 Okay. Well, I think we should get started. So the first thing is, well, I'm going to call this meeting to order. The first thing is to review and approve the agenda. And I don't, oh, yes, John. Hi. So I've got it's, it's liquor license season again. So you'll have for real, you'll start seeing that on the agenda every time starting next time. But I do have one. That I told the folks I would try to get on today, but it was after the agenda went out. It's for a first, second, and third class license for the folks who are, you probably read about them in the paper dropping in at Kismet. Oaks and. Oh, shoot. Oaks and Evelyn. So I would, I would respectfully ask that you all consider granting them a, a, a. The city's approval for a first, second, and third class alcohol license that I can then forward to the, the DLC. And I understand they've done everything right. As far as the DLC is concerned. Okay. Just an add to the consent agenda. I guess there's no objections. Okay. So I have one item. I'm not sure really a formal agenda ad, but we need to take our photo for the annual report. So Jane has asked if at the end of the meeting, if the council members and Cameron and John Odom, and I can just be on and get a screenshot of us on the, on the screen. You know, I usually hide from those things. One that I appeared in. You're, you can do as you wish, but the rest of us. I think we should have two, one with mask on one with mask off. There you go. Symbolize the year. Yeah, that's accurate. Maybe this is something we can discuss further at the end. Is that okay? We can throw that on. I just want to make sure. Yeah. We'll do that after the, the warning. Anything else? I'm going to be assuming we're all still here. Honor, you're going to have to comb your hair. Okay. So with that, we'll consider the agenda approved with those. Additions. So the next thing is general business and appearances. This is an opportunity for any member of the public to address the council. On any topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. If you have comments about something on the agenda, hold off where it will allow you to, to speak adjacent to that topic. But if there's some topic that is not on our agenda, our agenda that you'd like to talk with us about. Now would be the time to do it. And as with all public comment, if you could state your name and where you live and try to keep your comments to two minutes, that would be fabulous. All right. Anyone want to address the council. Please either use the raise hand function or physically raise your hand or hit a reaction button on the zoom. How about if you're on a flip phone. You just speak up. Would you like to say something? The only one I'll wait. Yeah, I would. But I was letting anybody else go first. I visited the. I visited the. Transit center this week. And seven people. Occupying the building. There's not a, not a chair, a couch or anything, fiberglass, whatever. No staff. Bathrooms are locked. Bathrooms. Say ask for assistance, but then you research further and read the fine print. Nobody even there from 11 to 230. And. You go to Shaw's padlock on the restroom. You go to Kellogg have our library closed, except for grabbing your book. City hall bathroom, public building. We own it. And y'all are locking it. To protect your family. You know, it's. It's, I've said it again. And I won't stop saying that you're callous. You're, you know, indifferent. You're oblivious. You're. You're really ignoring people are supposed to be watching this. You're really ignoring people are supposed to be washing their hands six or eight times a day. People are need to. Relieve themselves. Instead of, and you know, it's just, it's outrageous that we've got that building and that, those new bathrooms. And. We can't seem to manage ourselves into arranging for some public bathrooms to be open. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Stephen. I think we did get word that there was a new. Portlet that was put in somewhere. Cameron, where was that? Go use it yourself. Oh, I have used portlets on many occasions. Anyway, go ahead, Cameron. It's behind the state visitor center. Right across the street from the state capital. It's in the park behind the building. Okay. All right. Anyone else. Okay. All right. So on to the consent agenda. Is there a motion. Jack, go ahead. Move the consent agenda. Okay, there's a motion and a second. And. Any further discussion. Jack. I am. Going to be voting in favor of the consent agenda, but I think it's worth us. Recognizing that as we move the. Location of the. Curtin pocket park. We. I think there are. It's fine to do that, but I think we need to recognize that. This still is leaving and. Unfilled. We need to continue to work on addressing. So that the, the people who. Have been relying on that location for. For a place to socialize and congregate. Still need their needs met in. In the city. Yes, thank you, Donna. Thank you, Jack for starting that off because I too wanted to bring this one up. I felt disappointed that it was within the consent agenda. I think it deserved a little bit of discussion. There was the matter of the actual grant, which kudos to the staff going out to this grant. It has a wonderful description here of all the things they want to do around moving this pocket park. So I really salute that effort. And I hope people, you know, help us all reach those goals. And I think that's a great question. I think it's important to have this resolution. That's attached. Or is that separate on the agenda? That would be included in that consent agenda. Okay. If you all are interested in pulling it, I can certainly give a presentation on it. That's not a problem. Well, I just want to read parts of it. The actual resolution that the mayor is being asked to sign. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. I think that's a great question. Public seating, seasonal activities in partnership. And a pump track. So that could become a real lively spot. And that's very inspiring. So again, Cameron, if you were the one clever here or Ann, or, or page by, oh, whoever, but kudos. Thank you very much. But like Jack said, we also then need to come back to what, how are we going to help people who need our assistance that can help them. I think that's a great question. Thank you. Don't forget that. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. Connor. I just, I just wanted to thank staff. I was on the previous meeting there, just going over. Some of the blueprints there. And there's a tremendous amount of creativity. Backed it into this. And I think staff did recognize. That's a pretty short turnaround of the grant. So it's not like a solid decision, but we're probably not going to determine whether one commercial space or residential or anything anytime in the near future. So I think that's a good question. I think that's a good question. I think that's a good place as a place where, you know, we can open up Montpelier when the sun comes out. You know, people can go have a sandwich there. That's a beautiful thing. So. I think this is an example of just thinking outside the box, the kind of stuff we need to be doing going forward. So thanks very much. Everybody worked on it. Yeah, thank you. Any further comments and we certainly can pull that one off. If you would prefer, but. And I'm not a council member, but I, I didn't see that. It didn't mention burden pocket park. It didn't mention anything in the consent agenda. And I protest the fact that you, you removed us from C. EC five or in a consent agenda item as well. It's inappropriate. So it's up to the council. Is. So there was a motion and a second. Any. One want to amend that. Jack. I think there's enough interest here that it's worth taking the, this item out of the consent agenda. So I. Move to amend my motion to, to do that. Okay. So they're a second on the amendment. Second that. Okay. So the motion and second on the amendments. Okay. Any further discussion on the amendment. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. So the motion has been amended. So it's back to a motion and second. Any further discussion on the consent agenda minus that item. Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay, so. As the primary. Item for. Well, so the question is, do we do that right now, or do we do that later? And I suspect that most people are probably here for the budget hearing, so. I think we should probably do that next. And then. So after item six, we will take up. Item C from the consent agenda. About this grant and which does involve the grid and park park. All right, so. All right, so moving on then to the budget hearing. So for this, I think. Okay. The, just the order of operations of what's going to happen here. Is that bills got a presentation. Or maybe Kelly. One of the two. And then, and then I'd like to specifically hear from the public. And then we'll. Go from there. So bill or Kelly. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to do a quick. I'm looking for here. Hold on. I'm trying to, I'm going to share my screen as soon as I can figure out what I'm looking for here. So as I can find it. How do I search? Someone would tell me how to search. That's usually if you're in the PDF. Well, I'm looking to get to my desktop is what I'm trying to do. What to share. Okay. I usually these files are right there. I'm terribly sorry about this. I'm obviously not good at this. Is there a search base at the bottom of your screen to the left? I'm looking for here. Excuse me. Search place at the bottom of the screen. To the left. No. Okay. You have a PC. I do. Okay. So to get to your desktop, there's a tiny little bar on the very bottom far right hand side that you can click on that takes you straight to the desktop. In theory. I think I'm getting rescued by Kelly. Hey, Kelly. There. I've been here, Bill. I can folks see that. No, not yet. No, not yet. No, not yet. Yeah. You're not sharing his screen. Can you see it now? Nope. The other time I've done it. It pops up in that group. There you go. There we go. In business. You don't hear. Thank you. I apologize for that. I'll probably take longer to have done that to actually go through the presentation. It's just a quick overview of what we've been talking about the last couple of days. We're going to talk about what we've been talking about. We're going to talk about what we've been talking about the last couple of months of our budget. There is another one next Thursday before final decisions are made. So this is where the council is at right now. As we did the FY 22 budget, we had some challenges. We had a major budget gap due to COVID-19. Our goals were to deliver responsible services, implement our strategic plan. And then we based our budgeting on a one year. And the next budget. I one of 2021 when we are doing, when the next budget would be. It should be more back to. Should be back to. Whatever the new normal will be. And we did understand that residents and businesses have been hit by COVID. And so therefore we had to be very careful with any tax increase. The strategic plan priorities of the city council, our community prosperity. And so we had to be very careful with that. We had to be very careful with that. We had to be very careful with that. We're housing responsible and responsive government and sustainable infrastructure. So looking at our budget revenue, we projected a general fund gap of about. $520,000 from various revenues. And those are all detailed. And the parking fund. Another 525,000 of which these are. This is specifically parking money that has offset various expenses. So, I'm not going to get into it. I'm going to get into it. And I'm going to get into it. Various admin staff, which is now no longer available. So those expenses needed to be picked up by the general fund, even though they aren't new expenses. So total budget gap of about $1 million. Revenue gap. Excuse me. And then another close to 400. So what we had. On top of a COVID crisis, we had a rare. Once every 12 years, 27th, We also finally had to adjust our legal for our costs and put money into reserve for re-appraisal. So that created about $400,000 in expense pressure on the budget. And the 20, I want to be clear, the 27th pay period wasn't just, that 330,000 wasn't just that. It was a contributing factor. It also included normal steps, cost of living adjustment, which we did not do in the current fiscal year. So the combination, so to try to close that $1.4 million gap, we have the following reductions. There's six positions that are being left vacant. One police officer, one finance staff person, two within recreation and two within DPW. We reduced our capital and equipment plan by close to 475,000. We have some external and community funding dropped by about 216,000. Our operations were dropped by 110,000 and we had two ballot items last year that were 23,500 each and one of them is not here this year. So a net drop of 23,5 for a total of about $1.2 million and spending reductions to close that $1 million revenue gap. So currently where we ended up in the budget is a property tax increase of 0.6%, 0.7. And that includes funding for Montpelier Alive. It includes funding for the equity consultant that's doing work community. It includes funding for the Montpelier Energy Energy, what is the A? The advisory, energy advisory committee. The police department social worker, the ballot item for the library, the ballot item for central Vermont home health and hospice, the personnel cost reallocations and that's what I just talked about, covering the costs of formerly, items that had formerly been allocated to the parking fund now reallocated to the general fund. And there's been some questions about that with regard to police and dispatch because people saw increases in those budgets but it was simply where they were being paid from. And then our basic services continued. Some key budget items that remained in the current fiscal year, we adjusted our budget down to deal with the projected shortfall. So what you're seeing in the column to the left is the adjusted amounts for these things. And then the FY22 column is what we budgeted for next year. The community fund has remained whole at 131,005. Housing trust fund, 60,000 dropped to 50,000. The Montpelier Development Core dropped from 75,000 to zero. Homelessness task force actually increased from 22,000 to 45,000. Public arts fund dropped from 10 to zero and the capital area neighborhoods which had not been in last year's budget were added in at 20,000. So approximately a $50,000 drop from the adjusted amounts. The original amounts for those were much higher, about 490,000 for all of those in the original FY20. So taking a look at some key budget numbers, the general fund budget overall is reduced by $372,000, about 2.5%. And it requires only $61,322 of new tax dollars, as I said, 0.6%. There are no changes to the water sewer and CSO benefit charges. So the average home which is assessed at $228,000 single family home would see a $16 tax increase for this. In comparison, the Northeast 12 month CPI just came out either yesterday or today and it was 1.4% for the last 12 years. So we've always tried to keep our tax rate around CPI and this year it's about half of CPI. Talking about, since it's a public hearing we did for the first time in a while a citizen budget survey online and the results are now posted. We're gonna go through those quickly. We did get 320 responses. Question number four was an open-ended question. So we are compiling those narrative results, sorting them by category and we'll get you all of those by the end of the week so you have them before next weekend. But in terms of the questions that were asked, about 95% of the respondents, excuse me, were Mapili residents. And they found that public works, public safety police and public safety fire were their top three categories, parks and housing right below those and then environment energy. So this is where people felt were the most important services and asking if they would support increasing taxes to support the city's revenues to continue service levels about 30% said they would support about 32%, 33% were neutral about 38% would not prefer that. So pretty even split there on that. So those were the three questions and then the fourth open-ended question, which as I said, those are all over the map but we will get you all of those. You will be able to see every response. So that is all I have for presentation. We're certainly able to answer as questions our staffs here just to go through the schedule. Again, we have the public hearing tonight next Thursday. And again, I note to everyone that it is a Thursday to in order to meet the 40 day requirement for town meeting that is our one a year on Thursday, second public hearing. In February, we will start talking about our utility budgets, water and sewer, district key, those are not on the ballot. So we will do those later. And of course on March 2nd is voting 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Early voting to start mid-February and at some point I'm sure the city clerk will talk about all the various options with that. So that's a quick summary of the budget that the council has put together and is preparing. And as I said, we're happy to enter discussions or answer any questions as we go forward. And again, I'm sorry about the technological glitch there at the beginning. No worries. Okay, Sonna, do you have a question? I was just curious, how did people find out about the survey? Somehow I missed that you were doing it. Well, I'm sorry you missed it. I think we did maybe put that in the weekly memo or send it to you all. It was on the website. We put it in a front porch forum. We had it on Facebook. Kelly, can you think of any other place? We tried to put it in all the usual places. Yeah, that's right. I mean, and this year we really wanted to do something to engage the public and wanted to do it sort of doing an electronic survey. And so this is kind of a soft start for future years. But my apologies if you didn't. No, no, it's great. I'm great. And I don't know, you said 320 comments. I don't know how many responded, but that sounds like a good, that sounds good. Yeah, I'm quite pleased with the number of responses. And I've been working through each and every fourth question response, which is more of a narrative. And there's been some really good feedback. And so, I'm looking forward to being able to share that too. Yeah, great. No, really good. