 Monday, December 20th at 5 or 6 p.m. We'll be confused about what's going on. We have two members who are here in person. Two members who are on the, on the zoom. And we, our next member Councillor Jenner will be joining us in person shortly. But we're going to get started. The first item on the agenda is the agenda. We have a second. Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Any discussion of the agenda? All those of you are motionfully saying I propose. Motion carries unanimously. We have an agenda. And that brings us to the public forum. Your personal motion to speak to the board. Is there anyone on zoom? Who would like to speak? You may use the raise hand function. No one. We will close public forums. We will move to. 3.01, which is the reclassification of one role within the human resources department. You may speak to this. For motion. Interesting. We've got the first three items. Well, there's a lot of these. I don't know. I don't know if you want to go. I don't know. I'm thinking maybe there might be an option. Just get an overview of everything, but that's a lot. So. I would like to at least hear like a little bit. Okay. Let's try to move through. Go ahead. Okay. So the first one being human resources. We recently. We were looking for. Responsibility. And it didn't feel that we were able to get the caliber of. That we were looking for. So we decided to bolster the job description of reassess. And we have. A higher level. To percent. For your approval. Okay. Tony, that is great. I would just add that. When we were unsuccessful in the recruit. We approached some of. The human resources partners. That we work with both formally and informally. To get some advice on why we weren't able to get a quality. Candidate. So it's not like. We simply. Had an unsuccessful recruit. And then immediately jumped to this. There was a pause. And certainly a period of reflection and seeking input. I also want to thank Tony for stepping in. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm on this night when there are a lot of HR items. Director derpy intended to be here. And has great family news. Because she's becoming a grandmother again. As we speak. So she can't be here. And thank you, Tony, for stepping in. Ready for motion. Questions. Council. Thanks. I'm not on mute. Yes. You know, I don't know if this is a. Generalization that you can make or not. But it appears as though. At least in this case and in several of the others. That. It was either a reclass or a retitling. And in many cases. The position. And I don't know if this is a general. Generalization that you can make or not. But it appears as though. At least in this case and in several of the others. That. The position. Like in this case, it went from. A benefits manager. To a benefits and risk management. And the grade increased from a 19 to a 23. Did the position change. Because you were having a difficult time finding someone. It's not a personal responsibility. You were able to make the job more attractive to candidates. That is a piece of it. The other people that we spoke to both. Our experts at. Hickok and board man and. Tony helped me out. Thank you. In talking to both of them, a big thing challenge that we've been trying to overcome not just in HR but elsewhere in the city is making sure that we have a clearly identified deputy position in each of the departments. And frankly what we have seen in HR is that because it's a mayoral appointment, there are lags and we have a great HR team but it is a team of equals and so we really need to create more of a named deputy assistant director not just to hire someone but to keep this team going in between mayoral appointments and to really provide additional leadership. So that's the real driving force here was we decided this we don't know when we'll get to create another position in such a small department so we should take the opportunity to do that now. Okay all right that is just my question. I think we're still questions or are we ready for a motion? Council call. Thanks so I'll make a motion to take the recommended action as listed on board docs for item 3.01. If we're doing these one at a time and I assume we are. I'll second that. Thank you for the discussion. All those in motion please say aye. Aye. Very opposed. The motion carries unanimously. That brings us to 3.02. Precision classification of one, PCA position. Do you want to give a quick, might give a quick summary? Yeah. Don't see Glory in one second. I'm sure they can speak to this. Much better. But basically this was envisioned initially as a board for the sponsorship aspect of PCA service capacity or temporary role. And after looking at the organization a little more strategically and assess the needs of PCA as it currently sits they decided to add this as a regular role that encompasses not only the support piece for the sponsorship and that arm of PCA but also the marketing support that is needed. There was quite enough for like one full rule or two positions. One position so kind of looking at needs were to kind of comply to this one. I would just add that when I first spoke with Dorian and Sarah about this, this was originally two positions and they have an incumbent candidate who is able to fill a full-time position to move from part-time to full-time. And this is obviously something that in our current climate the need for development resources is only accelerating. So it does not seem that limited service is appropriate. So it's something we would want to make sure was regular. So that was the thinking behind that. Thank you, Catherine and Tony. The floor is open. This is promoting Councillor Jang here. We are on item 3.02. We just abandoned a quick introduction of it. Any discussion or are we ready for motion? Councillor Paul. I'm sorry about that. I'll make a motion to take the action that's recommended on Board Docks. Thank you. Is there a second? Okay. Tracy, discussion? Seeing none. I'll vote. All those of you who are emotionally sad. All right. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And that brings us to 3.03, which is the classification, reclassification of PSEED-O Assistant Director for Administration of Finance Position. Tony, could you do a quick summary here? Also, excuse me, Mayor Director Pine is also on the line. Brian, would you like to take a lead on kicking this up? Sure. I'd be happy to. I'll be brief. The reason for seeking a reclassification of this position is because the duties of this Assistant Director really shifted in 2020 and took on significant additional responsibilities with respect to our department budget and continues to be a core function of this position. And as a result, that level of responsibility, in addition to increased oversight of a number of new initiatives at the sort of managerial level, it just seemed like it was time to revisit. And so HR went through the reclassification and using the Willis system, of course, and came up with a bump up from the previous classification to what's being proposed here. So it's from a 22 to a 24. And we have the ability to absorb that in our existing budget, so it doesn't require any budget amendment. But we felt that this was appropriate to bring this forward now. Very good. Thank you, Councillor Pine. I would like to make the motion as indicated on board now. Thank you, Councillor Jiang. Is there a second? Second. Second, for Councillor Paul. Discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favour, motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And we're nothing to be referring to before, which is a reclassification before our clerk-treasurer positions. Catherine, would you like to take this up? Poor Tony has also been offering excellent support on this. I will just say in this motion, I am asking to reclassify two CT positions up and two CT positions down. And this is because, as I have mentioned previously, we have had and are still having several members of CT retire. And as we are looking at responsibilities, it is allowing for some members of our team to take on expanded roles. And that's what the reclassifying up is. And so as they take on more, we can hire for more entry level and hope to fill those positions and again provide professional development. So that's what we're going for in CT. I'm happy to answer any questions if there are any. Just recognizing that these are community positions, just wondering what the conversations would like to ask me on this. Yeah, I can speak to that. We follow the CDA to the lender here and comment in advance of our grading and also share the grading results with that after we've heard of this agreement with what we ended up scoring. Thank you. Thank you for a motion or further discussion? I would like to make the motion as indicated on the agenda. Thank you, Councillor Ting. Second. And second by Councillor Powell. Further discussion around 3.04. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, motion please add. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And to 3.05, reclassification of the limited assistant to the limited service asset management coordinator to regular full-time asset management and GIS coordinator and move to the C department. Now, this one is very confusing, which is why I'm going to ask that about who would speak to it. Surprisingly, it's director Martha Keenan, who is the current supervisor and she's joining us by Zoom, so I would ask that she give us a quick intro, please. So the asset management has been, was originally under my position when I was in public works and it's over the time of the asset management program being implemented. It has turned out that this position has done a lot with GIS and also with various software programs and ended up working with both Scott Duckworth and Jay Appleton extensively on this and really is a software-based position that deals with all of the various different departments and therefore HR looked at where it might sit and came up with INT and so that is the request. I would just add that the other request is to take it from limited service to full-time and we are so grateful to DPW, specifically our friends, Chapin, Spencer and Norm Baldwin for getting this asset management program up and running. Most of you know I was in the office for something like two to three weeks before COVID during that time. Chapin harangued me into a launch at the Great Northern and made me think like life at the city is going to be so awesome. I love this place. I love these people and got me all on board with asset management and now two years later we have an actual program and it's doing really well and we realize that you can't just have a software program. We will continue to need a coordinator to help us with the care and feeding and that's what this is. Thank you for filling that out. I think I did mean to cut anyone off. I would make a motion to actions as recommended in board talks. Seconded by person Tracy. Discussion? Yes, a couple of questions and I think the first one is you know I understand limited service to full-time. I understand that and also to move it from a department to another one but I did not understand why the pay grade has to change. He is doing many more things than was in his original job description. There's actually a request for a retro pay as he has been doing duties above and beyond the actual job description and when we asked him to list them and then had it graded it came out at a higher grade. Based on my understanding also we did hire an asset management consultant and I remember them doing a presentation to the city council last year or two years ago. Now that we have a full-time position will we require in the future hiring a consultant to help support this type of work? No, we have actually the consultant is still helping us finalize our implementation but on completion of the implementation we will be on our own and working with our team within the city. Thank you. Further discussion? We have a motion. Is that ready? So no further discussion. We will go to vote. All those here in motion please add. All right. Motion carries unanimously. Creation. Listing this elimination and creation. This is a no more DPI. Thank you Mr. Mayor. See you look in my watch. I will keep it free. I'm excited about this because it's one of the biggest changes since we went to the one-stop shop and then got into the new permit software but we are in a position now to request elimination of a position, a customer service position and repurpose that and create a second electrical inspector. What we have is a new software system, a permitting software called opengov that has created a lot of efficiencies and allowed our staff to work a lot better together not just with themselves but with the public. As one of the great advantages we have fewer lobby visits staff estimate that it's probably greater than 75% reduction in the number of customers that physically now come into the office. Many of the ones that physically still come in actually want to do that for some purpose rather to meet with someone but the financial changes have meant that about 90% of the financial transactions are now taking place online rather than in person. So we had a staff member who left to go into the CEDO department part of the led program and as a result that customer service position was vacant. We asked our staff what the greatest need was. They almost unanimously said Tim Hennessy who's doing a great job as our electrical inspector needs some help because he's regularly backed up for weeks for inspections. It's probably the number one complaint I get from customers that they like to have inspections faster. So this feels like a win-win that we can help Tim out, we can help customers out, reduce that wait time and the result will be something that we can do in a budget neutral fashion for this year because we've had that vacancy from the current position and we're looking to fill the second position as a permit tech. That position has been open for a few months now. We have a little extra revenue to be able to cover the difference between the grade 14 and grade 19 position that'll be created and again I think this will be a great benefit to all of our customers and particularly to our staff. Certainly this is an area where we get a lot of questions for our customers. That's Paul. Thanks so much. Phil just wanted to say you know kudos to you for seeing a tremendous opportunity and addressing it this way. I don't know how many times I've heard from people about the amount of wait time on electrical inspections and seeing this opportunity with a person who is resigning to take another job within the city and being able to get a second electrical inspector I think is just awesome news. So congrats and if it's not inappropriate I'm happy to make the motion as recommended on board docs at this time. Excellent. Thank you, Councilor Powell. Is there a second? Thank you. Thank you, Councilor Chiang. Further discussion? Seeing none we'll go to the vote. All those in favor, motion to say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Bill. It's a good work. We will now move to the creation of one regular decision in the office of city planning into the table are still new. I think we can suck on that for a while. Director of Planning, Megan Tuttle. Megan, do you want to give us a short preview here? Sure. Thank you. I'm really glad to be bringing this decision to you tonight and thanks to Tony for all of his help in getting this decision created and all of the details associated with it to be able to bring forward to you tonight. This position emerged as the opportunity that was created by a position that was actually in our 2022 budget to create a senior policy advisor position. We were originally anticipating that that would be a 0.6 FTE position that would be filled at a high level of expertise. We were anticipating the transition of our previous director into that role. With his departure, we reevaluated the needs of our department and the opportunities for creating capacity within the department and felt that we were a much better position to bring on capacity at a level that could support a broad range of projects within the department and support the work of the principal planner as well. So this position is to create a plan. I agreed 18 within the department to support our long-range planning, planning, policy, and planning conditions work. Thank you. Megan. Floors up. I'll move the record. Thank you first. Tracy, second? Second by next. It's our discussion. Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. We'll now go to 3.48 for color books. Hailing, classifying, eliminating, and committing assistance to the department. Welcome to even a norm. So, thank you for delving me in on this long list of items. Public Works and Generic Tech Services team seen a lot of changes over the years and continues to see more changes. So this is an attempt to reconcile all the issues that exist within the team as they exist today with the workload changing. So one of those is the retuning of Fort Burke's engineer to Fort Burke's transportation engineer. As somebody may know, we also have the engineering teams with an OR resource team. So the retuning of this position is really kind of aligned with the work that my team does, which is primarily in the right way itself in transportation systems. That's the first item. The second one is the reclassification of our two associate Fort Burke's engineers from grades 17 to 19. So the associate Fort Burke's engineer positions, and many of the positions on our team were trying to create this latter career-like team. What we found when Susan Mosant that there were gaps between positions and there wasn't a great amount of overlap enough to have people move up within the team. So some of these descriptions really reflect a few things. One is the need, desire to have some measure of overlap in positions for gorilla, but also acknowledging that Susan's absence that we needed to cover many things with the existing team we had. And so there was an increased responsibility with associate engineers in terms of the financial aspect and also smaller contracts. Moving right along, the reclassification inspector. That request comes from, we are more strictly enforcing and managing our property rights within our right away. Traditionally that's been a rule both by myself and Laura Wheelock, the senior engineer, but clearly with all of the work that we've got going on there's no way we can focus that kind of energy effort. And so the execution inspector has been asked to step into that role and meeting with the licensed committee and property owners to reconcile any sort of property rights issues that remain or exist. There is also, as you've seen, the parklets and those sort of things in the right way that need to be inspected, licensed and presented from the council. So those things total and added responsibility to the execution inspector. I would also note that the next item is that we are looking to vacate the capital asset program manager from the responsibilities of this team to the credit chargers office. It seems it makes sense that the general fund have a central office that has no vested interests in the decisions that relate to capital asset management in the priorities it sets. So we are in agreement with the credit chargers office to have that position relocated. Martha had obviously resigned her position and took an opportunity with the CT office. And then one last item and that is the, we've heard from both the public and the council in this last budget presentation that there was an interest in doing more active transportation, those sorts of activities. This does require a different amount of civil support beyond the transportation planning that occurs. As a result, we're asking, requesting the loss of one position with the asset manager to add this code works transportation engineer to our org staff. So that is the long list of items I'm certainly welcome to answer any questions you may have. So one question that I had was with the re-typing. I guess I'm curious as to, there's a number of people at grade 21. It looks like they have different levels of reports. I'm just wondering, with that retry, why those decisions work, the way they work, keep them all at that same level. It looks like some people, you have one who is at grade 21, it's just a, it is a public works transportation engineer, it's a senior transportation plan. Is that just the difference of the order? Yeah, so the in-chain positions on degrees of responsibility and experience. Okay. And do you think that this will help with one of the issues? Yeah, absolutely. That's a little of why