 which I've got, I decided to be a little briefer this time than last time. So I've only got three things, which the first one is a list of things, but which is the mayor put out the legislative priorities. I think some of us are going to send a list of other priorities that we don't think we're in the letter. One of them is Green Mountain Transit and funding public transportation generally. Do you talk to your legislatures, but I don't actually think that our legislatures are the ones that are going to not prioritize. I would say also write letters to some of the other folks across the state. Then I think the other things that I think are still priorities for our legislatures, especially since some of them are online, is the housing for all, so what Julia spoke to. We have a lot of pending charter changes that were approved by the voters that the legislature still hasn't approved. That's everything from gun regulations to just cause that I'd really like the legislature can take that up without us passing again. So I hope that they do that. Citizens oversight, oversight authority generally. The city's ability to regulate cannabis which we don't really have right now. So those are to me some of the priorities that I think weren't in the mayor's letter that I will be reaching out to legislators for. The second thing is already mentioned by Sharon at Speakout is Trinity campus. I sent a letter to Carolyn and Tom, so I think they'll post the full updates. You can go to the NPA website after this meeting. It's not ready to read the full update, but for folks who don't, there were five city councilors myself, Joe McGee, Jack Hansen, Ben Travers and Sarah Carpenter who sent a letter to the planning commission last summer asking them to consider the impact that UVM has. So I think the plan to build more housing on Trinity, I don't think it's a bad plan. I'm not worried about the height, I'm not worried about the setback, but I am worried about the fact that they have stopped their MOU with the city and what that means for having any accountability for how we house students, especially the fact that juniors and seniors don't need to live on campus, but I even aren't allowed to live on campus because they don't have enough housing. I just think the university needs to be a much, much better and much more proactive partner with the city than they've been in a really long time, and instead it feels like they're pulling back, which is the wrong, I feel like move, and this is the first time we've had any ability to have any accountability with them since I've joined the council and I think even since long before that. So I just really hope that my fellow councillors will not approve the Trinity campus, not because I don't want to see Trinity campus built, but I think they need to come to the table to have a real negotiation before I think we move forward with anything. So I'll be working with other councillors, specifically making sure that we've got bipartisan support for holding you the uncountable before we sign that. The Planning Commission did pass it for one. Our Sloan Ward 1 route, Alexander Friend, was the no vote, but even in passing it, the Planning Commission said that they saw a lot of concerns and that they figured we wouldn't approve it until there was some transparency and accountability issues addressed around student body size. So I think that this is a real issue. And I encourage all of you to reach out, especially, I think I've got the progressives unlocked, so to our Democratic colleague. Yeah, absolutely. They're saying you need to go to the city. And I, you know, I haven't been as involved until recently, so I feel as though we were able to have a great conversation and I was able to bring up a lot of concerns from Ward 1 residents in particular that I've heard and about how Trinity really needs to be this mutually agreed upon. I believe the MOU is absolutely imperative but to really work together to create solutions for the entire city and all of its residents, whether they are students or families or homeowners. Yeah, sorry. So I do feel that, yeah. Oh, I do feel that things are going to get better. And I think that communication, the lines of communication are open. Did you spoke to Joe Lairo? I think he's like the community engagement coordinator for UNM, I'm not 100, but it's, that's, that's actually important. Yeah, but I think he's very positive and really spoke to Joe Lairo. Everybody can go and get the MOUs. Yeah, yeah. So, no, Joe, Joe's fine now. Thanks. S-T-I-U, yeah, thank you. And so the MOU is a kind of historic agreement, which I think Air Harder actually worked on the first generation of the MOU, maybe back in the U.S. city councilor. And it's an agreement. I don't remember everything that's in it. It definitely speaks to how UNM will be transparent about their housing, how it, I think, I don't know if it says it in the MOU or if that's somewhere else, that they will provide a new bed for every new undergraduate that comes. It has some commitments around housing, also around admissions. Yeah, and admissions. Maybe is the payment in lieu in there as well? The payment in lieu was in the MOU, so their voluntary taxes. I will say, I've spoken with Joe Spidell, Wendy Koenig, Richard Case, which are all folks who work at UBM. I think Joe and Wendy are great, but at the same time, like, I don't think Richard's great, but that's different. I do, like, like from what I've heard them say to me is that the president is not interested and they don't see a path forward with consigning another MOU, which I'm like, that is, to me, the baseline commitment. They were very negative about the chances of that happening again. When I left, I'm speaking to Wendy again next week so that could have changed, but in every conversation I've had with them, they're like, that's a non-starter, which I don't understand how that, how we're going to move forward if a written agreement isn't on the table anymore. So I'm not as positive based on the conversations I've had with them, but again, maybe things have changed. There was one more update. Oh, housing, houselessness. The CDNR committee started a kind of theoretical conversation on camping in parks, which got a lot of pushback, especially from people living in parks. I think folks were really worried that we would take some of the parts parks that we have. So we're thinking like Ledi's, Smalley and things like that. So we're trying to, and now there's a lot of urgency. I think there's starting to be a lot of, we have a theoretical debate. And I think now there's a lot of urgency with the housing vouchers ending in end of April. So I think May 1st, we won't have any of the housing vouchers. Our houseless population has increased a lot during the pandemic. People are struggling. More folks are entering into houselessness. More folks are staying in houselessness because they're not getting out of it again. So we're gonna have a large number of people way more than we had before the pandemic were gonna be houseless starting May 1st. And right now it's a huge, it takes so much energy for staff to move the different campsites. It's dangerous, nobody likes it. Everybody's frustrated by it. When you move a campsite, you have to tell people to leave but you can't tell them anywhere to go because all the other shelters beds are full. So it's already been a huge stressor. It's only gonna come first. So we're gonna try to move quickly on at least arranging you allowed campsites in various urban areas around Burlington. I don't know what that's gonna look like but we've had some conversations with city staff on what that would look like and where those campsites would be where we can at least provide port of bodies and have some knowledge of where folks are so that we can try to get them services. That's a horrible solution to houselessness but it's, I think the least that we can do is when we tell people that they can't be there, at least try to give them somewhere else to go. Can you give us an example of where that might be? Yeah, so right now there's probably 40 campsites around Burlington that are... How many? 40 something, 40, wow. And so there's, I don't actually know but we talked to some of the park rangers and I think they've got about eight locations in mind of where they would wanna concentrate folks and have five, four to six people camping there at a time. I don't know where those locations are but I assume they're supposed to be a certain ways off of paths, a certain way from like our more traditional parks like Lenny and things like that. And I don't know specifically the locations. I assume they wouldn't be advertised either for general folks, yes. Are you saying that there are 40 people camping or 40 sites with 10, 20, whatever? Sites, not all of them are always, don't always have someone there. Okay, and how are they going to put that many people into eight sites that they're looking at? And that's absurd. I don't know, and not everybody's gonna use, and not everybody's gonna use the campsites that are provided by the city either. And, yeah. And then of course we've got Elmwood opening up. This is how many people, it's 30 something, yeah. Not many. But it is supposedly one of the, not supposedly, we've been told one of the most cost-effective ways we've found to house people. And even then also providing them much higher services than they've gotten in some of the other places like the motels. So hopefully that'll be a model that we can scale on. I got to adjust a comment and that's, I don't know if you can hear. I guess I think they can hear, but don't leave me. I'm pretty sure we're at the point where you can speak from anywhere because we're off at this shotgun lake. Okay, just to be in the audience. My friend called me and said that there were people sleeping in cars overnight on the street. Is that a common occurrence now? I think it's becoming a more common occurrence. I assume once the motel voucher ends, it'll be a more common occurrence. And I think that's one of the things that folks were talking about as well. I mean, that was the one time, the first time that I didn't have housing, I slept in my cars. I think it's a common kind of in-between situation to be in. So I think we're also hoping to have designated site that's part camping essentially. Okay. But again, I don't know if this will happen. We're still in early figuring out what that would look like. And if you know folks who are like, we're going to need a community partner and the city can't be the one providing all the services. We're going to need some of the other nonprofits that we have in Burlington to step up and be a partner in that. Fair enough. Earhart, thanks, Tom. Thanks. I don't know if this is right. Can folks hear from back here? Awesome, thank you. Thanks for all the work you're doing on the camping, campsites. Just one quick correction. So the state's motel voucher program, it was actually not that long ago, has been extended at a 50% level for folks until the end of the state's fiscal