 So, officially, we begin our meetings with kind of called order and public forum. If anyone has any comments. Anything to kind of update word six on open it up. Okay, I'm going to say there were no comments. I see that Mary has joined us she's virtually married ankle director of the Fletcher free library. Thanks for joining us tonight. What can you tell us about the library. Thanks. Thanks for having me. We can you hear me okay. Oh, yes. Okay, great. We're at another sighting time that we're going to refresh our strategic plan. So we're looking for input from the community. And have a online survey that we would love people to fill out very quick. Five to 10 minutes at most more questions. Room for comments as well. The URL is very easy. Let your free. Or slash service. So it'd be great if you could put that in the minutes. And I know people read, read the NPA minutes often and hopefully they can access it that way too. We were a little bit behind on our strategic plan just because of COVID. But we are, we are back at it and we, we really take this opportunity to hear what the community wants. We think we do a lot of great things at the library we're always trying to provide the best services we can get out into the community, but we don't know what we don't know. So it's important to hear from folks. That's basically why I was here today, but I will make a plug for we have an exhibit right now at the library. It's called telling the people's story, African American children's illustrated literature. And it's a great exhibit. It's all about children's picture books and telling African American history through these picture books. And then next Wednesday, I believe is the 12. I'm going to double check myself I've had so many dates roaming around in my head lately. Yes, next Wednesday on the 12 at 630pm we have one of the illustrators whose book is whose books are featured in the exhibit James ransom will be coming to the library and talking about his work. He's, I don't know all the awards off the top of my head that he has one but he is an award winning author African African American illustrator and his illustrations are just beautiful. So I hope people have time to, they can't come to the event next Wednesday at least come down to the library and check out the exhibit. And that's, that's really all I've got today Nelson is that okay, short and sweet for me to know that's okay. No, that's okay. We have some questions here. Oh, sure. Mary, could you. Could you just repeat the URL for the survey please. Sure. Right in the minutes. I appreciate that I certainly will it's Fletcher free.org slash survey. Very easy and straightforward. Thank you very much. Sure. I have a question for Mary. Yes, Jeff wick. Hi Mary, it's Jeff wick. How are you doing. Good. Nice to see you Jeff. Nice to see you. Sadly, my life been so busy I haven't been able to spend much time at the library but I absolutely love the library. And having grown up here I've always loved the library, but I feel a little bit out of touch and I was wondering if, since maybe we do have a minute or two for me to actually ask a question and you know some extra time. But you don't mind letting me know or letting us know, you know what what you mentioned strategic plan and all that but what are the challenges facing the library what are its successes like, how's it going. I think it's going really well I think one of our big successes right now is our programming. We have programming for everyone. We have baby story time, we have baby yoga, we have preschool story time. We have singing with Linda Bassack. We have steam nights. We have on that's for like elementary school kids on Wednesday, we have family play shop on Saturdays. We have a team tween library and she's doing pizza and paperbacks. She's been doing a ton of programs we did SAT prep, not that long ago. She's been doing a great job. And then our adult programming we have our book discussion groups. We have our cookbook club. We have language learning classes, you can look online for all the different ones that we have. So I think we've just been knocking it out of the park with our with our programming lately, which has been great. Another thing that a lot of people don't know and we've got our physical building which again filled with programming filled with books, but we also have our online resources as well. So many people like you Jeff haven't been in the library a long time but they've been accessing our downloadable ebooks and audio books and our audio book circulation our electronic audio book circulation continues to go up and up. And that makes me really happy because some people aren't readers but they're audio book listeners. And so that that particular format's been increasing. We also have consumer reports online. We just added something called wise financial. So you can look up all different kinds of stocks and mutual funds. We have databases to get on newspapers and magazines for research. And I know I'm forgetting some more but we've got a whole bunch of online resources well. And then we, you know, I know, you know, we also have our little new north end branch that we just opened up in the Ethan Allen shopping center that's fairly new for us. So keeping getting that continue to keep that going has been has been fun for us as well. And trying to think what else you know I think the challenge I would say is the space right now. So our meeting room usage has gone way up and continues to go up. So we definitely have people who want to use our meeting rooms, and people want smaller room meeting room spaces to do things like tutoring, or zoom interviews, or maybe they're doing some, you know, educational training things. They need some private spaces. So that I would say is is one of the big challenges. I could go on and on about the library for two hours. And I just