we would seek to add this information to try to respond to a little bit of a better form than we are now. The other thing is, there's a lot of quick builds out there that we need to focus some of our civil design to construct permanent. So transitioning from quick builds to more permanent solutions, as well as trying to deal with traffic problems. So, in a different way. This is the hope that we will have a positive effect in trying to resolve some of those outstanding balance issues. Okay, wonderful. Thank you for the discussion. So, I'll move to the recommended action on the core docs. Okay, is there a second? Second by Councillor Jang. Further discussion? We'll go to vote. All those in favor of motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Very opposed? Aye. Looking to carry on the system. Amisley says the city is adjourned. How can we class vacations and commissions within the city attorneys on this? Good evening. I'm here to talk about three positions to our reclassification. One is of retitling in the city attorney's office. The first two are New York is a reclassification for existing positions. As specifically, we're creating a deputy city attorney position and we're creating what we've called the director of litigation. The first of which would be Justin St. James position. The second is Kim Sturman's position. The reason for this is this is sort of a long and making a reclassification to create a sort of clear line out or chain of command such that when the city attorney is available, who will leave the office and that would be the deputy city attorney. But in doing that, we decided that we really needed sort of a twofold examination. The deputy city attorney is really sort of inwardly facing and administratively facing for the office with the both the internal legal advice we give to the city as well as to the administration of the city attorney's office. The director of litigation Kim's position is really trying to house under one sort of roof coordination of all the external and third party litigation of the city that they're involved in because of statutory obligations zoning or because of liability that the city is either being challenged or is taking against a third party. And so with these three classifications, I think we empower both of these. We also recognize the two most senior attorneys in the office and it is a great improvement and retention tool because it recognizes experienced legal training and background as a way of making sure that we have the best in the city attorney's office. The other position is more of a retitling. It doesn't involve any change in salary. And that is the position that we're that we're calling the public records officer. And it's essentially a refocusing of this public information position previously was shared between my office and my treasurer's office. The idea is that we're going to put it entirely in my office. It's going to be focused on public record responses. And the idea is that this person can function as a higher level of doing a lot of exemption review and work right at the gate to make our public records responsiveness more timely, more efficient and to avoid, you know, engaging in the current review of some of these documents, records or body camera footage, just give this public records officer sort of greater ability and recruiting a person greater experience in that to make that efficient and to further that aim of the office. So those are the three positions. Happy to answer any questions you might have. I'd also notice that Justin and Tim are here. They're happy to answer questions. Very excited to give them this opportunity to really sort of recognize the work that they've already been doing and that they hope to do in the coming year. Thank you, Dan. Thank you for bringing this forward. I know it's been something that's been the worst for a long time. Are you suggesting there's questions for you to speak for? Yes. So the floor is open for discussion. So I just have a question on the two questions. The first is that on your memo, on page two of your memo, I think that there was sort of an internal question that you were asking and then probably I presume got the answer. It was sort of like a way at the bottom right after right before a board of finance motion. It said need information about how this will be paid for in FY 22. That is a typo that was answered by the table above it. Okay. All right. Thanks. I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't something else I was missing on. And then the other is on, you know, it seems as though the responsibilities of these positions, they're not the same, but they're, it seems as though they would be, you know, the salaries should be comparable. I mean, you're asking one to be essentially and effectively the stand-in for the city attorney, should the city attorney not be there or, you know, for whatever reason, the city attorney is not able to respond. And I guess I'm just trying to understand why there is a fairly significant difference in the reclass salaries. If the responsibilities are changing, wouldn't that be an opportunity for then the positions to be comparable in terms of reclass salary? Well, if I can answer that, they are comparable in terms of rate, but they are different in terms of step because the current occupants of these offices by different steps. If you start with their current status, you know, Attorney St. James is at 24-7, where his attorney servant is at 24-15. So when, my understanding is that when you apply the new reclassification, you can't ignore their sort of 3D existing salary because this upgrade, this reclassification has to represent a certain percentage. That said, if we do refill this with new people, they will ultimately be the same because they are at the same level and they are above the other three city attorney, assistant city attorneys at the same level. So going forward, they'll start to look more like each other, but the idea that they're going to be precisely the same, I think, can't work in a way, my understanding of the reclassification and step analysis works. Okay. All right. Thanks very much. Further questions? Or are we ready for a motion? That's a poll. I'll take, I'll make a motion to take the action as recommended in Board Ducks. Great. Is there a second? Yep, by Constable Yang. Thank you. Captain Channing. Further discussion? All those in favor of a motion, please say aye. I'm ready to post. Barry, as you know, thank you very much. Thanks, Tony, for all that work. So next up is 3.10, it's an opposition to extend contract terms. Extend contract terms for Park Mobile, Park Management Systems. Yeah, sure. Fundamentally, we have a contract, Park Mobile is a five-year contract, and it inspires the unit from basically down. And we are on the cusp of making some pretty big strides on how we use Park Mobile. Particularly, we're interested in expanding its usage in the resident parking program. So that we don't have to hand out parking permits to thousands and thousands of people, and have those thousands of people manage all of those thousands of pieces of paper, all the things that help with parking. So as we dive into that beginning of the next year, we're very concerned that if we make that jump around June, July, August, we would have to go out to bid. This is a contract that expires from the unit here. So it would take a couple of months for the bid process, if we had a defender with a few months of transition, and it creates a lot of instability in the environment. So we're asking for an extension of two years on the Park Mobile contract. That would give us a three-year run to create some innovative, revolutionary-style products for residents and residents growing. And give us the time to develop and properly have a nice, solid, honest relationship with Park Mobile to partner with us to develop these products and get it out in the street. And there's a bunch of other stuff in the memo. Happy to answer the questions, but that's the way it works. I would more like to see questions. Tracy. I'm curious what kind of user feedback you've received over the last two years on the Park Mobile contract. It's been accepting a lot. Burlington has a huge adoption. We're at over 60% of our global industries right now. And we're running a high-level corporate agreement around this. And from the start of it, the marketplace runs from the start. We're at 55%. So well over half of the people are choosing to use Park Mobile. There are people that don't want another. So, you know, that's a perfect thing that's fine. But for the people that use it and adopted it, they really put a lot of positive, I guess, positive feedback today. This is like in my office. I really love this because when I go to meetings, I get a notification that this was for my time expiring. And in cases where you look back, have you been so glowing or have you been able to address those with Park Mobile even before this or have you been new with this new contract? Well, it's usually around just trying to purge into using the phone. So we still have kiosks. We still pay every meter. We pay with the credit card at the meter. We pay with the coin at the meter. In the garages, we pay with the kiosks with the credit card, with the coin. And on the street, let's say, Paul Street has kiosks. We have multiple ways to pay. And even with Park Mobile, you can pay by text. You can pay by phone. So we've got almost too many ways to pay. So that's usually where the discussion involves. We're on top. They don't like Park Mobile because they don't like Park Mobile. It's they don't like the concept. I've just had one thing to it. They have been responsive when issues have been written. We have had issues such as the concern over the zero to call issue. Some people entered zeroes into the life of the play. Her toes into the life of the play, but they're really zeroes. And we have found, you know, that was an issue that we've had to work with globally in terms of our enforcement team. And we had a like clearly was a big issue. But in terms of functional concerns, Park Mobile has been a partner. We have evolved our offerings with them. They started this island program 2017. I prior to drafting this over to be a response to Park Mobile and Jeff's assistance. Okay. And then just a lot of questions. It's just that, you know, to that end of the memo, tonight conference wanting to continue to work in all of our systems. So this agreement we serve, but this is the flexibility that's necessary to make further changes to our system. And they open to working with us. Yeah, they're actually, they're willing to expand their services to us in detail. Some of them are going to extend some of their services to us either at a discount or for free. And we're interested in taking advantage of that. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Yeah. Yeah. And I actually work with the proposal for the past one or six weeks to sort of work through this. I do have a document from them that's a service, so we're going to work out on that in the next couple of years. Okay. All right. Thank you. Any further discussion? We're ready for motion. I'm sad. Thank you. The collaboration with part of the whole was really with us in the right direction. Number of years now, it's part of this. We're ready for motion. That's Paul. Thanks, mayor. I'm happy to make the motion as recommended in board jobs. Thank you. Councilor Paul, is there a second? Second. Thank you, Councilor Jang. Discussion and questions? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those who favor motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you. Good to hear that. That's fine. And that brings us to 3-4-4-1. It's a request for official 700-50,000 dollar wrap-up of the slide. And property tax flag issue. This is something happened. So we're going to work into Chapter 182 first. Sure. Excuse me. In September, Cara and I and others came to you and requested $250,000 to help alleviate the property tax, excuse me, lag, as we've called it. And this is to account for the reappraisal and understanding that the state system is, has provided payments that are not sufficient. There is this lag. They are providing based on the old numbers, not the new numbers. We've done a lot of work on this to make sure that we understand the exact population that we want to help and that we're going to help. And thanks to the CT team, especially Jason Gao and Tracy Packett, they designed a spreadsheet that allows us to see exactly which homeowners would be eligible under which criteria. So you'll see just a bit ago, we put together some updated criteria based on very useful conversations with Councillor Carpenter and Barlow who've been part of the committee looking at the reappraisal process and hearing our community members who need hearings in this process. They've devoted a lot of time to that and they had feedback for me on how we could help the most people. So the ask tonight is for an additional $750,000 of ARPA money. That brings the fund up to a million dollars. That allows us to help just over, it's close to 1,100 property taxpayers and the grants and I say grants, but really these would be credits applied to their tax bills. Hopefully in advance of the next payment due March 12th would be no more than $2,000. Because of the work that my team has done, we know exactly who these people are. So we will proactively reach out to them to try and make that process of applying as easy as possible. We'll of course also do the usual press conferences, put it on the website, ask all of you to get it out via front porch forum. But we're fortunate that we know exactly who it is and we can reach out to them one on one. And it's something that, you know, we do have the capacity in our office to work with taxpayers to do this and then to refer them to the RRC if they need additional help. And I'm happy to take questions. Thank you, Captain. And thanks for your hard work on this. I don't know if the board would like to receive your questions. We have Councillor Crawford here who is in front of this. Also neglected to mention Councillor Hanson has also been involved in our conversations and I wanted to thank him for his time and support as well. Really, I don't have a lot to add. I want to really thank Catherine and her staff. It was a little hard to wrap your head around how to get to this because there's a lot of moving parts, particularly understanding how interrelated to the tax credit was supposed to have come from the state. But I think we're okay with it. I think it's about as broad as it can be given all the moving parts. I appreciate Catherine's willingness to let us play around with it. We plugged in lots of numbers and lots of scenarios to arrive at the one that we're presenting to. I would support us doing that. That's a ball. I have a question. You posted a new memo, a revised memo online, actually probably a few minutes just before the board of finance meeting started. I just now have had a chance to take a look at it and it appears as though the change is simply the increase in the assessed value. Before it was the median home and now it's $500,000. I'm just wondering how you arrived at that number as opposed to say $550,000 or $475,000 on if you could maybe explain the logistical, how you arrived at that? Well, we plugged in a lot of numbers. You need to understand that the eligibility is either ending or out. $350,000, which is the median home price, seemed to low relative to that was going to be an absolute cutoff. We put it at $600,000. It includes more people, but it costs more money. So it was kind of the strategy of trying to get to people that would have been impacted. And the thing that's a little harder to, as a criteria that says last year you received at least a $1,200 credit, a lot of people get credit, but it's a small amount of money. So that number should be a determinant of need. The higher that number is, the more needy you would have been. And so it was just sort of balancing it in. I think to be honest, it was just trying to seem fair. I think a million dollars is a lot of money. And so we were just trying to kind of keep it in that way. Hit who we thought was the most needy. We will hear from people who's had this $510,000 and they're not going to be able to. I would just add to that, counselors. It was more art than science, counselor Paul. But when we made the change up to $500,000, the one other change we did make, which counselor Carpenter is referencing is the first draft had the minimum state payment at $1,500. We dropped that down to $1,200 to make a few more people eligible. And wanting to keep the total ask at a million. I was trying to keep the total liability at about 1.2, figuring that undoubtedly we still have mistakes in here. There will be people who say they're, you know, don't want to take it for whatever reason. But I was trying to keep us in the ballpark, as Bob Rustin would say. Yeah, I mean, it's just, I guess what I was just questioning is simply if you're increasing that you're decreasing something else, it should include more people, which means that the 750, which is unchanged, you know, it's sort of like a, you know, any mathematical equation, one thing goes up, one thing goes down. How do you, you know, how do you keep this, you know, and it was seamless though, in this case, putting up one thing and something else going down should mean more people, which should translate to more than 750. But I'll trust that you've, that there's, there's other things at play. And if it includes the people that need it most, then, you know, I'm happy to support it. We in Valley have missed people, and I'm sure we'll hear from you now. Be mindful the state credit is very complicated. It's effectively a sliding scale. And we actually have earlier conversations about should we do a sliding scale, should we do a means to have asset tax. And at the end of the day, it just seemed, it would be phenomenally a lot of work to get a one-year short-term relief relative to the lack of problem. People's taxes who now have a much more expensive costs, will be paying more taxes. We hope to stable that, I don't know what something that will not be caught up in, and that's going to be like a whole different problem. This is really only to catch that laugh this year. Further questions for the discussion? Yeah, we are still waiting for a motion. Before the motion, I wanted to just ask about some technical question, but how the property owner who are eligible would be, who know about this now? How will we reach them? Great question, Councillor Jayne. Can you speak to that? Sure. So our staff is planning to reach out to them with a direct mailing, letting them know that they are eligible and making it as easy as possible for them to get the credit. They'll essentially just need to sign a postcard and return it. It'll already be addressed and stamped. In case they forget that or lose that, it'll be on the website, front porch forum. I'm sure we'll ask the mayor to include it in a press conference and all the usual methods. But we do expect a lot of people by including it with a mail or probably with a regular property tax bill. And then another reminder will be a very effective technique. And your team won't require a coordinator of this program. It's just going to be embedded on the job. Yes. Thankfully, one of the positions that you just approved for reclassification, she will be taking this on and can administer it. So thank you for that. Thank you, Councillor Jayne. Yep. I make the motion as you're looking for the motion, right? We are still looking for motion. Yep. If you're ready. All right. So I'll make the motion as indicated on the board. Great. Thank you. It's our second. I'll second it. Let's see. Present Tracy. Further discussion? Okay. All those in favor of the vote, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Is there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Catherine, for your hard work on this, as well as the others. That's a borrowable preference. That brings us through that section of the panel. And can you share? Right. And now we are at the board of finances approval only, which we have one item. Councilor, this is a funding request on behalf of the redistricting. It's 9,400 seconds. Council Paul, would you like to speak to it further? Sure. I'm trying to send out a memo that's attached in board docs. It's a request for council initiative funds to cover the cost or the charges that have been incurred by CEDO on behalf of the ad hoc committee. As you may recall, we passed a resolution unanimously in June about redistricting and that included the creation of an ad hoc