 Hello. That's very loud. Hello, everyone. Can I have everyone's attention? Clap once if you can hear me. Clap twice if you can hear me. Amazing. Good evening, everyone. Hi, my name is Erica. I'm sorry about that. This is a very sensitive mic. So hi, everyone. This is the wards 2 and 3 MPA meeting. You can't hear me? Oh, okay. It feels very sensitive. So this is the wards 2 and 3 MPA meeting. Thank you all for joining us. I'm going to start off by adopting the agenda. You can see the agenda, a short version of the agenda on everyone's tables. You can also use the QR code to get a more advanced version of the agenda. And yeah, and then I'm going to introduce all of the steering committee members. So my name is Erica Faulkner. I am Ward 2 steering committee member. Do we want to, yeah. Hi, everyone. I'm really loud. My name is Lauren. I am a Ward 3 steering committee member. Hi, everyone. I'm Molly. I'm a Ward 3 steering committee. That didn't happen. I'm Roxanne. I'm a Ward 3 steering committee member. I'm Chris. I'm a Ward 3 steering committee member. I live on College Street. Ward 3 for now steering committee member, but she is back in the kitchen finishing up this wonderful meal we just had. As always, we have an open thing, open application for any new steering committee members. If anyone would like to join, you can get in touch with me or anyone else who's on the committee. Our next meeting will be Thursday. Oh, we didn't update that next meeting will be Thursday, July, July 13. Thank you. We're going to have a public forum for any announcements. Hi, I'm Gene Bergman. I live on St. Louis Street and I'm a member of the city council for Ward 2. The reason I'm making this announcement is because next Tuesday we are having a symposium at City Hall on the McNeil plants operation and the burning of biomass. And anybody who has been following climate change, anybody who has been following this discussion that we're having in Vermont about the burning of wood to fuel electricity and its impact on emissions on health really should come to this event. I'm not really clear about the the end answer, but we are going to have scientists who have been part of the international climate change panel work coming up along with foresters locally and from UVM as well as BED to talk about the operation of the plant to talk about the emissions at the plant to talk about forestry practices and their relationship with the the emissions that come from burning wood. And it's absolutely essential. It's somewhat related to the expansion of McNeil for the purposes of district heating. So it's this is a live issue. And the idea is that we get the information so that we're at least talking the same language we've got the same scientific basis to be making policy decisions. So it's not a debate. It's it's more of a conversation with some folks who we hope will know a lot and can teach us stuff so that we then when we go to make the next decision it's going to be live streamed it's going to be there'll be a zoom link there will it will be live at 630 next Tuesday the 13th at 11 at six. The ICA will be on the channel 17. I'll try my best to do some front porch forms and I hope I see you all there because we'll have enough seating for hundreds. Okay. Does anyone else have any announcements. I am on the board for registration of voters and I just wanted to let everyone know we have a few open positions. If you are interested in applying, they are on the Burlington City website. And if you have any questions, feel free to ask me. Thank you, Lauren. Yes. Hi everyone, I'm Jeannie, one of the people that coordinates the ramble. If you don't know what that is, it's the celebration of creativity and community of the Old North End. It's always on the last Saturday in July and this year it's the 29th, right? Okay, should we check our phones to make sure we're correct? Anything to do with numbers? I'm also an art teacher. Anything to do with numbers? Not my forte. We actually had the 10th anniversary two years in a row. So we called it the second anniversary or the 10th anniversary, it was fun. Anyway, just to let you know, we're hoping to launch next week, which means forms of how to participate, what to do, whatever is happening on the ramble is up to you guys. But we want to, we need to get that information at some point. So we're hoping to launch all of those avenues, which is really just a bunch of Google Forms. Sometime next week, stay tuned. We're hoping front porch form is also gonna sponsor us. And the theme is exalt, gestalt. And will you define, okay, exalt mean like elevate. Will you just put the shirt on? The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, just like our neighborhood. Jen is also on the board with me. Okay, thank you. Amazing, thank you. Does anyone else have any other announcements? Yes. Hi, I'm Brian Perkins and I do music in the Old North End, supporting young people, playing music and playing traditional music in particular. Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, this summer, starting on the 20th in Roosevelt Park, we will have youth music making from four o'clock until six o'clock. Pizza dinner is provided, musical instruments are provided. Young people are encouraged and older people who feel they have something to share with younger people or who wanna support people getting their start in playing music. Please come to Roosevelt Park four to six every weeknight this summer. Amazing, anybody else have any other announcements? Okay, I have a quick announcement with my work. I sometimes will work with and support Sunrise Chittenden and they asked for me to give out an announcement to the public of the Old North End that this Saturday from five to eight p.m., they are going to have a Green New Deal Community Festival right here in the Old North End Community Center. I have information if anyone would like it and I'll put it on the front table but would love to see as many community members come out and support this youth group working for more climate solutions. Amazing. Okay, so last call for any other general public forum things. If not, I'm going to hand it over to Jess to give the community grantee report out. Hi again, everybody. So as folks may remember, the awards two and three NPA had a about a little over $4,000 to allocate to community projects and our grantees did a bunch of wonderful things, everything from festivals to outreach projects to repair shop and so several of our grantees are here tonight and they're going to very briefly tell you about their projects. So if I could have any of the grantees who are here, just come right up. Trav is here, Brian, wonderful. So come up and so you each have about two minutes each. So super quick, tell us about what you did with the grant funds and whether it's something that's a project that's ongoing or completed and I'll let you each just pass it from one to the other and then there are a few grantees who couldn't make it today and I have something to read from them. So why don't we start with you and just introduce yourself, say your project and what happened? Thank you. Hi, I'm Josie here with Luna and we both helped organize Plex which was a like one night arts festival that happens in the Old North End at Junk Teaks and Tang Recording Studio. And yeah, we had a lot of like local artists submit their work from like visual art, wall art, sculpture to like dance and other kinds of performances and some like interactive pieces, some like video screenings. I don't know if I'm missing any other types of art but we had like a lot of different artists doing a lot of different things and a ton of people came out to see and participate and so it was really great and we're super grateful to have had the funding from the NPA. So we mostly use funds to pay for space and with the generosity of Junk Teaks and Tang Recording Studio, we got a super discounted price and we hosted all our performances and artworks there from about 6 p.m. all the way until 1 a.m. And we had free merchandise that we offered to people who came to see the show and we sold or we had around like 200 or 300 people come through that night. It'll be an annual event and hopefully some of the same organizers, all of us or most of us live in the area, we'll hopefully organize it next year. I'm Trav, I'm a member at Laboratory B down on 12 North Street, that slopey building there and we have been hosting the Repair Cafe for almost three years now and so we got the grant and we spent it on, we spent it on food for volunteers and tools. So I think one of the things we got is a new Dremel for repairing things. So we do this Repair Cafe every month, it's the third Saturday, so it's not the day after tomorrow, but a week from the day after tomorrow at 12 North Street. Anything you carry in we can fix or at least we'll try to help you fix it and hopefully you'll learn things in the process. So furniture, bicycles, computers, a lot of clothing comes in, anything, anything you can carry in. It's a lot of fun, we are always looking for more volunteers and we're also open on Thursday night, so actually after this I'm gonna go down there and if you have things that you need fixed, sort of off schedule from Repair Cafe you can come by and people will probably help you out and it's a fun time. Will you go last? Hi everyone, my name is Malik, I'm from Fresh Press BTV and we were fortunate enough to receive a grant from the MPA and we threw a music festival down on the main street landing amphitheater which was newly renovated, which was really cool. So essentially the funds that we received from the MPA were used to put together the community's second Fresh Press Music Festival. The festival brought in hundreds of people to one central location to build a stronger community through music and arts. The grant money was used to rent out the venue for the festival, paid the talent and cover the cost of hiring a professional local studio called NEP Studios to run Sound and Electric. So it was newly renovated, it was really amazing. Felt really nice to this Chris in the space, we got a lot of positive feedback, it was really special to just kind of see how many people we could bring in to one central location and just kind of share our love of music and arts and build a stronger community