 Joan is saying that the city calendar says the meeting. Welcome to the ward six neighborhood planning assembly. Just to introduce the members of the steering committee here, we have Mary Riley, Nelson Martell, Joel Fitzgerald, Matt Grady, and Michelle Maraz. And my name is Caroline Hauser. So we'll start off with public forum. We have 10 minutes on the agenda for anyone who would like to speak in public forum. Yes, that's it. Yeah, hi. I just wanted to comment on one of the charter change items. Is that an appropriate comment for public forum? No, okay. So I just, I want to express my opposition to the just cause eviction ordinance. And it's for a really simple and very personal reason, but one that I think is not only just something that pertains to me, which is that I'm a landlord in town and I was sexually harassed by one of my tenants. And the just cause ordinance creates what is effectively a perpetual tendency. And it means that a tenant can harass landlords, can harass neighbors, and there's very, very little that somebody can do. Because even if you take somebody to court, it's very hard to prove what are basically microaggressions. And so that really concerns me because, and I'm actually, I'm selling our building because I don't want to be in the position of ever being harassed with no recourse, like the ordinance basically threatens to do. And you think, okay, well, maybe like the flip side of that is it's going to make it so that tenants can't get harassed by their landlords. And that would be a really great thing, but the problem is that it really doesn't because I've been looking into like landlords harassing tenants and trading sexual favors for rent. And that incentive or that opportunity wouldn't go away because one of the few things that is excluded from the ordinance and is considered to be just cause is non-payment of rent. So essentially what's happening is that we're not really solving the problem of potential sexual harassment in one direction and we're creating it in another. And that just really frightens me because it's not only sexual harassment that is possible, but a landlord can be harassed on that you could have a tenant who's a racist or you could have a tenant who is homophobic or transphobic. And it just creates a really difficult situation for landlords potentially. That's my comment, thanks. Thank you, Betsy. Looks like Representative Stebbins has raised their hand. Thank you. Thanks Betsy for speaking from where you're coming from and what you're seeing and witnessing. I am Representative Gabrielle Stebbins in the Vermont legislature, which I need to recognize as different from the city council. And it should be recognized as such, but when charter changes occur or are requested or supported by the Burlington residents and voters, then they do ultimately come to the legislature. So it's helpful, Betsy, to hear your viewpoint. I am here on behalf of both myself as well as your other Representative Tiff Blumlee. And we are trying our best to juggle the various meetings, which is about 12 hours a day that we are asked to attend. And frankly, they're all important. If they weren't being held, people wouldn't show, right? And so they're all important. So she's going to a different meeting and I'm here. But please know that when I'm here, I am also communicating with her. We have once or twice or three times a week check-ins. So I just wanna, if it's okay with the planners, I'm gonna take like a minute to just give you a little bit of time or rather overview of what's going on in the, well, no, not in Montpelier in our homes as we legislate from afar. So just an FYI that a week from today, it is Thursday, the 11th from 6.30 to eight, Representative Blumlee and myself as well as several others are hosting an event whereby we've actually secured the three lead authors and decision makers, the commissioners regarding the most recent tax structure committee report. So both Tiff and myself, we heard from many of you that yes, we want to support education, we care about so many things in Vermont, but we've got to figure out a different way or some, we've got to rethink how we're paying for these things. So about three years ago, there was a tax structure committee report that was presented, a rather that was created. And this report is now available online and those three commissioners will present next week, 6.30 to eight and I'll share that information with Mary Riley so she can share it with you. So just an FYI, you do have to sign up because of people who might bomb Zoom events, but so just another piece separate from that still money related, budget adjustment. These happen usually just once a year, but with COVID it's been two or three times in the last year. The Budget Adjustment Act, it expands and supports continuing support for coronavirus relief funds for emergency food, hotel housing for the homeless and rental assistance. It also is supporting Vermont State Colleges for additional expenses related to COVID-19. It's continuing the Everyone Eats program through June, 2021. It is funding technical assistance to implement the Global Warming Solutions Act of 2020. It's also really looking into the completion of broadband extension programs and projects which is perhaps not as near and dear to all of us because we have a great 5G Burlington here telecom, but it's really, really challenging so many schools and children and families in other parts of the state. Vermonters are invited to weigh in on the governor's proposed fiscal year 2022 budget about the state programs and services that you care about and that the governor's administration has proposed. You're also always welcome to contact both Representative Bloomley and myself. I will also share this with Mary. Sorry, Mary, I'm tagging you up for more and more things. You do have to register no later than February 5th to testify if you actually wanna get your two minutes to speak up. We also did just today pass, it's really heavy to listen to it, a sexual exploitation bill that tightens up some statutory loopholes and we've also passed some rental assistance work where approximately 3 million goes back in rental assistance program through the Budget Adjustment Act and please let either Tiff or myself know if you guys need help, don't be shy, that's what our job is and thank you. Thank you. I see that's what our help is, it's what our job is. You said job, but thank you. Long day of meetings, I'm sure. Since 7.30, you know. So that wraps up our public forum. Do we have Jenna Olson? There's Jenna. So Jenna will be giving an update on the Water Resources Division Rate Affordability Study. We only have 10 minutes on the agenda right now but her PowerPoint will send that as an attachment to the minutes as a follow-up. So thanks so much for joining us, Jenna. Yeah, thank you for having us. So my name is Jenna Olson, I'm the City's Water Policy and Programs Manager. I'm joined tonight by Jessica Lavalette. Jessica is our Customer Care and Finance Manager. So just as a quick background, we did come to you guys in the fall of 2019, which feels like a lifetime ago now to talk about this rate affordability restructuring. Things got put on hold last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but we are rebooting things and starting our outreach now. So we're going to the NPAs, there will be additional opportunities for the public to weigh in and comment, but we do want to at least get this basic information to all of you tonight and just to all of the NPAs so that folks are aware of what's going on. So jumping right in here, the whole premise behind this project has been that we need to provide stewardship to our water resources infrastructure, which means we have to basically maintain all of the pipes and pumps and our plants and everything that we need to produce clean water for Burlingtonians so that we can provide access to clean water. But the cost of that stewardship can ultimately impact the affordability of our services. And so what we had to ask ourselves is what does it really cost to provide water service to the city of Burlington, who's using the water and are each of those users paying their fair share of the costs? So if you look at this graphic on the right-hand side, you'll see three circles inside of each other. And that's to demonstrate that our distribution system for water has to be sized appropriately to provide adequate flow to all of our customers. But each customer class, as I was saying, is unique and doesn't place the same demand on our water system. So the infrastructure, that innermost circle to provide that base level demand for normal residential and commercial water usage is represented again by that smallest circle. And if that were all we had to deal with, our pipes would be a certain size and the fixed costs for all of the pumps, electricity, chemicals, all of those things that we need to provide clean safe drinking water would also be finite. But then that second circle shows what happens when we add things like watering lawns and gardens or peak demand when everybody is using water at the same time, residential customers and commercial customers alike. We can see that the distribution system has to be that little bit larger in order to provide water for both that base level demand and those extra capacity flows. Now the final circle, the largest one, that shows how large our system has to be to provide fire protection. And that's for all of the private fire services in the city. Now all buildings have a water service to provide flow for their domestic water. And that pipe's typically one or two inches in diameter but such a small pipe wouldn't be adequate for most institutions, commercial and large multi-unit residential buildings that have fire protection needs. So they either have to have a separate larger service pipe to provide that fire service and retain the small domestic service line or they have one incoming pipe that's sized big enough for the fire protection and then their domestic water service is tapped off inside and reduced down to the correct diameter for those base level needs. So going back to our original question our original premise here is that the pipes as the size of the pipes increase so do those fixed costs that are needed to treat and deliver water. Now going back to our original question are all customers paying their fair share of the cost it takes to provide their property with water? Right now the answer is no because even though some customers place a higher demand on our water infrastructure, certain customer classes require our system to be inherently larger and they're the ones who benefit from it. So Jess is gonna go over some of the proposed rate and policy changes that we've set up in order to address this. Thank you Jenna. So we have six proposed rate and policy changes that are all considered standard best practice within the water utility industry. The items in green that you see reflect changes made to our proposal since last March in an effort to mitigate the impacts on commercial customers while still maintaining affordability benefits for our residential customers. So the first one you see here are fixed charges by meter size. We are proposing a fixed fee for both water and wastewater that escalates based on meter size beginning with five eighths inch meters up to our largest size of six inch. We have always assessed a fixed charge on meter size that one inch or larger but this is the first time since 1996 that we will be assessing a fixed charge on five eighths and three quarter inch. The five eighths inch fee is currently proposed to be $3.34 for water and $4.68 for wastewater. Here we see a modification from last spring where we were able to achieve a lower charge for most meter sizes by modifying the calculation basis and reducing the percentage of our cost recovery. The next item is a lifeline rate tier. Currently we have a uniform rate structure where everyone is charged the same amount for a hundred cubic feet which is equivalent to 748 gallons. The introduction of a residential lifeline rate allows us to define the water needed for essential life activities as 400 cubic feet and charge less for usage under that threshold. So the current rate for water is $4.44 and we are proposing a tier one rate of $2.49 for consumption less than 400 cubic feet and a tier two rate of $6.23 for usage over that threshold. We chose 400 cubic feet because it is the median usage in Burlington and in calendar year 2019, 54% of Burlington customers fell into that usage category. The next item you see is class space rates. As Jenna discussed, the strain each customer class places on our water system is inherently different. So it doesn't make sense to continue charging customers or everyone the same rate. This change allows us to recognize that difference while providing support to our residential rate payers. We are proposing that all multifamily, mixed use and commercial properties be charged a rate of $4.36 which is a midway point between the residential tiers. This does provide some relief because they are typically larger consumers and would actually pay more if eligible for those lifeline tiers. Our previous recommendation did have mixed use and commercial classes at a higher volumetric rate but we have decided for the upcoming fiscal year to leave them at that lower rate to mitigate any pandemic impacts they may be experiencing. The wastewater volumetric rate is proposed to go from $6.20 per 100 to $6.08 for everyone. This rate is the same for all customer classes because volume is not a