committee. CEDO did go ahead and place a page out in the North Avenue news in November to get the word out on the survey and on the work of the ad hoc committee. The ad hoc committee also met six times. Their last one was just a couple of days ago. And in addition, they did have coverage of their meetings on CCTV. So the total is the cost of a contract with third sector associates who did the facilitation work, the North Avenue news ad, and the estimated cost for CCTV services. And then it was the request of CEDO that, given that they don't have all of the final costs, that we give them a little bit of leeway, which is why the difference between the 93-25 and the 94-75. And Director Pine is on Zoom for this meeting. If there were other questions, I would suggest they be asked of him. Yes, it's more for councilor Paul. Okay. And I was just wondering, you know, the relationship that we have with CCTV, do we have, you know, they request funding from the city all the time? They have done it already for 2022. And in that contract, whether like the number of meetings they need to cover for the city? And is this an addition, the six meetings that they cover? I believe it is, Councillor Jang. I don't know for sure. I know that we have a specific number per month and then also the NTA meetings. And, you know, my understanding of their budget, and you also were the CCTV rep last year, is that they don't really, they don't charge us what they probably should be charging us. They do more meetings than is probably covered in their budget. And these were not budgeted for. So thus the additional costs. And my understanding from Director Pine is that, you know, CEDAW runs a pretty tight budget and it's really not in their budget either. So he came to me and asked me if I would make the recommendation that we take councilor initiative funds to pay for this. Yeah, I'll support it. Thank you. I second it. Thank you very much. Great. So I think Councillor Jang may have just said he's seconded it, but I'm not sure. Sorry, Councillor Paul, did you guys can move it or? I haven't, but I can also move. Okay, thank you. Is that a second, Councillor Jang? Yeah, second. Great. Any further discussion? I'm going to vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Motion carries unanimously. And that brings us to the final item, I believe, which is the presentation regarding the challenge to the fiscal year 2023 capital budget with the bond not close bond, not getting to the two-thirds amount required. What's in favor of the board of finances and challenges we face with all of that. So, see, Martha, you turn the camera on or you don't need this part of the schedule. I actually have Chapin and Norm and Catherine and Brian are all on the capital committee. So they can all come forward and chime in as needed because we're all in the boat together. So we did not succeed on December 7th. And so looking, the capital committee has been looking really hard at their budget and their obligations and what that means to us. And we wanted to make sure that we brought this forward to the council so that they would understand as we move into the budgeting season and next year what that really means to the capital work around the city. We have been averaging 18 to 30 million dollars a year for our budget. And in the coming year, we have about five million dollars of revenues available to us. Annually, we get two million dollars for the CIP. And additionally, we have been making use of the street capital tax, which is restricted to street sidewalks and local matches. Our parks get their penny for parks and impact fees. And then we do receive some general fund dollars that cover our existing master leases. So to go along with that, we have some obligations that are within that budget that will limit us in this coming year. We have project management salaries, an MOU with Flynn Avenue, a number of grants that we have local matches for. And then we provide dollars to the general fund operating budget through work that is done in the right-of-way group on our sidewalks. So what are we going to be able to do in this coming year? We're going to be able to continue on all of these committed grant projects. So the Rail Yard Enterprise, Shelburne Road Roundabout, Champlain Parkway, Intervail Park. There are lots of really good Lake Street sidepath, Mansfield sidepath, and a number of penny for parks projects. So there is a lot that we'll continue on. We will have reduced paving and reduced sidewalk, although in talking to Senior Engineer Laura Wheelock, she did let me know that the state is doing a lot of paving in the coming year. So we actually will get more paving in the coming year than the one mile that we can afford. So that will be a help to us. What won't we be able to do? And unfortunately that list is a lot longer. So we won't be able to do any preventive maintenance on either streets or sidewalks or any curb work. There will be no new fleet purchases or mass release in the coming year. No new fire trucks. The public safety infrastructure with both radio and video will not be there. IT has their capital budget within our budget and there won't be any dollars for that or the facilities budget. The transportation planning budget with enhanced traffic calming does not have any dollars. There isn't any contingency. There is any room for any park special projects, three of which are revenue generating, but both House North Beach and Harbor dredging. And then we just passed the ordinance this past year in public art and we're looking forward to putting that into our new capital projects and they will not be able to do that. So with the mayor's support, we do plan to bring forward we've started work on it immediately after the bond did not succeed to come forward with a new reduced bond proposal for consideration in March and looking at our other options. And I don't know if Chapin or Norm or Brian would like to say anything. We have major projects like the retirement projects that just this past year when that funds are exhausted. So those are the kind of things where maybe part of 23 is okay, but we're at kind of the end of funding solutions to that as we get a strategic maybe a strategic is like I'm saying I'm not going but obviously it takes time to to process something like that to get the fund money in place. So a big thing for us in the other part is obviously we're not moving in the same direction we have in the last four or five years because we're not being able to invest in our sidewalks and roads like we have not recent past but as I did know the positive is the state is going to be about paving that will offset some of those reductions in paving itself. So just say a little bit more about my perspective. So obviously setback I did not ask I do think in fact that the substantial majority of Marlintonians did support supported plus the fact that we I think do have the ability to come back to the end. Do you have the ability to speak to some of the questions that I certainly heard most often about the situation with the auditorium as a clarifier position I do significantly request there to reduce the request another increase as well but the fact that the majority the fact we have substantial needs the fact that we're still getting around the heads around the infrastructure bill but it does seem from what I've heard so far that we stated before that we thought it was likely that securing federal hundred of dollars will require matching funds I've seen some confirmation that is accurate so we could say that with a little more competitiveness than you're able to during this discussion where but it can be a down to further industry but in real just because of the nature of the timing it's very challenging to answer questions about how the infrastructure bill would intersect with this need I think that can be clarified I think there's some just the action that you took earlier tonight to address some of the concerns maybe some of the most acute concerns about the appraisal and the impact that had on some individuals I think we can have a significantly different and tightened uh proposal to make some people really good if we were to bring it back I think we need to do that from my sense of this list of what we will not be able to go forward with so I think we are in part looking for some feedback on that initial page in this discussion that you're able to offer me that it is worth it for us to continue to put an effort into refining of the proposal but you know we would have to nail this down by the end of January so that will be here soon so an early indication from you that you had to agree with this last you know not asking for final approval tonight but some kind of directional indication for board is likely to score a small uh it's still noticeable but it's just like that so I just think it's really important for you to keep this out to the public one of the other pieces though that I think is continues to be a concern and I'm interested in their perspective on the staff is that one of the questions that we heard was when going to high school and doing that funding opposition school board or ran to this bond some very public ways and so oh you see that that conversation is like this I understand that they were in November bond some people were knowing that the expenses are still out there and it will still have a better idea just what that might cost but yep um I think I think you're you're absolutely a person which I see that was definitely going to be additionally increasing if you had wings that just on face was he just was not entirely knowable as we sort of set down this path with the events that would happen with high school and certainly there um here so the good news is that with each passing month there is some initial priority from from from the school district about their plans you know that said I don't think you know the next C.R.T. heartbeat you're correct next November is when they will come forward I don't expect them to have clear costs proposals for for them so not this will be some ongoing uncertainty I think this is something you know one thing that I think made this one thing that is changing about the school district discussion is we as I think you all should know we are going to have a joint meeting with the school board for the first time in a while after the year on January 6th I got away from that during the pandemic because I've been helping uh people to be able to have some you know kind of effort to get us all on stage I think they certainly will be looking for us I think I think what I understood or what I heard most often about potential concerns from the school district was heard in the Memorial Auditorial Proposal that seemed to be discretionary in some sense and a large number it was hard to I didn't have a great answer frankly for how we could commit to 10 million dollars when there are such big questions about the school district and the overall school the high school on the overall capacity there so what I ended up doing and you know you may have heard me say this publicly as I was trying to work out the case and whatnot is sort of indicating that we would minimize how much we actually committed of the memorial spending until we had greater clarity about where the high school was fully funded I think this gives us an opportunity to kind of formalize that tighten it up or explicit hopefully we could actually by doing that it'd be great it was was my goal your call a few years ago in 2018 it really had to be with the school district that we were all kind of working together about toy capital planning and I think there could be an opportunity to do that again with this initial time or better sense of stuff but it is important that we have greater consensus in the sense that we are coordinated about how we're doing this before going back at it so that would be a major focus in the next month is to try to get to that but I you know to that point I think we have to be and I do think this means it's not just where they'll talk to me anywhere else where there's sort of truly discretionary spending truly spending that can postpone on until after that big question is answered and where we know we stand will be important that the district will be willing to leave us to start our pencils and be clear about that in order to have a similar so I think this has to be substantially lower for it to succeed any anyone else want to offer any any you know we're not having a vote tonight nothing yes I need tonight but it would be helpful to understand any any guidance you have for us that we're working on this proposal council jay go ahead yes um thank you mayor and the first question that I have is how much do we have left from the debt service that was passed a couple years ago if I'm going to say correctly the $27 million bond from 2016 is is essentially fully expected at this point and then we have you know we basically fully committed our annual allocation as well so that's that's why you're seeing such limited capacity you know beyond the kind of evergreen sources that we have on an annual basis that are documented in that memo which you are about to some millions of dollars and will ask to do something we have no very basically no other discretionary you know additional funds beyond those um I mean I see a way forward but I think it also has to be very detailed and also instead of just what will we no longer be able to do maybe to divide it by department instead of just this whole list said these these are the departments for example radio infrastructure video camera I feel like that's a police department to divide it by my department and also put a number associated with it I think it will be helpful for me to sell what we care in order for people if we have another bound to be able to vote in support I think that would be helpful that's that's that's one and I think um two was just also wondering if yeah and and and also the the new fleas purchase that we are talking about what are their life expectancy currently I you know where where are we there and I think all of those details I think I will need it on a document that is also tabled with detail and then I think people would be able to say okay let's prioritize these and the rest maybe can wait into all the years to come that'd be helpful thank you thank you council chair any any other member of the board like that way I'm sure we'd all appreciate a little time before the seven o'clock recombinating upstairs so um just I will I think we'll close this item by saying I think uh nothing from this discussion has left me thinking you should not continue this work I think we'll do so as much as we can this month certainly if you have additional ideas or thoughts offline hopefully we'll be able to have a little bit of iteration and come back to you with the not totally mailed down plan with some more detail in it get for the feedback from there but uh you know this month's going to go quickly because you know the holidays and whatnot that might be what they are so um clearly this sounds since it's a pretty good sort of primer for for the discussion and action it's anywhere I'm sure the rest of the council for for thoughts on this so with that um thank you all uh thanks for round through a lot today on this uh last quarterfinance meeting of the year close out the years hope everyone enjoys the holiday that you can see on the hall upstairs at the advice test won't be meeting again on this let me just say happy new year everyone to join the holidays and look forward to getting back to the rolling up our suites on the other side of uh so that with objection we will adjourn the board planning via zoom this evening and we'll also have several presenters um on zoom as well to the public who are interested in speaking know that if you're interested in speaking you can sign up for the public forum by going if you're in person by going over to the clerks table over in the corner there or to the clerks table here and they'll relay it to me um if you are participating remotely and are interested in joint in participating in the meeting um you can sign up for the forum at burlington vt.gov slash city council slash public forum um and that will take you to a forum that you can fill out that will then use to call people who are signing up we do prioritize burlington residents um who have affirmatively indicated their their resident status in burlington so i think that so we'll go first to burlington folks who are in person then burlington folks who are participating remotely then uh burlington non-burlington folks who are participating in person and then non-burlington folks who are participating remotely so we'll be going to each of those all right so the first item on our agenda is the agenda itself uh councilor stromberg may please have a motion on the agenda yes i move to approve the agenda as follows add to the consent agenda item 4.34 communication daniel richardson city attorney regarding reclassification of positions within the city attorney's office with the action to approve the motion as written per city attorney richardson add to the consent agenda item 4.35 communication diana carlyle regarding agenda monday meeting short term rental discussion with the action to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file add to the consent agenda item 4.36 communication linda tyrney regarding arabian b short term rentals with the action to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file add to the consent agenda item 4.37 uh communication casual observer regarding defunding the police with the action to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 4.38 communication Ivan Goldstein regarding Lakeview Terrace AirBnB police event with the action to waive the reading except the communication placed on file. Add to the consent agenda item 3, I'm sorry 4.39 communication will copus regarding defund the police with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 4.40 communication Christopher Aaron Falkner chairman Burlington Republican Party regarding updated and resubmitted opposition to municipal mask mandate ordinance with the action to waive the reading except the communication placed on file. Add to the consent agenda item 4.41 communication Barbara Zeper regarding short-term rentals with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 4.42 communication June Lice regarding short-term rentals with the action to waive the reading except the communication placed on file. Add to the consent agenda item 4.43 communication Jillian Eaton regarding opposition to alternate str ordinance with the action to waive the reading except the communication and place it on file. Thank you. We have a motion from Councillor Stromberg. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor McGee. Any discussion of our agenda? Okay. Hearing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favour, please say aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously and we have an agenda. Item number 2 is the public forum. However, it is a time-certain forum that's supposed to take place at 7.30. We're still well ahead of that. So I will skip ahead to some of the other items on our agenda this evening that don't require the council to take action so that we can move through those items. And anything that requires a vote, we'll wait until after the public forum to address those. So we'll move past the public forum. We'll come back again to that at 7.30. So we've got about 50 minutes on that. The climate emergency reports. Does any council have a climate emergency report to offer this evening? Okay. Seeing none, we'll move on to the other pieces of business that don't require council action. Item number 6, committee reports. Are there any committee chairs wishing to speak? Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracey. The ordinance committee will be meeting Wednesday the 22nd at 4.30, both in person and on Zoom. Our agenda includes an update on energy efficiency and weatherization, completing action on pre-qualification of construction contractors and a further discussion on minimum and maximum parking requirements. Thank you. Thank you. Any other committee chairs? Councillor Paul. Thanks, President Tracey. The Public Safety Committee is going to be meeting four times, at least four times in the month of January, and it will be January 4th each Tuesday. So the 4th, the 11th, the 18th, and 25th, we're going to be going section by section through the CNA report recommendations. And we're going to be joined to review those recommendations by a couple members of the police commission, one member of the marketplace commission, and a couple of other groups, another couple of other representative, representing groups, and then as well by different areas of the administration to talk with each, to talk about each section of the CNA report and the recommendations. Those will be posted on the city calendar. We don't, I believe they are all in the pusher conference room, and they're at 515-730, but there'll be more information on the city website. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Any other committee chairs? Councillor Hansen. Thanks. The Transportation, Energy, and Utilities Committee, we pushed back our December meeting, we pushed it back to January 12th at 5 p.m., and that'll be both in person and remote. Thanks. Thank you. Any other committee chairs? Yes, President Tracy, Racial Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging Committee push back this meeting until January 18th, 2022. Thank you. Excellent. Anyone else? Okay. Seeing none, we will now move into item number seven, which is City Council General Affairs. Any council are wishing to comment on City Council General Affairs? Okay. Seeing none, we'll keep moving into City Council President Council updates. You have a couple updates for the council. So the first of which is just a reminder for Councillors that if you are present, if you are participating remotely, to just please give us some advance notice for that so that we can please send you panelist links, understand that a lot of times that's a game time decision or gets closed. So certainly understand that, but just advance notice is certainly appreciated with that. The other piece is also in terms of our, I had announced at a couple of the other meetings regarding the ad hoc reappraisal committee. We only received about six, we only received six applications for that, and they did not meet the full criteria of each of the positions that was laid out in the resolution itself. So I'm not feeling comfortable pointing half of a committee. I'd like to be able to make the full decision of the full committee. So what my plan is is to be in touch with individual Councillors for areas where we don't have folks and let folks know of that and then get a re-advertisement for just those positions for which we don't have any applicants going in January with it. And we're still working on figuring out when the deadline for that would be. It's looking like that would have to take place sort of mid-month just given the nature of the holidays. But I do want to make, I do want to weigh out the full committee to understand the full skill sets that are at play at the, when making the decision or the appointment of the full committee. So that's going to have to wait a little bit because we don't have enough folks that have applied for that. And so certainly we'll welcome Councillor assistance in doing outreach to folks to make sure that we have a full committee in order to continue with that process. The last thing that I just wanted to note for this evening is that, you know, we've had a series of meetings where we've been disrupted. I hope that tonight will certainly be an exception to that and that folks will respect the decorum in the room this evening and refrain from the behaviors that we've been seeing at the council, whether it's interrupting counselors, whether it's using profanity, whether it's, you know, engaging in personal attacks. I just really hope that we can maintain that decorum. But this has risen to a level where I did feel like we need to assess our options as a council and understand what we are and aren't allowed to do under open meeting law and First Amendment law to understand just what our options are for maintaining the, a well-functioning meeting. So to that end, City Attorney Richardson is drafting a memo for us that will sort of lay out those options. It'll be shared with the full council so that we can assess those options. I see this very, this conversation very much as being one of a full council conversation. So not just calling to me to make it, but I really appreciate the assistance and advisement that many of you have given me so far. And I'll be looking to the full council for that. I think it may even make sense depending on our agendas for those January meetings to have a work session specifically geared around what the council would like to see. So we'll be able to have that memo in advance of any work sessions. But I just would really, I really have appreciated the support that I have felt from councilors in trying to handle this. Many of you have come to the table really wanting to offer solutions and help, and that's been really productive. So please continue to think about ways that we can bring and maintain decorum. And it is an issue that I just want everyone to know that I'm actively thinking about and working through. And again, for those of you who are here and participating remotely, please respect the decorum of our body. It really is important that we're dealing with major community issues here. And engaging in some of the behavior that we've seen is entirely unhelpful and does not move us forward in a way that really respects the seriousness of the issues with which we're dealing and really our community just in general. So that's what I wanted to say this evening. And with that, I will turn it over to Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracey. And sorry, just to be clear, are you asking me to convene the Board of Civil Authority? No, I'm sorry. Your mayor, your mayoral update. I'm sorry. Yeah, we'll get to Board of Civil Authority after we get into that. I think my only general affairs comment tonight is just to reiterate the statements that I made on Friday and that was confirmed by the state over the weekend that our wastewater testing has confirmed that Omicron is here in Burlington and spreading here, which is not surprising given what we're seeing around the country and news today that Omicron is already becoming the dominant form of COVID. What we know and what has become clear just in recent weeks is that boosting is very significant with respect to the Omicron variant. People's resistance to infection goes up dramatically with getting the third dose, the boosted dose. It is believed that your risk of serious illness also is benefits from the boost with Omicron. And we just continue to urge, as we have for weeks, people to get the booster. If somehow you are not vaccinated yet, you continue to be very much at risk. And this does relate to our agenda. We will be extending, asking the council to extend the mass mandate with action later tonight and continue to encourage people to use a combination of boosting and testing to enjoy the holidays. I have been on the phone with Dr. Levine repeatedly earlier today and I know that people are having trouble getting testing appointments. I know the state is working hard to expand testing capacity here locally over the course of this week so that as people embark on their holiday plans, they do have testing options. And I know Dr. Levine is having a press conference tomorrow. I expect you will detail this further there. So with that, I do think it is still possible for people to enjoy the holidays this year. If they do take additional precautions, we are in a much better place than we were a year ago despite the news of Omicron that we have so many more tools than we had a year ago for people to enjoy the holidays. I hope everyone well. I wish everyone a happy new year. Certainly my colleagues on the council. With that presentation, I'll hand it back to you. Thank you, Mayor. We are still a couple of minutes ahead of public forum, but we do have a number of folks who are in the room. So I'll just go ahead and get us going with that. We do have a number of folks signed up this evening. Before we do get into that, though, I'll just state sort of the way that folks can sign up again. So if you are in the room and are interested in participating in the forum, this evening you can sign up at the table over here. And then once you filled out your form, please hand it to the city clerk over here at the table here. And then they'll get it to me. I'll go through the comments in the order that or the sheets in the order that they're received. We, as I said before, also offer remote commenting as an option for folks. So if you are someone who is interested in participating in the meeting remotely, you are the comment period remotely. You may sign up by going to berlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum. And that will feed into a forum that I will then use to call off the folks who are participating remotely. As we're in this forum, please stay close to whatever device you're participating in. Sometimes we have issues of folks. I'll try and read off a number of folks who are participating remotely just so that you're able to know that you're on deck soon. In terms of the forum itself, I will be, we'll have two minutes for commenting this evening. We have, for folks who are in the room, we do have a large clock behind the council table as well as one that appears on the public forum speakers table as well with a light system, green meaning you have plenty of time, yellow meaning you have your time is running out and red meaning your time has run out. It will beep when you do run out of time. We will then ask you to move aside or move to allow us to move on to the next speaker because we do need to because everyone gets the same amount of time in this forum. That's a requirement actually of open meeting law especially when you are dealing with time limited forums as we are this evening. We've set aside the period from 7.30 to 9.30 for public forum. In terms of the conduct for the forum, I would ask that folks not use profanity this evening. Also, please refrain from commenting on speakers while they're speaking or interrupting speakers in any way. Please keep silent also after speakers have spoken because it is helpful for me to then be able to speak or to be able to alert the folks who are coming up next and it's hard to hear if people are loudly applauding or jeering. It also can sometimes create a chilling effect for people who are trying to participate in those meetings, in our meetings. The other piece is also that we had just asked that all comments be directed to the chair and that you stay focused on issues and not individuals in this particular forum. With that, I will get us started two minutes early and we'll get started again as I said before in terms of the order. I'll go to Burlington folks who are in the room, so folks who have affirmatively indicated that they are Burlington residents or that they have listed a Burlington address, for instance, as one way of that. Then we will go to Burlington folks who are participating remotely. Then we'll go to non-Burlington residents who are participating in person as well as to be followed by non-Burlington residents who are participating remotely. That's the order of the operations for this evening. Again, if you can just please follow those guidelines and we'll get started. The first speaker for this evening in person is Kara Greenblatt to be followed by Beth Seitler. One thing I forgot to say is for folks is just speak into the mics just so that we can really hear you. Can you hear me now? Yes, that's perfect. Thank you. Thanks. My name is Kara Greenblatt. I'm a resident of the most densely populated portion of the North Wanooski Avenue corridor between Grant and North Street. I'm an avid biker and I'm very proud of the biking infrastructure in our community. I'm also a social worker working for the Howard Center and I am required to have a car for my job as I drive clients to the health center, food shelf, and to other services in our community. I'll say up front that the current plan to remove 75 to 100 parking spaces is one that will cause unnecessary hardship for essential workers like myself as well as vulnerable members of our community. I say unnecessary hardship because there is already a northbound parking, sorry bike lane, one block over that I use on a regular basis. On another front, one of the things that's really frustrated me during this planning process is that the data supporting the current plan is faulty, deceptive, and outdated. I'll give you some examples. One, the transportation study claims that on my block in the evenings, 50 to 70%, only 50 to 70% of parking spaces are occupied. Making it seem like it would be no problem to remove half the parking. This is absolutely inaccurate and I invite anyone to visit our block any evening to witness the competitive parking situation that exists there. In fact, my partner and I typically have to go around the block two or three times in order to find a space when we get home from work. Two, given COVID, significantly more professionals are working from home. Less more residents' cars are there during the day and night and I think that we cannot rely on an assessment that was done in 2017 for planning today's reality. Three, data collected for the study noted that 86 households were being impacted in our section of the corridor. We pointed out that this was dramatically understated and the consultants upped that to 131, yet no effort was made to reconsider the foregone conclusion. So your time is up? Okay, I'll just say in conclusion. So your time now, if you'd like to share your remarks with the full council, you can email them to citycouncilatberlingtonbt.gov. And we'll be able to- I'll just ask that the council reconsider their plan. Thank you. Okay, thank you. I also live on North Inuski Avenue. Do you hear me okay? Yep. I'm asking the council to reconsider or delay the resolution to reconfigure the plan parking removal and the second bike lane addition on my street. The data gathered and used in this study in 2017 is wrong. My neighbors didn't know about it when they heard about it. They don't support it. The report didn't meet its goals as intended. Why continue with a report based on bad data with unfulfilled goals with strong resident opposition? A group of six neighbors and I recently canvassed our street about the planned removal of half of our parking spaces to put in a second bike lane. We gathered over 140 signatures which we present to you here. The data in this report is wrong. The original report based on a parking vacancy rate of up to 60%. It was adjusted to 20% as Cara said and that's still wrong. I invite any of you to come to our street and try to find a place to park. The report has the wrong housing unit count. So they have the wrong number of off street parking spaces. They didn't answer their own questions about what kinds of parking spaces to provide because they didn't have the correct data. There's no agreement with businesses or apartment buildings about sharing their parking. In fact, most have said they won't. Our petition shows that engagement efforts were not successful. 139 of the over 140 people we spoke to between Pearl and North Street did not know that the removal of half of the parking spaces and construction of a second bike lane was happening. We've heard that there was robust outreach and there may have been but it wasn't remotely successful. The goals for the March 9, 2020 resolution were not met. A strategy for balancing parking demand and supply north of Pearl was not met. Meeting essential parking needs while freeing up space for dedicated bike lanes was not completed. Identification of strategies for improving multimodal. So your time is up. If you'd like to share the full statement again, please feel free to write to city council at Burlington VT.gov. And if you have copies, you can share them with the clerk's table as well. Our next speaker is Robert Bristow Johnson to be followed by Amy Magyar and Kristen Baker after that. So I can't be speaking to you on behalf of the redistricted committee because I wasn't authorized to, but I can be speaking here on behalf of me and just ask you to not squander the opportunity to meaningfully poll the public on the ward redistricting that we have to be doing. It's not realistic for a ballot item to be on this town meeting day on the 2022 town meeting day, but it is realistic to do at least a Doyle survey kind of poll. But I see no reason why you can't say this is an advisory vote and use the regular ballots to record the information, but I'm not a lawyer. Nonetheless, you could at least do something like a Doyle poll where there are actually some maps, maps available on the internet and maps that you could post up at the poll where they can look at it and voters can say approval, neutral or disapproval. You can collect some statistics and so that when you make a real decision and what map is really going on the charter change ballot, you might have some idea about how the public is going to accept it or like in advance. So you don't have much time to waste. It's it's coming up real fast and somehow you know by a month or less you're gonna have to decide what's going to go on the ballot or what's gonna happen on Tony. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Amy Magyar to be followed by Kristen Baker. My name is Amy Magyar and I'm a permitted BNB with the city. I've spoken at length for the past two years on the subject to short-term rental. So tonight I'm going to keep my comments focused and short as it appears that mines may already be made up about the topic. First I wanted to say that I fear the city council ignoring the well thought out proposal that came out of the joint committee meetings over the last 18 months. The three-year ownership for non-owner occupied short-term rental units was a great compromise. Taking into consideration the city's fear of developers but also the support of Burlington homeowners looking to support the high cost of living in BTB. By ignoring some of the nuanced details in that original proposal I think you're actually glossing over a very thoughtful collaborative work the committee and the host developed. It's a shame. Second as the city's start began to tighten the regulations for long-term rental landlords in the last year those tight regulations are actually discouraging folks from moving from short-term rental to long-term which is the opposite of what you want. So I wanted to clearly state over-regulating short-term rental will not lead to more long-term rentals more so due to the fact that the long-term rental regulations are seemingly so unsighted and far from supporting a landlord. Finally when it comes to primary residence requirements for short-term rental I ask you this when you have rented a short-term rental through Airbnb or Verbo in a city where you were visiting did you ask yourself if it was a primary residence before you booked your stay was it okay for you to rent from a non-owner occupied outside of Burlington but you're restricting it happening here please consider looking back at the ordinance suggested forwarded by the joint committee back in the spring it's a solid plan and a great solution to a tough challenge thank you thank you our next speaker is Kristen Baker to be followed by Christopher Aaron Felker and thank you for reminding everyone to keep everything you know calm and communicate in a very um hopefully constructive way. First of all I just want to say this is not LA we don't have people coming in buying up everything and they want to develop in whatever and maybe I don't know maybe they are in there I don't know that but I don't think that's the case I think it's a case of supply and demand I have a an Airbnb here on Main Street I rented it and to UVM students and then they leave and then I'm stuck and then I'm like oh what are we gonna do and then okay I'll try Airbnb I make it nice I make I make sure like I get involved in in the building because my daughter went to UVM all her kids went to UVM those buildings are not being maintained and they're and they're just it's sad for me because they're beautiful buildings and what we're doing is bringing people in we're bringing money in and they're respectful and it's what we want for our city what we want for our downtown is to have people come in instead of my child going and all her friends going to San Francisco we need a reason for people to come in and it's disappointing when it's not our fault I'm just trying to I'm a middle-class person I'm just trying to make a little bit I'm just trying to figure out how to make my rent and I'm also concerned about the other person that has to rent out a room because our taxes are so high and it's a real problem and if you want to get rid of people okay we're gonna have to sell right and we're gonna have to sell to the highest price of person who comes in from San Francisco and pays 100 plus 50 60 70 thousand