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So at this point, we'd love to hear from the public. So in order to do this, I get the sense that there might be a few folks who would like to speak. So if you would like to, if you would like to speak, if you could indicate that by either raising your hand in the... Actually, I like Cameron. You explain it. Thank you, Mayor. You can either under where you are in your participant, you can raise a hand. You can also hit the reaction button, give a little clap emoji. You can also literally wave at me and I will write your name down. Great. And so just from folks who have... Okay, so I'm seeing Mara and Stella. I've got a verbal request to get into queue. Okay, I'm going to write down, I'm writing down Mara and Stella, and then Abby German. Rachel, I'm so sorry y'all. I will be pronouncing your names phonetically and I will probably butcher them. So, DeCelis is raising her hand. Okay. And anyone after... That you have after Rachel, Cameron. Even Whitaker. Not at this point. Lucy's iPhone. Okay, so Steven Whitaker is after Rachel. And then Flynn. I'm sorry, after Steven, I'm missing one. After Steven was... Lucy. Lucy, okay. And then Flynn. Okay. And then Stephanie. And I'm sorry, your name is cut off. It starts with G-O-M. Oh, yes, Stephanie Gomery. Okay. Okay, and there may be others and that is fine. Well, that's our starting list for now and we'll go from there. All right, Mara and Stella, if you would introduce yourselves and then, yeah. Then go ahead. Thank you. I'm Mara Siebens. And I'm Stella Kahn. And we stand in solidarity with Surge Defund MPD and community leaders to call for the Montpelier City Council to defund MPD and invest in community-based safety measures. A 2018 study from the FBI revealed that over 95%, over 95% of crimes committed in Montpelier were nonviolent crimes of necessity, as such as theft. The police cannot address the underlying causes of or prevent these crimes, but only respond after an incident has occurred. Investing in community services such as affordable housing, food security measures, and et cetera, will reduce the desperation that causes these crimes, thereby improving actual public safety and wellbeing. The current police budget of $3 million per year is far more than is necessary to respond to the average of 15 annual calls for dangerous crimes in Montpelier. We suggest a decrease of 10% from the current Montpelier budget, Montpelier police budget of $3 million. For the $12 million budget of the Montpelier Roxbury School District, we employ about 250 full-time employees, meaning that for $1 million, we can employ 21 teachers, but only five police officers. This is an absurd and harmful waste of public money. Montpelier City Council has a commitment to helping the Montpelier community and defunding the Montpelier Police Department for the immediate and long-term wellbeing of our community is a necessary step. The Montpelier Police Department's bloated budget overcompensates for minor crimes that need to be addressed in a real and provable way while unnecessarily wasting our taxpayer dollars in a manner that is harmful to our community. Thank you. Thank you. Abby. Can you hear me? Yes. Beautiful. So my name is Abby German, my pronouns are they, them. And looking at our current proposed budget for the City of Montpelier, I am deeply appalled, but not surprised to see that the police are set to receive a 10.4% increase, bringing this to 22.9% of our total city budget. This indicates either incredible ignorance or willful indifference in regards to the national movement for Black Lives, neither of which make me confident in or proud of my city leadership. This summer, following the police murder of George Floyd, the City of Montpelier painted Black Lives Matter outside of our Capitol building. Without committed action, this is simply performative allyship. This condemnation of racism without specifically reexamining the police risks nothing and means nothing. Black Lives Matter is not a catchy slogan to absolve your white guilt. It is a commitment to change our racist institutions, including policing. The police is a violent, anti-Black, colonial institution that originated as slave patrols. Their primary mandate is to protect not citizens, but property and to militarily enforce white supremacist capitalism. I see a lot of white exceptionalism in our community here as if our police are somehow better than police in other areas, but this is simply not true. When it comes to the national crisis in policing, Vermont is not an outlier. Black people are stopped and searched at disproportionate rates to white people. Our prisons have some of the worst racial disparities in the entire United States and images of police brutality against people of color appear often and the officers are not held accountable. This is despicable and we must do everything in our power to stop the suppression and violence. It is my view that the police must be completely abolished, but as a means to an end, we must defund the police. Possible solutions to social problems excluding police and prisons include but are not limited to affordable housing, healthcare, employment, counseling, after-school programs, trauma services and anti-violence programs. So this 10% increase should go into that, not into the police. In 1777, Vermont proved itself to be on the right side of history when it became the first state to abolish slavery. Systemic racism unfortunately was not abolished and is upheld in many of our institutions including law enforcement. Now in 2021, it is time for Vermont to prove itself to be on the right side of history yet again. It is time to take a stand against the prison industrial complex, the police and their racist and violence practices. We have to defund the frickin' police. Thank you. Amen. So I also just want to note that I want to hear from everyone first and then we may address some of the things that you're talking about at the end. So I just wanted to make sure that I said that. All right, so next up is Rachel Desalets. Thank you for this forum and allowing residents an opportunity to express their thoughts regarding the budget. I have two questions. One, the first one has to do with property taxes and the second one has to do with personnel issues. So the question around property taxes refers to unpaid property taxes. And I'm not referring to the 2020 in which we've been living through this pandemic but more specifically pre-pandemic that how does uncollected taxes which is a liability get treated and then when you collect the taxes that are unpaid how do they get treated? That becomes an income and is that a separate line item in the budget? So that's the first issue around taxes. The second one is three part and it has to do with personnel and my understanding is that under the public works line item we are holding one engineer position and one street position vacant. Of great concern to me is the one street position and especially given all the water main breaks that were incurred last year. So I'm very concerned about that position not being filled. Under the community, the second personnel issue under community service there are two rec department positions being held vacant and when I looked at the school budget the school has added one full time position to their budget to take care of the grounds that was the responsibility of the rec department. Again, I didn't work the budget that's just my understanding from reading it. So I may be off. So my question is why are we holding two rec department positions vacant when the school has added one of those positions into their budget? And then my last personnel question has to do with the police department. One position, again, my understanding is that one position is held open. And the school I think eliminated the SRO position from their budget leaving a half time police position open. Is there any way we can use that half position to fund and add it to the grant that funds the social worker so that we can have one and a half time social worker position because I'm concerned about having one position that's supposed to address all the issues between two schools. And I know this is a beginning but even as a beginning, it just doesn't make sense. So even though I'm looking at adding a half it's a little bit more but it isn't where it needs to be. So those are my points, my questions. Great, thank you. And again, we're making notes by the way of all these things. Okay, Stephen Whitaker. Stephen, if you'd like to go now it'd be a good time or we can come back to you. Is it my turn? Yep, yep it is. Okay, yeah, I was at a Senator doing the call waiting. Okay, so while I don't wanna trivialize or diminish the some of the couple of the prior, I appreciate the immediately prior mentioning the public works budget prior before that mentioning the police. Realistically, I've asked today to be on the agenda and take up many of my issues with the police scope and cost in the context of that police review commission which you've created. So I won't belabor that point nor will I align with the idea that we should just abolish it completely. On that note though, if indeed the reason we need a $3 million police department or even a million and a half dollar police department is because our situation as the state capital, it's entirely reasonable to prevail upon the state legislature to bear a significant piece of that cost as payment and lieu of taxes because we do not need to, if people are gonna converge next week on the state capital and we need a bigger department, the state should pay for that or supply that. We don't need an oversized department to drive around in circles chasing cats and lost wallets. That doesn't require a $3 million police department. Secondly, I wanna speak to the public safety dispatch but I mentioned it in a prior meeting in the public comment period. I have done further research and I have evidence that a Motorola representative spoke to a public safety authority in Illinois and said, yes, we're sunsetting these consoles, we're discontinuing these consoles but here's the few parts to buy and you can get five more years life out of those consoles. So the idea that we need immediate $135,000 a year for the next three years, $300,000 or $400,000 of the consoles is a lie. You are being lied to by your police department staff with no, there's no name or date on the report. The only document justifying that, ask. My request for public records has been delayed due to, I'm sure Bill will own that but the purchase of consoles starting in this year's budget for $135,000 is premature, especially in light of the needs assessment professional independent engineering needs assessment being conducted by CDPSA. It's entirely possible that Montpelier will not continue to maintain its $345,000 revenue that a regional system will evolve and Montpelier will take its rightful and humble role in that but manipulating the process, hiding the records, buying things prematurely is not the way to do that and build trust that's necessary for that regional system to evolve. I recommend that we consider, we are in emergency times, we cannot count on huge, backfill from federal money. At the end of current contracts, I suggest that we consider recruiting a new city manager with a cap of $100,000, not 130,000 and make one of the qualifying attributes for that city manager a strong background in public works. We've got decades of neglected public works to catch up on and having an engineering background as Barry does would help us and help our public works department scroll to the task. That's, so I would eliminate the assistance and rely on one city manager with one assistant to keep minutes of meetings and schedules, et cetera. We've got way too much bloat of ineffective and unnecessary staffing and I know y'all consider it all family but that's not what the public can afford. I think that I will address the other issues and bring them back. I think you have two public hearings and I've asked Lauren to put me on the agenda for the next police review commission. I'd like to have them refine and filter my suggestions and history with that department but we are grossly overpaying for a $3 million police department when we really need a behalf that and we need, if we can't get simple public restrooms after a year and a half of badgering from somebody as persistent as I, we really need to question the effectiveness of our staff. I'll leave it at that. Thank you. All right, Lucy, I'm trying to see if Lucy is still on. I don't see... I've asked her to unmute. Hi, can you hear me? Oh, yes, yes, now we can. Thank you. Okay, I am also calling to disagree with the increase of the police budget. If the city wants to decrease or prevent our very already pretty low crime rate, studies show that investing in community programs is the most effective action rather than investing in the police. So there's really no reason why the police are due to get a 10% increase while quote-unquote community programs are slash by nearly 50%. In this deadly pandemic, I'm sure we can agree that medical professionals, educators and people working and living at the elderly and assisted living facilities are the most at risk and therefore the most in need of these extra funds but these programs are also proposed to be downsized. And I really appreciate the first speakers who provided specific research and solutions to reinvesting that money in education specifically. I think the city of Montpelier needs to take a long look at our priorities right now and ask ourselves why we are trying to decrease or in defund the programs that we're really need at this time. And I think we should follow the footsteps of our fellow Vermont cities, Rutland and Burlington and defund and disarm the police rather than increase their funding. That's it. Okay, thank you. Your last name, Lucie, I'm sorry. Am I still on? Yes. It's German. Thank you. Yeah. Okay. Flynn. And now it's Flynn Aldrin. Hello. Hello, Flynn. Hi, sorry. My name is Flynn. I use he, him pronouns and I live in district one. I apologize, I'm a little unprepared but I just wanted to echo what the other folks have been saying tonight and show my support for the immediate defunding of the Montpelier Police Department by at least the 10% that's proposed for the 2022 budget. Yeah, having grown up here in Montpelier and having been raised on this false idea that somehow we are exempt from the violence and racism that plagues the rest of the country and US policing in general. I want so badly to be proud of being from here but with this proposed 10.4 increase, I believe, that's just not even possible. It's time to stop simply saying that we're a safe and progressive community and that our police are somehow different and instead it's time to start taking actionable steps towards becoming that community and defunding the MPD is just the very beginning. I also just wanted to thank and acknowledge the speakers before me as I heard a lot of them outlined other possible areas where that funding could be diverted and invested in for actual ways to increase public safety. Yeah, thank you. Great, thank you. Stephanie. Hi, I guess I can show my face, why not? Hi everyone. So yeah, I too want to echo my disappointment in the increase in police funding. In this year of all years, I mean, so many people here in Montpelier, so many people nationwide and worldwide have been voicing their desire to decrease funding for the police and here we're seeing MPD getting an increase and I mean, as a former PR professional, I can assure you that in addition to being awful for our community, it's really bad for Montpelier's image. I mean, this year of all years, I mean, a previous speaker mentioned the Black Lives Matter mural and I remember when that happened, I and many others said, we're really worried that this, you know, which is a great act of art and of all that. We're worried that this might just be a box to check and it might be an empty gesture. I was certain it would be and now I'm, that's confirmed and you know, seeing it like screen-shotted in the budget proposal today made my stomach turn because it's, if we're going to not only not defund the police, but increase by so much and so much since last year and the year before when you see that chart in the budget, it is stomach turning and it shows you haven't been listening to any of the community. Not the people who come here to talk or email you, but you know, what about all the articles all of us have read in the past year and all the pundits we've listened to on TV and all the evidence we've heard about how bad policing is for communities and all the protests we've seen. It makes it seem like either you weren't listening or you did listen and you reflected and you thought and you conversed with your family and friends and then you were like, I don't care that much. The status quo is more important. In this case, not the status quo but an increased budget for the police. If anything, you couldn't have said like they've got what they need. Let's keep it at that. That's what that's just really galling. And I mean, it's not just here in Burlington, BPD used force against black people this year at a record rate in 2020. So in 2020, when Vermont and the nation had risen up to demand better black individuals in Burlington have gotten the worst police treatment ever. So I guess I'm not surprised that in a year you're paying to the Black Lives Matter mural. You've also increased the police budget. And my last thing I'll say is, you know to address the exceptionalism that other people talked about, less do you think Burlington is a different beast? I don't think Montpelier is far off at all. It just so happens that we unlike Burlington don't have concentrated communities of people living in poverty or concentrated communities of people of color. But if we did, I think our police problem would be a lot like Burlington's and it might not, it might even be worse. This is just common sense. You know what happened deep down, you just know it. I don't want that to happen here. As others have said, Montpelier residents are suffering from the pandemic and it just, I would have liked to see a little more imaginative thinking around how to allocate funds to programs that really would benefit people at this exact moment in time. I mean, that could be like fully funding the housing trust funds, which is less than half funded I believe allocating more funding to public works even just to keep our city running the way we needed to funding community arts fund. Obviously there are so many other things but it's a slap in the face to all of us to see this hypocrisy and to see this large increase in a year when people are suffering and in a year when we've been trying to make this point. And I don't know if it's like a simple backlash like people rise up and then the powers that be kind of, you know, to get scared and respond with the opposite. I don't know what it is politically. I haven't, I don't know, but it's just it's deeply disappointing. And I expect more from Montpelier. Thank you. Thank you. All right, Meredith. Hi, thank you. I'm here to object to the budget increases that are proposed for the Montpelier Police Department. Our city government and community need to be focused on public safety, but police are not the only nor the best solution. Public safety is one of our main priorities and if that's true, then now it's a time to begin shifting money away from the police who have a very narrow training. And instead, we really need to diversify the ways in which our community can respond to neighbors in crisis. Last week, we saw on our nation's capital, rioters breach into that building and we're coming slowly to learn that those rioters in some cases were given tacit approval or worse by law enforcement. All police, including the MPD, need to start coming to terms with what their organizations are actually capable of. At worst, they are part of a union and organization that has deep ties to systems of racial harm and inequity in this country. And the MPD, whether we like it or not is part of that system. Now is the time to defund the police and invest in food security, mental health, housing and other mutually beneficial systems of care. Thank you. Thank you. Peter. Hi, can you hear me? Yes. Peter Kellman. I think it would be an important exercise to try to think about ways that we can reduce costs in the police department that are not related to numbers of officers. Burlington is beginning to look at this out of necessity. Are there jobs that do not have to be done by uniformed armed police people, the people who have other kinds of skills that are involved with policing? Just looking at sheer numbers of positions is not the only way to either save money or spend money. So it would, I think it would be important for the police and for the city council or at least for the city manager to think about other ways to address the issues that are currently a demand on the police. And somebody mentioned lost wallets and cats up trees or whatever. There's an awful lot of really minor things that don't require an armed police officer. So decreasing the number of armed police officers doesn't necessarily mean overall decreasing policing. It means spending your money on policing more usefully. And I think one of the things that is being overlooked here in all the Ds, defunding, is disarming and demilitarizing police. Do we in Montpelier really need a highly armed militarized police department? I don't think so. Thank you. Thank you, Peter. So that is the end of the list that I have. Cameron, do we have anyone else? Yes, we have Sean Stevens. And I think that's it right now. Again, if you want to speak, just raise your hand or speak up. Okay, go ahead, Sean. Thanks. Okay, starting my