think we have an amazing collection. You know we just have a wonderful, wonderful collection so we have stuff that you probably want to read favorite authors, things you're interested in, but I always say you will find something that will delight you as well if you just come browse ourselves. And your index is it available online I think it is. Yep, if you just go to Fletcher free.org, you can see our get to our catalog and you can put holds, you know, right from the catalog. And if you put holds right from the catalog, then the book is waiting for you by the checkout desk when you walk in. Nice. I love that. Thank you. And I just, you know, it's this is I'll take this moment to just give so much credit to the staff, we just have an amazing, amazing staff right now. So, wonderful. Thank you. Thanks for the question. I'm going to call on myself for a question. So, so Mary I'm an architect and I moved back home to Burlington a few years ago and I remember that was like 2019. And I remember when I moved back there was there was a lot going on, you know a lot of conversation around improvements to the the branch the main branch. I guess I'm, I've fallen off of tracking that and I'm wondering kind of where that stands is, is, is that moving forward or has that been kind of pushed to the side recently. So, it's been moving forward but slowly, I would say, I think COVID again put a pause on things, but we did just finish schematic design phase. So that's been helpful and part of schematic design phase, as you probably know is building assessment. So there's some things that came up in the building assessment that we want to take care of. We did receive a earmark. Now they call him a CVS from Senator Leahy's office for $500,000 to do improvements on the historic part of the building, which is what we needed to do as part of this remodeling project as well. And we also got $20,000 from Vermont Historic Preservation. And we also have an NEH grant that we're waiting to hear about, which is, we should hear about in April, which again is for preservation of the Carnegie building as well as doing some weatherization and envelope work. So once that gets done we, we hope we can move forward with getting to the next phase of the remodeling project. Is there, I imagine there's opportunities for kind of public input along the way. Yes, absolutely. Yep. And well, and I would say our last strategic plan, a lot of the input came from that. We had people who wanted to say, because I don't want to skew your survey results, your input, but people wanted a cafe, they wanted more meeting rooms, they wanted a brighter, more flexible youth area, a bigger teen area. So all those things we took into account and worked into that vision. No, that's great. It's such a kind of, it's the center of the city. So that's, that's fantastic to hear. I think so too. I think our 1904 building is one of the most beautiful buildings in the city. Agreed. All right. Any other questions online or in person for Mary? I think that's, I think that's it. Mary thanks so much for taking time out of your evening to join us. And we look forward to the survey, to completing the survey and then having you back here sometime soon. Sounds good. Thanks so much for having me everybody. All right, take care. Thanks, Mary. Thanks. Okay, we're going to move on to the next agenda topic, which is an update from our school commissioner, Jeff lick, who has joined us in person. Awesome. Jeff. Thank you. Thank you for attending. Oh, my pleasure. The pizza was good. Those of you not here in person, you missed some good pizza. I'm going to have to do some more. So it's not too late to come on over. Yeah, thank you. Well, let's see. With the schools and the school board and things like that. Last week was our use this week, our organization meeting to, you know, how each year. We reorganize ourselves may have some new members this year we have one new member of the school board. His name is Gary Golden. I think he's the East district commissioner. So we welcome Gary to the board. And we voted in the slate of board officers chair vice chair and clerk. And it's the same as it was last year. So Claire wall is chair I'm vice chair and Lucia Campri yellow award five is our board clerk. So, then we had our first meeting on Tuesday. So I did, I think a few highlights. Very good news. One thing is, we just found out that the superintendent plans to hold a candidate forum for the top candidates for the BHS principal position that you might remember is, is open. Right now we have in term principal Amy melon camp and we are so grateful to Amy for stepping in. And that's that's going very well we really appreciate her work and her decades of experience. But we have some new candidates and that's a principal forum is next Thursday, April 13 at 6pm, downtown BHS. So if there are any interested folks listening in tonight we hope to see you next Thursday. And I think they're going to be, I'm not sure because it's not clear yet but I'm guessing usually maybe three top candidates, and they'll each get to present and questions will be asked and that sort of things. So that's pretty exciting. Other highlights. You may be aware of the budget past. And so thank you to all of you for passing the budget the budget passed by 68 69% if memory serves so a strong strong showing of support. Last I heard that implies possibly a 4% increase on the education portion of your property tax bills, which is usually about 70% of your overall property tax bill. So, you know, relatively modest. But as you might remember I remember when we got our tax bills last July, they actually went down, you know for circumstances details we don't have to get into but I was glad that at least once they went down year over year. I don't think that'll happen this year but at least the increase won't be too large. So