dollars over I work at Burlington furniture I see it all day and I hear it all day long so this is a supply and demand problem we don't have enough housing but to go after us is ludicrous because you're losing us and you're getting California Brooklyn so your time is up okay but I just want you to remember that thank you for that thank you very much your time is up every single day thank you your time is up so our next speaker is Christopher Aaron Felker and that's the last Burlington resident I have in person so we'll transition to remote um after this I addressed this council regarding the need to restore civility decorum and order in this chamber once again last week we all witnessed multiple individuals launching into objectively offensive profane that elated and personal attacks directed at individuals in the room and continued interruptions of speakers during the public forum I renew my request for this council to restore the public forum speaking time back to three minutes to ensure each individual has a fair amount of time to express themselves and I also renew my request for council president to address the rampant harassment that takes place in this room against members of the public and speakers during public forum this body cannot continue to ignore these interruptions and how they essentially rob individuals of their time to speak last week I stated the public must do their part to restore civility it's even more important that our elected officials set up another example as a burlingtonian who is both a member of the public and an elected chairman of the burlington republican party I pledge to set a better example every day and I ask you all to join me I appreciate that some of the counselors have reached out to me in the last week to thank me for my comments I presented on restoring civility some of you wished I had said more and many had recognized that the problems were there but were unsure of how to stop the interruptions it was suggested to me by a fellow burlingtonian that the council president should wield a yellow and a red card much like soccer and when a speaker is interrupted in an unruly member of the audience council president raise he can raise the yellow card and every time the card is raised a speaker can reclaim 15 seconds of time for repeated violations the council president's empowered use of red card to have the offender removed from the chamber where they can watch the remainder of the meeting from another room in city hall council's urge to take decisive actions restore civility and decor promoting an environment of accessibility and fairness thank you for your time I wish you all a happy holidays and and happy new year thank you all right we are going to transition to resident burlington residents who are participating remotely and I'll read off as I said before a couple of folks just so that you know that you're in line so I have Laura miscell to be followed by paul hendler maggie randy sightler deb ward lions kent kissella chris rivers so that's just a few of the folks who have signed up so far we I will ask that folks if you could please just make sure that you're named as the person who are the name that you signed up as that's helpful just in terms of locating you so Laura miscell I'm not able to locate you okay so I will go and Laura or others who have signed up whose names that I call I will I will if you could just use the raise hand function if I'm missing you for some reason that's not however the way to sign up and if I didn't call your name that doesn't mean that you're not in the list it just means we haven't gotten to you yet so just so you know that as well so I'm going to look for paul hendler now paul I'm unable to locate you as well so we'll move to Maggie and I believe I see two sign-ups from the same what I for the same person I think it's Maggie Stanley so Maggie I will enable your microphone working yes I can hear you just fine okay hi I just wasn't sure how this worked I um thank you so much I can you hear me okay yes go ahead okay I want to wish everybody a merry Hanukkah a happy Christmas and a blessed Kwanzaa and whatever else you celebrate obviously we're in a very pivotal uh juncture with COVID in our city and community and state and I want to thank you all for your continued work um I'm familiar with a wonderful program I wanted to share with you all that's why I signed up tonight in Austin Texas called Community First Village I do not know if you're familiar with it but I uh ask you all to please take some time to look at it I'll follow up tomorrow with an email the founder is an amazing gentleman named Alan who um started his career as a developer a commercial real estate investor and the program has changed hundreds of lives in Austin Texas and I feel like our homeless landscape and our development landscape and need for housing is right for this type of project so I urge you to consider that my second comment is I am concerned about a number of youth I work with and no given COVID and I understand the city has received some um federal COVID funding and I would ask you to please consider allocating substantial amounts to bring in additional support for our at-promise kids in our community that don't necessarily have the familial support and resources they need to thrive and there was a third point oh I know I'm almost out of time well my third point oh the Airbnb thing anywho I think we'll touch on that later I wish you all a blessed holiday and thank you for your continued service good night thank you for that our next speaker is Randy Sightler to be followed by and I'll read off a couple names just again um Randy Sightler to be followed by Deb Ward Lyons Kent Kasella Chris Rivers and Lori Koderman um I do have one person who has signed up who is not a Burlington resident who will follow after we get to the non-Burlington residents who are here in the room um so I do have you um know that um but I just don't want to call you right now and just for um to keep things clear so I'll go to Randy Sightler to be followed by Deb Ward Lyons Randy I've enabled your microphone can you hear me uh you're a little soft okay I'll try to increase the volume sorry about that that better um no it's still really coming through very soft it's through my computer but I don't know how to increase the volume okay maybe I maybe try and speak louder okay I'll I'll I'll try that uh so I'm also here to speak about the North Winooski Avenue corridor uh study and the parking management plan I want to say from the um a few other people have talked from the beginning I'm asking the council to um delay implementation of the lane reconfiguration until there's a significantly more robust and successful public engagement process with the outcome being a parking management plan I'm sorry that uses a realistic definition of essential parking needs and which does not make the lives of vulnerable people who live and use social services in the neighborhood harder it does not threaten the diverse mix of residences small businesses and non-profits that make this neighborhood so unique um Burlington considers itself a progressive city even if you're not part of the progressive party and I think we are for the most part um but um this isn't progressive you know the idea of people needing to leave the neighborhood because they no longer have parking small businesses that will have a hard time attracting customers if there's less parking especially non-profits who serve a lot of the most needy and vulnerable making it more difficult for them to serve them uh previous progressive administrations and taxpayers in the city that put a um a lot of resources and public infrastructure into the development of underused and unused areas of this neighborhood Northamniewski Avenue has been the focus of a major community development initiative for the past 30 years to create a mixed-use neighborhood commercial district that has thrived I think this plan ignores that history and puts the neighborhood at risk of giving tenants small business owners and non-profits a reason to move if they can the mixed-use nature of the neighborhood is what makes it um attractive and funky to live here in my view this plan views our street our neighborhood as commodity to be used by the few that can arrange their lives to accommodate traveling by bike so your time is up what we have accomplished thank you thank you our next speaker is deb ward alliance to be followed by kent casala Deb I've located you and have enabled your microphone okay can you hear me yes cool I'm going to make a prediction you will not gain much long-term housing with either of these str proposals people will instead sell or they'll pivot to monthly rentals for traveling professionals this isn't much of a prediction because it's already happened consequently in addition to gaining only a handful of housing the city will lose many thousands of dollars from the rooms and meals tax and gain a reputation as unfriendly to those seeking lodging during their stay in the queen's city in the name of affordable housing you are favoring the big hotels in town it sure seems like some on this council don't care for hardworking low and middle income property owners and their rights we are squeezed with no no cause eviction told that we can't short-term rent unless owner occupied and if we live on north winewski avenue we'll also have street parking taken away i'm in favor of safe rental housing and more rental housing but you were using a sledge hammer on short-term rental property owners as if they are the solution to the crisis per the mayor's recent announcement there's a five-year goal to create 1200 new housing units and uvm plans on building up its trinity campus how about mandating that college juniors need to stay on campus are you going to throw away two years worth of discussion work and time in favor of a highly restrictive ordinance that a few counselors have crafted in the 11th hour instead make sure all short-term rentals are registered and meet health and safety standards and put a stop to speculative buying by limiting short-term rental rentals to buildings owned for a minimum of three years as counselors you represent all of your constituents not just the big hotels and renters thank you thank you our next speaker is kent kasella and kent will be followed by and i'll read off a couple different name a couple of names of grillington residents who have signed up so we have chris rivers following kent as well as lori coderman and abbott stark so kent i have come to you and have enabled your microphone so you should be able to speak i trust you can hear me yes thank you for some reason it seems that short-term rentals are being targeted as properties that need to be available for long-term rental because the affordable rental issues berlington faces my question for the committee is simple as the city determined that short-term properties that are being targeted would be classified as affordable rental long-term rentals has there been documented support of that period i can speak for myself and several other hosts and say no these properties would not fall into the lower fair market or affordable rental value they'd be much higher because these properties are very well maintained to a standard that is above average i know for my single unit which is a licensed bed and breakfast and i'm here to support my fellow hosts my rent would exceed the fair market average so that i could afford the nearly 20 tax increase that was imposed recently on my duplex short-term rentals make visiting berlington affordable for people who cannot afford to pay the extremely high prices that the four downtown hotels charge so these short-term rental folks they bring in they bring in money tourist money revenue for the state and the city my girlfriend's son is visiting from out of town for holiday and he tested positive for covid today he's visiting from out of state now he's isolated in a downtown hotel at $229 a night we did that to protect us my unit was not available so i couldn't give it to him or it would be a hundred dollars a night so short-term rentals are actually affordable tourist rentals frankly i think this is very short-sighted of the city short-term rentals are making rental hosts are making ends meet by supplementing their income so they can remain in the city they love i think that this draconian regulations to help solve an affordable rental crisis is ridiculous so if any of you are out on a holiday and you choose to stay at a short-term rental just remember the regulations you're imposing on your fellow berlingtonians thank you very much thank you our next speaker is chris rivers to be followed by lori coderman and abbott stark riffs i've located you i've enabled i've enabled your microphone thank you for the opportunity is my audio level okay yep you sound good great thank you i'm a resident along the north manuski corridor between north street and grand street i've been following this issue closely since discovering that the survey created and touted by the hired consultants was rolled out after the decision to add a bike lane was made there is a shortage of parking every weekday as described earlier by some of the guests this evening along this part of the road we have a bike lane folks bike lanes are not a climate crisis solution i'm a biker i frequent the city streets on my bike in good weather just like the many in our city there is a bike lane already one that needs better maintenance and bad weather for those that rely on their bikes throughout the winter months those that rely on their cars during the winter months need parking the survey was unclear and unsuccessful in capturing useful data and led to a lack of viable answers to replacing all the parking that would be lost the committee has not come back with adequate answers on the negative impact on parking on this mixed use avenue the cold consultants have yet to share the answers to key questions about parking that were promised earlier on in this process from my vantage point the entire process has been flawed from the outset myself and other resident neighborhood stakeholders those that park routinely along this route because they live there largely were unaware that this had even been a topic much less something that was acted upon late in the game a couple months back now neighbors the included canvassed our neighborhood and managed around 140 signatures in very short order to a person everyone we spoke to was dismayed this plane had gotten so far without their knowledge please put a pause on the bike lane until there is better communication to residents a pause until the data is updated and finally a pause so we can learn more about what is best for this very important quarter in our city thank you very much i yield the rest of my time thank you our next speaker is lori coderman to be followed by abit stark lori i've enabled your microphone okay i'm muted now yes you are and go ahead thank you i want to first acknowledge that i understand that you all have a very complex problem that you are trying to resolve here with short term rentals in the brellington crisis i almost didn't sign up tonight because i feel like i haven't been heard i've told this story many times i don't know that i could say it any better than dev clients or amy um we had a solid plan with a great solution to a tough problem and it really was thrown to the ground at least that's how it feels uh like many here in this um situation i have a duplex that is off-site i'm an off-site host and the only way i'm able to cash flow this property is to have a short term rental which we created so we did not take away any rentals my husband and i are hard workers we do community service we uh hold multiple jobs for self-employed we don't have a 401k or a pension and this short term rental has solved the problem of the high cost of living and has allowed us to to live in brellington the city i grew up in and love and love to share with the out-of-town people and we may not be able to stay here if this bill does not pass as we had presented um so i will just say that i hope that you are going to hear the pleas of your constituents that we will all feel heard as a result of what happens here tonight um i think that if the proposal is passed as is um on the table now that much collateral damage will be um the result with very little any resolution to the housing crisis thank you thank you our next speaker participating remotely will be abbott stark and then after that we will transition to non-berlington residents who are participating um in person to be followed by non-berlington folks who are participating remotely so abbott um i've located you um and have enabled your microphone hi there can you hear me yes i can uh happy holidays to everybody and thank you so much for your service especially during this covid time i know many of you are also uh either entrepreneurs or small business people yourselves and um you know i recently started a business in burlington i've resided in the city for the past 20 years um and although the business is growing very quickly we now employ seven people locally uh we're still a startup and nearly half the office does short-term rentals of some sort to make ends meet and continue our growing business um you know as a city i know we're desperate for additional taxes it's been a very painful year for many people um the tax finance bonds any revenue we can get our collective hands on you know the countries in the middle of an economic crisis rich are richer than ever before um and according to airbnb 52 percent of hosts are low to moderate income 53 percent said that hosting helped them stay in their homes that's definitely true of me regulating airbnb is also going to hold back the improving economies of local neighborhoods i know some of them have really thrived over the last decade the same data showed that 42 percent of guest spending is in the neighborhoods where they stayed that's really important for my place i'm in roe street after my divorce i found myself back on the rental market and it was through str i was able to re-achieve the dream of home ownership however i couldn't do it without rental income if i were forced to shutter my str it would jeopardize the low-income housing that i'm able to offer to two of my rental units one is a disabled low-income family who've been remained in their home for 18 years and the other is an elderly disabled low-income family um even my conventional long-term renters have had frozen rents due to the str so if strs were canceled it would force really tough decisions in circumstances that i would hate to have to face so i encourage you to allow for str and exchange for affordable housing thank you thank you um so that concludes our the burlington folks who had signed up um participating remotely i looked again for laura mesel and paul henner wasn't able to locate either of you um so we'll transition now back to burlington uh non burlington folks who are participating in person i have eric henley um to be followed by julie marx good evening everybody and thank you for your time for letting us speak tonight on short-term rentals i just want to talk about the benefits of short-term rentals in burlington and how her how hard we've worked the last two years with the planning and zoning committee to try to get a fair solution for everybody you know we're not all big-time landlords in burlington we're all here to to help help people come uh have another option for staying in burlington i'll give you a quick example of two two scenarios i had in the last two years i had an older lady and a couple from new york city that couldn't get chemo treatment in new york city so i put him up in the air bnb here close to the hospital for a couple months she didn't she couldn't stay in a hotel so if we get rid of the short-term rentals like what we have proposed right now with me not being an owner host i'm not an on-site host um you know that that would go away um i had a traveling nurse last year during covid with his family from virginia close to the hospital their kids had never seen snow they had a great time up here um i'm just hoping you guys look at look at all the scenarios too and with short-term rentals too everybody has a cleaning crew you know that changes over a lot more than a long-term rental you know so we employ a lot of people with cleaning fees and stuff too i have a offsite i have a host that employs her three kids and they have college loans to pay off but i just want you guys to to look at all the options and and and try to keep the short-term rentals in the pool of of housing in burlington thank you thank you i have