two minute timer. My name is Sean Stevens. If you go over, it's really okay. Okay. I live in district two here in Montpelier. I want to say, first of all, that I really appreciate the work that you guys have put together on the budget. It's highly complex and I really respect the amount of work that went into it. It's a lot of work and I don't like that kind of works. I'm glad that you guys are doing it. I am here to speak on community safety and on the police. I am in favor of some version of community safety that looks at using sources other than the police. I have been, I think I mentioned, I visited the council once before. I have been trying to read and study on this issue and listen to black and brown people with an open heart and an open mind, as I hope we all have. The last time I gave testimony, I was called or we were called extremists and I've been thinking a lot about that since we got called extremists. And I feel like it is a way to dismiss people and a way to be able to say to yourself, I don't have to listen to those people because they're extremists. I'm gonna request that you refrain from labeling me in that way. I don't think of myself in that way. I am, like I mentioned before, just trying to listen to the voices of black and brown people and really study on this issue. There's been a groundswell of Americans throughout the country that are looking to try to decrease police funding. So I understand what Bill Fraser pointed out about the fact that the police budget is a little complicated. Some of it is going to dispatch and some of it is going to police. Nevertheless, the broad takeaway is police are getting a rise when most other departments, gosh, two minutes goes by fast. Okay, can I myself one more? It's okay. Or I'm gonna have to talk like an auctioneer. So I get that. And yet it still seems as some other folks have pointed out, it's galling that that number is going out at precisely this time when there's both a call to decrease funding for police because of their role and what's happening in the US, what has been happening to black and brown and poor and mentally ill people in this country for a hundred years. So I'm asking that we consider reducing the police department by two FTEs this year. The police department is the most expensive department and the majority of the services that they provide could be provided more efficiently and better by other personnel. Stephanie mentioned Montculier exceptionism. I also want to point that out like it, I think it's premature for us to say, oh, all the other police departments all over the US, they're bad, but ours is great. That just doesn't make sense. Like we don't have very many black people. We haven't had an opportunity to experience the problems that they're experiencing in Burlington. I don't want to dismiss the value and the integrity of Mr. Pete and many of the other members of the department. But I also feel like that's not the central point. Nobody's arguing that Chief Pete's heart is not in the right place because it clearly is. But the question here is, what is the best way for us to improve community safety in our town and in our state? And that means, by the way, not just killings, but stopping arrests and people getting sent to prison, incarceration, all the things that come along with the way policing is currently carried out. That's it, thank you. Thank you. And I see your hand there, Nell. Nell Sather, go ahead. Hi, folks, can you hear me? Yes. Hi, I just wanted to very quickly make my support known for the speakers who have advocated for decreasing the Montpelier police budget, or at the very least, not increasing it. I really appreciate all the eloquent points that were raised by the folks before me. I just want to highlight some of them that really spoke to me, one being Montpelier's hypocrisy in thinking of ourselves or being thought of as a very progressive place, having Black Lives Matter written on State Street, and to then not support or to not follow through on the action that's been asked from the Black Lives Matter campaign by not defunding the police, or at the very least, not increasing police budget feels very hypocritical, and I feel that we can do better. And another point is the points that were raised in the letters of the editor about Montpelier's overpolicing. I don't think that we need the police department the size that we have for our small, small town. And lastly, I just want to say that I think this could be a great opportunity for Montpelier to show that we mean what we say and that we live by our values, our progressive values that many, not all, Montpelier writes pride themselves on. And yeah, I just want to thank you all for listening to the public and for all the speakers who put a lot of time into organizing and rallying our community members. Thanks. Thank you. Cameron, anyone else that you are seeing? Your ma'am. Anyone else that would like to speak? Okay. All right, well, thank you, everyone, and that. I have, Mayor, can I have one more minute? Sure, go ahead, Steven. Okay, I think I'm focused. One thing I forgot to mention is that if you're gonna continue to fund Montpelier live, they should be subject to public records law. The action that happened around my public toilet signs, art protest is unconscionable. And the fact that they claim that all their emails, while they're housed in City Hall, while they're using City Hall trucks to move the planters, they need to be, that their funding needs to be conditioned upon them being subject to public records law. That can be done by contract. Secondly, I've brought over the last years, brought to your attention, your police, our police officers, taking unopened beers from the homeless, harassing former residents who are attorneys for having a beer, sharing a beer up in the woods above, below national life. We don't pay our police and prowl private property. That's the national life problem. That's their security. I've brought to your attention, the historical abuses by our police department. And no one has ever followed up and asked that any of that be examined. So the fact that you wanna maintain status quo or increase the police budget when it's on you as a council for not having followed up validated and verified these things, those are reasons to cut our police budget. We've got abusive police. We've got people shooting mentally ill people, killing mentally ill people on the Spring Street Bridge, stealing beer from homeless people, harassing people for sleeping in their cars and citing false statutes. We've got a problem and it shouldn't wait another year for your police review commission to filter it down to where it's all politically. We've got a cabal of, you know, entrenched the blue wall and you're considering them part of our family and it's not right. It's time to trim the sales in management and in abusive enforcement. And it's not just racism, it's classism. It's, you know, it's oppression of people who are politically outspoken, myself included. Y'all need to take this seriously. And I think I applaud Moreau's strategy. He rearranged things. It appears to have cut the police budget more than it does, but it rearranges and it de-polices. It creates more social service approach to the problems that we are traditionally shouldering upon the police. And it justifies and rationalizes a smaller, more modest and appropriate scale police department. Thank you. Okay, thank you. All right, so there are a lot of thoughts in there and a lot of things that I think are worth talking about. So the first thing is about the 10% increase to the police budget. And so Bill, do you wanna talk about that briefly? Yeah, I'd be happy to talk about any of those budget type items. So first of all, do you understand people's concern about a 10% increase? And I just wanna make sure I'm clear about this. The police department police actual patrol operations increased 4.8% dispatch went up about 20.6%. So the combination of the two is 10.4%. So while that is an accurate number, the actual police operations that people are expressing concerns about did not receive a 10.4% increase. The second thing I wanted to make clear is that there's actually a reduction of one position in the police. We've had 17 authorization for 17 full-time officers and this budget has 16. So the 4.8% increase is solely in costs, just general costs of personnel, wages, benefits, things going up. It's not from new officers or expanded officers, is in fact one. And I think it's really important. This kind of sounds wonky and Sean referenced it. Appreciate that. But some, a fair amount of the city's operations are funded by other revenues, which are down this year. And one of them is parking revenues. And only those that are related to parking. So a part of my pay, for example, is parking. A part of the finance department is parking. All these things that deal with it. But police and dispatch is a huge, a large amount. So with parking down, those funding sources had to be shifted to the general fund. So we're seeing an unusual increase in the general fund, but their budgets as a whole are not up. It's the funding source that's up. If you look at their budgets, there is actually zero increase in police and dispatch for any operating lines at all. All the increases are in personnel. And again, those are rising costs for things. And as I said, there's one less police officer. So I could say from the city manager's perspective, proposing the budget, I think from the councils, there was no desire or intent to inflate the police department or somehow show, as other people said, are we trying to ignore the will of the people? In fact, I think, as I said, we've reduced one position. The other issue is this council did form a committee to look at many of the questions that have been raised and that work is ongoing. They're actively meeting on a pretty regular basis. And the other thing is we are in an economic crisis right now, as we build back and we see new revenues, whether they're parking or other things, one of the benefits of having converted these things is now is now we have the opportunity to look at different opportunities to use those revenues and perhaps build some of those back into some of the social services that we've talked about. So that has been part of our strategy. This year was really to just try to keep our base services. So that's the police, someone didn't mention the size of the police department. And we did respond to that. I think pretty publicly when it was raised, our department is pretty normally sized for not only Vermont police, but communities are sized. It's particularly given the number of calls that we get compared to many other communities. Someone mentioned the state, the impact of state government, which absolutely has a huge role on our police, as well as fire and others. And I would point out that in a normal year, in the year we are in before the pandemic, we had actually budgeted for over a $1 million in payment of lieu of taxes from the state to compensate the city for services. Obviously we've reduced that estimate somewhat for this next year because the state budget is lower, but they do contribute for a lot of our municipal services. So that is not, you know, while it impacts the need on the expense side, it is offset in the tax rate from services coming the other way. Someone mentioned, talked about the SRO and the social worker. In fact, we are not receiving a 1.5% the school, well, excuse me, our budget assumes no revenue from the school at all for the school resource officer. There is a position listed for that, but it's currently being used for patrol. And if the school chooses not to have a school resource officer, then that is the 16th officer, not the 17th officer. So there is no extra position there. We still do have the grant for the social worker position. And again, should we see more revenues? I think that is someplace we would look at expanding. Going, let me just see if there's something else I had about police that came up. I mean, there's a lot I think will be looked at by the committee, including the deployment of different resources. Clearly there are many calls that an armed police officer is not required for. There's no question about that, but because they do all sorts of different things, you never know when the next call is going to be in the same way that we respond to the ambulance calls with a fire truck in case they need to leave from the ambulance scene to a fire call. So it's preparing for what other emergency might exist. It was a question raised about the community service in two rec positions. Our plan here, the reason for that, first of all, we weren't aware that the school had raised another position. However, the school did make a decision not to have us continue. That was their choice to stop paying us. So that is a revenue loss for the city. So that is the reason for one of the, for at least looking at the position. And our thinking with the two rec positions was other two community service positions is number one, at least this year while most of our leagues and summer camps and those kinds of things are closed and not operating, we don't need to provide the same kind of field and outdoor maintenance that we normally do in a fully functional year. And so we are combining parks department and record combining this year to try to perform some of those services with cemetery and others helping out that is not intended to be a long-term sustainable situation. It was a COVID crisis type reduction. And with DPW similarly, the engineering position, we felt we could reduce that because we've also reduced the number of projects and we don't need that. That is again, something that would come back. Someone mentioned the street position. We are actually adding restoring to, we added two last year. So it's a net one. We just aren't filling one of those two. And I'd point out that water and sewer breaks are funded through the water and sewer fund not through the general fund. And so the water and sewer maintenance staff is the same. Now clearly the streets people help, but in terms of the immediate responses to water and sewer breaks, that staff has not been reduced. I'm just trying to look and see if there's anything else I can comment on, but if there's more questions, I'm happy to answer them. I hope I didn't. Well, I also want to jump back in here and make sure that I thank all of you. Thank you for taking the time to compose your thoughts, to share them with us. We certainly, we do appreciate that. We do, we are listening to, we're certainly trying to listen to you and to process all of this. The other thing that I want to point out as well, I certainly, I was also thinking about, when we painted Black Lives Matter on the street, like let's make sure it's not performative. And so like what does that mean for us? So if, even though, like just because of the way that our police budget works, this year it happened to look like there's this 10% increase when really it's effectively, it's basically the same, but all that is also to say that there are other things, there are other steps that we were intentionally have already taken and are planning to take around the issue of racial justice. And so just to point out a couple of those. So one thing city manager mentioned, I just want to highlight was the police review committee. So that will, if we're going to think about the direction of the police department, that is that's the group that's going to be able to have robust conversations about policing and become experts in best practice and have in-depth conversations. And that's a group that's going to come back to us to make some recommendations. The second thing is we are actually in this budget is included money for the social and economic justice committee to work with a consultant that's doing a basically like a needs assessment for the city to see like where are we falling down and where do we need to do better? What are our opportunities for doing better by not just by the BIPOC community, but also just folks who may otherwise not have a voice at the table often. So that's also a group that is working on recommendations for us that we are, we're gonna see what they have to say. And then, so another thing that this budget does include is funding for the capital area neighborhoods. And that is, we talked a little bit about last time, but it's basically a way to network with neighborhoods and that may be a way for people to be in touch with each other about needs that they have that maybe don't require the police. Now that's something that I think could evolve, but let's have that conversation. And yeah, so, and all that is also to say, you know, there's an open invitation to all of you to continue this dialogue and to, you know, if our answers aren't satisfactory here, like that's fine. Like let's keep talking about it and what else, you know, makes sense for us. So, thank you. That's all I wanted to say about that for now. Oh, there was another one other thing. There was one ask about taking money from the police to invest in education. And just for context, the way our budget works, we don't, the school budget is just totally separate from our budget. In many cities around the country, those things are combined, like it's all part of the same sort of package, but ours, our budget is very separate from the school budget. Yeah, I think that's all the things I wanted to say. Any other thoughts from council? Connor, go ahead. I'll just piggyback up some of the things you said, mayor. And first of all, nobody who's coming here, you're not extremists, you're activists, and you know, you should be commended for spending your time at eight o'clock at night coming here and holding us accountable as your elected officials. That said, I think you got to give us the time we need to be thoughtful about this, so we make intelligent decisions. As Rene Vermont-Bigger, the Burlington Police Commission yesterday voted five to one. This is a commission of citizens to raise the camp on officers in Burlington, because I think what they're finding is they just don't have enough people to get the job done. It was talking to a social worker up there, and they said they made a 30% cut. It was quite arbitrary, and that 30% cut didn't mean we got more social workers to do the job. What it meant was the work didn't get done, and that has bad impacts for people on the ground here. So I think when we have this police review study committee, we do wanna take a hard look and examine it, but as elected officials, and I was talking to somebody in town, if the phone rings at three o'clock in the morning and there's a domestic assault in town, you need somebody ready to respond to that, and if we don't have people ready to respond to that, we're not fulfilling our obligation as elected officials here either. If it could be readjusted the staffing levels, where social workers, other people are dispersed and doing different jobs, maybe it's a regional approach, I think we're all ears listening to that, but as far as re-imagining the police before the defund movement, we already started having some of these conversations about, okay, should we have a homelessness liaison to be the face of people talking to the homeless population on the ground? Is that a better person than a uniformed officer? Should we have a social worker in some cases that should respond again, rather than a uniformed officer? So I think it might seem like small steps, but they are steps in the direction that you're talking about of having a more holistic look at this. So I think we need time. I think we need to be honest with you too about what we feel like we can do. And I think, your comments are harsh sometimes, but keep coming, keep coming to the meetings, keep having the conversations with us. And I for one, and I think I could speak for the people around the table, you're not being blown off. These conversations are really happening in a meaningful way with these different committees, Jays on the SRO commission. We wanna continue looking at it and not just drop the ball on this, but to make sweeping cuts in a very short period of