also good things with our audit, you know, you may be aware that we have our books and record our books are audited at every year school districts. We have a very clean audit, and we ran a modest surplus of, I don't know exactly the number I'd have to look but it was a million or two on a 95 or so million dollar budget so that's that's positive that's maybe the seventh year at least that we've, we've had that it could be longer but this is my seventh year on the school board so I think things are going well in terms of prudently managing the school districts. Money. At our school board meeting we, we welcomed and recognized a few BHS students who were just named presidential scholars which is kind of a big deal. I think there's only maybe roughly 150 of them throughout the entire country. Obviously they're recognized for their overall academic and other excellence, and also at least one national merit scholar finalist. So, you know, we've got, oh, in addition to that, you know, not to get too much into the details but I'm very proud. Our scholars bull students won the state champs this year within the last few weeks. Woohoo. Yeah, kid on that team. I do not. But that's okay. So things seem to be well on our, our enrollment which dipped a bit during the pandemic and, you know, possibly due to the fact that we shut the school and everybody freaked out that maybe we were remote for a while that was really hard so. But I think people are starting to come back who we had worried we might have lost to certain other schools who shall remain nameless, protect the innocent. Um, but I think we're, we're, we're optimistic and in about the big thing, of course, the BHS DTC construction project. Things are progressing you might have read maybe yesterday and seven days that we're basically on track but we're a few months behind so we had hope to welcome the students in, you know, call it September 1 of 2025 the beginning of that school year. But it looks like at this point we will welcome that same group of students right after their, their holiday break their New Year's break. That's where things are now. And, you know, so far as we continue to sharpen pencils and figure out how costs come in. So far things appear to remain on track. I think we're going to get more information. Um, I think there are three big chunks of costing information that come in. I forget their what they're called they might be called guaranteed maximum price contracts. And the first one I think was in line with expectations in a month or two or so I think we're getting a second one and then followed by a third and so we're keeping a close eye on on how that will work out. And we're also potentially cautiously optimistic as they say about the legislative session in Montpelier, you know that all of us in Burlington, I've been, you know, very hopeful that a broader pool of money might help us defray some of the PCB, the cost that demolish the building due to PCB situation. And also the cost to build the Burlington Technical Center, which is more of a regional resource than just Burlington so I don't want to get ahead of myself because you know it's politics and until it actually happens you know what's going to happen but I'm crossing my fingers that we might, you know, we might be the beneficiary of some state funds, you never know, can't promise anything crossing my fingers. What else generally good news, not a lot of drama. Is there is there any movement on the like is demolition started, or is that that holding until funding is kind of, well, it's good that you asked because I was just checking my updates before I came over here today and our update on demolition is that abatement and demolition work and building a is well underway. And then a bunch more in the weeds information that's you don't need to know but yeah that started, you're not going to see it yet I don't know if we'll see it for a month or so but then it'll happen very quickly when you actually, but I think so now it's all inside stuff as far as I can tell. But yeah, it's happening. You know we've we've sued Montsanto and that's going to take a long time to wind its way through the litigation process. I'm here for questions things are generally, I'd say, pretty good. Any questions here online for Jeff Dale. Can you talk about how the students are handling being in the old Macy's building. I've heard mixed things about that. And I'm just kind of curious about what the school. It's not really a school board function I know but what the school is doing to make that as good as possible and experience for the students. Here's what I understand well I'll say a few things on a few different levels. Two of my three children are high schoolers at downtown BHS so I see it in a very firsthand intimate way. Truth be told I think either they're very resilient or they're actually having a really good time there. So I don't hear any complaints I do know I mean, realistically we all know that it's easier or healthier to be in a building with windows this this will not have, you know, we don't have windows at downtown BHS and and the sound was an issue but I think they keep. They say sound is totally not an issue the bleeding of sound from one room to another but we keep doing continuous improvement on the sound issue and and and other issues. And, you know, the truth is we don't have the greatest science ability to do science lab work. So there are real compromises for sure. But honestly if you've been in there if you go in there, and people who do go in there. I think it's my kids like it I have to say and and I have heard that other friends and acquaintances are. I think they're making the best of it but it's not the worst thing in the world. I can imagine a lot worse. One of the decisions we had to make as a school board was whether we're going to go forward with Macy's, or