year. So June 30th, they're providing a bit more of a breach that goes beyond March. In a letter basically to get people a breach. And that's at 50% of costs. So right now it's at 70% until March for the lowest income folks. So it's a little bit better than what had originally been announced. And then Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity just announced today that they have 100 rich vouchers for folks living in motels and in shelters to get housing. Of course, the problem is that there is a whole lot of housing to begin with, even if you have a voucher. But at least this way folks who are, and this is for families, families with children, pregnant moms, there's a lot of information on CBOEO's website for folks who want to look into this. At least it's 100 vouchers and will help 100 households. It's going to hopefully bridge to a more permanent section 8 voucher. The only other thing I just wanted to say, Maya, I appreciate that you had a great conversation with Joe. It's great sometimes to bring fresh eyes and ears and voices to discussion of the state from my perspective. Things have been a lot better with the university than they were when I was there back in the late 80s. They have been a lot better. And it's gone up and down. It's been cyclical. The fact that they are not willing to entertain an MOU with the city to me is a really bad sign. And I would urge city counselors to hold the university steep to the fire because ultimately to get what is needed for the community, I think UVM needs to come to the table in an official way and needs to make some commitments and move and do it in a written, accountable way, which is through an MOU. And I would urge you guys to not act on the trinity rezoning unless and until you get some kind of promises from them about freezing or maintaining their student body levels at certain reasonable levels that help the community. As a historical note, I think I've mentioned this before. But first, MOU that we had with the city, we only received it because we held up a zoning permit for a building that they wanted to build. And that's what got UVM to the table the first time around. Suggesting you want to be that extreme now. I'm just giving you a little note. That's how they got their first commitments to student housing. That's how we got their commitment to require that sophomores live on campus, which it used to just be pregnant. And as that first MOU, it was also a sophomore. They replaced the housing that they demolished at University Heights, 100 units of housing for retired staff and for graduate students that became Centennial Court. It also preserved the core area of Centennial Woods, which had never been there. There was no absolute legal, legally binding mechanisms to make sure that Centennial Woods was not developed. So those are some of the hallmarks of something we did back in the late 80s, early 90s, and it took a lot together. Thanks, I heard. Yeah. I thought I saw a handle. Totally. Troy, did you have your hand up? Yeah. Earhard, correct me. This might not be accurate. And I can connect with Representative Small from Winooski because I think she's got a lot of room on it. But I think with the new hotel plans was temperature dependent. If we raise above the temperature, those are no longer available. That is correct. So through COVID, the state got a lot of federal dollars. Those are the ones to essentially create a motel voucher program for all so that people could shelter safely. Congress shelters were not safe for distancing. Many of them shut down. Many of them went to 50% of capacity. And so at the height of that program, we had approximately 2,700 people living in hotels coming from homelessness living in motels around the state. That program is ending. There is an underlying program called the General Assistance Emergency Housing Program. It continues to be funded. It was also federally funded during the pandemic. And that has something called adverse weather conditions associated with it. So through EAGA, which is the acronym, that will continue. And those adverse weather conditions basically are very, as my understanding is that they're in force and effect not on a day-to-day basis, but more or less from now through to March. So thank you for that, right? Zariah, may I? Yeah, and while we're talking about shelter, the Monday City Council meeting, we heard from Brian Pine from CEDA about the Elmwood Avenue Shelter Project. And apparently a bathhouse has arrived. And once that is connected, then it will be open for, you know, the shelters will be open for habitation. And it's been delayed, but they're trying really hard to get that up and running. Anything else? Almost there's a question. Okay, I'll take it. We're going to talk a lot more. You know, Erin? With back to the trendy thing, I think that what Anteir said is so important and it can't be like just a promise. It has to be in writing. And it really is the only way to, and I remember at the last meeting, we talked about if they're building 400 beds, 200 need to be for juniors and seniors and 200 for freshmen. It can't be only freshmen because in two years those freshmen are gonna, those freshmen will then be juniors in our neighborhoods. And that's what it's all about. Trying to preserve housing for everybody, not just you being students. Yeah, and I mean, even just a step in like allowing juniors and seniors to live on campus with them. They're allowed. They're allowed, but there's no housing for them. But like the resident director of trendy campus was like, as far as I know, they're not. Sharon, you're welcome. So then they came through and talked about their survey. What they said was that, and this has not changed because when we did the site visit fraternity, juniors and seniors don't want to live on campus. There are a percentage that wouldn't mind doing it, but affordability is one issue and restrictions are another. So even though we're talking like we are in the driver seat and don't get me wrong, I totally support getting an MOU, but we can't mandate that juniors and seniors live on campus, live in that housing. We can, we could go and see if there was any appetite, which I'm sure there wouldn't be to require juniors to live on campus. It took a long time to go from freshmen to sophomore, but I really do believe that we cannot force juniors and seniors to live in that housing. And so that's a fantasy that we have. We want that to happen, but we can't mandate that. No, it didn't touch Lashford, who's a lawyer. Didn't he bring that up at the last meeting about, it seems like there is, oh, it can be housing, designated housing. And again, I thought that's what you said at our last MPA. But they don't have people that want to live there. That's the point. That's the real issue. So I just want to add that in addition to having the students, maybe I'm in the future. Basically. They could be. Yeah. And also a few of the land owners. You'd be on huge tracks of land through El South Burlington. So I think focusing just on the student housing is slightly, I mean I understand because it also has the average impact on the name, right? But we can enlarge our view a bit to look at the whole impact of UVM on the housing market. And that might get us further. So just one more, this is actually good news. Okay, one more case on the student housing. In my work capacity, I would like to have the honor of going to groundbreaking for UVM Medical Center, which is developing a total of 160 housing units. It's in South Burlington in the city center for their nurses, for their employees because they are similarly impacted by the housing shortage. And at that, I heard that the university is about to probably be in announcements at some point, but over the next several years, they're planning on building approximately 400 units of housing for university staff. Also at student center will be a phase development. I think it's supposed to start in March, if I'm remembering the date, right? But just another encouraging piece on both the housing front and the problems with workforce having difficulties finding housing and just the whole housing crisis. And my understanding too, is that that's to include childcare. That's correct, that's the medical center housing and we're going to have to move forward. But I think, so you counselors, you realize that a lot of people have opinions about this. So I'm just going to leave you with that. Thank you for coming and participating. And we're going to move on to the school questioners update. I like it. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's fun. It's budget times. The budget, it looks like there will be cuts this year. Total of 10 reductions, 3.2 FTES will be added. And so, a net reduction of 6.8 FTES. Some of that has to do with lower student. numbers in the different schools. And the hope is that through attrition that we won't have to let anyone go. We won't have to go out painless because I guess there's enough people they either know are leaving or are retiring that we can do this without some huge loss of jobs here. So that's the biggest thing in this. I mean there certainly I can tell you where the reductions are being looked at. If people are interested in that it just takes a long time and I'm not sure that they yeah. Can I ask a quick question? Yes. What is the reduction in students? You said there were fewer students. There are in schools across so where those where in whatever schools there are less kids in they are. I was wondering how how many fewer kids to go. Well you need to ask me that and that never they never told us exactly. It isn't. You're so right. That's okay. That's okay. 100 maybe 100 maybe it's not even that much but across the it's less than 100 but it is across the district. Over the last couple of years we've lost close door budgets. If you I think I remember from the because we got the presentation on Monday so the high school and middle school populations especially haven't changed. Well high school hasn't really been on that. Yeah only a little but not compared to 2019 I think it's almost the same and then the K through five I feel like it was like quite maybe even like a couple it's like I don't remember the numbers but I do remember the line. It seems like it kind of drastic and they sounded like they didn't 100% know if it was like school choice only through the fact that for a small number of that they didn't quite know how K through five could be decreasing that much for middle school and high school. But the other thing is the one good thing is as those numbers went down in the grade school superintendent Flanagan had a bright idea while we have this huge waiting list of kids trying to get into pre-k so he took and added pre-k's into those classrooms at the different schools so that we have no waiting the waiting list for pre-k anymore. So the school buildings are full but you know it's not all with K through 12 so that's about it unless someone has questions. Do we have questions from people online? I don't see any hands