time without actually looking at the staffing levels, it might not make financial sense if you have officers working a ton of overtime, burnt out, making bad decisions, maybe you're not enough staff to actually be able to walk and beat, get familiar with the population. I think in my mind, these are the things we need to keep in the discussion and under consideration before we make deep cuts into the department. So let's continue listening to each other. And I really do appreciate everybody who spoke tonight. Thank you. Donna. Likewise, I appreciate Anne and Connor's comments and all the speakers can't say enough when people talk to us. And we do listen, we may be more slow in responding than you like, but not only do I want you to come back to talk to us, I really want you to join at the tables, find a city committee, and it may be directly related to the police, it may not, but get a sense of working and help us change. We only involve from the inside out. And I would love to have your creative thinking at any of our committees, any. You'd be more than welcome. Thank you. Thank you, Lauren. Yeah, thanks. I also am really grateful and really appreciate having an engaged community and accountability and was right there too when we approved the Black Lives Matter painting that this is not the end of the story, but a continuation and really, in many ways, doubling down on a commitment, but that means real action. It's a very interesting week and a half to be having this conversation, looking back and looking forward. And on one hand, I am extremely grateful at the hard work our police department is doing right now. We know that there are threats of armed protests in our city within the next week. And there has been an incredible amount of really dedicated work, looking at how we can keep our community safe. And I'm really grateful that they're doing that right now. I also hear loud and clear and have read a lot of the same things that everyone speaking tonight has and have been serving on the police review committee and really encourage people to come to that. These are public meetings. It's a public process. There's going to be more specific engagement opportunities, but those are happening on the second and fourth Mondays at 4.30. You can find the meeting schedule on the city website, but these exact conversations are happening and it's happening at the pace of government. But as a council, as Connor mentioned, we really wanted to look carefully and not just make a political statement and make a cut without, well, okay, how are we providing a service? If we're going to change things around, what does that mean? What are the implications for other city staff? And so on. So the conversations are happening, looking at the data. How are people spending their time? What services are we funding? All of the exact conversations. And it just, you know, it's all complicated as you can imagine. And so, you know, I really would love people to be showing up in that venue as well as that conversation is rolling out. And, you know, as there's ongoing public comment opportunity and also with the social and economic justice advisory committee that I serve on, there's going to be public engagement opportunities with that as well as we try to, you know, look not just at policing, but at other equity issues within our community and what we can be doing to also address those. So again, thanks for coming and appreciate all the input and spotlighting on these really important issues. Great, thank you. Dan, go ahead. Thanks. I actually had one question for Bill. Bill, the increases, the personnel cost, those are tied to the, are those tied to the union contract? We don't have union contracts right now for police for actually for any of our units for next year where we'll be bargaining them. But it's anticipating. We assume to, we put in 2%. We didn't, as we said, we didn't do any this year with the exception of the one fire that was already bargained. So it includes an estimated 2% cost adjustment as well as steps that people might be entitled to or costs of insurances, those kinds of things, you know, the inflationary costs, but it's not due to additional employees. Okay, right. So I mean, it's just for existing costs that we're anticipating. And I think that's an important point that, you know, we going into this budget really instructed the city manager to hold firm on keeping the budget as level funded as possible, which really means cuts because we are missing these revenue sources. And it was with the mind of the residents of Montpelier, which is, you know, how do we preserve services, core and essential services that we all have relied upon, maybe not each one of us relying on each service, but as a general population as a commonwealth of citizens, we have relied on these services. And we made a decision to make this a human budget, which is to say every line in this budget just about that relates to personnel, relates to a person, an individual who has a family who is depending upon the salary and benefits that the city of Montpelier provides. And, you know, I for one was not in favor of a budget that would cause that kind of personal hardship at this time to individuals, you know, who have served the city. And, you know, we can talk about next year and we may have to budgets that talk about a constricting of certain services and reducing them, but one of the goals here was to keep the services on the table that we've come to rely upon and to recognize the staff of the city and their contributions to our working as a city and to preserve them, to give them that security because at the end of the day, those are individuals who go home and they support their families. And I think that's a really important way to think about a budget because we're funding these positions that people consider their jobs that have put years into. And, you know, that was really one of the thrusts in that. So if some of that results in personnel overruns, you know, I don't think that's necessarily hypocrisy, that's, but it is holding on to the idea that these individuals, this father or mother or parent or sister that has to support a family can continue to do so. I think the example that was given before about the DC police is interesting because I saw the videos and, you know, there were two examples. The example was brought up in some of the public comment about the officers who seemed to let people into the Capitol who took selfies with some of the rioters and looters. But there were also other examples of police putting their bodies in harm's way in suffering injuries, protecting the building and protecting the individuals inside. And Eugene Goodman, whose name cannot be said enough, I think who saved a number of lives by diverting a crowd of people running up the stairs away from the Senate chamber that was unsecured. That's the kind of bravery that these type of first responders demonstrate, you know, and you can go back to 9-11, to people running into danger and not running away from danger. So I think there's a, you know, there's that split and there's that dilemma. And I think that the objections and the issues that have been raised about, you know, do we need armed police? Do we need these type of forces in our communities? Our important questions to ask, and I, you know, I support the asking of them, I supported the police review committee for those exact reasons that we have to look, we have to always be better. And we are not simply because we're in Vermont, immune from the societal ills, but to ignore the contributions that the individuals make within that and the role that they do play, you know, I think is we have to be careful because that in some ways, you know, waits the question unfairly. And I think that we have to think about those issues. And that brings me to really my last point, which is I think a lot of the concerns that were expressed tonight and I share my fellow counselors' response of saying, thank you for bringing this forward. Thank you for talking about this. You know, we welcome this kind of public comment, public feedback, we all have tough skins. So, you know, if you wish to frame it in a way that, you know, cuts, that's a way of getting people's attention, that's fine. But I think at the end of the day where we have to look at the data and we have to look at the information and we have to look at the bigger picture. And that's where I think the police review committee can do a lot of good, you know, making a cut on a line item in a budget has unintended consequences sometimes and it doesn't necessarily do what's intended. And I think the cities that are most serious about this and the example I would give is Minneapolis this summer made sudden cuts to the budget and had to reverse them a few weeks later. You know, if we're talking about true change, it's a slow process. It may not be as fast as you want it to be, but it's one that's thoughtful and one that can bear weight. Edmund Burke contrasted the American Revolution with the French Revolution on exactly those terms and noted that, you know, there has to be a thoughtful process as opposed to one that's driven by sort of a passion. And Jonathan Swift said, imagination, getting a stride of reason is where we lose sense. And in that respect, you know, I urge, you know, you to keep that passion and keep that issue, these issues coming up, but you know, we have to work through this process. So thanks, sorry. Don't worry, is anyone else? Jack, go ahead. Thank you. We will be have, this is a big project. You know, we've got our budget book, which you've seen and there's lots of pages, lots of lines of expenditure and what we're going through another public hearing next week. And the goal is, the goal that I have, and I think most of the members of the council have, is to provide a whole range of essential services that the city, the residents of the city rely on and really demand from their city government. And in gent, most often are services that only a municipal government can provide. And so we are looking at all range of things, public safety and law enforcement are core government functions. And we have people who have every right to expect that we'll provide those services. I have constituents, people out in the city who've emailed me or contacted me in other ways, who are demanding sustained police and public safety services and funding because they value the services. I've worked with community members and the police to deal with problems that really require a law enforcement response. As with law enforcement and with other areas, we're trying to look at, the government always looks at whether we're doing the things in the way that works best for the community or are the things that we could be doing different. Differently, I'm serving on the police review committee. We're meeting twice a month, it's a heavy schedule. And we are going to be looking at, well, what's the need for police services and what's the best way to meet that need? We already know that the city council has directed funding into a social work position. We know that the city council has directed funding to services for a homeless population. We have, as Lauren and others have mentioned, we're doing other things to ensure that we're fulfilling our desire to have a fair and equitable community. And we will continue doing that. We are looking at other areas. We've looked at public works. People are familiar with the alternate side of the street parking policy we adopted this year. And that was also in an effort to examine how we're providing our streets and public work services to be efficient and responsive to the community. And I think that that's going to, as we get, when we get to the end of the winter, I think we're going to find that that's been a successful change in what we do. And across the city government and throughout the budget, we are addressing ways that we can meet the community's needs and to provide a level of essential services that we can provide given the serious hit we took due to the pandemic. Having said all that, I think where we are now and the proposed budget that we have now is a responsible way to serve the needs of our community on a short-term basis from now up out to about a year and a half from now in July of June of 2022. And as many of us have observed, if we thought that the budget challenges we're facing now we're going to continue for multiple years into the future we'd be looking at the budget differently. But because we want to be able to maintain the level of services and the workforce and bring it back as quickly as we possibly can. I think where we are now is, I think we have a responsible budget providing the services we should be able to provide and can provide. And I don't know if we need a motion to adopt this budget to the next public hearing or we don't need that because it's already scheduled. But if it is, I would make a motion right now to adopt this budget and present it at the next public hearing. Oh, second. Okay. There's been a motion and a second. I'm gonna officially close the public hearing. I'm assumed that I opened it when I invited people to speak. And okay, so any further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. All right. Well, thank you again, everyone. And let's keep an open dialogue about this. All right. So we are going to move on to the item from the consent agenda, which was the ACCD grant, which yes, yes, go ahead. I just wanted to remind folks while they're still on the people that are interested in the budget that the next hearing is next Thursday, the 21st, 6th or Wednesday. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Yes. Okay. So Cameron, go ahead. Thank you. So I'm here to discuss the potential grant application for the ACCD better places grant. It is a up to $20,000 no match grant to make honestly, to make better places. So city staff got together. I worked with a pretty large group of city staff from planning DPW parks and Montpelier alive to sort of brainstorm what we could do with that type of funding. Since Confluence Park did get sort of funded through other grants. So that was our initial thought. And then the bigger thought came, how do we really, like renovate and revolutionize sort of the corridor of coming into town. And that became really our main focus is how do we invigorate that space? You know, we moved, y'all moved recently to sort of pay for that space from the state. And right now it's sort of, it's just an empty lot. And while we know and sort of acknowledge in this grant that you guys could make decisions to do anything with that lot in the future. Right now it is remaining empty. And so we really wanted to write a grant that invigorated and opens that space. One of the things that that potentially included was moving the Gertin Park structure. So it would move it from where it is currently onto the space. We'll call it 12 main. So at the 12 main space, so it opens up that area, makes it more available to the public, makes it more open and inviting so it can still be used as a gathering space, but it can also be used as something that is an impromptu stage for performances. The proposal also includes making it more of a sort of ad hoc Parklet, having some recreation opportunities for the youth and the form of a pump track, which we thought was really innovative. And I really thank Alec for bringing that opportunity to us. And really allowing it to be a public art space. Part of the grant also includes a soliciting for a local artist to create either a mural is our assumption, but could be anything in that space. You know, really also focusing on outdoor recreation as a something that spurs economic development as well. I know that might seem perfect, but if you create a place for people to go and to gather in our downtown district, we really do think that that's something that's missing currently and that this could fulfill. You know, we want to make sure that this answers some of the questions that we've had about Gertin Park. If that's something that y'all are interested in, in approving us, you know, including in this grant application, it doesn't mean it will happen. Hopefully we get the grant if we apply for it. But, you know, it will remain a memorial on one hand, but it also will remain a public space along the greenway. It's right up. I'm sorry. The Stephen away be multi use path. Still trying to get green way out of my head. Apologize. But it's right there next to the multi use path. And so it becomes sort of a corridor from the multi use path into our downtown economic area. And also sort of a gateway to our other park systems. So I did want to share the, this initial site plan. I will say that it's already gone. Undergone changes since we created the site plan or choices working very closely with us. Before I show it to you and share it with you, I just want to state that we've talked to page garden. We actually talked to her right before this meeting at 530. And she's comfortable with our proposal. And, you know, we've had a really great dialogue with her about this. So I'm going to pull up the pictures and share them. Which is, this is probably the best angle. Can you all see that? I saw Donna's thumbs up. So. So I will say that. Can somebody email me that document because I'm only on voice. Yes, I will Steven. Thank you. So this site plan already has undergone some changes. The Gerton Park structure will hopefully. Have the back of it towards the sidewalk so that it can be a public sort of stage in this area so that folks can gather here. I want, I mainly want to draw your attention to the back here by the river, where we've also included another memorial site closer to the river. To really acknowledge that they are initial Gerton Park structure. Was a memorial. So. Including that in the back there by the river. I think that is, well, I'll also say again, this site plan is already outdated. We've asked for the playground to be taken out because playgrounds open up a whole world of liability that we cannot afford to take on with a $20,000 grant. But the coolest part about this is that the pump track and a potential skate ramp that was a word Joyce. I think that's great. I didn't know this, so I'm sharing this information. They create a rubberized surface that people can put on to. Escape ramps, et cetera, that dull the noise. So it doesn't become a very noisy and disruptive thing, which skate park technology has come a long way. Apparently. So just want to point those things out. And I'll stop sharing and I'll email this to Steven. Steven, I'll put it in there as well that this is a. Definite draft and we'll probably undergo changes before we submit it. To a CCD, but this is definitely. Sort of where we're at right now. So I've been rambling at you for a little bit. So hopefully. Pick the narrative up there and I haven't missed anything. Did anyone have any questions. Okay. It looks great. Absolutely great. And I appreciate the visual as well as what you put in the written stuff. It's great. Thank you. Okay. Super. Other comments or questions. Jack, go ahead. I think it looks great. I think it's, it's a great thing. I think it looks great. Great. Recreational opportunity in the, in the center of town as, which I think we need. And. As long as we're in the position of not having a final plan for what to do with that. Real estate. I think, I think this is. A good thing. Could you. Talk at all about the. Any. Any. Advocates for the homeless. That you might have had as, as part of this discussion. So we've brought this up a few times at the homelessness task force. And I know that council member Casey has spoken directly to folks there. As well as the, the peer outreach worker for. Good Samaritan has also talked to folks at the. Shelter there and people aren't. And I'm going to say this in generalities. I'm not going to say this directly. But from the reports that I've received, people are not using that as a overnight shelter. According to good Sam, they have gotten every single person that was coming to. The overflow shelter into short-term housing at this time. So people are using it as a hangout spot. Like anything