whether we're going to put trailers on the base on the baseball and football fields and that's where we were going to put the kids for three, four years. And I think we made the right decision. Although I don't know what the trailer living would have been like but I think it would have really would have really impacted school sports, but definitely challenges but I think generally doable and and you know so I think everyone in the school community teacher staff administrative staff students everybody involved for for bearing with us but there is hope at the end I'm so excited for this. This new high school when we think about it assuming knock on wood. When we get there we have no choice we have to get there. But we're going to have a wonderful place to educate our city students. Any more questions I love questions but there aren't any that's fine too. I guess I have a question so you talked about the schedule slide on the construction for the new for the new BHS. And I recall it was quite a tight window or that was one of the concerns is Macy's kind of ongoing availability. Is that a, this is only a few months we're talking about but is that, is that an issue like is there any sort of like friction there in terms of Macy's being available for BHS until the new building is ready. I think it's a necessity. I think it's a public necessity. I think we have no choice. I'm not sure where the negotiations to extend the lease stand right now. I can certainly look into that but I have a hard time imagining that we'd be out on the street. But you know, I think in fairness both landlord and tenant. I think they're working on it. The good question. I have one other if there's no other questions I don't want to monopolize the time but. The school district ran a surplus. Yeah, for I guess several years in a row now. Yeah. I know there's, especially just with the bill for the high school. There's probably no, it's not hard to find a place to spend that money but what what happens with the surplus, like, how do you how do you all approach that. Yeah. So in prior years before we had to do this big construction project, if there was a modest surplus, we could choose to allocate it to something or take that and I guess if you will roll it into the next budget. You know, if the budget was 90 million and we had a million dollar surplus and there was a capital improvement project that we wanted to allocate half a million to well that's where half a million go the other half would essentially buy down the budget by half a million. But what we've been doing is I understand it effectively for the last year to two years is allocating some or all of it towards the new the high school project. And in fact, if you. Not that anyone wants to do this but if you go back and you look at our, our one pager a two pager when we were going out for the taxpayers about the bond. You'll see that I think, think our goal was to accumulate about five and a half million dollars worth of surpluses in the next few years to use towards the construction costs. Either on track or maybe we've accomplished that I'm not sure I'd have to ask the superintendent and the financial officer. That makes sense. I mean I did. I remember that one or two pager was presented here at the NPA. Yeah, one night, and I, I guess for the, these, these surpluses I only, I was wondering, there's other school district asset other buildings right other other schools to manage in the city and I, I guess I understood that the high school was such a heavy lift that that was sort of like all resources are going towards the high school for the foreseeable future near term will say. And I wondered, you know, of course there's ongoing maintenance at other buildings and projects and that need to be completed and I wondered how does the board kind of manage that. That need for those those schools. Yeah, with this obviously very pressing need for a new high school. Well, I do know we have, we do have a capital improvement plan from I forget if it's 2017 or 2018 that allocated. I don't forget at the moment what the numbers were but if memory serves it was something like 19 plus to a year and additional bonding. It ended up being 20 30 million if memory serves and, and we ended up spending that at less less of a clip than we thought we were so I think we've got. I just heard that the finance and facilities committee of the school board met earlier this week, and they presented the other projects the other school projects capital projects repair you know deferred maintenance stuff and fixing stuff at other schools. I've got to check to see what those projects are but I do believe that we're not neglecting those other schools and there is a list of projects I think in the minutes from Tuesday night school board Tuesday nights finance facilities committee meeting you could find it on board docs. And I'm sorry I don't know what those are but we are absolutely mindful of the middle schools the elementary schools needs and trying to keep up with that work. Of course that's hard job. So I appreciate, appreciate your effort for sure. Thanks for asking those are great questions if you've got more. I think that's it for me, any other folks either online or here with us questions for Jeff. I think that's it. Okay. Jeff, you're welcome thanks for having me. There's more pizza. That is the official end of our agenda this evening I notice we are joined by the chief of police. And I wondered if, if you were just joining to take it in or if there was something you wanted to share with us. Well, I meant to get here in time to join public forum but I was late and also, I think it looked like maybe the library was able to start a little bit early which is probably great for Mary. She deserves the ability to get home and more quickly. And it was great to hear what she had to say. Now I just