julie marx to be followed by jeff mckay good evening draw your attention to the communication submitted by jay lorosa from msk attorneys on behalf of the short-term rental alliance um i want to give you some reasons why this short-term rental ordinance is flawed number one it discriminates against non-resident property owners and favors residents of burlington without any basis to do so the short-term rental ordinance likely violates the equal protection clause of the vermont and the united states constitution owner occupancy and burlington residency has no bearing on whether a short-term rental negatively impacts the neighborhoods or housing reason number two for regulation like the short-term rental ordinance before you to be constitutionally valid it must be rationally related to a valid governmental purpose but the short-term rental ordinance resident and non-resident property owners who own land in the same district are functionally the same from the zoning perspective there is an irrational basis for the desperate treatment between the rights afforded to two classes as an owner-occupied property used as a short-term rental may just as may be just as impactful and detrimental as one not owner-occupied in the same zoning district reason number three the short-term rental ordinance may also constitute a regulatory taking the takings clause of the fifth amendment and that in the vermont constitution provides that no private property shall be taken from public use without just compensation there are dozens of properties today that are not owner-occupied and which contain short-term rentals and booked into 2022 or 2023 if you pass this ordinance those owners will suddenly face substantial economic consequences reason number four the short-term rental ordinance also unreasonably and unnecessarily impairs existing contracts article 1 section 10 of the u.s constitution states no state shall pass any law impairing obligations of contracts please reconsider the short-term rental ordinance thank you our next speaker is jeff mckay to be followed by susan bowen well i'm jeff mckay i'm the ceo of community health centers of burlington and for the record i'm also a resident of the city of burlington i'm sorry i filled out the format correctly um i know the representatives from our organization have previously expressed concern about the plan to reduce parking on north widowsky avenue which does not include a comprehensive plan to mitigate the harm to residents visitors and businesses that currently depend on that resource i understand that this is a conversation that has been going on long before i moved to marilicton but i think it's fair to say that the priorities we all had when this process started had shifted have shifted significantly over the past two years of this pandemic and yet this effort seems intent on taking us backward to meet the meet yesterday's needs without regard for what the community needs to grow to thrive to be safe and to be healthy today and into the future access to health care and support of human services is of vital importance to this community our riverside health center sees over 17 000 patients and brings more than 60 000 patient visits to the community each year our small onsite garage is commonly at capacity making accessible street parking and absolute necessity to ensure equitable access to health care additionally we're trying to expand our services to meet the urgent community need including an onsite affordable pharmacy and expanded clinical services fortunately at the same time the city is planning to increase barriers to accessing our care chcb is is very much in support of improving safety for pedestrians and cyclists and encouraging greener transportation options for those with the privilege to make those choices but there must be a solution that respects the diverse needs of this neighborhood and its most vulnerable members who rely on the multiple community resources within it the potential health benefits we may see as a long-term goal of this plan we're dwarfed by the immediate health barriers it creates and your time is up perpetuates thank you our next speaker is susan bowen to be followed by lucas jensen hi i'm susan bowen i'm here to ask you all to pop your information bubble burlington is one of 16 towns that voted for mask mandates the rest right now we're up to 72 that voted for no mask mandates or recommendations 72 in vermont you're one of 15 16 and i found that information on vermont daily chronicle it's another news source which you might want to look at vermontdaily chronicle.com and it tells you a lot of news that you do not get everywhere else another place you might want to look to pop your information bubble is health choice vt.com health choice vt has a lot of information and the true studies on masks and vaccines and we believe in health choice it's our choice on what we do to our own body we live in america people so it's time to pop your information bubbles go on to health choice vt go to different news outlets like american or one american news network which is oan.com um look for the information and don't get fearful because of our fear-mongering dr levine the folks could just please refrain from personal attacks um our next speaker is lucas jensen i mean that's the last person that i have um for non burlington in person so then i'll transition to the last speaker um who is non burlington remote my name is lucas jensen i'm a small time housing provider in burlington for nearly 20 years i don't live in burlington but i live very close by in williston um i want to be clear about the unintended consequences of the limits you're considering placing on short-term rentals um because of those limits and those of us who are not owner occupants uh many of us are going to sell the properties that we own in burlington or in addition to possibly we're going to raise the rents on our other tenants in order to make up for that lost income um case in point i recently sold the property that i own in burlington because of the increased cost to operate in this city i'm talking about taxes and a lot of the uncertainty for us housing providers the day after i sold that property the new owner sent notices to all of the tenants in that building that they were going to raise rents considerably in fact he offered one of the tenants five thousand dollars to move out of that unit because it was so much more valuable without her living in it and she called and left you a message in tears because she was losing her housing um because of that our ability to operate us as small-time housing providers our ability to operate short-term rentals gives us extra income that allows us to offset uh the rents that we get in our other units and when you take that away from us housing is going to become less affordable for many more people in burlington then it will make more affordable if you pass the regulations it is an unintended consequence that you need to be very aware of that housing is going to become less affordable for many if you don't allow us there is a way to figure out a way uh for us to continue to operate despite what city staff has said it is possible so your time is up thank you our we're going to transition back thank you for getting that timer up appreciate it um so still not able to locate laura missel or paul henler um so i'll go to our final speaker who signed up um remotely um and that is chris weinberg chris i've enabled your microphone good evening um i spoke to the council on november 8th and i would like to encourage the council to question the transparency and integrity of burlington international airport and the acting director of aviation so please the acting director of aviation acting director of aviation provided assurance to this body on november 8th that general aviation tenants of the area known as the valley would not be impacted as a result of the license agreement that was executed with beta technologies that evening and earlier today one of those tenants received notification that their leases was being terminated we have proposed a resolution to form a general aviation task force to advise and inform the city council on factors concerning general aviation and the airport at large there has been great concern about creating this task force it was actually removed from the agenda this evening and i would encourage the council to consider this as an example of the very reasons that we're pushing to form this general aviation task force to make sure that all of the general aviation stakeholders in the burlington community are heard from thank you thank you and that concludes our public forum for this evening thank you to everyone for joining us this evening and sharing your feedback with the council and the administration so we will now move back into our agenda itself um having completed the climate emergency reports we'll move into the consent agenda um councillor stromberg may please have a motion on the consent agenda i move to approve the consent agenda and take the actions indicated thank you we have a motion is there a second seconded by councillor McGee any discussion seeing no vote all those in favor um please say hi hi hi hi any opposed okay hearing none that carries and we will move into um well before we get to our deliberative agenda we just have two quick meetings to get to before that these are other structures under that we that we engage with the board of civil authority and then the local control committee commission both of which have short agendas so i'll turn it over i'll recess the the city council meeting at 816 and turn it over to mayor weinberger for the board of civil authority i'm going to call the board of civil authority to order at 816 p.m. and the first item on the agenda is the agenda welcome a motion to adopt it councillor mason so i'd move that we adopt the agenda as presented thank you is there a second second second by councillor paul any discussion um all those in favor of the motion please say hi all right are there any opposed the agenda is adopted which brings us to the consent agenda by councillor mason and make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated thank you is there a second second by president tracy any discussion all those in favor of adopting the consent agenda please please say hi any post motion carries unanimously and without objection the board of civil authority is adjourned at 817 p.m. thank you mayor weinberger we will now convene the local control commission meeting at 817 p.m. um we um the first item on the agenda is the agenda councillor me commissioner mason thank you uh commissioner tracy i'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented okay we have a motion on the agenda is there a second seconded by councillor hanson any discussion okay hearing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to item number two our consent agenda commissioner mason are you able to offer a motion on the consent agenda yes thank you i'd like to i'd move that we adopt the agenda uh and take the actions indicated thank you we have moved by councillor mason is there a second seconded by councillor megey any discussion okay not seeing any so we'll go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the consent agenda please say aye hi any opposed that carries unanimously we'll move to the only item on the deliberative agenda for this item um councillor mason thank you president tracy i'd move that we approve the 2021 2022 third class liquor license applications for sushi made it 152 cherry street with all standard conditions thank you a motion as a second seconded by councillor commissioner hanson any further discussion hearing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye any opposed that carries unanimously without objection we will adjourn adjourn the local control commission at 819 and reconvene the full city council meeting at that at that same time 819 give folks a second to just click over into that agenda where we will pick up at item 5.01 which is a presentation from mariel mathews public health equity manager in the reib and scott pavik substance use analyst with reib regarding overdose prevention sites i know we we also have a number of other folks on who will be also joining the presentation including ed baker ed baker i'm sorry grace keller and jillian curbs so i will turn it over to mariel mariel let me give you the hosting responsibilities so that you are able to share all right thank you um councillor tracy let's see looks like i can share so i'm just turning this into presentation mode how does that look uh that looks great okay wonderful so thank you again for this opportunity to speak to you about overdose prevention sites in burlington i'm mariel mathews i'm the public health equity manager within the department of racial equity inclusion and belonging at the city of burlington and i'm joined by my colleague scott pavik who is the substance use policy analyst within reib ed baker who is the host and producer of the addiction recovery channel grace keller and jess curby both from safe recovery a program of the howard center this presentation accompanies a report on envisioning overdose prevention sites in burlington which was a report requested by city council via resolution in september 2020 the report is posted publicly on board docs within the agenda for tonight this report proposes a pilot project um but just to be clear there is no pilot about to move forward right now as of tonight but more groundwork is being laid via the creation of this report the hope is that we would continue preparing for um overdose prevention sites or ops to be a reality here in burlington and i'll propose some next steps at the end of this presentation so as most of you on council know already an overdose prevention site or ops is a place where people can bring pre-obtained drugs and consume them under the supervision of medical professionals who can intervene if an overdose occurs um there's usually i'm just going to ask you to stop for a second because i'm not seeing it's while it is changing on to the second slide on your pre on um on the the zoom i'm not seeing it also reflected on the screen in the room just so that counselors there we go okay thank you for taking a pause sure um yeah if it seems like there's a delay please ask me to pause again um so at an overdose prevention site there is usually a reception area a drug consumption area an observation area and a medical intervention area there may also be treatment and other services in the same location and the whole point of these sites is to prevent people from using their drugs alone since we know that many fatal overdoses happen when folks are alone and more broadly the goal of public health is saving lives preventing premature death preventing and treating chronic disease and chronic health conditions and promoting equity when most people think of our public health response to substance use disorder most people usually think um of treatment which would fall in this secondary um secondary area on this spectrum in the harm reduction side of this spectrum this is where opus would fall along with the very successful low barrier buprenorphine program at safe recovery harm reduction is really important for us to prioritize because we first and foremost need to make sure that folks are alive in order to enter treatment i know this is review for many folks on the line but providing it for context here and now i've advanced to the next slide so let me know if that has updated yes okay great unfortunately overdoses overdose deaths have risen in the last several years this figure shows a national trend from 2015 to 2020 and sadly in 2021 the trend has continued and worsened throughout the course of this pandemic most but not all of these fatal overdrag overdoses are from opioids as you can see here the um light blue bars from opioids and within these um most of those opioid overdoses are specifically attributable attributable to fentanyl which is here synthetic opioid deaths generally refers to fentanyl ed bicker will talk a little bit more about this trend but the takeaway here is that we really only expect overdose death to increase unless we add new harm reduction interventions into our mix of public health strategies so i have advanced the slide again um and this is regional data from our police agencies who use a software system called bell whore um this slide shows um the data from burlington in some nearby towns and we see opioid overdoses with police response trending upward in this visual especially over the course of 2020 to 2021 and as we round out to 2022 here as well so we're looking at this lighter gray trend line in the back to see the change over time we also see a slow increase in cocaine overdoses with police response again looking at the same dataset of police agencies or law enforcement agencies that use the software system so we see mostly this trend moving up from 2020 to 2021 and 2021 on and then lastly we also see an increase um emerging with methamphetamine overdoses with police response as we see this trend line increasing so all of these things are cause for concern for us and also um cause for us to take some pause and to think about other innovative ways to intervene and make sure that um overdose is not happening in our community and that when it does happen it is not fatal and with that i will turn it over to my colleague scott hobbit we'll talk through some of the report details thank you mariel can everyone hear me all right great um so the vision for an overdose prevention site that we've offered in today's report is fairly similar to those already established in the united states canada and australia like those sites this is a pilot that's structured around very evidence based medical practice designed specifically to reduce overdose mortality uh the ways in which the program is unique um as a callback to the the spectrum mariel had presented we're framing a lot of these services not just through a lens of harm reduction but also prevention and treatment our report notes the importance of providing case management in conjunction with overdose reversal services which would not only benefit visitors seeking access to additional health or social services but also those organizations and agencies providing the services themselves uh while this policy proposal is often associated with opioid use services that we've presented are designed to address use of any and all substances for example we saw these sites launched in canada in response to the first few waves of the quote unquote opioid crisis the poisoning crisis driven by elicit fentanyl now has sort of renewed interest in these and we're also looking at this program as a critical tool in creating comprehensive responses to the things that we're maybe not addressing as well such as uh stimulant use disorder or looking at getting out ahead of potentially emergent trends things like siloing um a little bit more about those connections on the next slide so if you can see that slide um as the research has affirmed across academic studies of sites across countries um there's there's quite a bit to be enthusiastic about about this potential pilot and the associated health outcomes and the things that we've observed through studies of sites elsewhere are exactly what we're trying to achieve here in burlington particularly pertinent might be that third bullet point a decrease in found syringes um and it's also important to note the time frame we've sort of put forth as a dream or a vision for this first pilot and really that's looking at one to two years something to offer enough opportunity for evaluation and assessment that would also allow for service revision um while overdose prevention sites can take many forms um we're mostly thinking about what you see in the picture in the slide here really a single brick and mortar location ideally located either adjacent or within an existing health service provider here in the community we're also suggesting that pilot managers endeavor to make primary services as accessible as possible as you would with any health program but to also consider provision of services when other overdose response mechanisms um might lack capacity or might be unavailable entirely look finally at my next slide uh so we have three data visualizations here two on the left are overdose responses as reported in incident narratives submitted by police to valcor so there's a lot of caveats there in terms of this is a great sense of where overdoses are occurring but not comprehensive what you'll see the darker red areas in the left and center pictures are indicating greater frequency of responses