primary cost of service driver for wastewater. However, the strength of waste is a driver which is why we can assess a monthly surcharge when an industrial user exceeds the weight strength that is set in city ordinance, the threshold there. The irrigation rate is the next one here. We are proposing a higher rate for water use solely for irrigation or cooling towers but have allowed an exception for community based guarding initiatives like BACG or the Interveil. Private fire protection charges. This change introduces a monthly fee for customers with a private hydrant or fire service that escalates based on pipe diameter. Conceptually this goes back to our cost of service analysis where we are paying more to have a water system capable of serving should these properties needed. And as you can see in green here we have decided to phase this fee in over five years instead of assessing the full fee in year one. The last item is the one I'm personally most excited about the water resources assistance program. It does have the potential to make a real difference in the lives of our customers. We are proposing to waive the fixed meter charge for residents of single family properties who can demonstrate that they are at or below 185% of the federal property level. Here we see another modification from the spring proposal where we have expanded eligibility to include any senior citizens living in single family homes along with nonprofit housing developments providing affordable or senior living units. Next slide Jenna. Okay, so it's important to remember that future bills will vary based on a variety of factors like actual consumption the final approved rates and eligibility for assistance programs. This is a snapshot of the customer impacts and we did create a model that uses consumption data from 2019 to calculate the estimated financial impact for every account. And to go along with that we developed an account impact summary request form for customers to fill out if they would like to receive that projection. This will allow us to have a discussion about why a bill might be higher or lower but it also gives customers an opportunity to learn about our available credit and review programs, the related eligibility requirements. Initiatives like applying for RAP or stormwater credit along with requesting a meter sizing review or implementing conservation strategies can all be considered and completed in advance of the proposed rate changes. We will also be including data on post COVID consumption trends and our responses because the pandemic has significantly altered how water is being used. We've seen an average increase in residential consumption of about 10% and a decrease on the commercial side of 30% when compared to the previous year. Next slide Jenna. We have one minute left. Okay, customer assistance program. This program will be the very first rate pair assistance initiative for water resources. We are going to be leveraging existing state and federal benefit programs as our qualifying criteria in order to limit the administrative burden associated with developing our own income verification program. This means that any rate pairs who already participate in a state or federal benefit program like Lifeline, Three Squares, rental assistance through section eight can apply and simply use their proof of enrollment in that program to qualify for RAP. Or in the case of senior citizens they can just give us proof of their age. We also have lots of future assistance program ideas including things that address infrastructure and conservation needs, grant funding for condition assessments of sewer laterals, no or lower interest loans for replacements of water services and rain barrels, free tools to implement stormwater management practices. These are not going to be ready to roll out in July but we're actively working on them. Jenna. Okay, last slide. So we're doing this outreach now. We'll be doing our continuous improvement and getting approvals between March and April or March and June. As I said, there will be another opportunity for folks to learn more about this. We'll be having a larger public meeting for everyone virtually in early to mid-March. And then as a reminder, we kind of breeze through this just because we only have limited time but our implementation, this will go into effect July 1st, the new rates, which will be then reflected in the August bills for everyone. So super appreciate you guys giving us the time you put on your agenda. I know how busy it is but we did want to make sure that we got to you and if you do have questions, please reach out and thank you all and have a great rest of your meeting. Thank you so much. We appreciate it. Great. Thanks, Jenna and Jessica. I think Michelle, you were going to introduce Secretary of State Kondos for the next topic. Yes, thank you so much, Jim, for joining us this evening. We really appreciate that. I know you're very, very busy and your attendance here is really valuable for us. And we've communicated up until this point because we wanted to hear from you as we head into town meeting day in Ward 6 and across the state. Hear from you about how it has been for you in the Secretary of State's office, you and your staff executing three elections, well, a primary, a general and now town meeting day under the limits of COVID and all the concerns regarding COVID. So that's one aspect. And then we'd love to hear from you. I'd also like to hear about what you anticipate going forward. Will the measures that we've taken during this COVID era affect elections in the future, do you think? And then if you wanna throw something in about your tussle with the Supreme Court, the US Supreme Court, we'll hear about that as well. Michelle, can I just free start? We're gonna have a hard time letting people talk, but if people wanna send a question, please send it to my email. If you have a question for Secretary Condas, he's talking, I'll try to keep this up on the screen. I heard you can see. Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. It's certainly, I'm honored to be here to speak to you. Some of you may know that I grew up in the city of Burlington. We moved to South Burlington when I was a sophomore in high school. So I graduated from South Burlington High School, but I actually was out at BHS through most of my sophomore year. Basically K through 10, I was in Burlington schools. I was at the old Adams School on South Union Street before I went to Edmunds Junior High School, which I know is different today. But anyway, so I have a long history and background of Burlington and South Burlington. Many of you may know that I spent 18 years on the South Burlington City Council. I was the chair of the city council for the last eight of those years. I then served, I served all of Chittenden County as a state senator from 2001 to 2008 before becoming Secretary of State in 2011, the elections. Last year was, we're still trying to get over it. It was a very trying time. We operated on three premises throughout that time period, starting back in the last March, working with the legislature. One was to preserve the voting rights of all of eligible Vermonters. Two, to protect the health and safety of not only our voters, but also our town clerks and our poll workers. And three, all do all that while we're maintaining the integrity of our election process. And I'm pleased to say that we were able to do that. We've been receiving accolades from all over the state. It's been bipartisan, tripartisan. People, whether Republican, Democrat or progressive as well as independents have complimented us on how we ran the elections. And it was problematic. I mean, we really, we have the smallest election team in the country. There's only five of us or five people, I should say. My deputy and I were, we were, became honorary members of the elections team. But, we were all spending six and seven days a week working anywhere from seven, eight, 10 hours a day from April right on through to post November election. As I said, it was difficult, but the work and cooperation we received and the focus by our town clerks, Amy Bovee for the city of Brogdon was tremendous. We had rigorous outreach that we did, reaching out to educate voters on what we were doing. It was an uphill climb, but we feel that our hard work paid off. So what did we do actually? So we, of course, we've always, Vermont's been fortunate that we've always had very progressive with a small P election criteria. We have 45 days of early voting. We have no excuse absentee voting. We have online voter registration, same day voter registration, automatic voter registration. We allow 17 year olds to vote in primaries if they'll be 18 by the general. So we've actually worked very hard to increase access for people. We, in 2018, we implemented a new accessible voting system. Prior to that, we had an old analog telephone system. We were required, the federal mandate says that we have to provide a solution for impaired vision voters to be able to vote independently and privately. We had an old system. It was analog phone. And it cost us about $500,000 to utilize that every election cycle. And we had about 20 people that would use it. So that was about 25,000 per voter to be able to use it. Now, I'm not complaining about the money because really, when you think about it, what's our democracy worth? And we've been doing nothing but defending our democracy since 2016. And I say that not in a partisan fashion, but cybersecurity really reared its head in 2016. And Vermont was fortunate we had started to take measures that we needed to with cybersecurity back in 2013. So we were way ahead of the curve of most states. But in any case, we approached this election cycle kind of in a different way. We had to cram a lot into a very short period of time. That's why we went with the request system for the primary and then changed it to a mail out ballot for the general election. The governor last spring wanted me to wait. He didn't want the original legislation from the legislature said that it was me plus the governor had to agree before we could enact anything. We spent two months trying to get an agreement with the governor. The governor wanted us to essentially wait until after the primary to make any decisions. We kept informing him and kept telling him and his staff we couldn't wait. We had to take, there was too much infrastructure that we had to put in place. Contracts, borders for ballots, orders for envelopes, all these different pieces of it, changes to the voter registration system and all that had to be done prior to the primary. So we couldn't really wait. So the legislature came back and said, okay, we're gonna remove the governor from that decision making process and leave it to the secretary of state. And that's what we operated on on July 20th. We issued a directive to all of the town clerks telling them what was gonna be happening. And then we followed that up with a followup in early October to all the town clerks to make sure that they had all the information they needed as we were going into the general election. And that included things like drop boxes. It included things like allowing the town clerks to process the ballots within 30 days of the election rather than wait until election, the day before the election. As a result, we had for both the primary and the general election, we had 98% of the towns in Vermont reporting to us. There are unofficial results by midnight of election night. We were one of the first in the country to have that level of, if you wanna call it completeness of our election results. Although again, those were unofficial. And I do wanna stress, whether you're in a red state or a blue state, all the results you see in the first week after the election are totally unofficial until those numbers are certified. Here in Vermont, our town clerks have 48 hours post-election to certify the results to our office. And then we have seven days from the election to actually certify it with the three major parties to determine who the official winners are. So those are the pieces that we had. And then we started having discussions in early to mid-December with legislative leaders about what to do about the town meeting day. So we started to move in those directions. We started to have those conversations and essentially the conversations revolved around making the bill as lean as possible without any controversy so that we could move it forward quickly. And I can honestly tell you after serving eight years in the state Senate, I never saw a bill that moved so quick through the legislature. From the date that the legislature started, which was January 6th until it was about the 14th, I think that the governor received the bill and he signed it over that weekend. And that gave us the authority to move forward. And by the way, at this point in time, the governor, the minority leaders in the house and the Senate had all come around on vote by mail and we're all supporting it and wanted us to be able to get to this point. So we left, essentially we didn't put a mandate on the towns for town meeting day, but we allowed the towns to have many options to be able to deal with what they are going to with the election, with the town meeting day election. One of those being that, and the recommended one is to move town meeting day further out, say to April or May. The other is to, if you're a floor town, a floor, you do your votes from the floor, mainly in the small towns, they would be allowed to switch to an Australian ballot where they would vote by