up. Can I ask one question? Sure. We have quite a few folks come to them. I don't know if you've heard about the drama at IAA. Do you have an opinion on that? The value of your opinion? The drama teacher was getting quite at IAA but it was a contact position and so they think it's fine. Well I just heard the last last night at a committee meeting at where people from IAA came teachers and I didn't realize that that position actually has been going since the school existed. It was in the beginning funded through the film theater and then they had to go out and get grants to keep it going. So it has been going there for a long time and that wasn't what I thought I heard in the presentation so it is something that a lot of us are going to ask about. The other thing that I worry about is more of the coaches that are being added and personally unless I have watched this go on and we have had coaches since 2005 and no one can give us the data that says that they're they're worthwhile. And so what are they doing because in that time we have seen some of our math and what do you call it scores go down? The literacy scores go way down and so for me that's and it would be the one thing I've never voted against the budget but until it can start showing this data I don't honestly guess and so it's the biggest thing although there's plenty of other things in this budget that I think are great but it's like please finally give us the data that proves that we should be spending well over a million dollars for all these coaches. Especially because there's substituting and some instances teachers for coaches. Yes yeah. Karen. So what Dariah mentioned about the people that came and spoke about the drama position that seemed to be integral to that school it's sort of consistent with the mission of that school and so to me that's a very different thing not that I don't value all the program's acceptors but it seems to be something an outlier that really stood out once and once people brought it to everyone's attention it seemed inconsistent with with an action that the school would take and I understand that they said there might be other sources of funding but I was very concerned about that it's just a member of the public not even thinking that my kids to that school that that whole system wasn't in place then but as a continuing member of this community I would like I would talk with the school or try and find a way to solve that problem. Thank you. Well the school I have to say has done a good job of coming out and letting us solve those. Okay. So. Thanks Kathy. Thank you. Next up we have Jeff Padgett he's going to talk about parking services and you've got a presentation. Yes let's see if I can get this going. All right so I've got eight slides I'd like to go through. I recognize we're running out ten minutes late so I got a lot of content we've made a lot a lot of changes in parking I know parking would be a very passionate thing and we're working really hard towards fixing a lot of the same problems so I've got a lot in here I'm going to blow through as fast as I can I want to give some time for questions I know people have questions so I apologize for the speed but here we go so my name is Jeff Padgett I'm the division director for parking and traffic one of the parts of what I do is parking services so this is how we're organized so let me get right to this you made the uh the panel yes I've got a nice little questions there yeah all right so part of our parking services tonight but that's one of three things I do I also run the parking facilities which is the garages and the lots and I run traffic route which is all of the meters all the signs the lines the signals the crosswalks the crossing guards and my message on this slide is that these are three independent groups parking services is a general fund special revenue is a completely insulated non-tax exposed fund and traffic is a totally insulated traffic uh insulated non-tax exposed fund parking services is a contributor to the general fund so we basically all my group operates without a single tax dollar and we actually contribute to the general fund so every quarter that goes in a meter downtown pays for the signals that are which a lot of people don't understand so that's the point of this slide is just say understanding architecture of how my group writes so what we're going to talk about tonight is parking services so when I came in I said we needed to read understand how parking tickets work and we realized that every parking ticket that gets issued is fundamentally around safety or equity we as a community written an ordinance or a law that says you can't park to your corner because it's not safe you can't park in front of a highway because it's not safe you can't block your neighbor's driveway it's not safe you can't park in a handicapped bus it's not equitable if you overstay a meter you're actually denying the opportunity for the next person to come and use a meter that's an equity issue so we've actually mathematically gone through every single ordinance and ticket that we issue and assigned whether it's a safety equity concept and started to change how we're working on right now changing some of our ordinances to make them a little more fair because we realize some of them are a little bit superior so safety and equity is something my team gets sick of hearing me talk about uh the goal is to minimize tickets and minimize telling because we recognize that tickets suck that little green envelope and get on your car it just makes you mad even if it's just $15 $15 is a lot of money to a lot of people and we certainly don't want to tow somebody's car that's their asset they own it the title gets to their job it's a part of their life it doesn't need to be out in Splane's yard it will suffer and Splane's by the way is a very good partner of ours we work really well with that so that's our overall so some of the structural changes that we've made over the past three years in 2020 working with the mayor we it was an initiative to move parking enforcement out of the police and move them into park into DPW and in that and that's actually why I have this job I took this job specifically to initiate that change and and in the process we didn't just move them we rebrand them they're not parking enforcement and they're parking services they're not parking enforcement officers they're parking service agents though we're working towards a sort of a sort of a specific stylistic approach we also concurrently we took the gates off the garage which is fairly controversial but now the garage is run just like the streets you have park mobile or you can pay a kiosk it's exactly the way it works in the street and in the process that opened up staff because the staff that was working in the garage now didn't have a job per se we actually eliminated that job but we created a new job for them and partnered up so we've tripled our workforce in partner services really focused on customer service we've reimagined a couple of different manager positions to focus on creating a one-stop shop so the same person is now in charge of issue of selling permits and also enforcing the park so it's like they're selling a product and then they're sort of going little p policing the product that they sell we created positions across the board union level positions that are senior level union positions to create more of a management structure for the union level workers along with creating more actual management management positions full of different management positions and what this is all resulted in is we have increased coverage in better steps you get a little renewable up on your car you're going to say uh yeah right but that's what we're doing i'm working on it every day and it's it's it's a slow it's a slow slide so so the thing we've done is i've put the one-stop shop if you've got any questions about parking come down to 645 fine street comes to the window you'll get an answer call 5402380 you'll get an answer we're actually absorbing eprw so parks because they're very good at parks but not as good at parking so we're absorbing their lots and we're going to actually start managing their products and i'm going to follow the work division next week to get authority to actually enforce their lots so we're expanding our scope of what we do so we can become that true one-stop shop um we reformed scops uh two years ago if you got a ticket for a snowman you didn't pay it and then you got another ticket car was done so it was basically one and done and that just wasn't fair so we raised scoff to $275 so you can get multiple tickets and then we expressly stated in ordinance that we cannot as a city hunt for staff you have to be in stock if you're over that threshold and get another ticket but then here and then you are exposed to keep target so i think we made it much more fair across the board fines for food we just got done with fines for food i don't know if everybody's heard of this but if you have overdue tickets at holiday time you pay up your overdue tickets and get half the money to eating chicken we just raised nearly $80,000 so we're going to cut them a check for 40 grand we did the same last year we cut them a check for 40,000 so these are the sort of transformations i think this is why i'm here tonight is to sort of expose some of these things that first fly into the radar but we're working on every day um two hours free parking we gave out all city parking assets on fridays and saturdays during the holiday season two hours free and we actually see we have no analytics but there's an impact we provide discount parking to phs to support their downtown high school we support them supporting them in a rooftop garden they're looking to install on top of the downtown garage we're working with car shares for electrification of their car share spots that exist in our garage for free um and we talked about onwood we actually were integral to supporting the transformation of the parking lot because that was my work with cement machine on it was it was really cool so other thing we've done is we are going to a fully digital platform we have resident only parking permits that are digital now so if you've got one of the screen stickers on your car and you don't like it make sure you stop down at 645 pine street check in and make sure you make sure you're current and then you can also make sure that your plates are registered in the system and the net sticker can come off um and then contractor parking one of the big complaints i've had multiple hour-long phone calls with contractors scuming because they got a parking ticket on their truck and their trailer so we created a program where they can actually buy a i think it's weekly monthly or annual permit that allows them to park in resident only parking while they're doing work so kids park there all the while they're doing we created the whoops program which has replaced and expanded the blue chips i think you guys know about the blue chips that are collecting in