stopped by to say during public forum that if there were people that had any questions or anything. If there were any questions around and was happy to ask them then or just to connect. I got mad at the habit a bit of going to the NPA's I used to come to them pretty much all the time, prior to the pandemic, and I'm trying to get back in the swing of it. So that's all. That's, I really appreciate you taking the time to be here with us. I don't have any questions up the top of my head, and anyone else. Well, that was easy. I do really, it's, it's, it's a gesture that I appreciate. Thank you. I'm trying to connect with with folks. So thank you for taking time out of your, your personal time and evening. Oh, so it looks like we have one. Yes, we have more than one. Yeah. Terrific question. So, you know, we, we just, we got three recruits out of the last academy that began in August of 22 and ended in December. Those recruits are actually now mostly off the field training, which is wonderful. We had, we, we brought a total of six recruits into the current police academy that began in February of 23 and we'll end later this in the, as the summer begins. Unfortunately, one was injured remains an employee and is staying with us. We lost another just because the academy process can be hard. And what are the changes down there so I'm a member of something called the is a subcommittee for the entrance exam standards and we changed the physical standards from an older version that he was called the Cooper standards. For a while, we were using only a rowing standard as a measure of fitness. And we found that there were some deficits with that it opened up the pool of candidates but it also resulted in candidates that weren't once they were recruits really able to keep up with the physical education standards that the academy has. So we've, we've changed it again and reintroduced a run component in addition to that rowing component. We are working on getting a entrance exam we have not had an entrance exam for about a year and a half or two years now. And that's because the existing exam was not one that we trusted to be an accurate measure of potential for recruits. We found that there were some disparate impact issues with it with regard to a number of of class issues protected class that is race and gender etc. And so that test was dispensed with but we were on it we've been unable to find a replacement for it we had a very good vendor. There were some issues with the contract language and I think those are being worked through at the state level, and I'm hopeful that by the time we have our next academy class in not August of 23 but in February of 24 there should be a new instrument in place. And then we're going to be looking also at the psycho the psych test or it's it's a version of the MMPI. I think it's the MMPI to RF that we are currently looking at which which stands for renewed form, I believe it might be a different word other that begins with our but the concept is a renewed form or revised form probably. So those are some changes other changes you don't have to do with just the fact that there are more hours of training requirement that our constituents across the state want than we have. It is a 16 week program. It's usually preceded by a couple weeks of basic at each individual agency we do about three weeks of pre basic training. And then it's followed by several weeks of post basic training, but the total number of hours is insufficient when we have folks saying that, you know, we want more than just a half day of training on how to address people who are in the midst of emotional distress or having mental health crises. We want that to be three days. Well, I do too. But the problem is that three days means what do we do about the time that we have to have for instruction on the use of firearms or the instruction on the use on how we safely handcuff someone. Physical tactics, how we introduce people to the rules around domestic violence and reporting of domestic violence, how we introduce them to things that are relevant in certain parts of the state, maybe not as much in Burlington but, you know, animal cruelty issues those do not matter to us. Our community service officers deal with animal cruelty, but we're not going to find ourselves in the situation that other municipalities across Vermont do sometimes where you have, you know, 30 or 40 cattle, who have not been cared for, because of perhaps you know the declining health of a farmer, and you end up with with an issue there. That's not something that we need to learn about but it is a component of the sessions that they teach. So the ways in which everyone across the state gets equal instruction and that that instruction meets the needs of a populous in Vermont that wants more and more out of its police and rightly so is a challenge. I think that they're working on that down there very hard, but they're also being asked to push through new numbers of police officers because every agency in the state is hurting for for police. And so we don't want to have to turn anyone away. It used to be that that sometimes you would have qualified good candidates and the Academy simply wouldn't have seats for you. They have really done their best not to make that a factor. So if agencies can bring talent to them they will push those talent that talent through, but it causes other kinds of repercussions they're not adequately staffed. They need more support at the state level. We routinely send police officers down to augment their training cadre, and I love doing that I love allowing Burlington's ways of doing things to be shared with with new recruits from across the state. But it does cost us in the sense of that's an officer who's not on patrol here or not doing detective work here because they're down there instructing and the state really