night, everyone. Good night. Good night.