your doors well those are basically get out of jail for the car right so what we did is we expanded that program to reach out to all parking in the city that's not safety parking related infractions that are not safety related so if you overstay a meter once a year you can say whoops i just didn't pay the meter and get out of it you park in resident only and you didn't ask your who you were visiting to give you a gas permit you got ticket you say whoops i i got and then you get out of it so in some ways it feels narrower because you don't know there's four blue chips in your drawer anymore but on the other hand if you've got 12 friends and they all screw up well first four under the blue trips this is the first board get out of it and the last eight went off to pay the tickets this way it's a little more equitable and puts the responsibility on the guests to actually recognize that they're parking in a special neighborhood and check in work there close to make sure they're playing by rules and in the process of this we're also creating an online portal it's very close to rolling out they'll allow you to park your guests digitally so you can actually log into your account and add your card is there a place where you can find out more about the blue chip program the whoops program the whoops the whoops yeah because i mean i heard that you said but i need to think about it and i'd like to be able to refer to it so is there a place that it's in ordinance but for our resident is there a like a little cheat sheet well funny you should so this is so one of the things yes so yes yes yes and no so we recognize that we've had a hard time getting the word out to this but part of what we're doing we have a whole new back end platform that we've on boarded in november and it's spectacular but we're still working into it but one of the keys of it is all digital so we need everybody's email addresses we if you have resident parking and you don't get emails from us like every once in a while we're not spam this is like once a year twice a year type of thing you don't get an email from us saying hey it's time to renew or something like that you call us up because you probably don't have it even we really could use emails it's how we're getting hold of people so to your point though the whoops program we recognize we haven't gotten the word out we're actually working right now on fixing the website so that it's more clear when you get a ticket and you want to whoops it the way to do it is go to the appeal portal type in there i'd like to whoops this ticket and that's done and i can whoops it for like the contractor came to my house this is real but he doesn't have anything he was just coming can i whoops that ticket for him or no they whoops it themselves this is so this is what we're trying to try to shift the responsibility to the parker and not wait for you that's for the concept so the contractor now will learn they whoopsed it and in the process also learned oh i could buy an annual pass of $50 and get out of all this hassle right okay so this is why we're trying to push responsibility on the parker okay thank you um you got a question or bear so while you're on this little thing so are the blue ships it's no good anymore no good anything though can you get this book oh just want to get one wait let me tell you something about that electronic things my son-in-law lives on a residential park in street and he's got the electronic thing well he got the ticket well he has that electronic pass he doesn't have the thing you hang in your car or a figure he set up he set up with the credit can you set up with a good list okay so here well he got the ticket get two hours and hours and hours to finally get that ticket removed it was not easy and he was legitimately paid for it had not expired so the system so it's not perfect yet because he was the one that made call after call after call so it is not perfect i mentioned we tripled our workforce we went from five to 14 we took people from the garage who used to be ambassadors who their job was to collect money and open the doors of the gates and we're training them on the street to go around and read life constraints and get tickets mistakes are happening we just had an all hands meeting today and i put up a slide that said accuracy and consistency you have to be accurate you have to be consistent because so if you believe if you're in resident parking you know you have a permit and we made a mistake just call us up and tell her and because that's an error our error and then fix it like that you don't have to go through the appeal process don't not do not what's something that you believe is actually a mistake we'll check if it's actually a mistake it only fits like that if it's not then it was something more complicated and more a mistake within your system that it took several hard costs i mean they did correct it your office but it was not easy and my daughter was chair yeah so um Jeff knows this i sent you an email earlier to give you a head up but you already heard it from me before um i understand the digital process the internal improvement and efficiency but what i think is lacking for me as a as a person that lives on a residential parking only street is that when there was a permit um at least you know i've been close to the hospital and the university i could if there wasn't a permit or a painter i would call and let you know that you know there was a problem and sometimes these cars stayed for days and day in new days um now i have no way of knowing that because there's no there's no visual and so when i call um i'm maybe wasting your time because it's because and there's not enough people to come around on a regular basis um so i'm concerned i'd like the internal for your efficiency but i really like the visual because you expanded your enforcement by having all of our eyes now helping you yeah so one of the concerns that we have is we don't like the philosophically idea of neighbors necessarily turn neighbors in because we like the idea of us filling out control wouldn't you call our office every day and say i'd like me to drive down my street we will do that that will happen because that's what we're there for but there are different shifts from the hospital so you you'd have to be like you'd have to have a dedicated east avenue um right so put it this way a year and a half ago we had five people total doing enforcement one would be on vacation one would be sick then we'd have three we'd have three people to go for six seven five in the morning ten all of them if i could make a very low level enforcement now we have shifts of five twice a day so we have lots of folks out there well now we're not fully sat we're still on some calendars but we're headed towards providing you the service here it's back absolutely a little we're in a little bit of a approach so are those hangers stuck with them so we're so the guests yes so the guest passes we're still handing out physical guest passes because we haven't fully developed the online guest pass you are sensitive because i'm telling you that every time the best time that we have to get in there and put there there that's why we haven't done it you know we can do it but one when we do it it has to be simple simple and i promise it won't be simpler than handing them that thing and don't that thing it's you know it's okay you got it yes you said you're going to roll out some new software features on the website yes when is that going to happen and can we get you to come back it's ongoing and i would like to come back and like um next month and yeah but before you leave yes so i have a question um first of passion for parking thank you very much um what about really chronic ticket getters is there a restorative justice program that you're putting in place because there are people in prison because of unpaid chronic so in Vermont that doesn't really happen that's not your uh your driver's license is not tied to tickets ticketing is a holy separate and this is why i have to go to public to go to public works to do the parking enforcement parks the parking enforcement of parks is actually a civil crime because it's wrapped into fireworks and fights and drinking and all these bad behaviors that's civil we're taking parking tickets it's legally a different thing so they're not exposed but this is part of why we did the scoff reform because we didn't want somebody to not be able to get to their job get fired from their job and then caught committed crime to get their car back you know we recognize it with the heart of that case cycle and we want to stop it so beyond works is there some kind of restorative program in terms of not having a new case i mean i think well my understanding is that it's chronic um fines that don't get paid that's what i'm talking about actually it's not just ticketing but it's chronic fines that don't get paid so is there some kind of restorative justice and losing with the issues for things that's in what's happening with that and in terms of you know at this point right now creating the whoops program was specifically created to encourage people to pay we had people that owed over a thousand dollars to pay it off well they paid off seven hundred and fifty one dollars or whatever to get under the threshold so yeah this is very complicated work and you know the part of you is and yeah thank you for opening your mind yeah all right can i just throw one thing out there too um because i've been waiting patiently to say my piece um you talked about like uh trying to have a single point of contact can i just bring to your attention that for those of us who drive electric vehicles i'm paying the charger and i'm feeding the meter can we incorporate the meter into the charging feed that would that would be a lot i know and we work with bd that we have chargers in the garden it's it's very much more complicated than it seems like it should be yeah i'm like yes we want to do too we're going to leave on the bd department absolutely yeah i'm done something we're we're you can see there's a lot of interest in this i know we're going to look forward and having you here again but we're uh i apologize we're behind time our schedule and we invited some legislators and we want to move forward okay i may go sorry very yes go um quick uh request to consider a change in the uh the ordinance around parking when you're unloading a vehicle right now it's restricted to trucks only and i've had legitimate situations of unloading a passenger vehicle in that space and i've been finding the 75 dollars uh when trying to bring something to my office on church freedom this is complicated a lot of what i've done just two levels really quickly one is i think top off i promise top it was jeff i we do appreciate you power thank you all right the last thing on our agenda is a discussion about there's the legislators and i believe that we have we have all four legislators here i see troy i see ryan our team and ryan is not there ryan's out there so i guess we're