ballot. And then the third piece was to allow towns to vote by mail directly like we did in the general election. So those are pretty much the ways that we went. We went from zero drop boxes in the state to 175 towns having drop boxes of varying types. They were either freestanding stand-alones or they were wall-mounted or they could have even been like a mail slot through a door or through a wall. So we left it up to the towns to decide how to do it. We took it upon ourselves to take the CARES Act money and we will reimburse towns for anything above and beyond their normal election costs for town meeting day. The towns are all where we are in constant communication with the town clerks throughout the state. And I will say- I'm gonna jump in for just a sec here because we just have like a minute left. Yeah, I just wanna see what you anticipate for the future. Are we going to, do you anticipate that we will continue with mailing ballots to every registered voter in the state like a number of states do like Arizona where I lived and I received a ballot for every election. Do you see us going in that direction or what do you anticipate? I do see us going in that direction. The question will be, we can't do it without the legislative action. We're having those discussions right now with the legislature. We're working, the agreement with the house and the Senate was to start the bill in the Senate and then when they pass it, it'll go over to the house but we are having those discussions about going to vote by mail out to every registered, active registered voter. We probably will only have that for the general election and it'll probably be a request based for the primary. The primary offers a different problem because you have three ballots and you have to return two, you have to return all three, one that you voted and two that you didn't. So that creates a different issue but we're working to have a curing process in there. So if your ballots deemed defective, you are able to cure it. I'm pleased to say that in the general election, we had less than one half of 1% defective ballots for the general election, which is a tremendous number. I mean, it's a small number, such a small number. Most states would kill to have that kind of a response. So we were pleased by that but I don't wanna see anybody's vote denied. You know, everybody's votes to count. Yeah, so Jim, unfortunately we're out of time. I wanna thank you again for participating and for the extraordinary effort that you and your skeleton team did to transform the elections for an entire state in just a matter of months. It was incredible and I really appreciate your efforts as I know many election officials do. So thank you and maybe we may see you again in the ward six. All right, I'm more than happy to come back anytime. Thank you. All right, thanks, Secretary of State Condos. So now we are on to the Merrill candidate forum. I wanna first say thank you to the candidates for attending. We're joined today by Democratic incumbent mayor, Merrill Weinberger, Progressive City Councilor Max Tracy, Independent Councilor Ali Zhang, and Independent Patrick White. So just to thank you all for making the time to speak with us in ward six. A quick note about format. I know you guys have been bounced around to a number of these. What we decided was we'll start with a sort of a one minute opening statement for each of you. Then we'll move to some questions. We solicited some questions in advance by email to try to avoid some of the shenanigans that have been going on. And so we're gonna do our best to pose those questions to each of you, trying to keep it about the same amount of time. We're not gonna be super rigorous on that, but we will sort of cut it off so that we can move on to the next topic and try to cover some ground. And then we'll finish with a one minute closing statement for each of you. So all in all, it's about 40 minutes. And again, thank you for joining us. So I guess with that, perhaps Mayor Weinberger, you could start with your one minute opening statement. Great, well, thank you to the ward six NPA for bringing us together tonight. I look forward to the day when we can gather again in person. And I think those times are coming soon, but for now, we continue to grapple with a once in a century convergence of multiple simultaneous crises. A pandemic, a historic recession, a long overdue reckoning on racial justice and an accelerating climate emergency. Moments like this demand proven leadership. Moments like this are no time for a mayor without management experience to be learning on the job. Last year has shown us how high the stakes are right now. Since the first days of this emergency, I have asked the city team to act on this simple, powerful belief in a global pandemic, local actions matter. In response, we remade city government and launched dozens of new initiatives that combined with you, with your actions, the incredible vigilance of this community have made Burlington one of the safest cities in the country throughout this pandemic. If you give me the opportunity to continue to serving this great city, this is the kind of relentless commitment I'll bring to leading the economic recovery and addressing our other major crises. Thanks for the chance to be with you tonight. Looking forward to talking more about all of this. All right, thank you. I'm not sure if everyone's screen looks exactly like mine, but I'm gonna go clockwise around the space here. So, Councillor, would you go ahead with your one-minute statement? Wonderful. Thank you so much for having us here again. And Caroline, a special thank you to you with all the communication. I think it would be important to start us taking the time and remember all those that we have lost. Burlingtonians and Vermonters, we have lost due to this pandemic. And also to thank these incredible first responders, doctors for their incredible work. And every single one of us, Burlingtonians, we all showed what Burlington is about. And as you all know, it is about time that we experience a change that many people have been waiting for for quite some long time. And when we talk about proven leadership to me, it is all about listening, being responsive, being in touch to the people. And I am running for mayor as an independent because I'm not entrenched in partisan politics. I wanna bring Burlingtonians together. And together we will ensure that Burlington will be the best small city in North America. 13 years ago, I came here, no English, but I just been building. And in front of you today, I'm seeking your vote to be the next inclusive and trustworthy leader that this city needs to bring us to the next level of excellence. Thank you so much and hope to get your vote. Great, thank you. You guys are doing great on the one minute limit here. Councilor Tracy, would you go ahead with your statement? Yeah, thank you so much to award sixth year and committee for hosting us tonight. I really appreciate it. I'm running for mayor to make Burlington a city where all can afford to live. We know that working people and families are being priced out of Burlington because property taxes, rent, childcare, and so much more. These trends are unacceptable and prevent people from putting down stable routes in our town. My administration will prioritize being a city government that is accessible to all, collaborative, transparent, and accountable with its actions. As mayor, I will invest in a vibrant future for the whole community. Together we can contain and overcome this pandemic, lift the local economy, clean up our lake, uproot systemic racism, and reduce our impact on the climate. These bold actions not only address the issues of today, but they make us more resilient for our future as a city. When we work together, anything is possible. As your next mayor, I will be your partner in building the future that we deserve. Great, thank you. And now, Mr. White, would you go ahead with your statement? Yeah, thank you. So many of the questions that my team have gotten have been more or less focused around my history, my past, because my past isn't as public as some of my fellow candidates. So I figured I'd take this as an opportunity to address some of that publicly. Basically, I started in college to be a doctor. That very quickly became financially unattainable. From there, I became a massage therapist through a program I started during that education. Pretty much my path has always been to fix problems and help people. Unfortunately, due to an injury, I couldn't continue being a massage therapist and ended up taking to the insurance field like a duck to water, basically, because it just allows me to continue helping people, solving high-level problems and learning, basically every day. With that, I learned more about business and finance than I ever would have thought. And it's a big part of what's actually brought me to here today, just my education through that. With that, everybody who knows me, knows me as the guy you get a hold of when you're stuck between a rock and a hard place. And I'm really just excited for Brawling to get to know me as that guy as well. Great, thank you all. Liam, I wonder if you could add Carolyn to the big pictures, Carolyn Hauser. She and I are gonna be kind of trading back and forth on the questions. Thanks, Nelson. And thanks to all of you for being here. So we have collected a number of questions and I'm afraid we don't have enough time to likely get to all of them. Maybe we will if we're lucky. But just to kick off with the first one, it's about executive experience. So describe your experience leading in an executive capacity. What do you think are the most important qualities in a leader and what life experiences have prepared you to lead? So sticking with the order that we had before Mayor Weinberger, could you kick us off? Yes, Carolyn, I'd be happy to. So the biggest life experience, of course, that has prepared me to lead has been the experience of serving the city and going through so much together over the last nine years. This is, I think, a key issue in this campaign. Under our system, the mayor is the chief executive officer and it is the mayor's responsible for managing a team of over 600 people on a budget of more than 200 million. And management matters, especially in crises, especially in a moment like this. And I think this is something that voters need to ask themselves as they are weighing their vote that starts as soon as next week. You know, next week is the start, we're gonna mail out about 20,000 ballots. Is this at this convergence of really once in 100 years convergence of simultaneous crises, the time to have a mayor learning on the job that comes to office with really none of this kind of executive management experience? I think that's the key issue in this race. Thank you very much. So just going clockwise, Councillor Jang. Thank you again, Carolyn. Yes, I think the management is a big part of this job. And I think all my life in just preparing me for this exact moment and time in the city of Burlington to lead the city to the next level. You know, I came here with no English, like I said, and I am the founder and manager of the Burlington School District Pay and University, which I created from scratch. You know, bringing people together, making sure that we have the grants that we need to run a successful national model program currently in the city. You know, and I think I've been getting ready as a city councilor, as also a member of Board of Finance. And what I know that works the best is a leader should not know everything from the book. The leader should be someone who can delegate and also someone who can build a team with people who have knowledge and expertise in subject matter. It's not only about managing resources, but it is also managing people and also making sure that you are the representative of the city national level, international level and have the character and also the passion of building and also serving people. Thank you, Councillor Tracy. Thanks so much for the question. Having served on the city council for the last nine years and this past year as the council president, I have a deep understanding of how city government functions and especially how city finances work and having gone through several different budget cycles and really gained a deep understanding of that. But management in my mind is a lot about judgment and exercising sound good judgment on a daily basis. And that's what I'll bring to the office of mayor. I think we've seen some real lapses in judgment happen over the last several years. You know, when a police chief pulls out a phone and shows you a fake social media account created for the express purpose of harassing critics of the department, you don't just laugh it off. You tell them to delete it now and you take disciplinary action. When we have a development that sounds too good to be true in the context of city place, you don't force that forward trying to just overcome significant opposition. You bring people in, listen and incorporate that feedback to create and make a stronger project. So I think we've seen some significant lapses in judgment and I think we need to really make sure that we have sound judgment moving forward to avoid future mistakes that will put the city in a more precarious position. Thank you. And Patrick White. I see Mayor Weinberger raising his hand and I honestly feel like he should have a moment to respond to that. That's okay. Yeah, go ahead and take a minute. Yeah, thank you, Caroline. Thank you, Patrick. President Tracy