through that. Since then, we've got a lot of positive feedback from it and we're currently working with Main Street Landing to host another one, possibly do several throughout the years. So really appreciate the grant, that's what it's called but thank you very much. Ben? Were there any other grantees here? I'm gonna read the one from Ivan Clipstein who wasn't able to come tonight. Ivan says, hi everybody, sorry to not be able to make it in person today. I'd like to thank the NPA for providing support for the illustration, design and printing of my everyday neighbor's multilingual community wall calendar. It'll be a full color, freely available, practical collection of down to earth daily art for and about Burlington area's beautiful diverse local communities in their own languages. Ivan says upon navigating deeper into the work for the project in the later months of last year, the details and scope coming into clearer focus and with an unexpected major change in the cost of printing, I decided it would be best to delay the calendar's release by one year. And so he has done the work on the calendar but it'll actually be a 2024 calendar instead of a 2023 calendar. So he says, so in lieu of a recap of the production and release, I'll provide a quick update on the process in progress. He did a very nice job of writing this. With a renewed perspective and more experience, I've been collecting neighbor passersby drawings during this final half of 2023. As of this writing, I've created drawings for approximately 70% of the neighborhood characters. Following collection of all these line drawings, the following steps will be colorization, building of monthly background images, handwritten calligraphy of all the language options and then the final layout. So the final list of languages featured on this calendar will be Arabic, Bosnian, Burmese, Chinese, Dari, French, Kurundi, Nepali, Somali, Spanish, Swahili, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. Additionally, small pictograms of ASL will be included. So this is really truly representing the diverse languages of our community. It's kind of amazing. Along with continued progress on the calendar, additional fundraising and collecting of local sponsors will continue through summer and fall. He's intending to have the printed calendars in hand and ready to distribute for free by December and he thanks everyone for supporting this one-of-a-kind community project. So I can't wait to see this calendar. Great. Farmer's Market. Was there anyone from the Old North End Farmers Market? Tonight? Today? Nope. We have a couple other grantees who couldn't make it today but we'll hear about them later and to cap off our grantee report, I'll hand it over to Brian. Thank you very much, Jess. So I was supported in producing a series of educational classes teaching the Nepali sarangi. This is a sarangi. It is a traditional folkloric fiddle of Nepal and it is extremely common and well-known but there are no local players of this instrument though recognition of it is extremely widespread. So I work with the folkloric musical traditions of the area and to a great extent those are fiddle-based traditions. There's also a course of vocal and other forms of music making but fiddles are pretty much the important instrument at any gathering of traditional musicians and the traditions in Burlington have been made up of what has been brought here by people who have arrived here or traditions that have developed here on their own. So making sure that there's a place and a knowledge of the traditional Nepali sarangi is a really important priority. So we've been running a series of classes with the support of the NPA also with the support of Vermont Folklife and various other institutions teaching providing these instruments to young people and older people and providing instruction both by myself but also by master teacher Sham Nepali who comes up here to visit. And so we've been running these classes we've also done performances at various locations both Nepali cultural celebrations and also school celebrations. And recently I've been bringing some of my younger students onto Church Street to Busk. So keep an eye out for young people playing the sarangi and make sure to encourage them. Thank you for your support. Thank you and thank you to everyone who's been using this grant money to make our neighborhoods so beautiful and so lively. So next up on our agenda we're running a little ahead of time for once which is amazing. We are gonna be hearing from City Place on their phase two updates. There is a presentation that they're gonna have that they're gonna put on the screen but for anyone who would like to view it on their own personal screens you can just use the QR code on the printed agendas and it should take you to a link tree. And I think the first or second link tree will have the presentation just to make it a little easier and accessible for folks. Hello, testing. Great, thank you for having us. My name is Catherine Lang. I'm an architect at Freeman French Freeman. I have been involved in the City Place development for probably six or seven years personally. And I'm here tonight with William Fellows. He's the developer for phase two. And so as you can see on the screen here we're planning to just talk about the phase two project tonight so you can see phase one on the left portion of the screen and I'm not sure why that, oh, there we go. And so the phase two portion of the site is bounded by St. Paul Street to the west, Cherry Street to the north and Church Street to the east. We did present this project a year ago and so tonight is kind of a reconfigured version of the project just feasibility wise it's changed a little bit over the last year. So this is the new proposal for the project. So I plan to just run through the plans quickly. I'll start at the bottom and just kind of run through to the top of the building and then share some renderings as well. So the basement plan, the basement is the same as the existing Burlington Town Center Mall. Essentially that footprint of what remains of the mall now would turn into this project here. And this basement level is the same level as the existing lower level of that mall downtown. So that level gets turned into basically all parking. Level one, so this is on the left side of the screen here on the west, this is the new St. Paul Street. So what they're currently building downtown, this street doesn't exist yet, but it will. And so this will be all retail facing St. Paul Street, the new St. Paul Street. We do have up here on Cherry Street, there's a restaurant entrance and that's dedicated to that restaurant off of Cherry Street. And then we have loading and the garage entry down to the parking level below is off of Cherry as well. On the church street side, we're proposing a large retail space for the majority of that footprint. And then there are four levels of apartments above on Church Street. So that dedicated residential entry is right here on the southern portion of Church Street. So moving up to level two, so again, a very large retail shell space on the St. Paul Street side, on the west side. And then on the east, we get into the residential apartment footprint. So there are four larger apartments on each levels two and three. It's a total of 12 apartments for the entire project on the church street side. So level three is the top floor of the west portion of the site so that facing St. Paul Street. So we're proposing a restaurant and a large terrace with a green roof that would help us with our stormwater retention treatment on the building property. And then on the east side, you see again that residential footprint continuing. As we get up higher, so this is level four. So we're above the building on the west and we step back from Church Street to allow this residential terrace and three large apartments. And then level five is just one apartment and a large terrace on Church Street. So you can see here in section the two-story retail and the restaurant above on the St. Paul Street side and the underground parking. And then this is kind of cutting through the building east-west looking north. So you can see again the two-story retail and restaurant on the west and then the four-story residential building over retail on the east. Here are the proposed building elevations. So the materials are very similar to the phase one of city play. So it's a lot of limestone and brick and trying to stick with those sort of vernacular materials for Burlington. And then some pretty pictures. So this is Cherry Street and this is the bus station. This street here is the new St. Paul Street that is soon to be. And here kind of masked out in white is the phase one of city play. So it's showing how you would just see a corner of this building as you walk down Cherry Street. And just to be perfectly clear. So this is what is currently the old LL Bean building. So that gets replaced with this project here. Yep, the bus station is this on the left portion of the screen. You can see the bus station sort of in white. Yep. So this is almost as if you were standing on the phase one of city place looking at this new building. You can see the two-story limestone facade facing St. Paul Street. And then the restaurant is stepped back far enough from the street that you don't really see it from the St. Paul Street pedestrian way. And then this is our Church Street rendering. So this is showing we have the retail on the ground floor of Church Street. There's two stories of apartments directly on Church Street. And then we step back. So the building really feels like a three-story building when you're on Church Street. And then it steps back with more apartments above. So I think that's about it. Happy to take any questions if anyone has any about the proposed project. Yes. So there is this garage entry off of Cherry Street. So if they are biking or driving a car they would come down this ramp and into the basement parking. There's this portion of the parking garage is likely dedicated to the residences. And then we do have long-term bike parking in this corner of the plan here. I know it's a little bit hard to see. And then there's two dedicated stairs and an elevator up to the residences from that portion. Only. Oh, thank you. I feel I