going to start by um having each of you make a statement as to uh i think uh what your priorities are but also uh what committees you've been assigned to and um and perhaps what your committee is going to do so with that uh troy you want to leave off sure thanks um and just let me put this out there first if any of you find out that i have decided to maybe take up stand-up comedy remind me not to follow anyone from parking yikes um for those of you who i have not met my name is troy hedrick i live on billidoo court which is one of those streets off of east avenue um and i have lived here for gosh coming on this will be 22 years i think love my neighborhood love my neighbors um and i'm slowly um slowly getting my feet wet with this whole legislative deal that selena talked me into i don't know if selena's watching tonight but hey thanks no it's a lot of fun i've met some amazing people um orientation was four days long and almost immediately i could feel the energy in the room and there is just an amazing yeah energy just an amazing vibe at least in the house i'll let martin talk about the senate um a third of us are new um there's a lot of passion um there's a lot of great people there are so many great ideas floating around that room um and i'm excited and optimistic um and i'm not just saying that um and i've been listening for a while and some of my priorities are going to align with some of the conversation that was going on in the room um i'm excited about that i'm um surprised right now at a common theme between um corrections and uvm and i'll say more about that as i get to both of those priorities um uh for those of you who don't know i have worked at uvm since 1996 i took a little break to run my own business i started in residential life so i have some thoughts on housing i work in the center for student conduct right now um i have since 2008 i meet with a lot of students um close to who what's my what are my stats a thousand students a year um students who you know who have made bad decisions and need a tap on the shoulder and guided in the right way we take a very restorative approach to our work um but i just i really want to validate at least anecdotally um what charen had said um upper class students do not want to live on campus upper class students um are are are just jones and to get off campus um the ones that do want to stay on campus tend to go to the lofts um over on redstone campus um but i yeah i just really really want to punctuate what charen said i think she is spot on with that um let me just jump in with my my legislative priorities and then i i think you're going to find out where they kind of click with some of the conversation that's been happening in the room tonight um i'll start by talking about the first bill that i will be introducing my guess is that it's going to hit the floor sometime next week i'm currently gathering signatures to sign on um and this has been kind of this is the first thought that came to my mind about if i could change something what would it be i am incredibly concerned about the national trend um by which outside private very conservative groups are weaseling their way into school boards to change curriculum to pull books from shelves uh the best case example is moms for liberty if you go to the web on npr and check out all things considered from yesterday you're going to hear an article that that um you know an interview that that talks about this it's about an eight minute listen um i am very worried the moms for liberty um is probably the best known group already has chapters in southern new hampshire they have chapters throughout massachusetts they have chapters throughout upstate new york they are literally encircling us and my bill intends i'm going to talk about what it intends to do um and probably more importantly what it does not intend to do um it's a short form bill which means i haven't put a lot of detail in there it's going to land in the education committee and um they're going to have a lot of freedom to to create this um they'll likely call me in to um kind of provide my testimony about where i where i see this bill going but i i want to create a firewall um i do not want to dictate curriculum that is the work of the board of education and the supervisory unions i do not intend to create curriculum the only thing i want to do is um prohibit the those folks who do or prevent the folks who do create curriculum from prohibiting any teachers from talking about concepts of race racial identity gender gender identity um so when you think about right this is so these groups this is where the don't say gay laws come from this is where the anti critical race theory laws come from you can think of this as go ahead and say gay go ahead and talk about race go ahead and talk about racial identity go ahead and talk about structural and historic racism that's what this bill intends to do i'm going to encourage the committee to be very pinpointed with this this is not a generic academic freedom law right academic freedom in k through 12 is very very different it's not really a thing um as compared to academic freedom in higher education we essentially hire our teachers to teach the state curriculum i just want to state that as we're doing that creating that curriculum you cannot prevent teachers from talking about race and gender so that's the bill um i'll keep you updated i don't know whether or not it's going to have legs i don't know how it's going to get picked apart i'm working on partnerships um across the senate um to be there when it shows up um uh oh by the way i i've been assigned to the corrections and institutions um committee just came out of prior to this and i know martin was there too tanya i don't know if you were there i think maybe you were i can't remember just came out of a briefing uh on the status of incarcerated women so um i'll talk more about that in a second i want to get back to the evm housing piece this came up last night and i spoke briefly to jake after the progressive caucus last night um and this is the first topic that landed on my front door or my email when i announced that or you know when i got elected into the position so i was talking with cindy cook on east avenue jonathan shovel sokel um who raised their concerns about the trinity project um and i started scratching my head and i know cindy wants to take uh an act 250 um route and and maybe that that can potentially work i don't think it will um other people i've talked to are hesitant to think that that might have any legs um what i have been thinking about um and i shares a riot skepticism with regard to uvm's willingness to play along or play nice um uh full disclosure i am an embittered staff member for the university of vermont we just went through a very long battle to get unionized um and i do not feel things are good at uvm right now and i don't think they're gonna play nice and i do think it might be time legislatively um to start talking about enrollment caps i want to do it very specifically kind of two ways i think it might be important to consider can we cap uvm's enrollment until our rental vacancy reaches a five percent healthy limit um that's gonna tap the breaks and it's gonna get them to the table to maybe problem solve collectively about um how are we going to build more housing so that we can get to a healthy rental vacancy so that we can bring more students onto campus um the other thing i want to do um kind of adjacent to that are getting in connection with that probably in the same bill is um mandate that uvm has to guarantee a certain square footage for each on-campus student um and that should probably be about half of what has historically been a double-sized room right now uvm is just shoving students into triples and again i talked to a lot of students about behavioral stuff a lot of behavioral stuff is connected to the fact that there is no release valve right now for students who are jammed into very small spaces together i think we need to get back into the practice of housing students and doubles having a lot more singles available for students who have a medical need for singles whether that's anxiety or other concerns um so attaching an aroma cap to a healthy rental vacancy rate five percent and mandating that students on campus are guaranteed a certain amount of square footage that means even if they build a new house a new residence hall the first thing they're going to have to do is D triple the overwhelming amount of triples on campus right now those are my thoughts about you doing that we're gonna um i hate to cut you off but uh we're gonna shift gears a little bit and go to uh tanya but we're gonna circle back up for questions from the uh the audience here let me just say one more thing quick um i was in a i got corrections 101 today uh in my committee we currently have as of this morning we have 107 women incarcerated fully 50 percent of them are being detained prior to sentencing so that's that's a problem okay thanks yeah danya you're awesome thanks everyone i'm really happy to be here sorry i was late my dog was uncooperative on her walk this evening so it took longer than anticipated um i have been assigned to the committee on judiciary in the senate and i am vice chair of government operations after going around with the committee members the judiciary um priorities that were identified were cannabis equity um discussing decriminalizing things that should really be in the mental health or substance use arena prisons um prison reform bail reform and really looking at who's incarcerated do they need to be incarcerated um police oversight community safety gun safety tackling the court and civil the court dockets and and the backlog that's in in the court and civil dockets harm reduction um i think i already said bail reform and sort of the connection between mental health and criminal justice on government operations we are talking about sheriff oversight ranked choice voting um campaign finance reform also police oversight so my committees have some overlap which is actually really lovely to be able to bring both viewpoints into the different committees um i am working personally and have made it a priority around temp or vermont state employee temp worker misclassification and working towards some anti privatization of state contracts we will also be having conversations around legislative compensation and benefits um there will be professional regulation conversations but i don't think that was actually going to happen until next year largely because we have a lot of reports coming back from the last biennium and the director of the office of professional regulation is now the deputy secretary of state and so we're doing a national search for a new director and need that person to be able to get up to speed before we can do opr legislation um we will also of course be tackling charters um and i know burlington has a just cause eviction charter that will be reintroduced probably ahead of um town meeting day but the rest of the