is absolutely right. Judgment matters in this job. It was my judgment that played a big role in us solving our financial issue, digging us out of an incredible hole. And as we put out a report earlier this week, saving taxpayers $21 million over the last nine years by repairing our city's finances. It was sound judgment over the objections of Councillor Tracy that led to the revitalization of City Hall Park, which opened to a great welcome of getting through a challenge that had plagued us for decades this last summer. It is my judgment with an experienced team that has allowed us to break through this challenge of rebuilding, of doing something productive and exciting with the Moran Frame Project after so many prior teams have failed. So I'll put my judgment up against that for scrutiny. I think it should be scrutinized. There's nine years of record that I'm proud of, and I certainly hold it up in comparison to the judgment of significant decisions made by my council colleagues. Thank you for that. And go ahead, Patrick. Would you like me to repeat the question or do you? Basically just examples of my experience in leadership and what have you, yeah. Yeah, the most important qualities in a leader and your experiences. So from a very young age, I got a great example from my grandfather running a small business in Middlebury that was around for over 20 years. Learning how to generally interact with people and manage people in even a small setting. Then through my own executive experiences and titles and insurance, managing people, but then also when you're dealing with so many large and small businesses and all the inner workings of it, you get to see some of the greatest and worst examples of leadership and managing people and the morals that go into it. I mean, just an example of ways I respond to things, letting Morrow have that chance to response because I felt it was fair. I am about fair chances and doing us right. And as far as examples I've seen with leadership in large and small businesses, I've sussed out what works and what really doesn't. And I've seen the repercussions of both. Thank you all for your answers. All right, we're gonna move on to a question about consensus building. And we will switch up the order a little bit here. I'm gonna start now with Councillor Jang and then again we'll go counter, sorry, clockwise. And so we'll give people a chance to go first and go last as well. So on to the question. So Councillor Jang, describe a time when you successfully worked with someone from a different political party to achieve a common goal. What was your role in achieving this success? Thank you, thank you for that question. And I think one of my biggest accomplishments as a city council is the creation of the racial equity inclusion and belonging office for the city of Wellington. And I think it received full support from the council as well as of the mayor. And people in one point wanted to take some credit about it. And I'm like, definitely, we have to take it. What is important is not about the optic, but it is about the vision. And my vision was simply as clear as this need to be done. And that's what exactly the council came together and make it up. For someone who has been simply just new to this work, I learned very quickly. And I also, I learned and I also implement my learning, bringing people together is, you know, how I'm known in this community. Always all my achievement in life has been bringing people together and just finding the consensus so that we can get things done and move forward. Great, thank you. Councillor Tracy, would you like me to repeat the question? That'd be really helpful. Okay, describe a time when you successfully worked with someone from a different political party to achieve a common goal. What was your role in achieving this success? Sure, yeah, I can think of a couple examples. I mean, just offhand, being council president involves working with people of all the different parties that represent our city on a pretty much weekly, if not daily basis. So that's a big part of the role. But then also just to get more specific, can think of a couple examples. I've worked closely actually with your Councillor, Councillor Paul, who I have a lot of respect for on addressing the really tragic, opiate crisis that our community faces, specifically to bring forward resolutions regarding overdose prevention sites and really moving that concept forward in our community. And then in addition to that, I've also worked, I'm actually with the mayor pretty closely on transportation issues, having to deal with walking and biking issues in our city, specifically in development of planned BTV walk bike. So I've had a good history of having that collaboration around these shared goals and we've been able to move some significant policy forward in service of Burlingtonians. Great, thank you. Mr. White, I was talking about consensus, but did I want you to successfully work with someone from a different political party? So being the new guy, I don't have some like direct examples for a political position, but I can tell you within my own campaign, me and my campaign manager fall in some very different places on the spectrum as far as politics go. We work so well together because of it. I can't tell you how many times we've sat there and argued for hours. And these days, it seems people are willing to get rid of their own family members if they don't fall in the same political spectrum and it's great because the two of us will argue like cats and dogs and at the end of the day, come together and figure out where each of us may be wrong or right and form a consensus through agreeing to disagree or figuring out where one of us may be right or wrong and the reason I'm running as an independent is because a political party matters so much less to me than figuring out a way forward regardless of them. Thank you. Lastly, Mayor Weinberger, a time when you successfully worked with someone from a different political party for a common goal. Yeah, thanks Nelson. Looking back over the last nine years, I mean, it's literally the case that everything that we have gotten done which requires council approval which is basically everything under our system has required me to work across party lines with the exception of, I think about two months, I think in 2017 when there were seven Democrats on the city council, every other moment over the last nine years to get anything past has required progressives, independents, Republicans to join with the Democratic caucus that I lead for anything to happen. So, and I've tried to govern with that consensus that one example is we've passed nine budgets that have been reestablished that core of city finances and gave us the foundation that all these other social and infrastructure accomplishments have been built on almost all of those budgets were unanimous votes. I think the last couple of years there's been one or two, a couple of votes against it but to get to that kind of consensus on a document that includes so much requires a lot of consensus building. I'll tell you, this is a really relevant moment for right now. We are, we have divided, very much divided city government right now. The city council took an action last summer that has provoked a crisis that has created a crisis another judgment error, I believe from Councillor Tracy where without a plan he voted to reduce our police department by 30%. There's no other city in the country that has done that has removed 30% of our officers. And now I objected that strenuously at the time I put out there a compromise it was stripped out of my budget, it was voted down. We now have another chance on Monday just a few days from now for the council to fix this crisis that the council has created and ensure that Burlington is gonna continue to provide the public safety services that Burlingtonians expect. And this is a moment where we either gonna come together as a city and fix a problem or we're gonna have a growing, growing problem. And I hope they'll join with me and the Democrat Craddock Caucus on Monday and get this right. Thanks, Mayor Weimer. Yes, Councillor Tracy, a response. Yeah, so I just wanna respond. I mean, I think it's important to note that that resolution was passed on a 93 vote with three Democrats supporting it. So let's not just cast this as a progressive and a progressive own only initiative. We work closely and collaboratively with three Democratic city councilors all of whom voted for this. So, and the other key piece of this is that the mayor could have vetoed that if he was so strenuously opposed and chose not to. So that's another point of clarification that is conveniently omitted in this context. What is also conveniently omitted is the broader context in which this has taken place which is that we have deep issues with systemic racism regarding our public safety system and a dire need to transform that public safety system into one that works for all. We could have taken an important step in building community oversight for our police force by putting a charter change on the ballot this year. And that was when the mayor decided to exercise a veto. When we had a chance to bring real accountability and transparency, the veto came but not when he had supposedly strenuous opposition to this plan and is now trying to claim a crisis around public safety around. I think that he had a big hand in creating the context for that crisis and had a chance to begin to resolve that and decided not to. Okay, Mayor Weinberger, a short response here and then we're gonna move on to the next question. Yeah, I'll never be short. I mean, Max just has the math wrong. It was a seven to five vote with basically a part of a line vote that was the one that put us towards headed in this direction. And that, and I did, I came up with a whole separate compromise because I objected to this and saw this headed in the wrong direction. And that's why I vetoed this as well. The veto, if I had not vetoed that really charter change that had great controversy around it we were, it was going to deepen this crisis that the council had created last June. And it was because of that crisis that it was vetoed. We got a chance to fix this. And I didn't hear in that answer from President Tracy any indication that he seems to be, he's digging in and staying committed to this policy that is really a reckless policy and one that did not go through anywhere near the due diligence that a decision of this magnitude normally would go through. I hope he'll change for some Monday. Okay, thank you for that. Thank you for the back and forth here. I think we're gonna move on to the next question. Caroline, you wanna take it? Yeah, so switching gears a little bit here. This one is related to affordable housing and we'll kick this one off with Councillor Tracy going first. So how will you help create more affordable housing opportunities for young people to afford to buy in Burlington? Yeah, so that's a great question. And I think it starts with rebuilding our community economic development office. We've seen that office have a tremendous challenge face tremendous challenges here. We only have one person really deeply focused on housing policy. And we've seen a lot of turnover at the director position as well as significant staff positions losing significant experience. So I think we need to really rebuild that department to really focus on creating additional home ownership to expand things like the land trust model. I think we also need to make sure that we're recognizing the wealth gap that exists for BIPOC individuals in our community and create a revolving loan fund to help expand BIPOC business and home ownership within CEDO. I also feel like there's a significant need to continue to address property taxes. I think that's one of the issues where we continue to see significant challenges for folks and one area with that where we absolutely need to make progress is with regards to how the education taxes work specifically not taking into account Burlington's diverse needs and making sure that we are appropriately sourced so that we do not have to we do not continue to see these high year over year increases that have placed home ownership and home retention also out of reach for so many in our community. Thank you. Next slide, Patrick White. So I think two of the main things that are affecting home ownership and cost of living here are really supply and demand as well as taxes. We do need to make it so that we can build more housing here because without building more housing, we we're stuck with what we've got. And when you've got a limited supply and a high demand, pricing is inevitably going to go through the roof. That combined with the fact that a goodly amount of the houses in Burlington are rented out and owned by out of state interests and things like that, it further diminishes that demand or that supply. Taxes are another big part of it. Trying to take advantage of the low interest rates this year, I tried to buy myself a house this year and taxes are basically the deciding factor for a bank saying whether or not I can own a house right now. Unfortunately, a lot of that is at the state level, but I feel like Burlington does tend to compound that problem. At every turn. So we really do need to get our debts in order so that we can get our taxes down so that we don't need so much revenue to pay off things that we got bonded for before I was even born almost. Thank you. Mayor Weinberger, how will you help create more affordable housing opportunities for young people