live at the bottom of Cherry Street. I feel strongly that the traffic flow here with the buses and new people coming in and out of Cherry Street and whatever goes into the high school. I think the traffic is really going to be difficult. So I just wanted to express that to you. Is there any other way that people can get in and out beside that? We've had conversations with DPW and we've done a traffic analysis for the site. So this is the place I guess on the site that we all kind of agree is probably the best. We wanted to keep traffic off of St. Paul as much as we could and keep that more pedestrian friendly. We have reduced the capacity of the project to just 12 apartments. So in that sense, there won't be a ton of residential traffic in and out of this site. And do you have any green space in there? Yeah, great question. So on level three, there's this large terrace with a green roof that kind of wraps around it. So that would be open and usable. And then on the residential portion of the project, there are each apartment has either a balcony or a terrace. So each one would have access to outdoor space that's private. I'd like to step back to that traffic analysis. Okay. How was that conducted? So we've hired a traffic engineer, the company that she works for is VHB. And so her job is to, I don't know her process, but she's analyzing the traffic and the peak times that the site is gonna be busiest and making sure that we're not burdening the city's infrastructure. And where are people that are going into the retail spaces? Where are they going to be parking? Yeah, so right now this is a large parking garage that we have planned for the basement. So right now we're showing about 90 spaces. If we dedicate two per apartment, that's 24 that are for the residences. And then the remainder would be for the public for retail use or what have you, employees. Thank you. Hi, thank you so much for going through this. I'm curious about the decision to have a few large apartments. And I'm wondering, given the housing crisis, what, how large they are and like what, yeah, what was informing that decision. Thanks. There's size about 1400 square feet per unit. So they're depending, maybe that's a large two bedroom apartment in Burlington. And that planning of that is not totally set, but we felt that having larger units was better than smaller ones. But, and that more people actually could fit into a larger apartment than into a smaller one in terms of how it's used. That question on parking made me think, is there bike parking part of it? Yeah, so the city of Burlington has bike parking requirements as part of the zoning process. And so in this corner of the parking garage, you can see we have dedicated longterm bike parking. So that's secure overnight bike parking that would be available to both the residences and the public who are either working or shopping at the retail space. So this, the longterm bike parking, I don't remember exactly how many spaces we have allocated, but it's in the 50 range. So it's quite a few. Also, I love that there's balconies in all the apartments. I think that's very commendable. Thank you. Does anyone else have any other questions? Thank you, Molly. Yes, I have one question. The other block, this may not be part of your project, but the other block of St. Paul Street that now is occupied by the bus company, if one is on Pearl Street, will you be able to, for instance, ride your bicycle through that block and continue on St. Paul Street? Is that a through way now? The plan is for this to be a through way, this portion of St. Paul Street. So if you're up on Pearl Street, which is offscreen to the north, you can just see this gray kind of rectangle here. That's the bus station. So that connects down to what's proposed as the new St. Paul Street extension, if you will. And that, you know, that'll be open to whoever. That's a fully public right of way. So you can just pass through. Correct, yeah. The other question, and this may be a little premature, but are there still plans to open Pine Street? Is that still part of the project? Yeah, so that's over here. So the furthest west you can see on the plan is the proposed new Pine Street. And so that's between Macy's is just off this plan to the left. And then city place phase one is here in gray. And this stretch you see here is Pine Street. So that is planned to be a public right of way as well. And that passes directly under the existing 100 Bank Street building in this corner here. Thank you, thanks for the clarification. Yep. Also just to give everyone a time check-in, we have only about two more minutes of this. Besides the part, besides the bike parking, what TDM amenities are you all going to put into this? Yeah, I'm trying to think. So we have for in terms of amenities for the residences and specifically? Yes, transportation demand management to lower the reliance on single occupancy vehicles as part of the zoning ordinance. Yes, thank you. So we are putting together a transportation demand management plan as part of the submission to zoning. I don't think that we have solidified which particular strategies we're going to move forward with, but we do plan to comply. I think we need to select two or three strategies from the list and that's an owner decision that is going to be made in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully this retail space, which is a large retail space in the downtown, could be a store that is in itself an amenity to the neighborhood. With all the apartments that are going to come online from phase one, there's a real need in this part of the downtown for neighborhood services, which would be essentially retail services to the neighborhood. So a new grocery store here would be fantastic. I appreciate the difference. Transportation demand management is fundamentally different. So I'm glad that we'll get some robust things and perhaps they will help the woman on Cherry Street deal with the influx of traffic. Thanks. Hey, are there any other questions? Okay, seeing none, I'm going to move on to our next agenda item. Thank you so much, City Place, for coming and keeping us updated. Thanks for your thoughtful questions and for your time. Thank you. Okay, so our next agenda item is an update from our state legislators. So I'm going to call all of them up front. I think y'all have 25 minutes, but we don't have to use all of that. I'll take five and then Emma can take 20. I was totally kidding, by the way. No, you were. No, I'm just kidding. Just kidding. Emma's representative, Mulvaney-Stanak, who, so I'm Representative Kate Logan. I represent the Chittenden 16 District. So that's Central Old North End in downtown and King and Maple. I served my first term this year. I was elected as a Progressive Democrat last fall, which means, in case you didn't know, the order of the letters makes a difference. You're only allowed to caucus with the party that goes first when you get to the state house. So that choice meant that I was happily a part of the Progressive Caucus and Representative Mulvaney-Stanak is the Progressive Caucus leader for the House of Representatives. First day of the session, I found out that I was assigned to the Committee on Environment and Energy, which turned out to be, it's a huge committee, has a very broad jurisdiction. We passed 10 substantial bills out of our committee this year, but the very first thing that I worked on this year was a bill that did not go through my committee and was a result of hearing from constituent businesses in Burlington. Turns out that bars and performance venues had started having a really hard time finding liquor liability insurance and that our rating as a state was very poor in terms of liquor liability insurance rating. So we had the highest rates of liquor liability insurance in the country besides Alabama. The 126 had been closed for a while. The archives was considering closing because of the high cost of insurance, a bunch of other bars, performance spaces like higher ground, their policies were coming up for renewal and they were gonna find it impossible to continue to operate with the current prices. So this is one of those interesting moments as a representative where I had to learn a lot about liquor liability. Real really fast. It ended up being a bill I collaborated with a bunch of committees, progressives, Democrats, Republicans, the governor's office, the Vermont Chambers of Commerce, kind of everybody got behind it and we got the bar owners from the 126 into the state house to provide testimony and the bill got passed really pretty quickly. So that was my first experience getting a bill passed as a legislator. On my committee, like I said, we passed 10 bills out. I think the ones that you have probably heard the most about are S5, the Affordable Heat Act, which will establish a clean heat standard in the state to help us reduce carbon emissions from the building heating sector. So that one has been going on quite a while. We finally got it passed. The governor vetoed the bill and then the legislature voted to override the governor's veto. What that bill includes, I can go on and on about that. That's like a whole meeting on its own. But essentially, we will not reach our state's carbon emission reduction goals without addressing the fact that nearly between 35 and 40% of emissions in Vermont come from people burning heating fuel of various kinds, fossil fuel, heating fuel, and wood in order to heat their homes or they have extremely energy inefficient homes. So they spend a lot of money on heating their homes and burn a lot of fossil fuels to do that. Low and moderate income for monitors in particular, 80% of those households use a fossil fuel heat source currently, so we need a transition plan of fossil fuel heating sources that directs resources to those households so that they can afford to switch to electricity or less polluting heating sources while they wait in queue to get a heat pump and weatherization and things like that. So it's a 25 year plan to reduce our carbon emissions from the thermal sector by 80% by 2050. And in order to get it passed with a veto-proof majority, the Senate put a checkback mechanism into the bill, which means that all the regulations for this program are gonna be written over the next two years and