should be used on a bike path, right? What we're, you know, so. It might be. Maybe not being taken care of well, but it's not being used as a shelter. It's not being used as a shelter. It's not being used as a shelter. So I think that our. Homeless service providers are working very hard and diligently right now to get new opportunities for. A long term and real and holistic shelter. Instead of relying on our church systems. That again, it's not a city necessarily. Project. So I can't really speak more to that right now. But I do know that a lot of those things are in the works. But it's not a permanent solution. It's not. It's not a permanent solution. It's not going to deter anyone from using it as a hangout spot. So it would still be used as that. But again, it's right on the walking path that's right next to the sidewalk. So there is more visibility if we're concerned about, you know, improper use of that. It really does move it to a space that has more oversight. So I hope that addresses your question. It does. If I could, if I could follow up, I think we could. I think that's a good question. I just want to know. I agree with. Ken Russell and, and Dawn little, and. And I heard much the same thing. I think. People. We all know this. People need places to hang out. You know, it's in urban studies. It's called. You know, a third place at some places, not your home and it's not your work, but you have. So places, hang out and interact with people. When before I opposed moving the park structure, it was because it was seeming like it was taking that away. And I feel pretty good about this idea, keeping in mind that as I mentioned in my conversation with Dawn and Ken this afternoon, obviously the way we fix the problems that people who don't have homes are facing is to make sure that we don't have people that don't have homes. And we need, housing is a fundamental necessity of life and we need to keep pressing it on that area. But I support this. I don't want to prematurely cut off discussion, but I would move to approve this. Second it. Okay, there's been a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Connor, go ahead. And I just want to chime in, Cameron mentioned it. I have spent a few hours there over the last few weeks. They probably only had conversations with four people. So I don't pretend that that's everybody who hangs out there. But before I did speak to all of them had a place to stay that nice. So they weren't completely dependent on that structure. And the invitation was extended to be part of this, sort of the ad hoc committee with Dan and myself as we look at this and there wasn't any interest. So really did try to kind of take the pulse of this and didn't get a ton of feedback there. Donna, go ahead. I would like for us to come to some decision if it's a 12 or 16 and that the motion carries no matter what number we end up putting on this location, we do know the location, right? And let us know what is the decision. If we have to make it or staff makes it, but I would like to know. So we can talk about that property and assign it one number and we really get used to calling it that name. DPW staff recommended 16. Okay, great. 16 main, terrific. We'll go Jay and then Stephen, go ahead. All right, Cameron. I just wanted to just run my head around the numbers a little bit. So the ACCD grant application is for how much and that's based on which design. I know that you've taken out the jungle gym and the player equipment, but I just wanted to run my head around the numbers a little bit. So the grant is up to 20,000. Our budget is incomplete at this time, but I assume that it will be at that 20,000 is what we'll be asking for. So the site plan is still under development, but it will include a pump track, a memorial space at the back of the lot, movement of Gertin Park benches and some decorative, the art, the public art and the decorative space to hide the dumpsters. A lot of that will be, most of it will be going to sort of the building of this space. Some of it will be going to the artists to make sure that they're paid for their work and then materials. And I think I might, and landscaping obviously, and I think I might be missing something, but in general, that's what the work will be for. Montpelier Alive is also planning quite a few activation activities for that space as well. Like when I said sort of all season space for people to be there, Montpelier Alive and their partnership of this have planned a lot of like events that could happen there throughout the seasons. So some funding would go for that as well. Actually, I mean, I love and fully support the idea. It feels like it's well beyond the $20,000 project to make happen even without a swing set. Everyone has said that they feel comfortable with that amount. I think... Who said that? I'm working with planning, DPW, parks and Warjoice is our sort of psych plan designer right now. Good. No, that's great. I just, yeah, super. It is ambitious, but I think we can make it work. All right. Thank you. Steven, go ahead. Yeah, I missed the part where the obligation to pay for that property came from. It was still, if I'm not mistaken, that money was still due to be trans, but secondly, I think we should separate the question. I believe that having this resolution embedded in a consent agenda, even if it's broken out now, that in effect pre-ordained that Third Park is going to be moved no matter what trouble this design runs into down the line, whether the grant is made, whether the public likes the design, whether the, you know, it really just seems cynically manipulative the way it's been presented. I'm all for, I differ in that we're about to face, we're about to see a end to the eviction moratorium. You're likely to see a lot more people even if we temporarily house the ones that were mostly on the street. The privacy implication can't be under emphasized that the place where you could, you know, talk or, you know, have a beverage or whatever, that there's an autonomy in the current location that it doesn't exist on Main Street. I believe that one of the more little understood, but one, the kind of core erosions of the mental health of the unhoused population has to do with the lack of privacy, the lack of a place to gather your thoughts or feel unscrupulized. And I don't think we're factoring that in here. I think, in fact, I heard someone state the oversight that was desired and more desirable of having this, you know, thing move to this location. So I believe that the application for the grant should proceed, but the decision, the resolution to move the structure is premature. I would like an opportunity with the design in hand and with the, you know, implications to be able to review it with the folks. I'm an advocate who speaks to a lot of folks on the margins and I don't believe we've done our due diligence here by any stretch. I also agree with Jay that the number is grossly under, you know, departments don't have to take responsibility for their underestimates when it's, you know, a no name, no face, no document. I believe that we need to nail this plan down in detail if we get the grant and do things in the proper order and resolving to move the thing is not the proper order. Thanks. Okay, thank you. Well, and indeed we, there's no guarantee that we will get this grant. And even if we do as it is, this is more or less a, if I, I don't think this is incorrect, it is more or less a temporary plan as we continue to decide what will happen with that space in the long term. So in any case, there will be certainly be times to review it. So, okay. Mayor, I forgot one key point. In our priorities did not to have this artistic endeavor take precedence over public restrooms is absolutely absurd and shameful. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Steven. All right, any further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay, I'm seeing no opposed. So the motion passes. And I think we are, well, we're at 830 which would be a convenient time to take a break. But I also just want to look at some of the things there are some things that we really do need to get to tonight. And my hope is that we can get through all of the things actually. But I may, is it urgent to have the second quarter budget status review tonight? It's not urgent. It was a commitment that we made that you had asked for with regard to the with the, you know, the interim budget that we put in the mitigation plan. I think the short version is, as Kelly could tell you is that we're sort of on track. We're not ahead or behind. We're right where we thought we'd be. Yeah. Okay. Well, let's, the other thing is like if we move it then Kelly has to stay. So that's my only consideration there. But let's take a 10 minute break and then we'll decide what we want to do. Is that fair? Okay. I will see it's 830. I'll see you all in 10 minutes. Okay. I'm just going to go ahead and say that I have faith that we can make it through this agenda which means let's just do it so that Kelly can give her update and then she'd probably, I mean, say or not, up to you but let's do the review of the second quarter of budget. Okay. And I promise that I'll make it quick. Can everybody hear me okay? I think my sound was a little bit off earlier so I've turned it up and hopefully that's. That's great. It was a little soft, but we could hear you. Okay. Good deal. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go ahead and share my screen and walk you through this presentation. And let's see here, hold on. Okay. You can see this. Okay. Yep. Okay. So I'm just going to walk you through kind of where we started the deficit mitigation plan and where we are. And so as you can see, this is what we were looking at for revenue downgrade in 21. So in terms of revenue, just over $1.1 million and then just over $265,000 in the parking fund. And so I'm going to move on to our rescission summary which is the total of those downgrades in items that we came up with. And it's across the spectrum. There are personnel related cuts. There's capital and equipment. And there's also some of our community enhancements that were also reduced to just make way and make room for the difficult conditions that we're facing. So that being said, you know, we are within range with this plan and it's taking hold. So I'm pleased to report that. I'm also pleased to report that we have received CARES funding. So that's really exciting too. So that'll really help us weather the storm but you know, we're six months through and six months left. So we've just got to be careful as we proceed but I feel like we're in pretty good shape considering what we've seen. So this slide here just kind of breaks it down and provides kind of a net results for you. So we're about $25,000 to the good right now as it stands. If we're taking, you know, all things deficit shortfall and then comparing it to what we're actually seeing at the close of the second quarter. So as you can see, our taxes and fees are a little bit better than what we had anticipated to the tune of about $313,000 or so. And that's in large part due to the fact that we actually ended up receiving our full pilot payment that, you know, we had initially booked down because we just weren't sure. I'm not sure if we'll be as lucky in 22 but at least we did receive that here. So you can see that direct impact here in the first quarter or second quarter rather. We still do have some downs associated with FY20 that are coming into 21. Some of them are capital related and some of them are related to 21 and their program and user fees and the like we're just keeping a really close eye on them but you'll note that it's better than what we had anticipated. But then the parking fund is not better than what we had anticipated. We're just not seeing the revenues coming in. We're able to support enforcement but it has really forced us to take a really close look at the parking fund to make sure that it's viable, you know, now and moving forward. And so as we get down into these categories here you can kind of see that, you know there have also been shifts in what we've seen for reductions. I wanna note the personnel line in particular because it seems low based on what we were projecting but there are some things that are netting against that such as we've had some staff transitions, there are associated costs with public safety and COVID related needs that are kind of netting out here but we also did receive COVID funding. So we're actually in an okay spot. And then in terms of operating there were a few contractual things that we thought we might be able to mitigate but it turns out as we move towards a more managed service IT contract it's a little bit more expensive than the long run. I think it's actually gonna work out quite well and it's actually proven to be extremely beneficial as we've gone remote and being able to support the IT needs of the city making sure that we're secure, it's just really essential. So we're gonna be set up for the future and we are still able to meet the need of the current conditions. And then, oh, Jack, did you have a question? Yes, I'm turning, oh yes. Thinking about the experience of legal aid with migrating most of the work to home did we have to buy a lot of laptops for people to do working from home? So we did purchase some laptops. We were able to crowdsource some laptops also and we were able to use existing desktops and maybe assign somebody two desktops so one from home and one at work so they didn't have to look it back and forth. We've gotten creative and we were also able to negotiate into our managed services contract more laptops to just, we know that this remote work is not probably going away anytime soon and we know that we're gonna need to be nimble. So the answer is yes and we're trying to make the most of what we have. Are we relying on anyone using their own home or their own computers for that? Not at the moment. However, with the managed service contract the way once we migrate to the cloud folks will be able to log on using a personal device. We can't currently do that just because of the security concerns in the network but once we do switch over completely to cloud-based folks would have the option if they wanted to. That being said, we are making sure that the technology is available for folks that need it to work from home. That's good and the security is certainly what I was thinking about. Yeah, totally. When we went the first period of time with a lot of people just using their own home computers and security was a real concern at that time. Yeah, we've been really particular about that especially in looking at this contract and making sure that as we stand up to the cloud because we're still in the process of migrating and right now we're still sort of one foot in, one foot out but yeah, security is a big issue. Thank you. You're welcome. And then for capital you can see here that the only difference from what we had put in the deficit mitigation plan and what's noted here is the accounting for the power stretchers that we purchased through municipal lease financing. So I just took that down a little bit just to reflect that it's about $9,000 or so. So again, we're in pretty good shape although it's just with a little bit of caution but I say that because we still have six months left of the year to cover. And so this is the slide that I wanted to show you with the COVID money that we've received so far. A big chunk of it is related to the local government expense reimbursement grant. And so we did put in for items like plexi class barriers, some laptops, personnel costs that were eligible. We did have some shifts and duties that are associated here. So we feel pretty fortunate to be able to have secured that funding. So again, really help us as we get on. Let's see, I wanna jump ahead here. So the parking fund, here's our plan for dealing with the parking fund. So if the trend continues right now we're down about $177,000. And if that continues to the second half of the year then it's about 354,000. And so we're really monitoring the fund pretty closely and seeing how those revenues are coming in. We have enough to support our enforcement staff. So in terms of where we need to be for what the fund has to support as a core piece, we're doing that, but not much else. And so we are shifting allocations from the parking fund to the general fund. And that's where some of our planning with the mitigation plan really helps because we've made that room to be able to do that. And then I also do wanna mention something that's actually pretty exciting. And so it's good news in a time like this we've been working on it. And I had been hopeful that we would get to it sooner but by the end of the month we'll have Park Mobile rolled out in the city which will really help with our aging parking meters. So it's something that we had talked about on the list of things that we would need to fund. And so as we move forward, we may not need to. We may be able to just use the Park Mobile app for credit card transactions and then coin for the meters. So they're still accessible. And then the Park Mobile app itself will give us access to a lot more data around our parking in different zones. And so as things get better, we'll be able to build those revenue models and projections a little bit more accurately with the data that we get. And so in the interim, we'll keep an eye on things, we'll shift personal costs away but then we're also looking at ways to reduce certain credit card fees if we're using the Park Mobile app which is net neutral to the budget. And then also looking at other options like freezing equipment purchases and other purchase services. So I think we've got a good plan. We've just got to stick to it. So my recommendation is to kind of hold the line, be as conservative as we can be with spending and hopes that we end up in a better spot. We just don't know that yet. And the pandemic is just dragging on and we know that with the rollout of the vaccine being a little bit slow, we'll see. But I think we're in a good position to be as nimble as we need to be. And so I would recommend keeping the plan in place, spending on essential operational items only and then maintaining our hiring freeze only in areas where it's necessary. And then as conditions improve, we'll add things back. We are looking at that prioritization list right now so that then we have a list to come back to you with. So it's a pretty clear kind of what we would do next if we had the funding. So that's my presentation. I'm happy to go back to slides. I'm happy to answer any questions. I just wanna thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. If you can stop sharing your screen at this point for some reason I, okay, here we go. Great, any other questions for Kelly at this point? Jack, go ahead. Thank you. Kelly, this was a great presentation. I appreciate it. I was thinking this isn't directly targeted to this presentation. So if you don't have the answer and you wanna just tell us next time that would be fine but one of the commenters in the public hearing had some questions about the budget and one of them had to do with, it was Rachel Desilets and one of the questions had to do with uncollected property taxes. And is there anything you can tell us about uncollected property taxes and what the rate is right now and how we handle them? So I can give you sort of a general explanation but I would need to actually craft an answer to give you the specifics. I did pull the details but I didn't prepare it for tonight. Initially when we were experiencing this downturn I did take a look to see where our delinquency rates have been in the past and we've held pretty steady. And I just looked at the best example that is attributable to this one, the Great Recession and still surprisingly, people are paying their property taxes. I mean, we do have some delinquencies now that this thing is dragging on a little bit more and as they come in, they are booked. You can see within the budget lines that there are penalties and interests that we do book on the lines so that that's there but in terms of providing