in Burlington to buy houses? Yeah, thanks, Carolyn. Listen, housing has been a major priority of my administration for the last nine years from day one. In fact, it was a major priority of mine when I was an affordable housing developer in 15 years leading up into this office and we've made great progress. It's been the last nine years has represented the most progress we've made on this challenge in decades. We have built more than 1,300 new homes. My opponents in this race would take us backwards on these policies, not forward. We need to continue to, first of all, build as much permanently affordable housing, including a permanently affordable home ownership housing as we have done over the last nine years working with the nine nonprofits, working with Champlain Housing Trust that is a great part of the Burlington tradition and I'm totally committed to. What we also need to continue that's been new for the last nine years is to focus on building as many other types of homes as we can as well. There's two unfinished pieces of work from the housing summits that I hosted in 2019 that are still waiting for the city council to approve them that will benefit housing affordability whether you're a renter or in some buildings a homeowner, we are requiring that all rentals and that all residential structures in Burlington be brought up to a minimum environmental code that will save dramatically on utility costs which is an important component of affordability. And it's also time to take some action to ensure that we don't have a large number of our homes moving away from home ownership opportunities or rental opportunities and turning into short-term rentals. So those are two ways that I put out there and then our pending action. Thank you. And moving to councillor Jang, same question. Do you need me to repeat it? I think I got it. Yeah. How do I build affordable housing for young people to stay here? I think it's an incredible, wonderful question. But it is imperative for all of us also to not always accept half-baked truth that are being thrown to us. Housing is a huge issue in this community. It is, it is. And why it seems a problem, I think people have not been asking the right questions. A developer cannot provide housing. Former city councilors who worked for the city over 10 years to try to solve housing issues. The problem is still here, right? Anyone in front of you telling you I'll do X, Y and Z, why haven't you done it? We have an issue. I think we need to explore what we call rent to own, bringing developers, providing housing to younger people who are just starting new jobs, be able to have access. And I don't know if we can create housing if we do not wanna build up. We don't have lands here in the city. The option for us is to build up especially in our downtown. Inclusionary zoning, we have some programs right here. We need to strengthen them. Most importantly, as a next mayor, what I would do, it's not to just tell you X, Y and Z, is to bring all this organization working around housing. And for us, we will collectively have goals together. 50 housing per year, 100 per year, and we will be able to have metrics and also solve this issue once and for all, right? I think it is important for us to not always accept what politicians are telling us and to definitely try to find people who can think differently in solving our issues. Thank you. Thank you all for those answers. So Nelson has your next question. Okay, this is, I guess gonna be a speed round because I know we're coming up for them to stay on our agenda here. But I guess the question relates to growth and development in Burlington. So Councillor Jang, you just sort of talked about sort of increasing the density and height of the city, maybe downtown. I think we all appreciate the cities, the aspects of Burlington that are walkable and sort of a vibrant community. In what ways do you see the sort of growth developing, continuing to develop and support the city of Burlington? And we'll start with Mr. White here. And I guess we're gonna go for something relatively quick here, like maybe a minute per response if that's okay. Yeah, that's fine. So as far as development goes, I mean, really we need to lower some of the barriers to entry for business ownership. Some great things have happened, like the Hula project, which I actually, it's basically right behind me, that gives a whole lot of spaces as well because that's another issue. As some people wanna open a business here, but there's not really the real estate to do it. So really as far as building that up, we need to lower barriers to entry. We need to find ways for the city to put together funds for new business owners with working with the SBA, most likely. And as far as development goes, I definitely agree with Ali as far as building up. I know a lot of people seem to be kind of against it in Burlington, but space is kind of lacking here. And the only option really is to build up. Thank you very much, Mayor Weinberger, your thoughts on future growth and development in Burlington. Thanks, Nelson. Well, I mean, it's, I think no, it's known to everyone that I have stood for nine years for investment in, particularly in our downtown, in housing, in jobs. And again, it has been a period of considerable success, more than 1,300 homes built, which is more than twice the prior period. And we've also seen downtown vibrancy up until the pandemic increase year after year with all sorts of new amenities and jobs and things, places to visit. Going forward, we need to continue that. We can't, I am concerned that some of my opponents, just as these policies are beginning to work and we are seeing vacancy rates go up and we are seeing the cost of housing stabilize would take us in a different direction and we have backsliding. Specific ideas that I think you're going to see in the future from actions we've just taken, is there a number of projects on the book now that will infill in the downtown because we've gotten rid of parking requirements that killed projects because we have put in place very prescriptive zoning that says, this is the type of development we want, this is what we don't want. And if you follow the rules, you're going to get a permit and you're going to get it quickly. There are projects now under these new policies just starting to come forward. One last thing, a big part of the next three years that I think any, the next mayor is going to take on is a public development project, which is building the new district energy system that finally, after 30 years of trying, connects the McNeil biomass facility up the hill to the institutions and it captures the waste heat there to bring down our climate impacts, our climate emissions. It's another, I think, good reason to have an experienced team that is persistent, that is focused, that gets projects done is to see that that development is successful. Thank you very much. Councillor James, your vision for sort of that growth and development in Burlington going forward. Yeah, thank you. And I think it's important to give people a little bit of time, you know. So I think I talked about one of them, the density in our downtown need to change. And I don't want Burlington to be the boutique city where, you know, things are, I want Burlington to be a very modern. And I think to get there, we need to attract big businesses that are able to come and invest here provide jobs for people who live here. And as the development in downtown city place, I was very disappointed how the city council, including the mayor, wanted to take a different route or something that we clearly need in terms of job, in terms of housing, in terms of so many amenities in that specific site. But yes, I want to continue for Burlington to be vibrant, to be modern and to welcome big businesses that are here. Yeah, exactly. I think I talked about this. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor James and Councillor Tracy. Well, with this question, I think it's important to emphasize that I do think that the development does have to be part of the vision moving forward and that we absolutely need new housing and new business spaces in Burlington. I think, however, that we need to make sure that we're creating balanced development that really is in scale and in scope with our community and that meets the needs of everybody. So not just developing and gentrifying neighborhoods in our downtown so that they're in reach for the privileged few but out of reach for others. I think we need to prioritize equity and inclusion and any development moving forward to make sure that we're building strong neighborhoods and making sure that we're strengthening ordinances around that and creating new ones to really make sure that we're creating balanced development, not just thinking that if we remove and deregulate around our economy or around development that that not alone will be enough to address the affordability challenges that we face as a community. I strongly support the city taking a different approach because we've seen what a really exclusively market-driven approach means. It means that well over 60% of Burlington renters are spending over 30% of their income and 60% of Burlingtonians are renters. And so I think we need to really make sure that we're doing more to get rents and costs under control by passing rent stabilization policies that will prevent those high year-over-year increases that make housing so unaffordable and make neighborhoods less economically diverse and only kind of continue to exacerbate gentrification and exclusive policies of development. Great, thank you all. So we're right at the end of our agenda time here but I think we'll do one minute closing statement for each of you and I think we're back to the beginning starting with Mayor Weinberger. So thank you Nelson, I'll just say this. This election is upon us, it's hard to believe we're here, February has just started but the voting starts next week. We're gonna mail out ballots next Wednesday and 20,000 Burlingtonians are going to receive those ballots. You're gonna have multiple ways as you did in the fall to get those ballots back to us as you're hearing from Secretary Kondos and you have a major decision in your hands. I think the work of the next three years for whoever's mayor is very clear. The next mayor has to finish leading through this pandemic, bring this pandemic to an end here locally working with all our partners. The mayor's job is going to be to take the massive resources that are going to be coming from DC, get our share of them here in Burlington and help our very struggling business community lead the way out of this economic crisis. The next three years we need to make considerable progress on racial justice and we need to make good on the declaration of racism as a public health emergency that we made last summer and make measurable empirical progress towards eliminating racial disparities. And over the next three years, we must continue to hit our milestones as we have over the last nine on our climate action plan and doing Burlington's part to address the climate emergency. This administration, I think has a lot to offer on all those fronts. Local government is critical on all those fronts. If those are the issues you believe that we should be focused on here in Burlington, I ask for your vote. There's a lot more information on morofermayor.com. I would be a great privilege to continue to serve this community and serve you. Thank you very much for that statement. Councillor Jane. Thank you again for having us. People of vote six and this is just your cheerleader. And I think that's what the Burlingtonians need now because they all tired and people are ready for change. And that change should not be the same change. It should not be a change of a leader who's entrenched in partisan politics. People wants a deep and meaningful change of government that can be trusted to do the right thing no matter what. But government that is transparent and clear. And a government that cares enough to start the healing. And a government that will fix basically what we have endured over the past three years in terms of injustices, in terms of racism, in terms of inequalities. I think I am ready for this job and in order to learn more about me and why I will be the next leader of the city, visit my website alley jeng.com. Vote early, vote alley jeng on town meeting day. Thank you again for having us. Thank you, Councillor James. Councillor Tracy, your closing statement. Well, thanks again for having us tonight. I really appreciate it. Burlingtonians deserve better than maintaining a status quo that works only for the privileged few. As mayor, I'll prioritize strategies that make Burlington affordable for working people and families, transform public safety to work for all of us and build an economic recovery plan that invests in people in the planet. This moment is a time of struggle but it does not need to be one of fear. Let's be clear about what's at stake in this election. This is not just about surviving a pandemic. This is about having the courage as a community to take on our most pressing issues as a city and to survive the pandemic. Electing a new mayor is exactly what Burlington needs to emerge stronger. I'm asking you for your vote because the change we need to uplift all can't wait. More of the same isn't getting us where we need to be and in fact is leaving many behind. I have nearly a decade of tested leadership as a city councilor and as council president. I've got the experience to inform bold vision and action