needs to have its own full time staff that will continue to be augmented by other agencies but not to this extent that it currently is transitioning now winter and summer. And I'm just curious how you feel about that winter is usually more quiet. I think that's fair to say. Yeah, summer. Yeah. So how do you feel about the approaching season and possibly What level of cooperation. Do you have a different resources. Sure, great question. I mean we have great relationships with our neighboring police agencies, we help them they help us, but we don't police each other's towns in any kind of consistent way right that's not our respective duties. So when an incident happens for example, recently there was a barricaded person with a child in Milton than a few nights later there was a barricaded person with a child in South Burlington in both of those instances our emergency response unit deployed to those we sent crisis negotiators we helped at those scenes. And there were press releases about both those incidents. And similarly, if, if we have a relatively short shift for, you know, some reason that we only have two or three officers on, and two of those officers become embroiled in an incident. And another incident happens that's really supposed to be a two officer response we will call neighboring agencies like South Burlington like Colchester to assist us and they'll come as long as they're not the primary, but they won't do our work for us, nor would we do our work for them absent extraordinary circumstances. The Vermont State police do assist. They are still taking part in that paid overtime detail that we have at the corner of church in Maine. They don't do it very often, but we love it when they are there seeing those green and gold troopers and their cruisers at that intersection is terrific, but it amounts to, you know, $1,000 or $2,000 a month for the most part I don't have the exact figures in front of me but it's very small. What we really need to be doing is making the most with what we've got we need to, you know, really double down on our recruiting efforts we have a terrific recruiter named Carolyn Erwin Morris who is a corporal in the police department she has been doing great work but you know we brought in six recruits and we're only going to have for that are going to finish this particular class and that is a function that happens. It is natural and it's historic, the sort of same rate. What are we going to do is the weather warms well it's supposed to be, you know, high 60s on Monday and then maybe even touching 70 next week which is wonderful news for all of us. We're going to be out, we're going to be out, and I think you're going to see a more pronounced presence in certain parts of the town. But as I talked about with regard to the hours at the police academy, where there are only so many and if you choose to do X, it sometimes costs doing why the same is true of police personnel right now, we only have so many. And if we choose to do X, it is sometimes at the cost of also being able to do why, or if we choose to cover X part of the city it may mean not being as present in why part of the city. And that said, I think that we know that last summer. We did not like what we saw, particularly in our downtown core. I think people felt that there was an increased level of disorder I think people felt uncomfortable in public spaces in ways that they haven't. We've seen certain kinds of crime, go up, everybody knows about the shootings and the unprecedented number of murders, but that's not really what we talk about when we talk about daytime public safety and Burlington we're talking about a sense of disorder in our order in the public sphere, and we're going to do everything that we can to try to get a handle on that early in the season, so that we can have dedicated marketplace officers who can maintain the level of, you know, shared order and shared use of our public spaces that we're able to establish early will have marketplaces officers through the rest of the summer, who will be dedicated to that area, while we continue to have other officers cover the rest of the city. So what do you think about it, but it's recently happened in Nashville. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, so I've seen the video tape from Nashville, it is shocking and awful and incredibly impressive. The officers who responded to that incident responded heroically. And what happened in New Valde, Texas was a stain on the profession I think it was awful incident I think it was not handled well and Tennessee was the exact opposite. And I have a video, a training video from a couple years ago that looks the exact same as the that I saw in Nashville. It is a training video of the training that we did in with regard to active shooters using students were helping us actually from the technical center that we're participating as sort of role players in it. And it was stunning how, how incredibly similar it was to the real thing, the training that we were conducting. An officer with a camera is following another officer through the building as the officer using a dead weapon a weapon that's not functional is going through in order to find the the actor in that that threat scenario. We're on top of that kind of training this is something that we've done for a very long time as an agency. I have no doubt in my heart that our officers would perform the way those in Tennessee did. And we're prepared to do so we we've looked through the school, you know the relocation of the school that Jeff was talking about gave us some pause when it first happened. There were some real physical security challenges to that space. We've we've worked in it we were we still had SROs when the school first moved and and those SROs were able to help us liais and get access to the site before the students were even in