charters will come in town meeting day um personally some of my priorities are looking at police oversight municipal police oversight and sheriff oversight looking at um life without parole second look cash bail and really thinking about you know as we have the conversation about potentially building a big new prison which i'm personally not in favor of um instead looking at who do we have incarcerated that could be supported in the community that might be better served by substance use treatment the you know trey gave the statistics around the women's prison um and while a large percentage of those people are there pre-trial the vast majority of people are there due to substance use and so rather than incarcerating these people how do we make sure we have the community supports to provide so that they can tackle their substance use disorder um i will be introducing a a companion bill from the house around co-pays and epinephrine auto injectors this is really personal to me as someone with severe allergies um and i'm also looking at a really wonky technical bill around medical liens and the way the current medical industrial complex costs people money who have been in an accident not allowing them to recoup their losses um and then police oversight is another bill that i'm working on as well as a cannabis equity bill really looking at how we bring in equity and make sure everyone is represented in our new legal cannabis market and there are some technical changes in there but mostly that that is an equity bill so the those are some of of my priorities having heard some of the testimony today i also really want to look at universalizing our community justice centers and restorative justice responses across county chitin county has a lot of opportunities although there's still not enough but there are counties in vermont that don't have any community justice center and restorative justice opportunities so i want to look at how we universalize that and make that much more equitable and how we ask we allow people to access restorative community justice all right thanks um martin thank you um happy to be here tonight can you hear me yes yes okay this is my first time zooming from Montpelier so give me like a thumbs down if i start losing my connection um thank you uh representative hedrick i believe that your bill will come to senate ed at some point and that's where i am i am um i'm vice chair of senate education and i'm also on health and welfare in the morning um so i'm excited to be in both of those uh we literally today i had six hours three in health and welfare in the morning and three hours in the afternoon in education with folks coming in from the agencies from nonprofits just schooling us on the ins and outs of everything health and welfare and education so um if i'm not quite as chipper as uh representative hedrick and veofsky it's because i i don't know i have a lot of learning today a lot of learning um so i'll just tell you briefly what my priorities are that i shared already in both of my committees um in education i started off with just a kind of a large umbrella around equity um we didn't get into the weeds there but as you know there's a lot going on with um taxpayer dollars going to private schools and so on so that's something that we might be talking about at some point um and also to um to religious schools but we have to you know tread carefully in that arena because it is something that came down from the supreme court um i spoke um about uh by the way when it comes to equity i'm also talking about equity um in terms of curriculum um as representative hedrick brought up making sure that equity and inclusion is a huge part of what we're doing in vermont it comes uh it comes into play with financing and that leads me to making sure that the student waiting bill that's already been started is properly rolled out um i think many of you heard about the student waiting formula but it's um it's this one of the systems by which we allocate money um to schools in our state and we know if you didn't know there are three separate weights that are very important across the state and those are for students living in poverty el students as students living in rural communities and those have been underfunded for years so they've changed the formula so that it's more equitable and it's going to be rolled out in the next um basically the next year so we want to make sure that that's done properly um we found out a few um years ago that our literacy rates here in vermont are very low so the um legislature uh passed some legislation around dealing with that issue and the aoe and the legislature put together this blueprint that is also being worked on um that needs to get out into our schools and really hit the ground so that um you know we're using all of this great uh research to improve literacy scores and i have to say today we did get um a whole bunch of test scores presented to us and they were i have to say quite disheartening you know we're in terms of proficiency in math science and reading we're in sort of the 30 percent range so a lot of work to do um for sure in that regard um school construction something i've been talking about i'm still talking about it um it's something that we've been you know kicking down the road for decades and we have crumbling schools we have schools that are poisoning our teachers our students our staff and it we need to address this so it's something that i'm going to continue to talk about it's a priority for me um we lived it in burlington and uh it's very real for us but there are other schools that are also suffering because of just absolutely horrible infrastructure and and buildings so um that's something that i put as a priority as well uh in health and welfare i basically um tried to highlight some of the needs that were presented to us um by both the mayor of winewski and the mayor of burlington so i'll just read through a few um specialized care for violent individuals improved access to medication for opioid use disorder contingency management for the growing meth use that we're seeing in our communities uh reentry support for justice involved individuals especially those with substance abuse disorder um expand residential treatment opportunities including long-term residential treatment and remove barriers for overdose prevention sites um i'm very i feel very strongly about shield laws that protect uh abortion providers um who are working in other states and i also talked a little bit about reducing or streamlining the prior approval process for uh insurance um so yeah those are all my priorities and i'm happy to answer questions if anyone has any right we're going to go first to brian and then we'll open before so questions can you just tell me how much time i have i want to pace with that five minutes all right because uh i am working on a lot of things and i may not be able to say everything in five minutes but i want to try to at least give you a high level so let me set a timer or stop watch here all right go i'll tell you brian yeah you know what though i like pacing myself because i really don't like when people interrupt me but you can if you have to but i'm going to try to pace with that um so anyway that was 10 seconds um so as we uh as as we're coming out of the the crisis of the coronavirus pandemic we're heading into additional crisis ecological crisis and we're seeing the collapse of the planet's ecosystems and we have an opportunity here to spend an unprecedented level of federal money to build resiliency to the crisis that's ahead of us we also we can't just spend the money we have to be thinking about how do we sustain the investments and and work towards a steady state economy or more regenerative economy that doesn't destroy the earth um and doesn't extract and exploit people and so um there's many ways i think we can do this um one would be to continue to be wise in the way that we spend that money over the next few years and try to invest in in in the social determinants of health the legislature already did a lot of good work in the last few years and we need to learn from the mistakes and assess the strengths and build on the progress um in terms of housing food and economic development so some specific bills i'm introducing that related to this would be um a bill that would look at creating a year-round network of agricultural production in the state so that we can guarantee food to all of our owners um that's locally grown uh as well as banning pesticides and um protecting people from pfa's in in the food supply um a regenerative economy act that would look at a process that changes our democracy to create regional planning assemblies or regional people's assembly similar to neighborhood planning assemblies where people will assess the strengths of regions and the challenges and look at how to engage in strategic um redevelopment of the economy in regions so that we can uh weather the storms ahead looking at universal pathway towards universal health care by starting with universal primary care exploring the the possibility of a state bank or public banking system increasing the rights of tenants for example giving tenants the rights of first refusal on not only apartment buildings but also single-family homes and looking at rent stabilization through tax policy creating incentives for landlords to keep rent low and penalties if the rent gets too high but not telling landlords what they can or can't charge um so it still allows property owners to have that freedom um but sort of tries to steer the behavior so that we can keep housing affordable for renters um looking at a moratorium on new prisons as we explore a new way forward that reduces recidivism and promotes public safety um we would do this by looking at uh expanding housing um in a way that guarantees housing that meets people's needs at every stage of recovery including many varieties of transitional housing and supportive housing as people are leaving incarceration but then reimagining incarceration as a form of secure residential treatment for those who are risk of harming themselves or others or the environment with many pathways to less restrictive housing and integrating that with with um our existing treatment options and local resources so we don't separate people um from the resources we keep people we may have to take people's freedom for some time but we don't take away their dignity we don't take away opportunity for them to learn and grow um we don't punish people but rather hold them accountable um there's a lot of details to that bill I'd like to get get into with you later but I have a minute 15 seconds left um so I'm going to move on and just say that um in addition to all of these investments that we can make with the money and policy changes we need to be thinking about how to sustain them and so I'm I'm talking with other members about ideas like it's like a short-term surcharge on the highest income earners like Vermont did with Governor Snelling in the in the 90s and