as well as relationships to foster collaboration not just with the council but with the broader community. I look forward to doing just that as your next mayor. Thank you, councilor Tracy. And to close it up, Mr. White, you're closing the statement. Well, just like everyone else said, thank you very much for having us all. But yeah, the reason I'm here is because the current administration, I've seen a lack of transparency. I've seen a lack of any sort of real accountability and it's been going on for years and that's really what spurred me to do this. I am the new guy. I haven't been on the city council for 10 years. I haven't been the mayor for 10 years but I'm looking to make real change and I think so many people here in Burlington are looking to have real change and not the lack of progress that I've been seeing and I think I've seen everyone else notice as well. If you wanna learn a little bit more about me, my website is patrickforburlington.com. That's number four. I am open to any and all questions at all hours of the day. I'm an open book. Have a good night. Well, thank you all so much for joining us. We really appreciate you taking the time and appreciate your thoughtful answers. So next we're running a little bit behind but we'll move on to the city council or South district forum. We have Joan Shannon and Grace Ahmed here joining us. So thanks so much for being here and if, yep, popping into the featured space right now. So great, thank you so much for being here. We will again kick this off with just a brief opening statement from each of you. So Grace, I would love to have you kick us off here. Hi, so thank you very much. Ward six NPA for hosting us. My name is Grace Ahmed. I'm running for South district city council. I live in Ward five. I've been living on Howard street for about 15 years now. I'm a single mom of five and I study at the Vermont complex system center and I'm a community organizer. I work a lot in education equity and then whatever. And I have a bit of history working with workers movement. So I'm all for workers rights, renters rights, people's rights and one of the reasons that propelled me to run when I was approached and asked to was the stuff around policing and the transformation of our public safety is something that I would like to see move forward with fewer excuses and more creativity about how to make something that works. I do support having a public oversight board using the recommendations of the ACLU, the ACLU that's not too unhinged. And I generally support increasing making decision making power for regular folks. And creating structures, not just so that we get the best city councilor making decisions for us, but that we can create structures that democratize things a bit so that regular people have more participation and participatory budgeting all the way down through city. Thank you. Thank you, Grace. And the incumbent Councillor Shannon, thank you for being here to provide your opening statement. Sure, thank you Caroline. And thank you to all the steering committee members here not only for tonight, but for doing this monthly and making sure that we have this opportunity for engagement. And I know that there's a lot of work that goes into the planning for each of these events. And I wanna thank you all for doing that for our community. I have been doing this for a while now serving as your city councilor first as the ward five city councilor, now as a South District city councilor which is wards five and six. And what is endlessly interesting to me in this work is I feel like the most important things that I have done over the course of time have been unexpected. It's the opportunities that present themselves and quite honestly, it's often the crisis of the moment. And I have been able to move really important issues forward over the years, starting with my first opportunity really leading the state in smoking bans followed by Burlington telecom and leading the effort to create a body that could guide us out of the financial disaster we were in and the free fall we were in until Mayor Weinberger came along and could kind of further that continuing to work with the blue ribbon committee that I had started and served on and continue to serve on. And with COVID, I think that I have been an integral part in our city's effort to keep everybody safe, working on the coordinating the mask making effort, getting, working with the mayor to get the bars closed before the state actually closed the bars, assuring that our stores were requiring masks when the state failed to, I wrote the resolution that made sure Burlington was requiring mask wearing. And in terms of, I think we are at a moment of time where we really do need to move forward on racial justice issues and those issues are very important to me. And I look, we have taken some actions on the city council, some I agree with, some I don't agree with, but it is an issue that I am very committed to working on in the coming months and years if I'm given the opportunity. And I know you want to open it up for a question. So I'll just leave it at that for now. Well, I'll just say that there's always the nuts and bolts of city council work that is providing benefits to our community and protecting our environment while we do it to create affordable housing and to fight climate change is always on the forefront of our agenda. And I'm committed to those issues as well. Thank you, Councillor Shannon. So we're kicking this off with the same leading question as we had in the previous forum about executive experience. So describe your experience leading in an executive capacity. What do you think are the most important qualities in a leader and what life experiences have prepared you to lead? Grace, if you could kick us off. I think that the most important part of leadership is listening. And I think to our credit, I think that Councillor Shannon does listen to those people that are able to make contact. I've contacted her as a constituent and she's always been available to take that communication. And I think it's making that contact and being able to have the conversations and where I think I'm positioned in a place that's better than her for city council is being less separated from the communities that are not as active in the conversations currently that voices are underrepresented. I think I'm less separated from those communities. No, I'm gonna go ahead. Yeah, do you do me to repeat the question? Sure, that would be fine. Describe your experience leading in an executive capacity. What do you think are the most important qualities in a leader and what life experiences have prepared you to lead? Well, certainly my service on the city council has been, I think has demonstrated my leadership in a variety of ways, many of which I just mentioned. I have been integral to leading the city through some fairly significant crises. And but as far as being an executive, I don't really think that that's a criteria for being a city councilor. In fact, I think that the city council benefits from people of all walks of life participating and I certainly wouldn't want city council service limited to those with executive leadership. I feel very differently when it comes to being mayor. That is something where people should be able to speak to their executive experience. I have executive experience in as far as I have been, I'm kind of an entrepreneur. I started a business making long torso swimwear and that's what I was doing when I started on city council. But I would always say city council kind of ate my business and I then, being an entrepreneur and on the council was really difficult, particularly through the Burlington telecom years that was really, really taxing on my time. And I transitioned from that business into becoming a realtor and contrary to popular belief, I don't represent any developers ever. I try to help people get into home ownership and that is primarily my business is just helping people find homes. And so I think that that's responsive to the question. Great, thank you. So we'll switch up the order this time and Councillor Shannon, I'll ask you to go first again. So the first two questions here are the same between the mayoral race and the self-counselor race but has to do with consensus building. And I guess, can you describe a time when you successfully were able to build consensus to achieve a common goal? I think there have been a lot of times but definitely the time on the council when I felt the council was at its best was surprisingly when Burlington really hit a low point which was around Burlington telecom. And we were really able to reach consensus on a lot of issues across broad party lines at the time the progressives often aligned with the Republicans at that time. But we were able to get often tripartisan support going forward and we did in creating that the Blue Ribbon Committee for Burlington telecom and that was broadly supported really for almost a decade. More recently, I was also able to get tripartisan consensus around masks. And there was actually some pushback from progressives on the council around that issue and some concessions that they wanted made and I worked with them on that. But I'm actually disheartened sometimes with I feel like the council isn't striving for consensus as much as it did at other times. And I welcome, I think in order to reach consensus we actually have to not only bring the variety of different voices and perspectives to the table but then we have to do our best to accommodate the concerns that they bring to the table. And honestly, that's not happening very well right now but I do believe that that should be our goal. Great, thank you. So Ms. Ahmed, describe a time when you were able to build consensus to achieve a common goal. So one of the big kind of family organizing that I did was around the family room that was the VNA family room back starting 30 some odd years ago. And they had their big crisis and lost a tremendous amount of funding. And I was part of many teams of people that were not always actors that saw eye to eye or necessarily even wanted the same outcome or could imagine an outcome that would suit everyone. And those, we did a very good job of working toward a common goal and eventually managing to figure out a plan to keep family room running as an independent organization. Thank you both for those responses. So the next question has to do with the Pine Street Canal. What are your plans for the Pine Street Canal? The Superfund site has been a blemish on our city for decades. These were questions collected from the community just as a reminder. So the Superfund site has been a blemish on our city for decades with little to no progress being made. What specific actions will you take to clean the canal and make it safe? And Grace, if you could kick this one off. Sure, that is one of the things, you know, I'm like vaguely aware that the Superfund site exists and it's just something that I would have to do more research and hear more about before I can give a specific answer to. Thanks. Thank you. Councillor Shannon. The Superfund site has been remediated to the best of our ability. I used to be on the board of the Lake Champlain Committee who was really instrumental in stopping catastrophic remedy from the EPA, which was at the time it was a $50 million entombment of the barge canal. And that was both very expensive and it was going to be hazardous to our health because the contaminants in the barge canal are most, the biggest risk with them is to dig them up, make them airborne and that's how they're going to affect human health. In fact, when they're buried in the barge canal, they're not affecting us. And so leaving that and capping it was the best solution and the Lake Champlain Committee partnered with the city of Burlington and other, they're not called stakeholders, but the other parties that contributed in the contamination reached an agreement and it was one of the first times that a group was actually able to fight an EPA solution which would have been bad for the community and come up with a better solution. I did not plant this question. I happened to know a lot of that because of my previous service on the Lake Champlain Committee but really there isn't a future plan for the barge canal in terms of cleanup. It has been addressed to the best of our ability and the uses of the area are now limited because it has been capped. Right, thank you. So we're actually about at the end here and so I guess I would ask both of you to provide a one minute closing statement and I guess in the order of sort of flipping back and forth who's first, Councillor Shannon, if you would go ahead, please. Just say that my belief in terms of service on the city council is that we all bring different things to the table and hopefully collectively we have the expertise that we need at the table and that the different perspectives at the table are highly valuable. But different perspectives are also valuable in the community and while my opponent I think thinks I'm not in touch with people, there is nothing I value more than understanding the perspective of somebody who's coming from a different place than I am who I disagree with and I was once given the advice that one of the most important things you can do is take an other to lunch and by an other they meant somebody you disagree with and that has been an important element of my service on the council reaching out to those that I disagree with to have that conversation and also in part of my decision making to learn. We are charged with doing, we may come onto the council with some particular agenda but undoubtedly 99% of what you will be doing is different than that and you have to educate yourself and get informed. That education comes from our really skilled city staff and also from members of the public and that is also why our open meeting laws are very important to make sure that all of the information that can possibly be out in the public is public because the public gives us really valuable input and has expertise and perspectives that we all need to hear. I'll never be able to please everyone but all I can commit to for you is that I will listen to you, your input will be part of my consideration and if at the end of the day we agree or we disagree I will come back to you and explain to you why I made the decision that I made and in the years that I've served I think that that has, it seems to be satisfactory to my constituents and I hope with that you will give me the opportunity to continue to serve the citizens of Burlington and represent the South District. Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. Ms. Ahmed, would you go ahead with your closing statement, please? I guess I'm gonna say something that's not terribly polite but I have seen Councilor Shannon during public forum rolling your eyes when people speak, the level to which it appears sometimes that your decision has already been made and when people who are other, as you describe explain their position, I literally see eye rolls. So I find that a little disingenuous and I think that overall we need to be shifting away from the reliance on having individual members of city council that we agree with and that are going to understand our perspectives and create structures in our government so that we can verify things more scientifically, real scientific rigor and that the public can trust the processes and understand things better and that we create the places where people can come and participate in democracy, not just a forum but really places that neighbors can collaborate and start making more local decisions for themselves. With that, I wanna say thank you to both of you for taking the time to talk with us tonight. We do really appreciate it and with that, I think we're gonna move on to the next agenda item, which thank you. So next agenda item, we're gonna be discussing some of the ballot items coming up town meeting day. So we're not gonna go in order necessarily, but they're listed on the sample ballot at least. First, we have joining us, Tom Crocker and ward six counselor, Karen Paul. We're gonna start by talking about ballot measure number four, the proposed charter change to adopt ranked choice voting for city counselors. So I guess first I wanna say thank you to both of you for making some time for us. The following discussion of this particular topic, counselor Paul is gonna talk us through some of the other ballot items that we'll be voting on. And with that, I guess I will turn it over to you, Tom, to present your position on ranked choice voting. Thank you so much, Nelson, and thank you, ward six NPA for inviting me tonight to talk a little bit about ranked choice voting. It's a campaign that writes in democracy who my work for have been really involved with from the beginning. We're working really closely right now with VPurg who is actually really taking the lion's share of the campaigning on this front as well as League of Women's Voter as well. So if you don't mind, I'm gonna do a short presentation and then I'm gonna try and keep as brief as possible because I know electoral systems aren't the most entertaining things in the world. And then if anyone has any questions, they can ask me at the end. So I'm just gonna quickly share my screen. And yeah, okay, okay, can everyone see this? Oh, and hold on a sec. Is everyone able to see my screen? Yep. Wonderful, I'm just getting a big loading sign right now. So okay, so tonight I'm asking you all to vote yes on for this town hall meeting day. I'm gonna tell you a little bit about why I believe Burlington needs ranked choice voting. Oh, not going well so far. So former voting right now is plurality voting. And I believe that plurality voting is a broken system and I think there's a number of reasons why this is. First and foremost is in a plurality voting system, the candidate who doesn't win a majority can still take the election. This happens quite often, especially in a race with more than two people running in it where the candidate that gets over 40% ends up taking the seat, which means that over 60% of people or 60% of people or up to 60% of people do not support the winning candidate and yet they have ended up with a mandate to govern which is not very democratic at all. In a scenario where there is not, if someone doesn't get 40% and two people get between 30 and 40%, there is often a runoff election. Now runoff elections are often very expensive. It usually happens a few weeks after the initial election. And so an entire new ballot needs to be printed. People need to maybe take another day off work. It's an expensive situation for a municipality like Burlington but not only that and I think more importantly than that, it really has very poor engagement as well because unless you're very attuned to what's going on politically, you might know what's going on on town hall meeting day. You hear that all the time happening in the news and it's something that the date keeps coming up and you have people campaigning and a lot goes on about it in the news but in a runoff, you don't really have that same exposure and as a result, you often get far, far lower turnout than you would do in a regular election. And that means that you end up having the actual election decided on fewer people than actually voted for it in the first place. Which again, not very democratic. And then lastly, more options on a ballot when in a plurality voting system does not equal more choice. You only get a choice of one person. You might end up choosing not maybe the person that you actually want to win or the person you believe in the most, you actually may end up picking someone who you believe is the best chance against the person that you don't want to win. And so that ends up not really being democratic either because you can't even vote for the person that you want to vote for. So ranked choice voting creates a better ballot. For a start, it means that the candidate of the majority ends up winning the election. Only someone that can get over 50% of the votes can end up winning the election. There is also no expensive or poorly attended runoffs. If there is a runoff, if someone does end up, if there's a situation where no person gets 50% after the first ballot is counted, then that runoff happens immediately. Which means that everyone's vote is counted and it means we don't end up having a poorly attended runoff that is also expensive for the city. And the last... I'm sorry, I just want to let you know we have one minute left. Oh my God, I am way too slowly on this. More ballots means more choice. You end up having to be able to rank the people you want from first to last in terms of who you want to be supported. So how does it work? You get to rank your candidate in order of preference. When the ballots are counted, the candidate that comes in last after the first count have the ballots that place them as first choice recounted but with the second choice counted. This is repeated until one candidate has over 50% of the votes. So you can see here how a ballot would work. And so you get to rank them first to last and you don't actually have to pick one through to three if you just want it with one person and you could just pick the one. Lastly, in terms of benefits of rank choice voting, it provides more choice of voters. It promotes diversity in candidates and winners. It discourages negative campaigning. It saves money and increases participation, encourages candidates to build a consensus and speak out to beyond their base and eliminates the spoiler candidate effect which means no wasted votes. That is pretty much rank choice. Sorry, I had to rush that towards the end there but I am really keen to answer any questions that anyone has. So I think Tom, we're gonna have Councillor Paul present the counterpoint and then if we may have time for a question, but I know that we're pretty pressed for time tonight, I apologize. Councillor Paul, are you able to present the opposing viewpoint on rank choice voting? Well, I've been asked to not only to basically explain my vote on rank choice voting when it came before the council, but also there are lots of other valid items. So I'm not sure which you would prefer to do first. Let's go ahead with the presenting your position on rank choice voting. Okay, I don't know if Tom let the, yeah, it looks like Tom let the screen go. So don't see mine, let's see here. Sorry about that, you can see a picture of my kids. Oh, wait a minute. So I think for me, the best way for me to do that is to try and explain why I voted the way I voted and give you just a snapshot. Tom has already very well pointed out some of the pros to this, the rank choice voting or IRV voting system. And those are from fairvote.org, which is a nonpartisan organization that is committed to promoting rank choice voting. And you can see the issues that Tom had brought forward as far as the winner being elected by a majority, campaigns being more civil. And a number of other things in terms of saving vote, saving money and minimizing strategic voting. For me, when I deliberated on this vote, the majority argument is a compelling one. And for some of the others, my observation on IRV back in 2006 and 2009 didn't corroborate some of the other points. I will say that one of the advantages, I think, is that it does encourage candidates to reach out beyond their base of support and engagement is always a good thing. So that I think is definitely an advantage to rank choice voting. What I went back to was what I witnessed in Burlington in our experience with IRV and instant runoff voting or rank choice voting, what we are gonna be voting on on town meeting day is the same system. So it's become known as rank choice voting, but it is essentially, it is the same as what we had in Burlington. And so what I would say is that there was civility in campaigning and there wasn't strategic voting as we may think of it. However, there was strategic voting and I think that the reason there was civility was to some degree due to the candidate's personalities, but it was also because everyone was trying to get everyone's second place vote. And I'm not sure that we want a system that basically rewards people for trying to get second place votes. The strategic voting was that, I witnessed in 2009 that there was one candidate who openly encouraged all of his supporters to vote for one other candidate for second. And that to me is strategic voting or strategic or trying to get the voters to vote strategically. The campaigns, because everyone was trying to get second place votes, didn't really lend themselves to candidates taking strong positions on issues. They just tried to focus on broad appeal. And I think in Burlington, at least our experience was that IRV did not lead to strong leadership. Instead, many people second choice one. And what we are voting on on town meeting day is the same thing as what we voted, what we had in 2006 and 2009 and what was later repealed a year later. On why are we voting on this? And I think what we're, because it's a very interesting question. We are voting only for city council races. That's the only thing we're voting on. We're not voting on this for mayor or for school board. That was tried, but it didn't get seven votes. So now we're here with just city council races. And I think that it's important to understand that the goal, the long range goal is to implement this for all races. In fact, that was originally what we were going to vote on and it was later deleted because it couldn't get seven votes. So I think the only other thing I would mention is that there are about 18 communities that use IRV, use ranked choice voting. And in most of those cases, the candidates do not run under party affiliation. So if you have seven people running for an office, having ranked choice voting and broadening that scope, it probably makes sense. But we have caucuses. We have, so to speak, primaries. And I think that eliminates some of the reason for having ranked choice voting. The other thing I will just add is that in New York City, there is a counselor in Brooklyn who's running for mayor, was quoted in the New York Times as saying that he's running for mayor and is working with another candidate, urging voters to choose a team of the two candidates as their top choices. So there is a gaming of the system in ranked choice voting or in some cases. So in the end, I don't think that ranked choice voting served the voters of Burlington well. The outcome was poor leadership, brought on to some degree by many second place votes. The voters did repeal IRV and this ballot item while called ranked choice voting is exactly the same as what we voted to repeal. I also just don't see the point in having two different voting systems, one for council, one for mayor and school board. And I will just note that all voting systems have flaws, none of them is perfect, ours is not perfect, but I don't think that this one is the way to go. And also just wanted to mention that I admire Tom's enthusiasm for ranked choice voting. He and I agree on a lot of other things, this