it in order to understand floor plan and what we might need to do. I'm sorry a school resource officer. One of the decisions that was made in June of 2020 that included diminishing the headcount of the police department by 30% also demanded that we no longer have school resource officers. And so we don't, unfortunately, I felt that that was actually a really wonderful program that allowed police and kids to connect in important ways. But we're still there. The training still goes on our emergency response unit was just doing training today with different tools and tactics, and that includes the ability to respond to something as awful as Tennessee which we hope never happens here. I see your hand raised, you know, my question was actually about school security so. You spoke a bit about the kind of limit of training time and I'm not sure if I followed it all. So, forgive me if I do or, but what is the, what's holding us back from extending the training time is it just to just funding like that. I think it's really the like the additional time to sort of provide the officers the training they need. Yeah, I think the biggest issue is money and training I mean I think I want to say that the absolute numbers 860 hours of full time Academy training. We then do an additional 580 hours of field training with our officers. 660 hours is the classroom instruction that they need the tactical instruction they need introduction to firearms driving. And there are only so many, you know, it's a lot of hours it sounds like a lot but it disappears pretty quickly when you start to say that you know, 10 of the hours need to be this and 30 of the hours need to be this. And so, I think there are questions about funding each one of those persons is costing an individual agency money to be there. We make up a lot of that training here. We do a lot of training at the agency. It's one of the ways I've been able to keep officers invested and happy in the police department, even as other stresses have have shown themselves, allowing them to have that kind of growth, new things to learn new new tools to use some of that's fun right it's fun to go to certain kinds of training and get to have new equipment and stuff. So we're not engaging for officers, but making parts of it a component of the actual curriculum requires, you know, buy in across the state, because ultimately, we have officers that are from Burlington that have Burlington needs and we expect to have Burlington standards, but we also have officers from smaller places, you know, five person police departments in small towns in different parts of the state. And frankly, they may not feel they need or want and it may not even be that they feel they really may not need some of the same kinds of things that we're talking about, just based on the volume of time that they're going to, you know, they're going to encounter certain kinds of situations by volume and variety we encounter more than any other agency in the state, even the Vermont State Police that is a larger agency than ours, we still see more than they do. It's just a function of being big city. So I mean there are other states with quite a range of, I guess I'll just latch on to the kind of example of like city cops versus more rural cops. Are other states kind of experiencing the same challenge or is there a different method of like training officers that is maybe more specific to where they ultimately will be serving. Yeah, great question. The issue is that most large cities in America have their own police academies. Vermont, every single police officer in Vermont has to go through the Vermont Police Academy its statute. And it's also required by our size. I could not run a police academy with even when we were 105 person agency instead of a, then we were 74 now we're currently authorized for 87 we have 64 right now. Even when we were authorized for 105 we could not run our own police academy, it would have been just too much. The New York City Police Department where I started my career in policing has its own police academy. And that was I was I was a part of a one of a 1715 member police class, and that was one of two that they did that year. And so I was just one of 1700 other recruits, and there were dedicated officers who were only assigned to the police academy to be instructors. There were, you know, accountants that were there there were training people that were there there were quarter masters that were there it was an entire edifice unto itself. And that's because New York is by far and away the largest police department in the country, but other agencies do the same the Los Angeles Police Department trains its own police officers. And Vermont you know we're in that we're in a strange spot because Burlington has big city desires it has big city talents it has big city possibilities, it has big city challenges, but we don't have big city numbers. So, you know that makes this kind of thing a little bit difficult, Chittenden County has talked in the past of trying to create a Chittenden County police academy that meets a different kind of way of doing things, but there are a lot of impediments to it. And some of that momentum has been lost I think they're trying to institute some of the changes that such a local Academy would have created at the actual Academy in Pittsburgh, Vermont right now. Thank you. Any other questions for the chief. You can get off as easy as it seemed you might at first, but thank you again for taking time. Yeah, I'm going to try to be I want to I really do want to come to these and try to connect and of course if you ever want me here formally please let me know. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Right. So with that, unless there's any other comments here or online, I think that concludes this word six. Thank you all very much. Have a good night.