then in the 2025 session, a bill is gonna come back with those regulations to the legislature and we're gonna have to pass it again in order to actually implement the Affordable Heat Act. So please stay tuned. If you have concerns around biofuels, biomass for heating your home, what the impact on low and moderate income households is gonna be, et cetera, you'll wanna follow the rulemaking process and I'll be putting information out on front porch forum as opportunities to engage locally are available. The other thing that I think if you're interested in the McNeil plant, for example, and long-term use of biomass for creating electricity in Vermont, which so I hope you go on Tuesday. I'll be there, I'll see you there. Yay, another bill that came over to us from the Senate, S-112, I actually can't remember what the rest of the bill was when it got over to us from the Senate. My committee put a study on the renewable energy standard in there, including requiring the public utility commission to implement some equity standards for how renewable energy projects are done in Vermont, so that's a study. That study's gonna take place between now and the next session, so again, I'll reach out by front porch forum and any social media, you can find me on Instagram. I'm terrible at Facebook, but I'm on Instagram, rep, Kate Logan. And the renewable energy standard study is something that folks are gonna wanna stay very engaged in as well because we're gonna, probably not gonna update the renewable energy standard again for several more years. This is our big chance. And we are doing great actually on reducing carbon emissions from the energy sector in Vermont, but we need to do better. Some folks would like us to have a 100% renewable standard by 2030, some would, are okay with 2035. And we also wanna drastically increase the amount of renewable energy being produced in Vermont rather than the way it's done now, which I can go into great detail on that if you'd like me to as well. And then S137 I think is notable. It's called extension of innovative energy efficiency pilot projects and just FYI, in case you don't ever check your BED bill, there's a little link on there for rebates. If you are low or moderate income, you qualify for thousands of dollars of incentives to get a new EV or a used EV, federal tax breaks. And then BED also has programs to help subsidize the cost of installing an EV charger. All targeted towards low and moderate income households. I will be taking advantage of that so you'll see me post about it when that happens. And we also passed as part of that for low and moderate income folks who drive a lot for work, even more incentives. And those will implement in January. It's called a super user program. It's the first in the nation. So that's exciting. And we passed a bunch of other bills too. I'll send out a full update. I think one of the things that we really wanna talk about tonight and I already have planned to talk about is the end of the GA emergency housing program. So my real job that actually pays enough for me to pay my bills, besides being a legislator is as the director for the Vermont Coalition of Runaway and Homeless Youth Programs, also known as V-CRIP. Working in homeless services, we became aware earlier in the year that federal funding was ending for the GA emergency housing program pandemic rules that greatly expanded the availability of emergency housing for people experiencing homelessness. And right now in Vermont, about 80% of our homeless population is housed in hotels. Well, it was, I don't know what the percentage is now that several hundred people were exited last week. None of the hotels people have been living in are in Burlington proper. They were in Shinden County in Colchester, South Burlington and Shelburne. So several hundred, few hundred people were evicted from their homes last week. And I worked statewide in my role. So I've been tracking this issue. And what we, the decision that essentially came out of the legislature this year while we were kicking and screaming about it was that those several hundred folks across the state would be exited from the program last week, meaning losing their housing. And then another 2,000 more were scheduled to be exited at the end of this month. Things have been changing rapidly. We all voted no on the state budget because we felt that it was inhumane to not provide a gradual transition away from this very expensive program. Each one of these hotel rooms is $50,000 a year. Not a particularly efficient use of resources. It seems like we could use that money to house somebody permanently. But we don't have adequate housing. So we've had this tussle. There was just, in my opinion, not enough accurate information provided to the legislature before the end of the session for people to make a good informed decision. That's my most generous assessment of what happened. So we've been fighting it the whole way before the budget decision. And we're still working. We're making progress. The rules have been updated kind of like every four to five days. More people have been considered eligible for longer, et cetera, et cetera. And then I'm gonna pass it to Rep Mulvaney-Stanik who's gonna talk about the whole thing. Thanks, Kate. Hi, everyone. I'm Representative Emma Mulvaney-Stanik. And Representative Brian Cina has just joined as well. I represent it in 17, which is if you're west of Park Street over to that side of the Old North End and then up into the New North End to about the Ethan Allen shopping plaza and the Ethan Allen Park is my district. And so just to pick up briefly on where Kate left off on the unhousing of lots of Vermonters. So there are several legislators, the entire House progressive caucus and then another, I don't know, half a dozen or so Democratic sympathetic lawmakers on the House side have been working diligently since the session ended mid-May to come up with a tangible and realistic and fundable solution. So we would have a just transition for these Vermonters. So we are going back into session on June 20th. We had pre-scheduled that for a veto session. Our governor likes to veto things left and right. Don't know if you've noticed, he holds the record in state history and probably on the country at this point. I can give you a whole long speech about how that is a disruptive way to actually work in government. And he reminds me of a lot of my three-year-old toddler sometimes. I'm gonna be at that conversation for another time. But so we're going back on the 20th. And so we've been working hard to have a policy solution and we're really trying to go collaboratively to the leadership in the legislature to show how possible it is to solve this problem. Nobody in our coalition of lawmakers, whereas Kate was saying, nobody thinks that this program should be the permanent solution, but we can't just put people out on the streets. So you'll hear more about that soon. We're meeting with leadership in the next couple of days. We have found flexible money within the budget. It's an $8.5 billion budget. There is flexible money in there without robbing other pots of money or putting another very important program up against this very important problem that we have. So I just want you to know, even though I'm not gonna get into details tonight, that there is a very viable solution, several actually, and a very viable process that we can still use between now and July 1st. More on that if you, because I know that's the next agenda item. I just wanna briefly just mention a couple other bills that I know impact our community quite a bit. The very important affordable childcare bill, H217, is the bill that that policy finally got dumped into. Again, we can do a school rock. I mean, that whole thing about how government works. It wasn't the first bill, that's the bill that got landed in. It's an incredibly historic bill. We will become leaders in this country with this bill. The governor vetoed it though, and we do have the votes to override that veto when we go back in a couple of weeks. But in that bill, just in a nutshell, we'll finally make an affordable system for working families. So we will dramatically increase the eligibility of CCFAP, which is the subsidy program from pretty low income families qualifying now to moderately income families. It's a phase in, but it will actually now include upwards to $120 or so thousand dollars per household. It'll be subsidized and phased in, of course. If your household makes up to that amount of money, we know there's still affordability issues, especially if you have more than one child in childcare, my kid goes right next door here. It's unaffordable right now, right? So this is a huge investment. It's funded by a very minimal payroll tax to collectively support the cost of making sure the system functions for our economy. It benefits all of us when we can have employers have working families be able to work. It also includes, which I think is incredibly important as a former labor organizer, significant investment to send money directly to childcare centers and home care providers to increase their wages. They are so poorly underpaid, it's ridiculous. It's part of the care economy syndrome that we have where we've undervalued for decades. This critical work that early educators do. So it's gonna be able to infuse significant resources for those workers, provide them benefits probably for the first time. That's why this is so historic. This is, we needed a true transformation of the childcare system. Also in that bill, because I wanna mention it as well as unemployment and workers' compensation pieces in those bills, in that bill, one for the unemployment, we did not, many people don't realize that small employers, nonprofits in particular that three or less employees are currently exempt from the unemployment system. And a lot of Vermonters didn't realize that until we hit the pandemic and people suddenly needed unemployment. They could not access that during the pandemic. So what H217, once we override the veto will do is every employer will be treated the same in Vermont and every worker therefore has access to unemployment. And if you've ever worked in a small nonprofit and you get laid off, that's an incredibly important safety net to be able to access. There's more