the blue lines if you can see them are public transportation routes um and it's pretty obvious just from those two photos that you can see a cluster in downtown berlington of overdose responses the visualization on the far right those are just c-click fix reports of improperly discarded needles or syringes reported in the city for disposal of course we see these reports as proximate of of where drug use is probably occurring um and taken together these points of information are things we'd monitor moving forward to guide citing considerations in addition to what emerges from community engagement of course what are the people who are most likely to use these sites saying themselves and with all that um we'll turn it over quickly to our experts i think we're starting with ed baker from the addiction recovery channel thanks ed okay thank you can you hear me yes just make sure you speak up i will so thank you scott and thank you marielle for an excellent presentation and i'm ed baker and i want to thank the city council members for their continued focus on this most urgent issue that we face today i'd like to begin my few minutes a little bit uncharacteristically i'd like i'd like to ask the council members to join me and join each other and in just a brief moment of silence in honor of the many fellow vermonters who have been taken taken from us by addiction so just let's just join each other for a few moments in silence thank you thank you so so for my part i i want to try to describe the the terrible gravity of what is occurring and the velocity the force with which it is occurring and will continue to occur in order to do that we have to take a brief look at 2014 in 2014 the centers for disease control their analysis cited two troubling trends one trend was a steady 15 year increase in the number of overdose fatalities specifically related to pharmaceutical opioids and we know everything about that now so i won't go into that the other disturbing trend was a tripling in deaths attributable to heroin tripling in four short years so an accelerated rate of death attributable to heroin 2011 12 13 and 14 the interesting thing about this report is that in a footnote in a footnote it noted for the first time a trending related to imf or illegally manufactured fentanyl acetyl fentanyl the drunk enforcement administration their national drug threat assessment for that period 2014 cited the number of deaths attributable to fentanyl at 700 700 2014 if you fast forward to the 12 month period ending april 2021 the number of deaths in america attributable to fentanyl and its many analogs is 68 000 2014 700 2021 68 000 this is what we're up against it is unprecedented and we should make no mistake about it vermont is but a grim reflection of what is occurring nationally the same period ending april 2021 vermont for the 12 months preceding that period had cdc as noted vermont has had an 85 increase in drug overdose fatality from 114 to 2011 in one year the worst or the highest increase in rate in america vermont saw that this that year if you look at 2021 reports now the vermont health department is reporting 150 deaths due to a drug overdose with 23 death certificates being validated so you can say for all intention purposes up until september of 2021 there's 173 vermonters fellow vermonters who have died of drug overdoses if you continue that trend for to the end of the year have approximately 230 deaths in vermont this year of drug overdoses that's two vermonters every three days two vermonters fellow vermonters dying every three days so i'll conclude with this the need for for intervention could not be clear this is the definition of urgency it's the definition of emergency the science as scott pointed out could not be clearer it is unequivocal that these sites work the willingness of the most at-risk population in shitton and county couldn't be clear they've been polled 91 of people injecting drugs that were polled would use an overdose prevention site they don't want to be alone they're forced to be alone they would like to be somewhere where they could be saved if they overdose the funding is available well thank goodness for tj donovan and his fellow attorneys general nationwide for pursuing opioid wholesale distributors and settling the class actions to vermont will be getting millions of dollars per year for 30 years thank goodness for tj donovan and his relentless colleagues because they will bring the sakula family to justice and there will be millions more dollars coming into vermont over the foreseeable future the funding is here a precedent a precedent is set on november 30th two overdose prevention sites opened in manhattan on point one in east harlem the other in washington heist this is a state directly this is not denmark sweden switzerland canada even this is new york state right across the lake precedent is set i'm going to end with the last four words that dr june young park uttered as mayor one burgers community stat meeting recently dr june young park is a renowned researcher and expert in this field from brown university at a question and answer period regarding overdose prevention sites her last four words were the time is now so with that i'll pass it off to um and thank you for having me i'll pass it to to grace and uh jess thank you thanks and i'm not sure counselors how much time we have left right now but if we have time we'll um hear from jess and grace if not we'll have them available for q and a no we have time let's hear from jess and grace since we have okay on the on the line appreciate appreciate you being here all the time um but let's go to jess and grace for sure um i can go my name's jess curbie i work at howard's in our safe recovery um can you guys hear me out today can you nod if you do i'm a little laggy um i am the harm reduction supervisor at safe recovery and i'm also a person in long-term recovery from opiate use disorder myself and i've had overdoses myself where i was using a loan because i didn't have another alternative and it was really scary and that's not what i wanted to be doing i'm lucky that i survived if that was today i might not have because um of fentanyl and how much more likely you are to have a fatal overdose with fentanyl and i just wanted to you know make sure that i said that you know working with this population every day i do think people would use this site i think that we need this site and you know we lose a lot of people at safe recovery when we lose for monsters we often know them at safe recovery and it's absolutely devastating to us that's my child in the background i'm sorry um and we feel like we help them with everything we can that that we have the tools to help them like we provide people with narcanum we provide people with you know low barrier access to buprenorphine we help with housing and case management and connection to medical care and all those things but in the end you know am i uh lagging no you're okay i'm Ariel if you could just please go out of speaker view i mean go out of yeah there we go stop sharing just so that we can see um just go go ahead just okay one of the things you know we feel like we've helped people with all of the things that like at our disposable the tools that we have like helping people with low barrier bup and making sure that people have the narcanum they need and their family members have the narcanum they need and helping people connect to medical care and housing and doing all kinds of case management and all that stuff but in the end the one thing that we can't help with is you know one thing that people really need and that's providing people with an alternative to use alone and there's a lot of times when i'm talking to people you know who've had previous overdoses traumatizing events where partners have overdosed and you know trying to make safety plans with people for alternative to to use alone and to not using alone and a lot of times people don't have it and that feels really crappy as a provider trying to make a plan with somebody to how to not have a fatal overdose when you're losing clients you know weekly and people are like i don't i want to tell you i won't use alone but i don't have an option you know a lot of times people are homeless or in hotel rooms by themselves um you know they try to use places that they get kicked out of that kind of thing and it just kind of feels like you know working in harm reduction every day with people who are most at risk for overdose and fatal overdose that it really does feel like we're really behind right now and that this is like one thing that we know could save lives and that we could be doing for people um and you know i just wanted to take the opportunity to tell you like as somebody working in this population every day and somebody who's experienced this myself um and trying to find ways to not use alone myself and having overdoses myself like how badly i think that we need this in vermont and i just wanted to um to tell everyone that here grace if you can get it it's my it's my life's challenge to always follow jess so i'm grace keller i'm the program coordinator at howard center safe recovery and i've been here before on safe consumption sites we call them overdose prevention sites now that is really the term of art and um piggybacking on what jess said i have been to a safe an overdose prevention site i visited vancouver when we were looking at this in the legislature a couple years back i also have reversed overdoses at safe recovery so i can do a comparison on what happens in both situations i've used narcan myself 20 times on individuals that have been brought to safe recovery blew overdose and not breathing um all of them were brought in a car by somebody who was terrified and um i've used actually i've used narcan probably eight of those 20 times um no i've used narcan all of those 20 times now that i think about it and um and then we had one actual overdose on site all of the rest were people that were brought to safe recovery um and in those situations i've done narcan i've done rescue breathing the person is blue they're not they're not breathing and it's it's one of the most terrifying things you'll ever see especially because it doesn't resolve itself immediately there's been times where i've had to give many doses of narcan and the only reason that we've been able to save people every single one of those times is luck so we are really factoring in luck at this point when we have an intervention that we know can shave down that time that is evidence-based to shave down that time so when i was in vancouver it was pretty emotional because you get to see what happens there is if an overdose occurs there's medical staff they're right there they're there within seconds and they're reversing the overdose immediately with what has happened with me um the person who's brought them there doesn't even know how long that they've been um overdosed and that's uh that's really hard to assess even having done this myself even having trained thousands of people in overdose from reversal you know time slows down you can't tell if it's been a minute or 10 minutes um and all you know is that it doesn't look good for a very long period of time and again the only reason that we've been successful with all of those is that the person driving them to safe recovery got them there just in time and so when we look at places like vancouver where they've never had a fatal overdose and it's because that time frame is seconds not minutes not 10 minutes um they probably won't hopefully won't with us we are in a well totally different situation where we are completely vulnerable and at risk for having my entire staff witness a fatal overdose having myself and and other people administer narcan to somebody who doesn't survive um and i think i've talked about this before we interview all of our clients on intake and for a very long period of time up until 2017 23 to 26 of them reported witnessing an overdose in 2017 that number jumped up to 81 percent that's in one year that is what we're looking at with fentanyl on the street this drug is incredibly powerful and like jess said we are located in downtown burlington um but we're the only full time surge exchange in vermont so we have clients from every county in the state and sometimes as high as 30 percent come from outside of chitin and county so when you hear about fatal overdoses oftentimes we know them we know their dreams we know their recovery successes we know their challenges we know their families their partners their children um so it's been very very devastating to me and my staff and our community to be losing people at such a high rate um what i can say for syringe service programs the cdc says people are five times more likely to enter treatment we as the city especially a lot of you there we all work very hard to making sure that treatment access was available we've we've given out 32 000 doses of narcan out of our safe recovery office alone but as jess said the one problem we haven't been able to solve is that making sure ensuring that there's somebody there um to save somebody's life and not only to save their life but to have wraparound services to offer um support to offer treatment uh to to really spend time with people and the cdc says people in syringe service programs are five times more likely to enter treatment than those who don't we believe the same would be for an overdose prevention site so we're here for questions i think it's probably easier to do that and answer answer some questions so thank you so much for having us we really appreciate your attention to this really important issue thank you grace thanks grace jess and ed i just have a few next steps to summarize for council so that you know where we're going and where um you can direct new questions and let me just see if i can get the screen share back hold on one second um so in terms of next steps well that's not what i meant to do um the city staff will continue to work with the state legislature um to advocate for um legislative change that will allow for overdose prevention sites at the state level um i also hope to report back on a review of feasibility of any um changes that need to happen in order to ready yourself for an overdose prevention site here in burlington meaning looking at um all kinds of licenses and regulatory structures um and we will provide an update after uh this legislative session let you know if there's been any progress made with the legislature and specifically i'm wondering can city council provide a recommitment to overdose prevention sites it's been helpful to have the previous resolutions stating how strongly committed to overdose prevention sites you are they've been looked at nationally um they're certainly helping you know tone the conversation to be more towards protected public health policies and harm reduction and we also wonder if a letter of support from council um might be issued in that supports a previous letter um that the community stat subcommittee on overdose prevention sites just sent to the legislature um or the mayor's office sent to the legislature on behalf of those folks who wrote it um last week just advocating for overdose prevention sites and for the legislators to consider any overdose prevention site bills that come before them with that um i'll end our screen share and can take any questions that you have okay the the floor is open the questions or comments from counselors counselor paul uh thanks president tracy uh thanks so much for this presentation and for those who aren't familiar with some of the people that just spoke this evening you're getting the a team when it comes to uh overdose prevention sites these are people who have devoted tremendous amounts of time to this issue and our our uh uh our strong strong advocates for this for for promoting uh harm reduction and specifically overdose prevention sites um i just wanted to add that uh both president tracy and i are members of as the two counselors that are on comm stat we did sign on to the letter um that will go to the state house and uh with along with i can't even i can't i can't even remember how many others but there are a number of others that have signed on to this as well and uh the last resolution that we did bring forward in 2020 received unanimous support um if there is a desire to see us do you know to have another a recommitment to that uh we're certainly open to doing so um i think i think there is strong support for overdose prevention sites on this council thanks very much thank you counselor mason thank you president tracy i'm not sure if this is probably answered by marielle or who um of our presenters could you maybe lay out the steps that would be necessary you know between now and opening you know whether that's legislative whether that's finding a partner agency funding just to sort of pull out of the you know on the ground to maybe a 30 or 60 thousand foot level you know and the timing associated with um potentially moving forward yes i can definitely comment on that and um would invite others to jump in as you like um i think as you mentioned the biggest hurdle here is a legislative change and so road island has authorized the opening of the overdose prevention site at the state level um within their legislature they have not yet to my knowledge open to site new york took a different approach in getting their site up and running but that certainly the legislative the legislative change is a barrier it's a barrier in part just for the the site operating but also a barrier in part for finding a willing partner who is ready to um jump in and you know do something that is that the legislature is actively saying it's not okay right now so um advocating at the state level and advocating at also the local level are both really important next steps um finding that key partner and having um partners um we think we have um several partners potentially identified but having folks um be at the ready and and doing the um operational review to understand what it would take um staffing wise um resource wise in order to open is another step we have some citing considerations in the report that we um submitted last week mostly looking again at overdose locations i think there are additional data sets that we could look at um in order to get more accurate on where um our largest clusters of of overdoses are occurring um we have also made staffing recommendations within that report about how many staff we may need um or how many staff may be needed um and what kinds of you know potentially considerations folks would what considerations would need to be made in in terms of the whole sphere of harm harm reduction and service provision um exist within broington in order to find really those key um times to be open and deliver services um those are only a few of the next steps but it's a it there are plenty um of next steps so i want to see if any of the other folks on the line have comments to add there i don't want to muddy the waters but i want to be clear that we can move forward um without any consultants being hired with any without any legislative changes just with our own internal capacity to sort of collect those data sets to guide citing considerations otherwise a lot is going to wait to be determined until we have a partner for this uh regardless funding questions or mixes can still be explored well before any commitment is made those are great thanks Scott thanks thanks councillor mason councillor carpenter i'm just curious um i know there are communities a couple of the models out there have mobile sites versus a permanent site um can you kind of talk about the differences there sorry may not have picked it up on the mic oh i'm sorry um i know that there are um some models out there that have mobile sites versus permanent sites do you sort of speak about um the difference between that and and what you might be looking for in broington as uh we mentioned in the report this pilot specifically looked at the brick and mortar location um that's based on the fact that a lot of the academic research we've looked at the vast vast majority is focused on those sites specifically um i know that mobile sites are something that's that have been in the agenda sphere here in brimont we've had legislation introduced their last session to explore expansion of mobile harm reduction services um and certainly looking at the data that we collect through client engagement and over the course of this pilot um looking to have the flexibility to meet clients where they're at the course um but basically the the differences between the two models are a van that will take a set route and meet