using that to build up our state's reserves build up the rainy day fund so that we have that in the future when there are times of bust as we're in a time of boom and not only saving up the rainy day funds but taking a percentage of it maybe 10 or 20 percent and lending it to the people to buy the new homes that we're building to buy apartment buildings and houses when they go out for sale to invest in their small businesses to invest in the in the economy we we need to weather the storms ahead so the idea being that as people pay back those loans the money is going back into a fund that the state can use to then reinvest in the people of Vermont instead of having out of state banks um making money off of the investments that we're building here so you know through a combination of of strategic spending and and revenue um we can work towards an economy um and a way of life on earth that's better okay that's five minutes and five seconds i'll stop there oh wait i had five more seconds okay now i'll stop there okay we have questions yeah yes so um thank you all oh my goodness um try and tanya and brian i have a question for you and that is um primary caretaker of legislation this has to do with the issue of uh incarceration and the question is i've been told by people in the Hampshire that we have that on the boards here is it current legislation or do we have something in place in other words what it what it suggests is that we really would have a program in place like we've all alluded to that really looks at community support alternatives and accountability responsibility and allows people who are primary caregivers to continue in that role as well are you aware of that legislation primary caretaker no i'm unaware of any legislation i know that we have a program like like that jess kel does in the women's facility that allows um parents like women who are incarcerated to to have contact with their children but i i'm unaware of any but that's nothing compared to this i mean it's a good thing that it's in place but we have a long way to go if that's all i will do some more research on it but i really appreciate um can you send it send any articles or anything you find my are any of our ways but i'm more than happy to yeah to dig into that especially uh it's sounding like that would probably land in the corrections um and i mean my legislative email is active and if you just go to chorahedrick.com you're going to see a form there um or chorahedrick vtg email i'd also love to see anything you pull up i'm unaware of anything specific around that i do know um i just some of the statistics we heard today in judiciary anything so what i've learned is that the senate committees of jurisdiction sometimes don't perfectly line up with the house committees of jurisdiction so most of this would come through senate judiciary um so i'm certainly happy to take anything that you want to send my way i'm not aware of any specific legislation and i and i certainly heard today in some of our testimony just background testimony just the damage that is done i actually started working with new Hampshire about this and they have um a draft um of this primary care taker legislation so yes i will send all three good things thank you very much that would be amazing thank you i got a just a general question would we be well advised to if we're going to send a targeted piece of information to copy all the representatives from burlington um or is that just bogging down people's and vascus you can send me anything i'll probably see it quicker at my gmail account probably but send me out anywhere yeah i tried i'm pretty obsessive about my inbox so i i try to stay on top of it i definitely want to be in the know on what's going on for people that i'm representing um so certainly send it to me um you know i may not always be able to super quickly have an answer because i don't know the answers to everything but i can certainly try to find an answer and and definitely if there are things coming up for my constituents i want to know so definitely include me um and i think i i know that the burlington delegation in the house works pretty closely together but i'll certainly let brian you know speak to that but i i and try but please include me and anything that's coming up for you i would say include me as well and then um tanya and i can pass it on to senator bruce as well if you feel that it's relevant for him to see thanks the question i heard was should you send it to the entire delegation i don't see any harm in doing that our email boxes are full already anyway and you know we're sifting to hundreds of messages a day i don't see it's not gonna hurt to hear from more constituents and less from special interest groups or people spamming us so i would say send it and the worst case scenario is someone misses it um don't ever hesitate to reach out and i also would say if people reach out and you don't hear back and it's urgent right again because sometimes i triage every day i go through and try to get back to the things that are like time sensitive and then things get lost sometimes so just it's it's okay to send more than one email until you hear back as a former as a former community organizer like when i hear from all of you what's important to you it actually gives me more power in the building i'm one vote in in the senate but when i have the voices of all of you behind me it lends more credence to that so it actually gives me more ability to fight for what's important to you if i'm hearing from you well i don't see a lot of hands up but i've got another question if it's okay um and that's it's it's about well two questions actually one is about education and is there any chance or that we're going to get a legislation that will help communities build rebuild schools physical schools as you know marlington is is looking at a pretty big bond issue but we're not the only people who are going to end up with um contaminated schools that are going to end up being uh torn down and my understanding is that the state has been um unwilling or unable to contribute to this type of stuff since i think the dean administration so it goes back a long way that there's been sort of a moratorium on um supporting school districts and rebuilding is is is that where and is there anything we can do to help push that yeah i will say that oh sorry yeah just i introduced a bill like in my first year on this issue and got shot down hard i could even send you the testimony where they're like making fun of me for in committee for actually asking and and like kind of talking about the history of why and i would say that we have to do something now there's too many schools like crumbling and instead of having a moratorium on building new schools we should have a moratorium on building new prisons and we should be building schools and the infrastructure that keeps people out of prisons so i i'm willing to go back and fight further on this issue but um yeah martine i'm going to answer in the affirmative yes i think there is a chance i think um there's a good chance um there are folks who are speaking with our new treasurer about this um there are for example the head of the vsa um jeff francis is extremely passionate about this superintendents are on board it's an equity issue i would tie it in with workforce development folks are not going to want to move to vermont if our schools are literally poisoning our children um this is something that has to happen um it's well past time and i feel as if there is a groundswell of support now um to do something and you know i'm sure that this isn't going to be the kind of aid that will pay for an entirely new building but it will pay for part of a new building it should you know i keep telling the legislature you got to throw taxpayers a bone you've got to help us out this is a huge burden for us and it not only shows good will on the part of the legislator and our leaders but it helps us be able to do this work um there's a good chance that not all schools will need to be rebuilt they may not all have the pcb contamination that we had in burlington but they will need some kind of renovation and then there will be those that will need to be entirely rebuilt but yeah i feel positive that this is going to happen um and i think joel and sam have their hand up let me let me jump in i think the energy is best um to originate in the senate on that one um and i'm glad to hear that it's there martin this came up very briefly today because this is going to come out of the capital bill which is um corrections and institutions um and i did not hear a lot of enthusiasm or optimism from the chair um and i i can do what i can um but if it comes from the senate with gusto i think that's probably the best bet we're gonna hand up um joel and sam sam hey everyone thanks uh my question is related to transportation and transportation equity i suppose and it's nothing that's been explicitly uh talked about in the meeting tonight um but one of my observations here in roman is like how difficult it is to be mobile if you're poor or not even if your car is not in good shape um we take the bus around here when we can but we like to we prefer to ride our bicycles it's more enjoyable and cars are just um really difficult thing to have here unless you you know unless you have the time and the money to really dedicate to a car um so you know what we've been doing over the past two years since the pandemic really is just pouring over old transportation maps of streetcar routes and formerly free or nearly free transportation options um which benefited poor people old people kids differently able um bodies of all types and something that i've just um so something that like particularly kind of piqued my interest was seeing that vermont or maybe chitinon county i can't remember exactly which department was pushing this promotion to encourage people to purchase electric vehicles or e-bikes or all sorts of things and then get a tax credit um for that but i don't really see this as solving like um environmental issues we're still creating more materials these batteries are terribly harmful for the environment um it's just encouraging poor people or less fortunate people to contribute to a system which is already quite oppressive by how much money is just forced to maintain a vehicle and so one of my big things um that that i'm curious about is if there's any movement or if anyone has any ideas or passion about uh better public transportation the way the way things used to be which i know there's no such thing as going back but it's famously touted that we used to be able to take public streetcars from state to state and city to city and just hop on and hop off in certain neighborhoods so i'm wondering if anyone on the call has any and i kind of just want to add to that and just say if there's any incentives of like not having a electric vehicle or electric bike and either being a household with no car or being a household that primarily uses either public transportation or walking