details there to go into if you're interested. And the workers' comp piece, we also created some important updates in that program that haven't been touched since the early 80s that allow people who are on temporary disability to have a equitable work search requirement. It's pretty critical if you've ever been on workers' compensation. Our system was pretty outdated. So this is a significant update in that realm for workers. The other two things I just wanna mention because I know I've talked before at this MPA about guns. So we did pass H230, and it was another bill S4, but H230 has a few components I've talked about before. I put a bill in that had a similar issues raised in it which include, and the governor allowed this bill to become law without his signature. So we thought he was gonna veto this one. So at least now it's law or we'll be July 1st. But it's pretty critical because Vermont's gun laws have been pretty darn loose compared to many other states in New England at least. So now we will have a 72 hour waiting period before you can buy a gun period. Right now that's not the case. You can walk in, get a quick background check and walk out pretty quickly. It also will require safe storage so that if you own guns, it must be safely locked up. This is particularly important for kids and vulnerable folks who have easy access to guns where people own guns but you will be required to safely secure them. It expands our red flag, our emergency risk protection order system to allow family members and household members to initiate that process. This is also critically important so that people who know people best and know some things are right can actually sound the alarm and go through that process in order to temporarily be able to remove firearms with someone who's just having an unsafe moment to be able to align that with the other ways that we have emergency risk protection orders for other reasons. And then the last thing I wanna end on since I seem to be the queen of the charter changes in Burlington, it is when we have a charter change it must go down to legislature and get considered and voted on. So we had four for keeping track. We actually have five pending when we started the session. Just Cause Eviction is still on the wall. We're pushing hard to get that resolved for next session. It got stuck in the process but we're pushing hard for January for that to be taken up so stay tuned on that. But the other four we all acted on here in Burlington on election reform basically to just put it all in a bucket. Two were no-brainers allowing us to move polling locations to places that are more accessible even if they're not physically inside the ward. This is gonna be very helpful in wards eight and wards four and seven which in four you vote in a Catholic school right now which is not comfortable for many people. And we have the Miller Center right across the street out that way which would be great as a central voting location just as a quick example. We redrew the lines based on the census. That was an easy approval. And then the last two the governor tripped over because he likes to trip over bills again and he vetoed our all resident voting charter change. So we will have to act on that again in the veto session. And again, this is for people who don't have citizenship status here but they're legally here as residents and many have been here for years. We voted overwhelmingly almost 70% to approve the ability for those folks to participate in local elections. So we'll have to take that up in the veto session and he allowed the rank choice voting question to go through without his signature. So we'll be able to implement that for our next election cycle. So every local office basically whether it's mayor on down to school commissioner can be a rank choice voting system. And now the person you've all been waiting for. Drum roll. He's way better about introductions than I am. Brian J. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay, I'm gonna set an alarm for five minutes which is my two minute warning to wrap up. This is a ADH treatment in practice. All right, go. So it's really great to be here with you all although it's also really hard. As you know, as many of you know I'm a clinical social worker, I have a private practice and I also work part-time for the Howard Center in the crisis service and people aren't evicted yet and we're already seeing the consequences of the spike in suicidality and homicidality and hopelessness and despair before people are even kicked out. And I was with Brenda Siegel last Thursday at the Quality Inn and I'm happy to talk more about that later. But what I saw was horrendous. A tremendous failure of the government to care for people and broken promises and another public health emergency about to explode. And so as a frontline worker and a healthcare provider like many others, I'm like living with a lot of stress right now. And if it wasn't for music and performing with Troubadour and Jazz Fest and if it wasn't for all the people helping me with community gardening, with IsGood, I don't know what I would do right now and speaking of that, we are hoping to do some gardening with people at the Pod Village to link the village with the Isham Street corridor gardens. So if anyone wants to help us, please let me know. That's not really my job as a state rep but I just think it's important right now for me like the community is like a rock for me in this time of despair. So that being said, it broke my heart to have to vote no on the state budget that the state budget has amazing investments and benefits in it. But my concern is that one fatal flaw is going to erase all of those investments over time because of the impact of the social determinants of health on public health in the long term. So I'll start by pointing, I'm not gonna talk a lot about the housing crisis because we're gonna focus on that in a minute together in a discussion. But I'm gonna point out a few of the highlights, a few of the things that I think are great that are in the budget. Just checking my time right good. So I'm working on a front porch forum post. I don't do them that often, but there's a lot of numbers in it and it's sometimes hard to get the right number. And so I'm almost done. I was gonna try to post it by today, but I couldn't. So I'll try to do it by tomorrow. So all of this is in there and more. And it's about the true cost of the appropriations and policy of the state in 2023. So I'm gonna just share some sections that didn't get covered yet unless Kate covered it before I walked in. So I wanna talk about healthcare. I'm on the healthcare committee. And our, so in our house healthcare committee, we advocated for strategic investments and policy changes that would improve the healthcare system after decades of neglect and after it being devastated by the impact of the pandemic. We raised rates for health and human service providers which include 5% increase for designated agencies specialized service agencies, 10% for our federally qualified health centers, 10% for primary care providers, 15% for home health providers. We also raised rates for dental providers, EMS, recovery centers, nursing homes, youth service providers and many more. And I'm happy to share a fact sheet with you with all of these things listed out. Unfortunately inflation has been like, like it was 8% last year, 6% this year. So this is barely keeping our healthcare system up, but it does make a big difference. At a time when we're struggling. We also continued incentives for recruitment and retention of health and human service workers. We expanded efforts to prevent death by suicide firearms and homicide and overdose, is what I meant to say, not homicide. Suicide firearms and overdose. We saw record levels of death by overdose and suicide over the last three years. And we've been working hard as a state to address these things, but we did, we took some major action this year to hopefully get ahead. We also are continuing our work to promote health equity and address disparities through funding of the Health Equity Advisory Commission. We spent $5.1 billion out of the $8.4 billion on healthcare in Vermont, but that draws down more from the federal government. I don't know the exact number, something like 6 point something billion. So it may sound like a lot of money, but it also brings a lot of money in, but we do spend a lot on healthcare. And yeah, healthcare. Okay, we spend a lot on healthcare and people are struggling to access healthcare. 38% of Vermonters age 64, younger, are under insured at a time when insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies are making record profits. So I just wanna point that out. And that all of this spending on healthcare, it has a 20% impact on health outcomes over time. So what's the other 80%? Well, 50% of it are the other social determinants of health. Things like education, addressing poverty, food and nutrition, housing. So if an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, then we need to be thinking about how to spend more on those things moving forward. And I'd like to just give a shout out to my colleague here who mentioned universal school meals. We did take action to guarantee food access for kids. We lifted the ban on state aid for school construction and Burlington's gonna get 16 million to help with our new high school. And we're gonna be helping communities all around the state create environments that are not physically toxic for youth as we look at changing policies in the school around discrimination and bullying to make it less socially toxic because the true cost takes into account not only money, but the social impact. Okay, so that's my five minute warning. Wow, seven minutes is a lot, right? But it's good because I'm not rushing. Maybe you feel like I am, I feel like I'm not rushing for once. It's because I'm not trying to tell you everything. So let's see, so last but not least, let's talk about, let me set a one minute reminder. Hold on. What, it's gonna make us stay on time, right? If only all politicians time themselves. So let's talk about one of the greatest expenses for government, state and national corrections. We spend a massive amount money on a correction system that has very few benefits and causes