details on trending and where we are actually to date, I would wanna just look at that a little bit closer and I'm happy to provide that for next time. Okay, thanks. You're welcome. Anyone else? Okay, thank you again, Kelly. Thanks for this update. You're welcome. Oh, sorry, Connor, did you have something? Oh, I was thinking, Kelly. Oh. It's super. Awesome. Okay, so moving on in our agenda, the next thing is potential adoption of a resolution regarding the national election and related events. So I'm sure that many of you saw the YouTube video I put out just the other day. In my mind, it did three things. Condemned the attacks on the capital, the Washington DC capital. It asked, well, it informed people that the capital or sorry, that the state has to be closed, the school buildings would be closed and city hall would be closed. And then third thing is asking people to refrain from in-person direct counter protesting. And I know some of you wanted to also weigh in on that. And I think that's perfectly fair. There's actually an addition that I would like to propose to it, but I know Jack also had some thoughts on this. So Jack, I'm gonna just pick on you first and let you go first. And then I'll make my amendment suggestion as well. Go ahead. Well, thank you. I think I reviewed the latest version of it and I think you caught everything that I was interested in talking about. I had some pretty small editorial changes and I think those are all incorporated in the draft, the way it is now, I should look and see if there's something that, are you thinking of something that I sent you that didn't make it in here that I should be talking about? No, so my proposal is sort of just a different ask, a different chunk, it's a different thing. Okay, so yeah, I don't have anything to ask you to change more than what you've already changed, so thank you. Okay, so I also just want to, I think it's fair that in addition to, if we're gonna ask counter protesters to, we're only for people to refrain from counter protesting, I think we also need to ask anybody who's coming to not bring arms. Again, this is not a directive, it's not an order, it's legal for people to bring arms, but we've asked people to not counter protest, we can ask people to not bring arms as well. So I'm gonna throw that in there as well into the last whereas, and I can come up with some language. I think I have some language, I just need to like pop over and grab it. Lauren. Yeah, that was the one thing that stuck out to me, so I like that addition. I mean, it seems like some language around tied to that, remain peaceful and unarmed, however you can word it, but protesting is all of our right, but bringing violence is not our right. So however, however you can magically word that, if you've got a reversal of that sentiment. Dan, go ahead. I was just gonna say, it may be something along the lines of a peaceable protest, there's neither need nor necessity for being armed at a peaceable protest, and we strongly encourage anyone coming for either protest or count to any of these events to do so without firearms. Sorry, that was awkwardly worried. I think it was fine, gets a sentiment. Yeah, I think tying it with a peaceable protest language, I think may strengthen it a little bit, and it's the idea that we're certainly not discouraging. I mean, we're not saying they can't protest because they can, but simply strongly discouraging and firearms. Yeah, Donna, go ahead. I was thinking, Dan, could you put it like, please come to peacefully protest unarmed? Or please come unarmed to peacefully protest? You know, just like a simple sentence instead of a much longer sentence that you started with. Well, I just don't think we wanna say the words, please come in a resolution that's saying, please don't come. Read out what I just wrote out of it. Without arms. Okay. Cameron, do you have, you wrote some of that down? I did. So your last whereas, I ended it with, in addition, so after it says we're asking you to consider safety first during these events, in addition, there is neither need nor necessity to be armed at a peaceful protest, and anyone coming to any of these events, please do so without firearms. I like that. Yeah, very well done. Yeah, and again, acknowledging, well, at least in this space, I want to acknowledge that like, it is legal for people to bring firearms. Well, we can always ask them not to. So, okay. Any other thoughts? Connor, go ahead. Yeah, I just want to thank you, Mayor, for getting out ahead of this. And I think it's important to say that this is probably counterintuitive to a lot of us who come from activist backgrounds to discourage people to go out and do a counter protest. But I think like as important as this resolution is just, let's be explicit, like everybody's well-intentioned who's putting this Facebook group together, but I really worry about it. Let's call it what it is, that the president is inciting domestic terrorism. A lot of the people who are showing up on Sunday are listening to them. They're going to be there. They're going to be armed. They're going to be angry. So, to advertise, I think they backed off on this. It was initially a family-friendly protest. I think you got to be really careful here. You can't be bringing kids to this, or somebody could really get hurt. So, again, I respect all the people who are putting this Facebook group out, but just pay attention. It's not more courageous showing up. Like the mayor said, there's other ways to protest this. Don't put yourselves in jeopardy. Don't put our police, all the people trying to de-escalate it in jeopardy. Just please stay home. Chief, I see that you have turned your video on. Did you want to address any of this? If not, that's okay. I could do it quickly. And I think, especially the members of the council, Bill and Cameron, for your guidance, your leadership, as we're dealing with the situation. And ultimately, we, Montpelier Police Department, we value everyone's rights. They're constitutional rights for speech and for assembly. But in echoing Council Member Casey, we also want to make sure and ensure the safety. And while we don't know of any direct threats to Montpelier, to the Capitol, nor do we have any information as how many people may or may not show up. But we want to be able to focus our resources directly where they may need to be. And looking at the national trends and looking at what's on the news, we just want to be able to ensure that the best way for us to ensure everyone's safety is just to advise folks, just to exercise caution and discretion in what they're doing going forward. So again, thank you all very much for your support and for this opportunity and for your leadership as we move forward and overcoming this, because we are going to overcome this and we are going to ensure the safety of our city and of our community. Thank you, Chief. And I also just wanted to thank you personally myself. Thank you for all the work that you and your staff are doing to ensure our safety coming up. We deeply appreciate it. So please pass that on from us. Okay. So any other changes to this resolution? Okay. Is there a motion? I move we adopt it. I'll second. Okay. We got a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay. Colin, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Thank you all. Lauren, go ahead. Is it clear that it's as amended with that? Yeah. It's a good question as amended. Yes. Right. Yes. Okay. That's also how I understood it. Thank you for that clarification. Okay. All right. Great. So moving on. We have a warning for the net zero plan. I sort of assume either Bill or Cameron is talking about this or maybe Donna. Donna, maybe. At one point I thought this was in the consent agenda. I thought it was on the consent agenda last week to be honest with you. Well, I agree. But we talked about it. I pulled it out and talked about it. That's what I thought too. I was surprised when I saw it tonight. Honestly. I didn't pull it out, but I talked about it after we passed the consent agenda. Cameron, you muted. Cameron, you muted. Five layers deep here. I think this is a, I'm looking at it and it has a January 6th date on it. I think it just got carried over from last time. We apologize for that. Okay. That's all right. Is camera gonna send us a clean copy of the resolution as passed? I'm working on that as we speak. Oh, I'm so impressed. Thank you. Things deep. Sorry. That would be great. Thank you. Okay. All right. So potential ballot item retail cannabis. I know this is something that Councillor Casey has been working on. So I think I may turn it over to him. Yeah, sure. And I spoken about it at a couple other meetings. This was something I've had a few constituents come up to me and asked for us to consider putting it on the ballot. City staff did a great job with the synopsis that's included in the packet here. But it does stem from S54, which was passed in the legislature. And the legalization and regulation bill does require that a municipality pass on Australian ballot, language allowing for this sale of retail cannabis. This wouldn't, you wouldn't be able to set up a shop until I think it's later in 2022. But about 10 towns have adopted this already for the ballots. And I think there's good reason to. I think we want voters really to consider two things. First, will we be putting in front of them now? Do you want it or do you not? Personally, I see some benefits in having retail cannabis in Montpelier, certainly revenue. We could go on about how the war on drugs has failed. But certainly we've had a dispensary here, a medical dispensary for the last seven years, who have been really good partners with the city in an area of town that I think has not been very disruptive at all. So I think we want to make the determination early in this process. Do we want retail cannabis? If we don't, that's okay. I have no desire to introduce it a second time. But if we do, let's go through the motions of doing it right. Let's make it transparent. Let's have a community process on it and say, what does that look like in our community? Because I see potential in rushing it if we waited another year to put it on the town meeting day ballot there. So I think this sparks a discussion. Honestly, I think our community has been pretty progressive on this issue. About 10 years ago, passing a resolution to decriminalize marijuana. And there certainly are some benefits to having a dispensary in town there. And being one of the first, I think encourages early investment in this and allows us to have all the information we need to make an intelligent decision. I, again, I'm not an expert on this. You'll see a little square with Virginia Renfrow who has, she does represent the dispensaries. She's been in the state house working on this issue. So if there were any more like technical questions or anything anybody had, I just asked Virginia to be here because she might know the answer to it. But basically that's my spiel. I think it deserves it stay in court. And again, without expressing a serious like, you know, side one way or the other on this, I think it makes sense for the council to put on the ballot. I have some discussions before March, maybe let people make the case and it goes up or down. That's it for me. Thank you. Coms or questions, Jack and then Dan. I agree with this. I think we should do this from everything I've been told. There are large segments of the population who enjoy partaking in marijuana usage. And I understand it's quite pleasurable for those who do. I think it's an opportunity to treat the adults in the community as adults. And I think legalization is long overdue. And now that we're there, I think that this has potential for the city and I think we should be doing it. Dan. I won't ask where Jack gets his information from. Given the grateful dead playlist on Facebook, I don't know if I want to know. But chief, one of the components of this is has a sort of public safety component, especially driving impaired. And it talks about training to be received by police departments and dealing with that. Do you have any concerns about the timing of this or your ability to address those issues? That's a very good question, sir. At the moment, I don't think that there is established practice regarding how to make the determination of impaired driving with it, other than the standard things that we use for DUI, which will require things like blood draws and things of that effect, but in how to determine that. And this is a case that nationwide, the legislation is moving faster than a law enforcement reaction. So that's something that we would definitely have to continue to consult with commissioner Sherling's office and look for those best practice ways to include the academy. One thing I would caution with is just to look at ways that what I've seen in other places, in my previous assignment, when marijuana was legalized, we always saw burglaries and robberies at dispensaries. So I would just say that we, to just make sure that we're looking at security practices for folks who are in town who may be involved in distribution or selling. So just to make sure that they're protected, their business is protected, and then it helps us in our response efforts if we have to respond again to a potential break-in. I've also seen those reports about the significant increase in Girl Scout cookie sales across the street from said dispensaries. Okay, but so just to understand, I mean, as reading the documents that we were handed, it sounds like towards the end of this year, there'll be the state is aiming to get training out to police departments for that. And it seems to be one of these things where there'll be a training about the same time that dispensaries open. And I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't any sort of larger concerns. I mean, sometimes these things do move fast. And obviously you have to play a little bit of catch up, but I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any particular outstanding concern from a public safety point of view of that. To my knowledge, no, and I would have to, while I wasn't here during that initial conversation as the legalization process was going through, I've got a tremendous amount of faith in Commissioner Shirling and his ability to look ahead. And so I have no doubt that there are, this is something that he and the Academy are working on. Thanks, I guess I'll just echo. I don't have a problem with this being put on a ballot, having voters being asked. And while I might be less familiar than other members of the community with these practices, I certainly understand that they are widespread. Thank you, Jay and then Lauren. Well, I just wanted to follow up and I think actually to Dan's point that, and supporting Connor's argument here that getting ahead of it, getting it on the ballot now so that we can start this process early and don't have to feel like we're in a position where we're rushing to be able to sort of catch up and manage that whole process on a short timeframe. I think it makes it, I fully support the idea of getting on the ballot early so that we can work through all this process ahead in time. Thanks. Yeah, thank you, Lauren. Yeah, I agree as well. I think hearing the will of the voters now and then having lots of time to plan makes a lot of sense. I just had one question, it might be for Virginia. Just if people were wondering how this would roll out and it might not be clear yet as this is getting going, would it be like the way people get liquor licenses now? Is that the kind of role the city would play potentially as operations were getting up and running or is there any sense of that yet or is it too early? So Virginia Renfrew, I work with the medical cannabis dispensaries. So there'll be a cannabis control board which will be established hopefully over the next couple of months. And so they'll start to really kind of lay out what this is gonna look like. And I know that when the dispensaries, when that law first passed, they all had to go if they wanted to be like in Montpelier, the dispensary had to come to Montpelier city council and get the approval of actually being there. So I'm envisioning that that will probably be one of the requests on the application that the cannabis control board will be putting out. So different people will apply, but they would have to, if they were gonna, wanted to open up a retail store in Montpelier on that application, it would probably ask, has the town or city approved your store and have you gone through zoning? Thanks. Donna. Virginia, nice seeing you again. Do you get samples? I was just reading the language about the local cannabis control commission. And it's like the liquor board, if I understand this right, it's set up and then we no longer govern it. It's independent, is that correct? Well, and actually in Act 164, it does allow each municipality to have their own kind of cannabis commission if they choose to have a retail store. And if you have a local tax, which I think is 1%, if you have that in place right now, then you can apply that to the cannabis retail store. My understanding, if you're a town who doesn't have that, you can't put it in after the store comes in. But then the cannabis control board will also be looking at local fees of what cities and towns can charge for different fees to these businesses. But the only request by the legislature for city and town voter approval is for the cannabis stores. So there'll be small growers, there'll be wholesale, but none of that has to go through what the cannabis retail stores have to go through as far as being approved by the voters. I was just trying to understand the relationship. I mean, it says the municipals set it up, but that is sort of indicates that then the municipals wait for the board to present the rules. And so I guess how much of this language stays that way should this pass? Do we get to muck around in it if it should pass these rules? Well, I mean, I think that you would have the ability to certainly make the decision, let's say somebody wanted to, and I'm not sure what the city of Montpelier wants to do, but let's just say that somebody says, well, I wanna put my retail store where the former blue stone was in Montpelier's like, I don't think that's necessarily, I think that you will have say in where it can be within your city lines. And I mean, there is some unknowns right now because we don't have this cannabis control board and they will be putting together rules, but certainly you'll have the opportunity to go in front of this cannabis control board while they're making their rules and regulations to say, this is what we feel as a municipality that we would like to see our ability to have some control over this. And so I believe that that certainly, I know the city and league of cities and towns was very active in Act 164. Thank you, thank you. I definitely support moving this direction. I think marijuana needs to be treated like liquor. The more we do that, the better. So thank you. So I have a question and a comment. So just to clarify one of the things that you said, Virginia, my understanding was that there was not an opportunity for a municipality to have a local option tax on the retail sale of cannabis, but is that not the case? Do you already have a 1%? We have meals, rooms and alcohol, but not sales. So I assume it does not, it would apply if we had a sales, 1% sales tax, but it's not gonna be lumped in with the like meals, rooms and alcohol and cannabis. Well, there's gonna be a 20% tax on the, I think 16% tax, maybe 16% sales tax on cannabis. And let me get back to you, mayor, on that because my understanding is that if, so I know like Williston who has a tax on all of the stores that they have up there, I think they have a 1%, then if somebody was to open one there, that would continue to happen. And so, but I can get you some more information on that. Thank you. I am sort of assuming that it's the sales tax as opposed to meals, rooms and alcohol. And for some reason I thought, how could, is it, is it? It's called a local, a local option, local option tax. So Montpelier doesn't