just happens to be one that we don't. And that was my reason for why I voted the way I did. Thank you, councillor Paul. So I guess to keep things moving I'm guessing Tom, you might want a very, I think we can give you a minute to respond if you'd like and then we'll have to move on to discussing the rest of the ballot measures. Yeah, of course. Karen, you might be the best person to actually answer this one. I believe that we did try and get this passed for mayor and school board, but it was vetoed by Moro, isn't that correct? It did get seven months in council. It was vetoed because of it being a separate ballot item in November, and it meant that we would have had to have had a separate ballot. And the cost at the time was considered to be around $45,000. And that was the reason why it was, you're right, you're absolutely right. That is the reason. Thanks, sorry. You're right. I remember- You are right. I stand corrected, you're right. Yeah, in terms of rebuttal, as Karen says, we get on a lot in terms of many items. I think this is just one thing that we really differ on. I've done a lot of work with the likes of Fairbough, with V Perg, Howard Dean has also come on board of this as well, who's been a really big advocate for ranked choice voting. Zariah Hightower is another co-chair of the campaign. At the end of the day, I think it has broad consensus this form of voting because it is the most democratic way of doing it. As Karen says, there is literally no way, there's no voting system that actually is flawless. Every single one has a flaw. However, some are gonna be more democratic than others. And at the end of the day, ranked choice voting with the way that it's set out, does end up with outcomes that are more democratic than employer-arty voting. I agree that it's less than ideal having different voting systems for different things in Burlington. However, I think city council races are a really great stage in park for ranked choice. So we can actually see it work in action and let it go through a few years. And then we then introduce it to something like mayor and school board as well. So I think this is a really great way to dip our toe into the water without fully committing like we did last time. Great, thank you, Tom. I appreciate you sticking on with us here and Councillor Paul, I appreciate the discussion on this item. We are running behind as people who are watching the clock know. Councillor Paul, I saw the PowerPoint. Is it possible to do the speed round on some of the remaining ballot measure items that we asked you to talk about? I know we have school board member Jeff Wake waiting to present to us as well. I will do my absolute best. In the past, I have been asked to do this and usually there's like two or three ballot items. This has been, this is a year where there are a lot of them. So I'll do my best to go through them as quickly as I can. We've talked about ranked choice voting. So there's, you know, in terms of, so to speak, importance, I guess, there are four charter changes and then there's three other questions. One is the school budget, which I'm sure Jeff will speak to. And there's another one about cannabis sales and there's one about climate justice for building decarbonization. So just going with the charter changes, we've talked about ranked choice voting. So there's three others. One of them is fairly straightforward. It's about adding two seats on the airport commission. One for the city of Winooski, which would be the only seat that Winooski would have. And then adding a second seat or adding an additional seat for the city of Burlington. So currently there's five members and four from Burlington, once from South Burlington. This would add a Burlington seat. And in order to maintain the same balance and have an odd number, we would also have an additional seat for Burlington. So basically what this is about is that, the city of Burlington, South Burlington and Winooski have been working very collaboratively together. We just signed a memorandum of understanding regarding the airport. I would say that relations between all three municipalities over the airport have never been better. And this is an opportunity for the city of Winooski to have a seat at the table. Something that we agreed to put on the ballot after signing the MOU with the other two municipalities. So a yes vote means you support adding the seats and a no vote means that you don't. The other two are a little more complicated. One of them is just cause eviction. And- The only thing I would say on just cause eviction is that we actually discussed that item in particular on a previous NPA and- Okay. At least, and so I think we were going to, let's, if folks wanna check out the archive for that discussion, they can do that. And maybe we can move to the last item. That would be perfect because it's fairly complex. The other one is about thermal energy. And basically it's about the ability of the city to regulate all thermal energy systems in residential and commercial buildings. And it would, it does not include assessing a carbon impact or alternative compliance payment without the express approval of the voters, which means it would have to go to a vote. A yes vote means that you support working to regulate and make our city more responsive to thermal energy by requiring responsible energy equipment, less dependence on fossil fuels. And there's a corollary to that. The weather, the building to carbonization question is sort of a close corollary to that. It's the question would be that would the city of Burlington, would you as a voter want the city council and the mayor to, in regulating thermal energy to create policies, programs and incentives focused on delivering the benefits of the transition to clean energy that would not adversely impact low and moderate income Burlingtonians, BIPOC and otherwise disadvantaged community members. That's another one of the seven questions that we will be voting on. We're also gonna be voting on cannabis sales. We're required in 2012, 70% of Burlingtonians voted in favor of the legalization of marijuana. And we now have AXIC 164. In order for us to have retail sales, we have to vote on it. And that is what that valid item is about. I feel like you've given by not having two other items that we've actually, thank you very much, covered this in much more record time than I thought we would. My last slide was simply to say, there's a lot to digest, any questions and also wanted to mention that there will be, one of my blue newsletters coming out next week that will go into much more detail than obviously we have time to do tonight. But thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you both and I apologize. Well, it's everyone here. We're sort of, I'm blowing the agenda. Caroline, well, sorry, Senator, Councilor Paul and Tom, thank you, Tom Proctor, thank you very much for taking the time to be with us and present on these topics. Much appreciated. Thank you very, thank you so much. I have the advantage of seeing all of the members of the NPA steering committee in addition to Caroline and Nelson and thank you all so very, very much. I know how much work goes into these meetings and as the award six city councilor, I am grateful to all of you. Thanks. Thank you. So thanks everyone for bearing with us. Well, I'll say that I'm on our agenda is Jeff Wick with a school board update. So thanks so much for being here, Jeff. Thanks, Caroline. Hey, Jeff, this is Matt. Do you want me to share the PDF that you sent to Mary? I don't, I appreciate that. I should mention that it exists and where to find it, but I don't think I have time to go through it, but I did want to make it available to everybody. So essentially you can also find this on our school board agendas, but I just sent to Mary and Matt the slide deck for the budget presentation, which was the most recent one where the school board actually approved the superintendent's proposal, but... So I can attach that to the minutes when I, so then any people can access that if they would like to, I'll touch the link. Sure, great, sounds wonderful. And so I'll give you the school board update. So I thought I'd just put together a list of say the top five things that we're sort of working on right now. Number one, it is budget season and everybody here knows we'll be voting on a school board, on a school district budget again. And essentially the short of that is the net change is very little and I will maybe get into the details a little, but our budget, our education spending net of the increases and decreases is increasing a little less than 1%, but sadly, due to the quirks of state education funding, right now that's estimated to translate to an education property tax increase in the 6% range. But having said that, we just got some news, which maybe some of you know better than I do, I think within the last week or so that there may be a little more money or something like that in the Ed fund so that something called the dollar yield is going up more than we thought. So that might translate into a slightly lower tax increase, but right now, nobody knows exactly, but our best information is that a 1% increase in our budget or education spending may translate to a roughly 6% education spending property tax increase. And that's for those who do not get a discount on their tax bill. As you may know, two thirds or maybe it's up to 80%, somewhere between two thirds and 80% of homeowners receive an income sensitive discount on their tax bill. And therefore, obviously that will further mute the tax increase to some extent. But so the bottom line is we've been very careful with the budget, we haven't added, we've added virtually nothing of course. I mean, it's a COVID year, why would we? So we're trying to be aesthetics here, but there are some natural increases, wages, benefits, a little bit of debt service increase. And there are some decreases. Our superintendent and his team have found, initially they found a million dollars in operating reductions that does not impact student programs, doesn't impact students. And additionally, they've been able to find another 360,000 more. And then finally, we are hopeful that the state of Vermont may be assisting us with some of the fit up costs of the downtown VHS site. So in a nutshell, certainly hope you'll support the budget. I think we've been very, very modest as modest as possible. Oh, the good news is there was a pretty substantial surplus we've just figured out from the most recently closed fiscal year of $6 million, which is much larger than our typical surplus set, which is run in the $1.5 million range. So we've been able to apply some of that surplus to keep the natural growth of the budget down. And the rest of the surplus, we're kind of holding our powder dry because of these unfortunate things that have been happening in terms of VHS shutting down and us having to do a lot of unanticipated and very costly testing of the building materials. So anyway, that surplus is helping out coming at a time we really need it. So item number one on my top five list is the budget. We just went through that. Item number two, as you all probably know, is it appears we're making great progress on construction at the downtown VHS site. Hopefully that'll be open in early March. That's the goal. Number three, sadly, the PCBs at VHS are seems like a very long drawn out process and they're actively testing all the materials that they need to test to figure out the extent of the problem. And another one is, well, what's the implication on the high school renovation project? And so nobody knows the answer to that yet. My sense is the majority of the school board is wanting to kind of put a somewhat pause on this VHS project until we can figure out whether the project has to look different as a result of the PCBs that have been discovered in the building materials. And also, as you have read about, we lost our VHS principal. And so the superintendent and his team are engaging on beginning, I think this week, a national search for a new principal. And it is hopeful that we'll find one by the time school starts in the fall. So that's all I've got. If anyone has questions, I'm happy to answer. Are there any questions from the, those folks that have microphone access? Matt? Those can also raise their hands if they'd like to ask a question. Okay, thank you, Lam. Mary? Mary's raising her hand. I have a million questions, but I'm only gonna ask one. So Jeff, just to clarify, so the construction of actual high school did you say that that's kind of put on hold now until the status of all the PCB testing is completed? Is that, did I understand that correctly? Well, I'm probably not the best person to know exactly what on hold means, but it's my understanding that the project is not moving forward as swiftly as it would have been. And so I do think there's been a bit of a pause to figure this out. Right. Thank you. Well, thank you. Jeff, you are on the ballot, right? I mean, that's the other thing you didn't mention. I am. It was surprisingly easy to get on the ballot this year. No signatures. Jeff, I'm so glad you're running for re-election. Thank you. Thank you, Mary. I appreciate that. Yeah, thank you so much for joining us, Jeff, and thanks for your service to the community. Sure. Well, I appreciate it. Am I the last one on the agenda tonight? You're the last one, so that wraps us up for this evening. Thanks to everyone for joining and bearing with us. We really appreciate your participation and we'll see you next month. All right. Thanks.