a tremendous amount of harm for the workers and the people living in carceral facilities. The state is on sort of at a crossroads where we're looking at replacing the women's facility and I shout out to free her, Vermont and the National Council have incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women and girls. I finally can say it like without messing that long name up for working with me and others on fighting for a moratorium on prisons while we look at alternatives to incarceration. There's some great examples out there. I'm gonna write an op-ed later this summer about this so you'll hear more then. But through our advocacy, we've been able to get the capital bill to say that any corrections infrastructure from this point forward in history has to be evidence-based wellness environments that are trauma-informed. The research shows that incarceration can't be trauma-informed but at least now we're acknowledging that we don't wanna cause trauma in our infrastructure and a special thanks to the administration because the governor's, the commissioner of corrections has agreed to let free her participate in the working group and my next job is to go to him and try to show him how the 33 million we spend a year on a contractor from out of state called WellPath who we'll talk about later, look him up, could be spent differently paying community-based providers to go to do the work. And so I'm excited to keep working with free her on coming up with alternatives to incarceration and that those investments will save us money in the long-term so it's important in closing to think about not only the economic cost but the social cost of our decisions and in our next discussion we'll talk more about why I voted no on this budget and about why this budget is gonna erase all those gains through this one mistake that affects our most vulnerable, thank you. Thank you all. So our next portion, our final portion is opening up a housing and camping discussion. So I was wondering if we wanted to start off by having like city counselors come up and give a brief talk about that or if we wanna just open it up to start a community discussion, whatever folks are comfortable in feeling. Hi everyone, my name is Joe McGee. I am the city counselor for Ward 3 so Western part of the Old North End and downtown. And I am here with Jean. Stop, oh, there we go, I'm back. So I would be happy to kick off with remarks or happy to answer questions that folks have because I know that camping is on a lot of folks' minds right now and I would also welcome state reps to kind of talk about how we got here and what happened with the state budget and why the Motel Voucher program is changing the way it is and what the impact of that is. And then we can kind of go into what some of the solutions are that the city is working on and talk about that. So however folks wanna handle this, 30 minutes. One thing I also forgot to mention earlier, if you are speaking, if you can speak into a microphone and make sure that folks on Zoom and the recording are able to hear it. Is everybody really familiar with how many and the types of people who are currently residing in the hotels, sort of the demographics? I think this is really helpful for thinking about what happens next. All of the folks who were exited from the hotel rooms last week were there because of the adverse weather conditions policy that was extended through the end of May for this year by the legislature earlier in the session when the federal funding ended that had expanded it. And those are folks who qualify for the program in a number of ways, but primarily by being homeless. And I will note, everybody who has been staying in a hotel room is technically by federal standards, homeless because they're not permanently housed. Someone is considered homeless until permanently housed. So that means if the individual household is living in transitional housing or in an emergency shelter, so physically in a place or even in a hotel room, that household is a homeless household until permanently housed. So all 2,800 individuals in 1,800 households who are still in those hotel rooms are folks who are waiting for permanent housing. Many of them already qualified for rental assistance, but because we have a less than 1% rental housing vacancy rate in our state, those folks are competing with people who can just pay market rate. We have an enormous pressure on housing. I work with young adults providing rental assistance for young adults, homeless, young adults all over the state from 18 to 24 years old. And we have the highest rate of youth homelessness that we've ever had ever in Vermont. Already going into this. And now as it's just gonna having an unsheltered youth population and not just 18 to 24 year olds, but teenagers, unsheltered teenage homeless population in Vermont, I have an 18 year old and a 21 year old, not acceptable. At the end of July, 304 of the households who will be exited potentially from the program, the rules just changed yesterday, but as of the day before yesterday, 304 households would be exited at the end of July, our families, and that includes over 700 children, which I can't barely get myself to say it. And this includes teenagers, and I don't know if any of you parent teenagers, but if you're 15 or 16 year old had to live in a car or a tent with you for the summer, they would not be living in a car or a tent with you for very long. They'd go find something else to do. So this would create the most significant crisis of unsheltered minor homelessness in the Northeast in a very long time. Over 600 households who are currently set to be exited at the end of July are people with documented disabilities who require supportive housing, who we are exiting to shelterless housing, because the other piece of this, not only do we not have rental housing, we don't have supportive housing, we don't have emergency shelter beds available, we don't have family shelter beds available. We have nowhere for people to go, so that's 2,000 people. Other folks included in that group are people who are over the age of 60, people who are households fleeing domestic violence, people who lost their housing due to catastrophic events like floods or pests in the household. So yeah, that's the group of people that the legislature decided it was okay to exit into unsheltered homelessness this summer. And it is very costly to maintain that program. The budget has an enormous amount of resources in it to build new housing, to build new shelter, to build new permanent supported housing. We've raised provider reimbursement rates, so providers will be paid better to do the work, but those are all longer-term investments, and so we need something like, we have that long-term vision, fairly well-funded. My committee also did a lot of work on zoning and development policy so that we can build more housing more quickly, but we need to get from where we're at, 2,000 people in hotel rooms who are all very vulnerable people to where they can transition out of those hotel rooms and into better housing situations. And so that's what we're working on right now, as Rep Mulvaney Stanek said, and I think we're in a good position to do something about that. So that's how we got into this situation a little bit and the scope of the problem. And that includes about 500 people in Chittenden County alone, but 25% of everybody living in hotels is in Rutland County right now for reasons that don't make sense considering the size of the county. Thank you so much, Representative Logan, for outlying the scope of the problem and kind of doing a good baseline for this discussion. Wondering. I'll just quickly touch on what the city discussed. The city council had a work session on Monday evening. We got a presentation from Sarah Russell, who works with CEDO. She's the special assistant and homelessness for the city of Burlington. She, along with others in the administration, had been working with the Agency of Human Services. Essentially, since the decision was made final, that this mass exit was gonna happen from the hotels. And so the city has sent in a letter of intent to the state with a proposal to turn the state office building at 108 Cherry Street, so the brick building next to the bus station into a temporary emergency shelter for up to 50 individuals overnight. That will also have a daytime shelter for up to 75 individuals that would operate under the same sort of policy that is currently in place with the Community Resource Center at Feeding Chittenden that's operated by CVOEO. That space currently sees an average of around 160 people a day. And so the decision was made that that space couldn't really accommodate more individuals seeking services there. And so the decision has been made to stand up an additional space where folks can access mental health services, any sort of support that folks who are unsheltered might need. So that includes the folks who would be staying at the shelter and other folks who are unsheltered in the community. And so I think an important part of this conversation is the fact that 194 people were unsheltered on June 1st, over 300, and that's just in Chittenden County, over 300 are expected to lose housing on July 28th unless the legislature comes up with the resources to continue housing, vulnerable populations beyond that date. So clearly a temporary emergency shelter for 50 people is not enough to support the unsheltered population in Burlington right now. The city is also talking with neighboring municipalities, Winooski, South Burlington, Williston, about those municipalities also setting up temporary emergency housing. I think that will help. There are folks who for a number of reasons, congregate emergency housing does not work. And so we're gonna see increases in the number of folks who are camping or simply just sleeping outside. And so myself, Councilor Bergman, we have been really pushing the city to come up with a plan that is more compassionate that acknowledges this reality. And while we're gonna be seeing folks camping in parks, it's really incumbent on us to come up with a plan that says maybe you can't camp on the baseball diamond at Calihan Park, but here's a place where you can go to camp. And so that's something that we have been asking the city to look