have that. We don't have a local option sales tax. We have a local option meals, rooms and alcohol tax. All right, I'll get back to you on that. Thank you. The second thing, I agree with the sentiment that as much as we can treating cannabis like alcohol, I think makes sense. One of the things that I wanna be wary of is especially as we have a community conversation around this leading up to town meeting day. My, one of the things that I'm concerned about is underage usage and just wanting to think ahead about how are we working to minimize that? Working to minimize that. I mean, I know it's already relatively prevalent among youth in our community. And I think that is something that needs to be addressed and to be fair. This is more in the realm of the schools, but I would be interested in potentially the school's comments as well as, as well as their plan for what to do if or when usage changes, or particularly increases. Anyway, all that is also to say, I'll be very interested to see the youth behavior risk survey data over the next few years, if this does go through. If I could add, there's a certain percentage of the money that is going to be collected through the taxes that is gonna go specifically for prevention and it will be going out to the schools to work around prevention. So, and that was something that was definitely, you know, really desired strongly by legislators to ensure that as we open up the cannabis retail stores, which is for, you know, someone who's over 21, that some of that money be given to prevention programs. Okay, that's helpful. Thank you. Donna. Well, I'd like to make a motion to direct staff to add the article about cannabis to the ballot warning. Present this. Actually, I mean, that's fine. You actually are the people that decide what goes on the warning. We can write it down, but it's the council votes to put things on the warning. Well, that's what I'm asking for to vote on it. That's what your directive says, is that you need us to give you direction and you have ballot language here. So I'm accepting it. I'm just saying frame your motion to add that balloted language to the warning. That's all. Don't just tell us to do it, you can actually, you need to do it. All right, because your recommended action was to give direction to city staff, but I'll stop that. I'll just put a motion out there that we put, shall the city of Montpellier permit the operation of cannabis retailers and integrated licensees, which are licensed by the state of Vermont pursuant to act 164 of 2020, subject to the such municipal ordinance and regulation as the city council may lawfully adopt and implement. Second. Thank you. Motion and a second. Any further discussion? Okay. In favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. So that motion passes. So that'll, the item will be on the ballot. Okay. So the next item is about the clerk's lawsuit. So for this, John. Thank you all. I'll be really quick. Cause I know that there's a lot going on and this is kind of a favor I'm asking. I don't know if you all are aware of this. Like it was in the paper again today that there's a title insurance company that's based out of Connecticut, but their Vermont company, their Vermont director is technically the plaintiff that are targeting eight clerk's offices. I'm not one of just sort of randomly, you know, Whiting, Milton, South Burlington, Plainfield, Northfield to force them to basically go back to pre-COVID access rules in terms of hours and not making appointments, just having the doors open. So obviously it's dangerous. Obviously it's stupid. Obviously it goes in contradiction to the governor's order. So if this were to be approved, then it would bring it to question the governor's order. The language of it would bring into question even after the COVID situation, whether town municipal offices across the state can even have different hours at all because it's about equality of access. So anyways, it's dangerous, it's ridiculous. They have a motion for an expedited hearing and that is being heard at the end of next week. I've already gotten a letter signed by more than 200 clerks and treasurers across New England and in New York that I've sent their way, you know, depouring this. And it would just be, since it is something that would infect, infect. Oh, that's a Freudian slip. Effect, you know, entire municipal buildings and then presumably towns, if you started a cluster at City Hall, I just love some backup, you know, if you all, I didn't wanna craft a resolution that felt a little presumptuous, but, you know, if there were just a motion, you know, of the sense of the council, you know, condemning this action, it would be helpful, I think. I can, you know, I could talk to Cameron about getting that out there and it's just another person coming down on it, yeah. Another integer. Go ahead. I agree. I reviewed the complaint. It's one thing that was striking to note was that while the complaint says that all these towns across the state are violating the law in a very, very vaguely worded way violating the law by not allowing access to the land records, the complaint does not indicate a single person who has attempted to gain access to the land records of any town in the state and been denied or hindered or delayed in doing so. I know that a friend of mine is on the select board, also a lawyer is on the select board in Bolton and I know there's a motion to dismiss for failures to state a claim on which relief can be granted that it's been filed. And I think that this is, on its face, this is invalid and illegitimate pursuit and I certainly agree. I would move that it be that we express that it's a sense of the council to oppose the relief sought by this litigation, although not by devoting any funds or other resources to doing so. I second. Okay. Yes, Donna, go ahead. I just want to add to my second, Jack. I mean, you worded it well. I couldn't figure out why. I mean, they had no real plaintiff, no person who said they couldn't get records. I just found it very, I still don't understand why they're doing it. If anybody wants to understand, there's probably stuff I shouldn't say an open channel. Okay. I'll come visit you. Individual people in my opinion of them, but one thing I will just also add just four year old's information that the existence of this lawsuit, I know of two cases now, including one in this County where it has been specifically weaponized to force clerks to open up hours against their current procedures and policies. One where it's just, lawyer comes in and says, I want to get in now. You give me access now or we'll put you on the lawsuit. So is this like challenging executive order? Is that the real basis of it? I think it's more I think it's more narrow than that. I think it's just a petulance. Yeah, I'm not belabor it, but Dan, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I'm familiar with this lawsuit. I guess part of my concern in sitting here and thinking about weighing in on the lawsuit is as a town or as a city. I don't know if I'm fully comfortable with the precedent of doing that because the strength of this argument will rise or fall in court. And I know the attorneys that are arguing on both sides of this. And I fully expect that the arguments that they're gonna put forward are standing or failure or state of claim or in actual injury, all the preliminary injunction standards as well, will get litigated. And I don't know if the intent of the motion is to, we're not a party to this litigation. And I would think if, for example, there was a lawsuit involving some other piece of action that didn't directly involve us, we start weighing in, like for example, all the federal lawsuits about the election. We may have personal feelings about it, but I guess I'm a little bit trevidacious about starting to take sort of formal city resolutions or positions on lawsuits that don't involve us. If the resolution is intended really sort of as an expression of support or solidarity for clerks and the governor's resolution, I guess I'm more comfortable with that. But my concern is, I just think, for example, if a city in say Alabama had said, we wanna take a position against all the litigation, the recount litigation, I think we would have a problem with that, particularly because it didn't involve them as this doesn't necessarily directly involve us. If we're trying to articulate a position of support for general, maybe that's much more comfortable. I'm starting to repeat myself. I apologize. I think that's my concern and I'll stop right there for the time being. Can I respond to that really briefly? It does directly involve the city because this would be a blanket decision to open clerk's offices, which exist in municipal buildings, in city halls, town halls. It would force us to change our policies for access, not just to my office, but to the city hall building. So that is an act of policies separate from the clerk's office. It has to do with the actual physical building and the safety of what has been decided by the city is that our appropriate moves in the interests of safety of the municipal, not just the municipal employees, but the greater city at large. It wouldn't just mean I open up a ladder, open up my window and put a ladder out the door. It means we unlock city hall. If this group directly affects us and that is in fact the point. They're not just going after these eight clerk's offices. This is something they want to get through to have a blanket effect on all the municipalities in Vermont and I think all the municipalities in Vermont therefore have a direct interest in this lawsuit. And I don't think it's anything as abstract as somebody in Alabama not liking the election. This is about us. This is about city of Montpelier and how we get to run our affairs in the interests of safety. It's a shock, not off to the side or that's not oblique. It's a broadside right at that. I mean, I don't necessarily agree that that would follow. I mean, I understand where you're going with that, John and I'm not trying to be, I guess I'm expressing a note of caution here and I'm not familiar with the legal arguments that they're making. And so if I understand you correctly, John you're saying that they're attacking the sort of underpinnings of every clerk that's closing in such that if they were to prevail, I mean, because it's the rule of litigation is that the decision only affects the parties that have standing and have an opportunity to respond that are named in the caption as opposed to being affected. But what you're saying is that once the, if a decision was put out there by a superior court judge and said it's unconstitutional or whatever arguments are raising them and if they were successful then it's just a matter of time before our regulations would fall or they'd be susceptible to a challenge where we'd have to rethink that. And I guess along those lines, I mean, is there an effort then by municipalities either by the legal cities and towns or by some clerk's association to gain standing as an interested party in that? I'm not sure, but I just another thing to respond to these eight municipalities, they are random. Okay, this was not that there were particular issues with these towns. In fact, one of them has more of the most open policies I think of anyone at state and all these municipalities are baffled. They don't know who's bringing this but its intent is to create uniform access. I mean, that is written in there. So it, I mean, it is explicitly about Vermont municipalities and these are just the sort of, and I wouldn't say random, there's an attempt to sort of get a broad swath of types of municipalities and types of access. You know, you get Whiting in there and you get Milton in there or you get Northfield in there and you get South Burlington in there. But, you know, I think the intent is clear. It's not a lawsuit about Whiting and South Burlington and Plainfield and Northfield and Milton. I don't think that's being hidden. I don't think that's subtext. Right, no, I gather that. And I guess the other, you know, the other, you know, if we pass this, I mean, what effect does it have other than just sort of publicly stating that we support the defense of this or oppose the, as a general principle? I mean, is there an intent to then take action on this? Seek interested party status? I think speaking out is, you know, I have no intent when I circulated that letter and sent a letter of 200, you know, clerks from across the region, we're not looking for status. We're not looking for anything other than, this is our voice here. And I think there's inherent value in that. Yeah, I mean, sorry, Jack. And I know you're, I just want to sort of trace this down is that, you know, I understand there's a certain public principle behind that. But, you know, I'm wondering if this is talking about, is this something where, you know, and it would make sense to have these, you sort of unified voices say it. I mean, I presume that the attorneys are going to reach out to the clerks to be able to testify that this is a bigger issue than just these eight towns. But I mean, that to me would be much more effective to be able to make those arguments to the judge who would ultimately be the decision maker on that. You know, impeachment is more effective at getting rid of Trump than my speaking out. But I don't think that precludes my speaking out nor do I think it really frankly gets me off the hook for it. I think, you know, you just gotta, if there's something you don't believe, I mean, if nothing else, it affects the cost-benefit analysis for going, they decide at some point they're sewing more ill will than it's worth. I mean, it matters and you don't have to pick one's, you know, it doesn't have to be a lawsuit or a public statement or party in a hearing or a demonstration, you know, that's, you know, it's about, you know, speak out for what's right or no, you know. Yeah, I mean, I think it's a little bit different and I guess I still have this at the end of the day and this may be more of a litigator or attorney's response, which is, you know, fearful about weighing in on this type of litigation, but I think I've made that point. Sorry, bad. Okay. Before I go back to Jack, anyone who hasn't spoken about this topic want to weigh in. Jack, go ahead. Thank you. While this exchange was going on, I did a little typing to try to address Dan's concerns and let me read you what I wrote to see if this might be something that would be more acceptable and potentially get a unanimous vote in favor of it. It is, and so this isn't an amendment yet, but if it looks like it flies, I would move to amend my previous motion to word it this way. It is the sense of the council that the limits on access to the Montpelier land records adopted by the Montpelier city clerk are reasonable and reasonably targeted to protect the public health and safety while maintaining reasonable access to public documents. Consequently, the Montpelier city council supports the municipalities who are opposing the action now pending as Connecticut attorney's title insurance company versus town of Bolton, NL. Yeah, I think that's more comfortable. I mean, if we want to even insert language that the actions we believe are fully compliant with the governor's hours under the public health statute. So I think that's perfect. I think I like that phrasing better, Jack. I think that answers my question. Thank you. Let me type something else in. What I'm typing in is, and in conformity with Vermont law and the governor's executive order. Kind of lost whether or not we had a motion in a second already. We did. Yeah. And so I moved that we, I moved to amend the motion that I made to strike it all and put this language in instead and let me happily read it again if you'd like me to. I think that would probably be good just to have it all. Sorry, go ahead, Dana. What I'm just going to say the second is fine with the amendment, but. Okay. Council member Jack, do you mind emailing it to us? Oh, I certainly would. Would not mind it. Mind doing that. I would happily do that. It is the sense of the council that the limits on access to the Montpelier land records adopted by the Montpelier city clerk are reasonable and reasonably targeted to protect the public health and safety while maintaining reasonable access to public documents and in conformity with Vermont law and the governor's executive order. Consequently Montpelier city council supports the municipalities who are opposing the action now pending as Connecticut attorney's title insurance company versus town of Bolton et al. Okay. All right, so there's a motion and a second which is this amendment. Any further discussion on this? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. So that motion is amended. Now we got a vote on the motion. So all in favor of, oh, I'm sorry. Any further discussion about the motion? I'll just maybe a final thing. I mean, because I do, our firm does a fair amount of title work and land transactions. And so I think substantively underlying this, I wanna say that I think, you know, this is the right, ultimately the right position. And if I was our, you know, because we have been able to do closing after closing it's slower, it's a little bit more difficult, but so is everything in COVID. And, you know, so I certainly agree with the substance of this position as well. And that's been my experience as a title attorney is it hasn't stopped people from buying helms or selling them. I just emailed that to John and Cameron. Great. Thank you. Any further discussion? Okay. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. So that motion passes. Thank you. Thank you all. It does make a difference. The suit goes right here. Okay. We are up to the last item of our regular business, which is the warning for the town meeting. So you have a draft in your packet. You've just added an article 15 regarding the cannabis unless you wanna move it to some other location. I will note that I caught under article one, obviously we draft these from one year to the other. And there is a line in article one that says one council member from district three to fill out the remainder of a term of two years to expire in one year. And that is not, so that should be struck. That was for last year. Otherwise the numbers for the city budgets are all correct. We don't have all the final school numbers yet to put in. Just a couple of things about that, if I may, there's a couple of things, and sorry, I missed that, that was basically a placeholder because I hadn't heard back from who was kind of run for many positions they needed in cemetery parks, blah, blah, blah. But also the school and the CBPSA lines in there, they actually ultimately need to come from those respective clerks or organizations to go into the final. So those are essentially placeholders until next time on the final hearing. And you don't actually final approval of the warning until next meeting, which would you actually vote what goes on the ballot? So this is the first public hearing, if anybody has any questions about anything that's on the ballot. So does that mean we should open the public hearing? I thought the mayor already did. Oh, okay. Oh, I'll officially do that right now. Public hearing is open on the warning. So we don't actually need to vote on this tonight. It's just a hearing. Okay. Anybody else have questions or want to discuss anything on it? Can you explain why some of it is highlighted in yellow? So that's what John Odom was just talking about. Those three items need to come from the clerks of those agencies. So there are draft of them, but really until we get something official from the school district and CVPSA, this is unofficial. It's always loud. Donna and then Lauren, go ahead. But the actual at large comes from the person. And so since they're not doing petitions be a candidate, or is that person just coming in and telling you, John? No, no, that's not how this works. This is just the warning says you're going to be electing one at large person. Just like it says, you're going to elect one council member from each district. That's what the warning says. Then the actual ballot will have the names of the people. All right, but it may be a placeholder that won't be filled if we don't have somebody who wants to be there. That's all. It still has to be on the ballot even if there's nobody lying. Yeah, it would just be your only potential to do anything would be to write somebody in. It would just be blank. Okay. Thank you. Oh, Lauren, go ahead. Just had noticed in the nitpicky vein, there's in articles 5, 9, 10, and 13, it talks about fiscal year 2020 to 22. And I think it's supposed to be 2021 to 22. It looks like it's like two years right now or a year and a half. Yep. Okay. Anyone else? Okay. Any other comments? Public or anyone? Jack, go ahead. I assume I know the answer to this. There's the for articles eight and nine for the payment to the mayor and council. There is the $80 and $40 extra. And that is that because of the say, the extra pay period, just like with the other personnel. Okay. Raise? Don't spend it all in one place. Okay. All right. So with that, I'm going to close the public hearing on that and we will have the opportunity to vote on that next time. So, all right. So that is the end of our regular business. So we're up to council reports. Donna, go ahead. Yes. I sent everyone out a link to New York times. I'm really sorry if you weren't able to open it. I'll be glad to send you the article if you'd like about New York looking at empty commercial spaces and making it looking at options for housing. And I wanted, I've been walking by these state buildings that are mostly empty and thinking about why not have housing, especially like that ugly building of the department of labor. But I also got talking to people and thinking, well, Vermont college has dorm rooms that are empty. Heaton has a dormitory from the old hospital that maybe some of you don't know. On Heaton Street, there's now a senior housing on one side, but the other side, that dormitory was turned into offices by Washington County Mental Health. But it was fixed for housing. So there are lots of buildings like that. And so I'm just trying to get some stakeholders together and get the council to think about these kinds of creative ideas for housing that we should put the money in and set some temporary building or portable classroom or a shelter. So I'm going to be bringing some information at our next meeting from, and trying to get some stakeholders to talk about this idea. So I just giving you a heads up and I'm hoping to ideas and people you want to be part of the discussion. It's like a zoom round table. Thank you. You might want to come to a housing task force meeting to talk about that too. Okay, great. That's what I want. Names, all right. Semi, yes, all right. Housing task force. I'll send you a note about that. Yeah, good. Sam has already talked to some people and so Rick's really interested. Yeah. Okay, Connor. Now that was a great article, Donna and the Times there. Definitely would encourage everybody to read that. I think I'm all good. I would just encourage people again to download the My Ride app. It's so cool, you know, been using it hypothetically if you got a boot on your car and you needed to get a ride back home to get money and then go to the police department. My Ride could do something like that. Not saying that happened, but it's really good. And it's, you know, I think we're seeing the bumps in the road on it too. But it's kind of a good period to do that before like state employees come back and everything. I think there is a time to catch a breath on this and do it right. So download My Ride. Jared. I can tell you, I tried to use it this week and they told me it was full. There were no seats left. That's a good problem to have, I think, now, yeah. And so I had to log in later. I actually think that that might have been, they were having an issue with that where it was sending people that message. So that might have been a glitch that has since been resolved. So keep that in mind. I was hoping it was successful. Yeah, right. That would be a great problem. Okay, Jay. All right, thanks. So this is probably like the best council report I could ever give or that my most favorite of all time is gonna be hard to top because I get to do two things. One, I get to brag about my amazing wife and two, I get to share some amazing news for the city. A few meetings ago, we heard from Kevin Casey and from Vermont River Conservancy about their interest in pursuing a grant with the LWCF, the Land Water Conservation Fund. And we gave them the go ahead and they did that. It'll involve some matching funds down the road, but they went ahead and VRC and Kevin and Alec, they all worked hard on it, submitted it a week and a half ago, Riccarta, my wife with VRC presented to the grantors and they just found out a few days ago that they're fully funded for the grant proposal at $300,000. So this is just the best news for the Confluence Park that we could have gotten in. I know there's still a lot of work to do in terms of design, in terms of getting the matching funds, but I just couldn't be more proud of VRC and Riccarta but also excited for the city, for this project and for the access that it'll create to our river right downtown. So I'm just super excited to be able to share that news tonight. And of course they'll be sharing it more broadly, Kevin and Alec and VRC in the coming days, but happy to let everybody know that they were successful on that. So really good news. Yeah, that's wonderful. Okay, Dan. So three things real quick. One is in the news recently, Vermont Law School has been sort of teasing the idea of moving to Burlington. And that may make some sense, but it would be really nice if we approach them to tell them that it was far more sensible to come to Montpelier or put programs here given that we are the seat of government and that we would love to have them as part of our community. So I think it would be really nice to be able to approach them and maybe it's not the city or maybe it's the MDC, maybe it's another entity, but I wanted to just simply raise that because if they're thinking at all about moving any part of their program, we should be pushing ourselves into the conversation if we're not already. The other thing is, and it actually ties onto the idea of what John was talking about with land transactions or what I said in reaction, which is there's a lot of new people moving to the area. And I think it would be, there's an old-fashioned idea of the welcome wagon where when people come into the community they get a basket of stuff and coupons to local businesses and introductions about the best place to get their oil changed. And maybe this is a Montpelier or a live issue, but I just raised this as well. It just struck me that we should be doing outreaching to new members of the community and saying hello and welcome and here's who we are. And I guess finally, this is maybe the old, the point that was made before, but I wanna emphasize that I hope everyone stays safe over the next few days and stays in a place where we can avoid situations as we saw last week in DC if in fact some of those things happen here because unlike lawful protests, the thing that happened to DC was not. And no one wants to have either a discussion or a First Amendment argument when there's armed insurrectionists. And so I hope everyone just simply stay safe and logs about it at home. Jack. I agree with, I don't have much. I agree with everything Dan said at Vermont Legal Aid, we've had interns from Vermont Law School and we've hired many graduates of Vermont Law School and we have some many outstanding attorneys who graduated from there. And I think we would be an ideal location for VLS to move. And if Dan, if you wanted to be one of the people to approach the law school, I would certainly be part of that too, if you'd like. And because as I say, Vermont Legal Aid has relied on VLS graduates to do some great work. And the fact that we're right at the Capitol is a great thing for a great opportunity for students. And the only other thing I would say is encourage people to stay home on Sunday. We don't need to show up at the Statehouse Law to give voice to the fact that the election's over and we won because we know it because President Biden is going to be inaugurated next week and I don't want to see anybody get hurt. And that's all I've got. Thank you. Lauren. Yeah, thanks. I just wanted to acknowledge it's a really sad day that for the first time in history, a US president was impeached for the second time by the US House because of inciting a white supremacist violent insurrection attack on our capital and democracy and now seeing threats in our own community. And I'm just really appreciative of Chief Pete and the Montpelier Police Department, Chief Gowens and our whole safety team in the community who are I know working incredibly hard to prepare as best they can to try to keep our community safe. So I just wanted to say thank you and echo to everyone to stay smart and safe over the coming week and let's hope for the best and prepare and thank you all. Great. Thank you. Yeah, I would just add my own thanks to all of you for your support and grace through all of this. You know, as we go through the next week or so, it's really hard to know what is gonna happen but I have faith that we are gonna get through it. We're gonna make it to the 21st and I feel good that we are gonna do our best to ensure that everyone is safe as best as we possibly can. And yeah, anyway, I'm looking forward to the 21st. Well, and the inauguration, I was also sad just that we didn't really get a chance to speaking for myself. Really that we didn't get a chance to celebrate the fact that the Senate is controlled by Democrats and that the election in Georgia went the way it did because it was overshadowed by everything that happened in the Capitol. In any case, I was grateful Dan that you brought up Eugene Goodman who was indeed a hero in saving lives at the Capitol on that day. Beyond that, last time I had last council meeting I mentioned that I would be sending out to you the city manager evaluation, which I did not do but I almost sent it to you this afternoon and I am pretty much ready to click send on that. So that is coming very, very shortly. In any case, grateful for all of you. Certainly, let's be safe over the next week. All right, John, go ahead. Yeah, just probably won an election update. The little emergency election bill has now gone through both the House and Senate GovOps. I think we're supposed to vote on it today but I think they're voting on it tomorrow. I've sort of lost track of it. I've been testifying in front of Senate GovOps a couple of times the last week but there's a lot going on. The governor is going, there will be money provided for this. The money's kind of close your eyes, throw it against the wall. Nobody really knows how much communities are going to need for it but it should be plenty. So it's going to cover everything that you all were concerned. I mean, it'll be a reimbursement situation which pay it out but then we'll get refunded or it'll come back. It also means I can spend a little more because this is just the closer we get the more of a challenge, more of a mountain this looks like to pull us off doing this all ourselves and turn it around in just a few weeks. So knowing that money is there means that I can spend a little more, basically get some temporary help in to help out and we'll just make sure it works. There is some talk that there was hubbub today that the governor might, you know, executive order require communities to do it this way, to do the all mail in. I think you won't see that. I think you'll see at least half of the communities not choose to do this but we will. So I think we can be proud of that, assuming it all works across your fingers. This is very scary right now. Bill. Yeah, thank you. I don't have a whole lot either. I'd like to thank our Montpelier Police Department for all they do, but you know, this is tough times to be police. You know, we've heard a lot of constructive criticism tonight, a lot of concerns has been a lot of posting on from Port Forum and I think those are all important questions that need to be asked and talked about. I will say that I, you know, it's our understanding that none of our officers have participated and I have full confidence that our people will do the right thing and stand on the right side of the constitution and the law if called to do so. And they've got a tough, you know, I mean, we don't know what to expect but we're certainly spending a lot of time preparing for this weekend. So just I'd like to say thank you to all of them. And I also was hoping that the chief could give us a brief update about stuff that's coming up, I don't know if you have a chance to ask him any questions anyway. I'm putting him on the spot. I didn't warn him in advance, but say chief, is there anything you want to toss in here? Yes, sir, I'll be as brief as possible and definitely answer any questions that the council may have of me. First and foremost, I'd like to say that again, reiterate that we don't have any specific threats to Montpelier, to the state capital or to any of our elected officials, but we take this very serious. I mean, I was right there watching this with the rest of the world and I'm just as concerned and we're looking at national trends. So we're taking this extremely seriously and I couldn't be, and first of all, I also want to thank Bill and Cameron for their guidance and their leadership and how we're doing this. They're an instrumental role with us and especially with their support to the department. That means the world. But I got to say that I couldn't be more proud of the men and women of this department and the sacrifices that they're making and the determination that they have and the grit that they're showing and ensuring that they want to, and ensuring the safety of our community. We are gonna continue our planning. We've been planning robustly with agency partners, federal, state, municipal partners to include our surrounding agencies, very, very town, very city. Hartford has even reached out to us to see if there's anything that we need. So it's just been great to be here in Vermont. We have sent information out, letting the folks via the CAN network that in the coming days, people may see Montpelier officers in ways that you haven't seen us before. That's because we have a heightened posture. And again, I want to reiterate that we're taking this very seriously. So you may see officers that aren't with the tie and everything else like that. We may be wearing level four body armor on the outside. Level four body armor is designed to help us against rounds from rifles and shotguns to those effects. So again, that's the level of how we're taking this and how we're being serious about this. Also to let folks know or to let the council know that we have been coordinating closely with Montpelier live and with the local businesses and merchants in the city. And we're providing daily updates to them so they can prepare and plan for the safety of their businesses and their staff as well. So that's an ongoing continuous process. And again, we've also been working with the community action networks as well. On another note, we had a meeting with again our partners early today and the level of concern and tips that have been coming in to the Vermont Intelligence Center to the state police is inspiring. So folks out here are diligent and which gives me faith and knowing that we're all gonna make it through this and that we all understand the safety behind this and that Montpelier rights are looking out for each other. And other than that, that's all I got. Thanks, Chief. I don't have anything else to report. I think there's a couple of questions. Dan and then Donna. Sure, Chief, I had a question. It seems like the timeline is growing a little bit on this. Do you have any sense? Is this something where, you know, we're really looking at the 17th to the 20th or is it starting sooner or later? Do you have any senses to, you know, what the activities are likely to be? Yes, sir. So from my understanding, it looks like that the reason that the 16th was one of the dates that's out there within the media is because that's a date of concern of other areas primarily in the U.S. Capitol. So it looks like, in my opinion, out of an abundance of caution, the bulletins are coming out for all agencies to be cognizant from the 16th through the 20th, especially. But the 17th and the 20th are the primary dates we're looking at, but we are again gonna increase posture, visibility, and but moving after this, I think that we need to make sure we remain vigilant beyond the 20th. It's not as soon as the 20th is over with, we go back to business as normal. The department is going to make sure that we maintain a very robust information sharing platform and working with our partners. Okay, thank you. And I'll echo the other counselors and mayor and that thanks to the department and all the work you guys are doing because it's really wonderful. And please express that to the staff. Yes. Donna, go ahead. Yes, kudos to the police department. Yay, we're glad you're there. But I feel we would be amiss if we close the meeting without recognizing that three of our counselors and announced their reelection runs. And I missed it, I'm sorry to say. So I'm making up for it now. And maybe you all wanna say a word to your constituents on the TV that you're running for city council. Lauren, Jack, Dan, wanna say anything? Let's let Lauren go first. Sure, so yes, I'm running for reelection. Paperwork should be arriving soon, John, in the mail, the postal services is on tap. But yeah, I know I would love to hear from people as I run of what your priorities are and really hope to build on the work and these really challenging times eager to kind of keep up the momentum for a lot of the projects we've been working on. So I would love the chance. It's been an honor to serve and would love to be able to do it for another two years. Either. I feel the same. It's an honor to serve. Montpelier, everyone's heard me say this before. Montpelier is the best place in Vermont to live. And the work that we do here at Week In and Week Out helps keep it that way. And it's an honor to be able to be a part of that and to keep Montpelier being the great city that it is. And I hope people will continue to support me on town meeting day. I'm running for reelection as well and looking forward to actually serving in a full term as opposed to this one year experiment. And hopefully this has proven fruitful for both myself and District 3. I've enjoyed it immensely. I'll echo Lauren and Jack's sentiments that this is, you know, I feel like I'm the luckiest guy to have the opportunity to serve, you know, with the staff, with the fellow counselors, with the mayor, Bill, Chief Pete. But it's also, it's a great opportunity to really make sure that everyone's voices and ideas are heard and thoughtfully processed. And so, you know, if there are constituent concerns and if anybody wishes to give me any feedback or thoughts, always open and always available and try and make those responses as thoughtful as I can whenever I receive emails. So I hope for support as well. I'd ask all of you to vote, I think only Jay's the one can do that in reality. So thank you. Great. I did have one more item. Okay. And that is, we don't want to forget to stay on to get our picture. Oh, right. Oh, that's right. Thank you, I almost forgot. Yeah. All right, so. Council members and Cameron and John Odom, if he likes, could you just stay on at the end here after we adjourn? So we just get a group picture. And then chief, I know you wanted to call chief Pete. I know you wanted to call me, but we need to do our photo up first here. Okay. All right. Well, with that, I'm going to adjourn the meeting. Clearly like 10 o'clock came and went and we were just still going. I think it's a good sign that people are like, no, let's keep talking. It's great. We're cutting us off. We're done. Right. So without rejection, we're going to consider the meeting adjourned.