or biking because that's uh i mean if we had our our way we would just get a shuttle to go to any ski areas or go to any of the places that we want to go hiking but unfortunately we have to have a car to go do those things um so yeah kind of yeah if there's incentives for those i mean the short answer to your question is no those incentives do not exist i will certainly say that this resonates so much with me as someone who grew up in a working class single parent home and who came back here struggling to afford all of the things i had to afford and recognizing that in the state of vermont if you truly want to be able to do all the things you just have to own a car and it so it's i'm really committed to creating a i also i went to college in boston where it's not the best public transportation system and you probably don't want to look at it right now um but they have public transportation um i'm really invested in looking at the ways that we grow our public transportation system we have some micro transit pilots in multiple municipalities montpelier was the first one which is sort of like public uber so you've got an app on your phone instead of a fixed route you've got an app on your phone and that public transit comes to you um and and works in that way and it's worked really well in montpelier um there is an application process for municipalities to sign up to be the next pilot um and so i would really and i have that whole process because i've been working to try to get esx to do it because i think esx is really prime for for that method um and some communities have done sort of hybrid fixed route and this micro transit system there's also a lot of um conversation around rail um it is almost every vermonter lives within a half mile of a rail line and so really thinking about how do we build out our rail system you know i work as a social worker i have to do like home visits and all kinds of like ad hoc stuff like i literally can't do my job without a car but that doesn't have to be that way and it isn't that way everywhere and having been to europe where they have invested in incredible public transportation and high-speed rail and you don't see cars on the road because why would you drive if you can just hop on the train and so i i think there's also a lot of of push we need to do with with the federal's delegation to make the investment in things like high-speed rail so that we can actually make connections not just within the state of vermont but across the country you know when when i was in germany i could get on a train and in two hours be in france whereas here if i'm in vermont i can get on a flight and be in dc in 50 minutes but it's going to take me 10 and a half hours to get there by rail and so i i think there's a lot of conversation that we need to have at the local level about making our public transportation free and perpetuity it is right now but we need to make sure that it stays that way that anyone who needs to access public transportation can simply access public transportation as well as more reliable more and more accessible and more widespread because there's plenty of communities in the state of vermont that in burlington there's probably our most reliable and connected public transportation system i'm in sx it would take me an hour to get to burlington and three bus transfers and so why would i do that and so we need to really build out a more cohesive and equitable system of public transportation in the state but we also need to be advocating with our federal delegation to be making the infrastructure investments in building out transportation i'm not on the transportation committee but this is so like as someone who's struggled with how do i do my job when i can't afford a car when i can't afford insurance when i'm there i hear it and it and i have advocated for some changes to our t bill which is our capital bill that manages everything transportation to be more accessible to renter as as the only renter in the senate to be more accessible to people who a lot tax credits aren't going to be helpful for because i just don't have the upfront money to put in so you give me a tax credit that doesn't help me because because i'm not in an income bracket where that actually is is beneficial where i can even access that benefit so i'm always happy to hear these things and and advocate with our with our transportation committees um but the short answer to all of your questions is no i just want to i want to jump in and encourage i was really i'd like to just say something pre-mountain transit has uh through a consultant to the transportation committees i think in the house and maybe in the senate as well uh alternatives for funding public transportation because the current funding formulas that we use really don't work and um it's it depends on whether you're urban or rural how how you have to go after funds from communities that you serve and in some cases you have to go out and and get a petition sign before the select board will approve an increase and that's not working uh where we're we've really green mountain transit has cut its workforce back and it's on the verge of cutting services because it just doesn't have enough money to operate so in the last session i believe there was a number of proposals sort of a wide um uh proposals to collect money say from electric utilities all right a small amount each month from each account to help pay for public transportation specifically that that pitch was given to to sustain green mountain transit's fair free policy but um it hasn't gone anywhere and as of this week we've proposed that GMT's get a reimposed fares in july so um if there's no movement that's gonna happen move it we need your help i need your help i'm here to help but we but but i want to work in partnership i mean we need all of you to be telling our transportation committee that and i'm on the inside fighting for this but we're gonna i want to work together yes i agree do we have other questions here are people want to make comments awesome quick one maybe okay uh hey folks um you're right here uh so i understand that the clean heat standard bill that got vetoed by the governor is coming back in new form um now hasn't been a lot of comment on uh climate change and environmental justice issues so i just uh kind of wanted to see where new four are are going to be at on that bill the affordable heat standard correct yeah affordable heating act yeah that's the new name for it um i i am a cosponsor on the bill um tanya i believe you are the senate bill right no um so yeah i'm i'm all for it i know that there's some pushback around um um uh some of the some of the you know intricacies in the bill um but uh i i'm supporting um senator bray and um i i'm i'm supporting the bill at this time sorry i'm i'm tired i'm losing my words so people may or may not know that initially i voted no on the clean heat standard but i did vote to override the governor's veto the reason that i voted no on the clean heat standard was my concern around biofuels and the lack of clarity around how we were going to protect our low and moderate income vermonters from hikes in in rates um in my view the affordable heat stand heating act took the criticism of the clean heat standard and did a reasonable job at addressing many of those issues biofuels are still included in the bill i never anticipated that they wouldn't be however they are capped and that cap decreases over time so it over time it makes biofuels less and less of of a reasonable option um it also has provisions to prevent clear cutting to grow biofuels as well as provisions to incentivize food growth over biofuel growth it's not perfect but it is much better than what than what was in the clean heat standard i want to see what the committee deliberation process looks like around some of the provisions for protection of our lowest income and moderate income vermonters right now it's a lot of incentives for heat pumps and incentives which again as i pointed out earlier if you're really low income tax incentives aren't actually helpful because you don't have the upfront cost so i'm hoping that during the deliberation process they will fine tune what that looks like but my initial read on the affordable heating act is that it is a better bill than the clean heat standard it is not perfect um and there is is definitely room for improvement and and it would be helpful to hear from community organizers and and folks that are really in the most impacted groups as to how we can make that a stronger bill if that bill were to come to the floor today i would probably support it um again it's not perfect um and there is definitely room for improvement but i i also trust the senate committee process that they're that they're really hearing that feedback um you know they literally took all of the criticism of the clean heat standard and tried to address it in some way there's no world in which today we eliminate biofuels however i appreciated the the graduated step down away from biofuels and the protection for our old growth forests and our crop growing lands um so i recognize that as a really complex answer to what should have have been a simple question um but i sit in the space right now of generally being supportive of the changes that have been made and more supportive of this bill than i was the previous bill and hoping that through advocacy and testimony it becomes an even stronger bill through the committee process ryan can you speak to do you know where that is coming back from the house no but i'm just gonna say yes i'll support it yeah i think it was perfect i could just say that you know guys i think we're we're we're running out of time and we're losing our audience so um i want to thank all i want to thank you all we really appreciate it and um goodbye and hopefully you will will hear more from you as the session goes on so thanks a lot for your time and um would you would you be open to meeting with us again in a couple months open to to plugging and i can't be at every meeting all the time always so like yes i'm open to connecting with you but it will depend on kind of where we're at and what the senate schedule looks like um i also know that um senator glick and i will be organizing monthly coffee chats where people can come to us with their issues okay all right we'll keep you posted on the details we're gonna try to do them in each community as well as some zoom opportunities so that instead of having to go to multiple different npa's and select board meetings y'all can come to us in a space we're hoping that sounds however joy and i can come i think so please don't wait for the senate to reach out to us we're happy to come as much as possible yeah it's an easy easy it's typically easy for me um you know there might be the occasional evening where i'm still down in montpellier but i'm always happy to be there typically in person it was just i'm in the hotel right now so i'm on bill ado okay i'm in ward one right now okay guys thank you very much thank you