at, whether it is one or a few sanctioned camping areas where the city and community services could more easily provide support for folks, because it is easier to do that when folks are in one or a few places rather than in dozens of individual campsites throughout the city. And so that would be a more compassionate way for the city to respond to this. I think it would help alleviate a lot of the concerns that many in the community had last year around what was unchecked camping that was happening in several different areas. So I will end the summary portion of it there and open it up for questions. Let me just add a couple of things. Anybody who was out yesterday in that nasty weather, particularly in the downtown area, saw lots of folks hanging out, getting wet, getting cold, and got nowhere to go, right? I brought a couple of people into the UU because there was an event there and there were people that were just out, you know, like just freezing themselves, getting damp. So they didn't have any tents when we talk about camping out. And what we heard at the work session is that means like people just sleeping out, finding a place in a covering, mostly in private properties or public that aren't theirs. So they're private to them, right? And just trying to get out of the weather. And from my point of view, the lack of planning that the state has done and the state administration is one piece of it. But I gotta tell you, as somebody who along with Joe took a lot of grief or I say proudly, putting forward an alternative on encampments, right? This city in my estimation has failed to do the planning and the work that we need to do. And we are seeing an example of that in what's happening out there on the street. And it just sort of cracks me up that we can try to be so accommodating and so reasonable that we could say to the city administration and to the rest of the council, we'd like to study the best way we can deal with people camping out. We'd like you to like look at that. And we had a mayor, we have a mayor who said, no, I don't wanna put any resources into that. I mean, talk about burying your head in the sand. That's just plain stupidity. And the only reason that we got the resolution passed in my mind is because he was absent. And so it freed his democratic colleagues who we actually can work with when there is a desire to make things happen to sit together and come up with something that took out some language that may have indicated that that's all we wanted to do. And that was some how of the solution, which we've never said. But and we want to study it. I can tell you that without public support to demand that human intellectual resources get put into planning and into supports for folks who are forced to figure out how they are going to sleep in the sheltered way that they can. If we do not have folks saying that we need the city to do this, then we will continue to point our finger at everybody else and say, it's your problem, it's them, it's the state. Right now I asked at the work session whether we are asking for any state resources to deal with what we are paying for as a result of this. I live by the Boys and Girls Club. People camp out down the dump road. Anybody who's gone down the 125 bike pass knows that. Anybody who goes down that bike path will see the mounds of garbage that are out there. They're at least now in bags. And Howard isn't picking it up, right? Cots isn't picking it up. Parks and Rec is picking it up when, and I think they are actually doing it. Parks and Rec is sending the urban park rangers. Everybody who pays rent, who is in this room, who's listening online, your rent is going to pay for that. We're not even asking the state to pony up, to help us with that. No, maybe that'll change, you know, because we raised that. But it's gonna be our voices, it's gonna be your voices that say that this crisis can't be born on the backs of those who are suffering it and then the municipalities where people are gravitating to, at least not alone, we'll take our share and we're doing a whole bunch. But we need to do better and we need to really let that message out there, really put it out there that says that y'all need to plan, you need to put the resources in, you need to collaborate. And I think that we've got the components. I don't mean to be saying that we're not going to get there, but it does require us to be really focused on that and to call very directly for folks to join us in ponying up. Thank you so much for that. I wanna open up the floor to questions or comments, discussion. Would anyone like to speak? Yes. I know that this is a long shot and it's probably already been discussed. What about the old YMCA? Has that come out on the table for a possibility and somebody help me on that, please? Well, I can tell you that the city has spent resources, so it's privately owned. It has not been discussed as far as I know, not publicly anyway as a potential solution here, but the city has spent resources. The police department has been through there several times because people have been squatting in there. And I think that speaks to a larger issue that we've had in the community for several years, is whether it's vacant buildings, whether we're looking at Memorial Auditorium, the Y, or the pit downtown, we see examples all over the city of areas where we could have housing, where we could have years ago made a decision that we need more housing in the city. And this is the situation we're in because of that. I think that the state office building, which they've been emptying out, may be a whole lot better just because it's a state building that they're getting rid of, and this is a product of a state policy. So it, and it's right by, I mean, it's pretty central too, it's right by the bus station. I mean, there are lots of reasons why, a Y could fit that, it's by the library, it's by the Y, new Y, it's right close to, but I think that is Y, and the figures are like one, it's in here 1.5 to two, to turn that into, I think it is congregate housing, right? So it, but that doesn't deal with families. I mean, we've got lots of work that we've got to do. And I mean, we have as a city, I mean, I'm critical, obviously, but we have put a lot of new resources in. The pods did not happen just by accident and they didn't happen without opposition. Getting Sarah Russell in that position is a step up. So I mean, I wanna be fair for the work that's been done, it's necessary but insufficient. And people who try to rest on their laurels is not gonna do us any well. So I think that's basically the answer on that. And I have a related answer, I'm back here, I'll come up front so you don't have to hurt your neck. So that the state is looking at this right now. Oh my keys, please, that's all I need. I'll get arrested breaking into our shop, breaking into my own house. So I shouldn't joke about that though, because it happens. So the state is looking at abandoned properties, dilapidated properties. So if people see places around town, I think it's great to reach out to electeds and say, what about this place? What about that place? Because with some coordination between the private sector and public, we probably could more rapidly rehouse people. Another idea is that I've had, that I'm hoping the city will consider, is looking for municipal and state-owned land and trying to rapidly develop it. So I know this isn't shelter, it's more permanent housing, but we could potentially use some sites as shelter while we're building permanent housing nearby. So there's a lot we are doing, but there's more we can do and I think people need to keep the ideas flowing. And then just something someone said earlier, I wanna comment on and then I wanna let, there's two more people who wanna ask questions, but I wanna say this now, so then hopefully I'll have to talk again, that when we think about the true cost of this decision, that I'm not gonna whip the numbers out right now, but it's like over $1,000 a night in the emergency room. So one unhoused person who ends up in an emergency room because of this, that's almost like seven nights in the hotel. So by kicking people out, we're gonna, all those savings are gonna be erased through these, through healthcare system and then there's corrections, which is a whole other layer to this. And then another cost that people are not considering, like we've mentioned the cost on individuals and on municipalities, but what about the neighborhoods? What happens when people are angry and hurting and they have nowhere to go? They break in the cars when they're cold, they take things off people's porches. I know a guy who says every time he drinks his bottle of wine, he purposely breaks it because he wants people to see the glass so that they at least see him, because he's not seen. That to our communities is immense. And so we really need to be thinking about that and moving fast. I just wanted to put that out there because people don't always think about the full cost, but it's actually way greater than we realize. So the federal government's had a homeless assistant program for ever, Section A program. And there's currently, it works really, really well. It's slow and cumbersome and it only, it relies on existing housing, but it does work. I've seen it, helped people participate it and so forth. How come there isn't a little bit more working with the federal government and Burlington, BH, housing authority to accomplish this to some degree with the pre-exhausting, at least office infrastructure they have? Yeah, that's a great question. Well, so unfortunately the housing choice voucher program, the wait list is closed and it's full. So on average for somebody who makes less than 30% of the area median income in their household size, those are the folks who qualify for the housing choice voucher. Wait list is full across the entire state and it's taking an average of nine to 12 months for people with those vouchers to find a unit because that's how slow the turnover is. So we have to build housing and perhaps they have property that they could be using. I think people are trying to be very creative and before I came to this meeting, I went to another meeting, the Chittenden County Housing Alliance meeting. There were 60 people in the room, most of them were social service providers. They're all working on plans and putting funding proposals into the state government. I manage seven federal grants that provide rental assistance across the whole state. My least, my most underspent grant is the one for rental assistance. We got youth, 18 to 24 year olds enrolled into this program. They qualify by income. They do everything. They jump through all the hoops. There are a million hoops, it takes forever. It's insulting, it's invasive. You have to subject your whole life to a human being in order to qualify for this rental assistance. It takes weeks to get it approved and then once these youth get these housing choice, and let's just be clear. If a youth qualifies for a rapid rehousing voucher in Vermont, that means they don't have an adult in their life who can help them sign a lease. Not one adult in their life who can help them. And then they wait nine to 12 months to find an apartment. That's the situation we're in. All the people, so we have to build more housing. We worked on a housing bill in the legislature this year that will fast track housing development in Burlington in particular, throughout Burlington. It's going to mandate that anywhere you could have built a single family home, now you have to be willing to build a fourplex on that same lot. Gives act 250 exemptions, so the zoning permitting process is gonna go faster, but we have to build more housing. And we have money to build the housing. We have money to house people in the housing once the housing's built, but we don't have housing for people to live in. Partly that has to do with Airbnb's. There are 2,500 additional Airbnb units in Vermont than there were five years ago. It also has to do with the fact that there are a bunch of very wealthy people living in Vermont who have second and third homes here. 30% of our housing is vacant year round in Vermont. So, you know, but we can't get to those people's property. It's theirs. You know, actually we need to look at progressive alternatives to the existing tax system. And that's something that we are doing. And we'll look at the short-term rental unit in Burlington, 660 plus units. I think it's units and not beds are in short-term rentals. We have taxed them significantly and there's a significant amount of money that's going into the housing trust fund. What we're doing with it is something that we've asked, but we haven't really gotten good answers. And to answer the question before in terms of section eight, and I think we've gotta be really bold and innovative to overcome the Reagan era prohibition on us building federal housing projects or housing projects that are affordable. Fundamentally what we went to is the lovely neoliberal market system which says we do this by tax credits. And we eliminated all of the monies that went in to build Riverside, that built Decker Towers, that built a bunch of other places in town and all around the country. And we said we're gonna do this because the private sector somehow magically is the best thing since sliced bread. And we have eliminated that as an option. So then we just have to rely on the private market and all of that financing. There are a few and I'm trying, I can't cry it off the top of my head. No, there are a few places in the country that are experimenting with more state-based projects. I think California is actually doing that. The bonding authority. I think that at the end of the day, status quo politics is failing on every single level of our existence. And we've got to look fundamentally at something entirely different. And so social housing and the tax structures to get there, we need to do, but I say that really vehemently. It is not a short-term solution. It's not gonna get us there real quick. But if we don't put it on the table, this is a family show. So I'll just say we're screwed. Thanks a lot. So I came here tonight for this part of the meeting to talk about camping out in the parks, camping out in our parks. And what's happening over the past couple of years, I take my kids out, I go out to the parks and I see people in these tents and I see messes and it's kind of spooky and it's kind of scary and it sucks and I don't see the city doing much for it. And what I wanted to find out, a couple things, is it possible for us to have a congregate, large tent space, I have a dream. There's a large tent space, there's cots, there's heating, there's food, there's bathrooms, there's staff and people are safe in numbers. They're not scattered everywhere. It's advertised in town. Social workers are going out, telling people where to go and how to get there. The people are taking care of outside. It's a hell of a lot cheaper. It's a lot sooner. It's already happening and it's taking responsibility. It's gonna cost money. These other programs we're talking about from the feds from the state's gonna cost money too, but that's a long time away. And things are happening now. The weather sucks, it's terrible as you just mentioned Jean. It's horrible out there. And that's gonna get smokin' hot. And we need to provide concentrated, professionally staffed areas for people to be in where they're gonna feel safe and the public isn't gonna feel this animosity towards people camping out in buildings, in their front yards, in their cars. And we need to set up spaces and we need to do it now. I need you to come to the city council meeting and tell the mayor that his decision to not look at that, to not study it, to not consider it, to not, to not, to not is not acceptable. I need you to come and say that the current policy, which somehow has been blamed on the progressives for putting forward an alternative policy, which they buried, isn't working. And that all this stuff is happening and they're not doing enough about it. And so the current policy is now being re-looked at because we have actually succeeded in getting new resources that are non-sworn officers to come and deal with stuff. So they're starting, they actually put forward, for the first time that I saw, that they are now looking at the way that they're implementing their new policy. It was news, it came out on Monday to us. And they're looking at rewriting the policy, but you know what they don't have on there? They have no role for the city council at all. The current policy has major problems and it is exactly what is going on. And they are not even dealing with elected officials, let alone the community. So we need folks to, we need folks to say that camping is not a solution. We're not saying it is, but it's a need. And you've got to put resources into it and you all know because even the feds have laid out the plan that you've got to have to go along if you're gonna have sanctioned camping. So you're gonna have to put resources into that. So what is the plan to do that? So we need folks to do that because right now, the situation is based on a city policy which is created by the Weinberger administration and is maintained by the Weinberger administration and is done by them. And everybody else has just cut out. And Sears Lane in part was a problem because they had a policy and they didn't follow it and they said, you know what, we don't need to follow it. It's a policy, but yeah, it's just something we can aspire to. I'm sorry to interrupt, I'm sorry. Just giving an eye to the time, we said this would end at 8.15 and it is 8.15. I just wanted to give like another minute for any other community questions before we put a close. Thank you for saving me for myself. Of course, yes. Let me just give you a mine, Shelby. Hello, that's better. I have two things. One is just a statement and I, yeah, I'm like, I'm noticing I live on Manhattan and you know, the old dump folks are starting to camp in the field and I'm feeling a little bummed out about that, but it is what I feel like that's gonna be covered in tents probably. And I'm wondering, I know a few, I think Brian was talking a few months ago about putting a cap, oh no, it was someone else, putting a cap on UVM accepted students, is anything happened with that? Troy. We are, I mean, yes. So the state legislator introduced a bill, I don't think it passed. So right, but we are, they wanna build on Trinity and we have told them as a city and I think we're pretty uniform in saying you gotta deal with the housing crisis. And I can tell you, from my standpoint, that one vote out of 12 is that I will not support anything that UVM wants, not a stop sign, not a paint line, not anything, unless they deal really significantly with the housing students because otherwise, we are just chasing our tail. And that's what they are having us do. So we're in, I don't know that we're in negotiations right now but there have been those talks and they just ended their school year so maybe that's why they just put, they went to the DRB with an institutional parking plan and they were getting pressure to deal, to reduce the amount of cars and their impact. So, the housing thing is the next step that we'll do but we need you, we need everybody here to come to the council and say you want, we have a housing crisis, UVM has to deal with this because otherwise we're never gonna solve it because you'll just keep increasing the number of people that are here and we got a whole bunch of other people, you wanna bring them, house them. So we need you to do that. Completely. I need you to do that. Completely agree, thank you. Anyone else have any comments? And if not, I think we're gonna close out for the night. I could just really quickly. Of course. Gene has asked everyone to show up several times to the city council. Showing up in person is difficult on a Monday night. I know that so you are able to zoom in and emails are just as effective. So, to the extent that you are able and willing to write to the full city council and city council at BurlingtonVT.gov, you know, all 12 city council will get that email. And I think, you know, the more people who are communicating these needs, these community needs to the city council, the more power that gives us to be able to say, look, this is what people are saying we need to do and we need to do it. So, that is just my closing pitch for the night. So, thank you all. Thank you so much for those kind words closing us out and we're gonna end this. Thank you all. Have a good night.