people where they're at versus a location that is open when people come to the doors i think it's also a capacity issue that usually a static site can see more people in a day than a mobile site could so um when we were conceptualizing this we did conceptualize um what would it be like if a pilot were expanded to include a mobile site and i think that's still a good option to leave on the table to hit multiple needs but ultimately if we it came down to what is the suggestion for this pilot that will be evaluated to understand what the needs are in the community what the community wants um and a static site has capacity to serve more folks and also i think to provide all those additional services that we were talking about you know case management medical staff like there's more ability to do that at a static site okay just to carve should i assume in addition to the um oversight of of the injections you have ongoing staff that would provide wrap around services and other referral that kind of thing that's about the model because yes okay thank you council carpenter i have councilor McGee to be followed by councilor hightower thank you president crazy i want to thank you all for uh putting this report together and um just for the work that you do um within the frameworks that we currently have available to um do what you can to prevent overdoses um you know i think acknowledging the urgency and the emergencies uh ed mentioned um i think it is vital for the council to take action to redouble our commitment to make overdose prevention sites happen and i would absolutely support sending a letter to the legislature and passing another resolution thank you councilor McGee i have councilor hightower yeah and i don't have too much to add um i think you know you're hearing from the council kind of one by one but i haven't certainly heard anything negative towards this again and personally i also just want to say thank you as someone who doesn't know but as much about this as councillor tracy and president tracy or um councillor paul just appreciate you all taking the time to really walk us through everything i think for me a lot of this information was new so i just really really appreciate it and like council McGee said and also supportive of re-upping our commitment to um making this a reality thank you councillor hightower uh councillor shannon thank you president tracy um and uh i echo councillor hightower sentiments um i really appreciate the information that we've received both in the advanced communication and the presentations tonight i um have a couple questions one is um the places that i have read about that have overdose prevention sites now are very large cities and one of the things that large cities often offer is is more sense of anonymity than we have here in burlington and i wondered um and this question i don't know if it sounds naive i can certainly see it being misinterpreted but i still think it's an important question that i'll that i'll ask who uses these sites um why would somebody i mean i can understand that somebody would choose to use these sites if they're afraid obviously if they're afraid of dying of an overdose which is a constant threat but i would also think that there would be a desire to do this in in private and not to go to a site where it would be known by everyone in this very small community what you're doing if it's within a um healthcare facility that might offer more privacy but i wondered kind of what the what the vision is and if you can educate me on what the thinking of a user is as they as they use a site like this um i certainly think that something like this is far preferable then uh it's it's better for the users obviously it can prevent deaths it can help people that are are literally using on the street but i'm also wondering what would it feel like for users in our community i'll take the first stab but i think grace and jess are probably best equipped to answer this um i would contest the notion that there is widespread awareness of who in our community is accessing these existing services i don't think anyone of the council could name more than five particular clients if if that please correct me at the moment um what would it feel like for someone uh to have a safe place to go where they know they might have their life safe i would think that'd be pretty pretty uplifting i would think that would be wonderful for people who chose to access that in terms of who is using these sites anyone and everyone um in terms of who the doors are opened um if you're looking for more specifics in terms of who are the populations that are accessing these sites as established elsewhere it's the most marginalized most in need group of people in our communities um that's probably why it's harder to see them they're they're not the kind to come advocate for themselves when you don't have capacity for so many things to then in turn fight for policy reform or say hey i would use this um i'll add something you know just as a person that you know has utilized harm reduction services myself there was a time that i thought i would never step foot in a syringe exchange you know and i ended up doing that really you know frequently um and i think fear and need overcomes like the concern of what people might think about you or see you coming in and out of the building so you know because the same question could be asked for people that are utilizing a syringe service program like don't people know that the syringe exchange you know we have you know hundreds of people a week that come so i think it's kind of the same sort of thing that people have a need for something people are really scared and i think that that overcomes like well 100 of people using overdose prevention site no but i you know 90 of our clients says that they would you know over 90 so i think a lot of it is just um you know fear and need and that and that really overcomes a lot of that concern well thank you that's actually very helpful and and scott the connection with the um needle exchange which you kindly connected me with for for a tour um helps me have a better vision of what what this might look like the other question i have is like how wide an area would you expect to draw from would people be driving to a site like this or particularly driving from it what's the kind of radius that would be served i can try and take this one that um it's great from safe recovery um the driving issue comes up a lot it's something that we grapple with anyway i think the driving issue for me is often the reason that people get concerned about having a safe or a overdose prevention site the driving um concern to me is the reason why you would have one because right now what happens for a lot of people is that they are using in places they're driven into the shadows they're hiding from people you know from law enforcement they're in unsafe places and then they oftentimes end up having to drive away or or have to drive themselves somewhere else we have plenty of unsafe injection sites all over the city where this would allow for intervention observation support around um if somebody wasn't okay to drive there are policies in all of the places that that exist about a waiting period before you leave and and actually that's a great time to offer people services is after they've used the site and in while people are waiting and seeing if they're safe to leave um and those protocols would all be in place but to me that really speaks to why we really would want to consider this because right now what we have is people using in unsafe locations unmitigated without support without somebody that could step in if there was a concern about driving um and this would bring them in in a place that's safe that with people they trust just like you're talking about um they there has to be a high level of trust in the agency that would do this um in the population but it gives the opportunity for intervention which right now we really don't have in so many of these cases um so I I wonder if that answers your question and feel free to and also um Councillor Shannon did come for a tour at safe recovery we opened that up we are close to the public from 12 to close to clients from 12 to 1 so anybody who would like to come by I know this has been a couple years we would love to have you um just reach out and we can make something happen but I hope that answers your question anybody else can feel free to jump in yeah I would just I would add one thing about you know the people that would probably use this site I think the demographic would be similar to those who use um you know our service program in Burlington safe recovery and the vast majority of our clients don't drive and whenever this conversation comes up like I always like to say that most of our clients are coming on foot um and it's pretty rare maybe a couple clients today come in a car but most people so it's not you know just trying when you envision it I don't think you you shouldn't envision that every person that comes in the site there's going to be a situation where we have to you know figure out driving a car because I think that it won't come up as often as people think so if if I might add a little bit would that be okay sure go ahead we're going back to the counselor's question about how people would feel you know people people with addiction are have been stigmatized against um since since the well since the beginning of time actually but really since the war on drugs in the 1970s there's been a a consistent effort built into public policy to dehumanize people who use drugs the war on drugs was designed to just persecute prosecute and incarcerate people with a disease so people people with addiction they're languishing in the shadows they're afraid to come out they're afraid to come out because rightfully so they they're feel they'll be arrested and incarcerated um when you have a place like a safe recovery and grace if you could just touch a little bit on the level of trust that that people feel for you and your team members um I mean I can say I'm a person in recovery I've had a have a history of injection drug use I've been in recovery for a very long time and um it was narcotics anonymous and alcoholics anonymous and being around people who didn't look at me through a lens of stigma and understood who I was and what I needed that saved my life and this is what will happen with an overdose prevention site if it's located in a place where there's trust where people can feel they can go and not be arrested and not be persecuted and not be looked down upon and not be scorned and that's Grace's place then word word will spread by word of mouth very very quickly very very quickly we will have a population that knows there is someplace safe where people understand you where you can go and not be alone and that kind of affirmation resonates with people we all know that and and people with addiction are people it resonates with them no less than it resonates with us being accepted people with addiction just aren't accepted anywhere if you were to if you could create a totem of stigma the people at the lowest ground the people most stigmatized against would be people who inject drugs and that that's the people we're talking about by and by those are the people who are dying and in Vermont they're probably going to be dying two every three days unless we do something about it so Grace could you talk a little bit about the trust that you've managed to create with your your your people at safe recovery so Councillor Shannon has the floor right now so Councillor Shannon I think you have actually answered my questions really well and I appreciate if I actually appreciate the respect you treated my questions which may have been a little bit ignorant but I think a lot of us need that education your answers have really helped me feel more more comfortable with the idea so thank you very much thank you thank you thank you Councillor Shannon I have Councillor Hanson great just wanted to thank you all so much for all your work on this all the progress you're making for communicating it to us in the public and walking us through that and just want to echo other councillors and offering my full support for Burlington continuing to move forward and establishing one or more safe injection sites so thank you very much and look forward to continuing to work together on this thank you Councillor Hanson I don't have anyone else in the queue we set to wrap up on this item oh Councillor Jang have a question President Tracy go ahead Councillor Jang thank you President Tracy and I mean Scott Pavek you know I think since I have known you I know you just you know advocating for this and Grace Keller your name come up online of work and Mr. Edd you know you're always in CCTV channel 17 raising awareness about this issue and Marie well thank you for all you do too from the city so basically my question is about next steps we have this in front of us today but what is next from here I think it bears repeating again looking at our internal capacity to gather some of the data that can help guide and citing considerations I think we've laid out a few roles for the city council potentially aid in some advocacy efforts related to the legislative obstacles at the state level certainly we would need a little more guidance or to reconvene for next steps that could be pursued within our own existing capacity but regardless of who the partners are I would think a study of commercial real estate and related insurance stuff I know nothing about would certainly be helpful if I could if I could just briefly respond to that idea of next steps that that I personally think it's very important for us to take some very simple next steps everyone here has been a tremendous amount of support offered for the idea so each one of us in our social circle to begin to not not make this a secret this should not be a secret this should be something that we're talking about educating people about talking to our friends and our families about and getting other people to talk about the the idea is to get this on the table get it into like the cultural consciousness so we can take a look at it and make some decisions about it it's been in the shadows because people who use drugs are stigmatized against it's time to get it out into the open get it out of the closet start talking about it and and move forward with it and we can all do something about that every day people we meet conversations we get on that's something that I just think is is crucial crucial thank you and you know talking about the secret that you just talked about also you know I manage a grant from UVM subs just to support women's with substance use disorder and as you all know that we have this big problem about the lack of prenatal care for you women you know guys I'm pretty sure you know all of it and also we do not even have we struggling to access even the data basically we know it's out there and everybody's struggling to access the real data in order for us to be meaningfully you know bringing solutions to this issue it's a big that's a big issue one of the city council this asks a question about you know where is it going to be basically right and I think it would be very important to start to think about now like all the wraparound services that can come with it not only building it for people to come and use but also to do yoga to access prenatal care you know mindfulness those type of things so in order for you know kids can see you've got in but we all feel that this is just a safe place where you can come in relax and you have so much time I think it's also very important to think about the hours of operation right this should not be something you use Monday to Friday from 8 to 5 this is 24 7 you know and the funding part I think is the next step from my perspective let's get this done and let's do it also in a way that we even innovate you know basically compared to what already exists around the world thank you all for your work really appreciate it thank you councillor jane anyone else okay seeing none I'll go to councillor paul for a motion on just on accepting the communication uh thanks president tracy I would make a motion that we accept these communications and place them on file as we continue to move forward in this journey okay we have a motion is there a second second seconded by councillor stromberg any further discussion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of accepting communications and placing them on file please say aye aye be opposed that carries unanimously thanks again to uh marielle scott jillian ed and grace for joining us this evening really appreciated your presentation and all the great information you provided it's been uh it's just a joy to work with all of you at com stat and look forward to continued collaboration on this issue as well we'll be able to unite thank you you too all right that having completed the presentation will now move on to another item that is somewhat related um item 5.02 um which is a communication regarding national opioid settlement councillor paul may please have a motion on this I'm happy to you want me to you want the recommended I thought you were actually sorry I apologize sorry I apologize I'm sorry about that I would make a motion to approve uh the city of berlin conjoining and participating in the two proposed national opioid settlement agreements as negotiated by the remont office of the attorney general first with johnson and johnson and jensen for a portion of the 12 billion dollar settlement to be paid nationally over a period of 10 years and second with mckyson cardinal and amerisource bergen for a portion of the 21 billion dollar settlement to be paid nationally over a period of 18 years further resolving to approve and authorize the mayor and city attorney to draft and execute any documents necessary to report and effectuate the city's agreement to join and participate in the two subtle agreement settlement agreements and to file and report such documents including but not limited to exhibit k to the parties and to the forums necessary to perfect the city's interests in the settlements on or prior to the january 2nd 22 deadline and after a second I would turn it over to the city attorney if there are any updates from our last conversation last week certainly thank you for that councillor mason is there a second seconded by councillor carpenter uh city attorney richardson uh yes the only update is that we have had communications with the attorney general's office obviously they welcome the city joining the settlements in part is reviewed last time this does trigger a high likelihood that the state of vermont will receive the bonuses that are built into the settlement agreement so the state will receive the full amount of funding or come closer to receiving the full amount of funding as a result of the council's actions tonight and the attorney general supports the idea that burlington has an important role to play within the abatement fund that will be set up as a result of this settlement agreement and I think those are the only two additional factors otherwise the description that I gave to the council last week as well as the briefing continues to hold and I would be available if the council has any further questions thank you attorney richardson any questions from councillors okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favour please say I any opposed that carries unanimously brings us into our next item which is ordinance on short-term rentals councillor mason thank you president tracy before I make a motion can I ask a point of information in it I don't know if it's to the city attorney or the planning staff the recommended action on board docs is not consistent with the recommended action the memo so I'm not entirely clear the the board docs action is waive the second reading set for public hearing the memo on the other hand says the council's requested to provide guidance to staff on which of the two options it wishes to pursue and then vote to schedule the second hearing public hearing and adoption for a meeting in january so I'm not sure in light of those two what my motion would be and to that end the city planner title and director of litigation servant will be happy to answer those questions okay so the points to the fact that there are actually two different versions of one of the documents for this discussion tonight and asks for the council to provide direction on which of those versions it would like to further discuss the next actions for these are to either make further amendments or consider moving them forward for adoption each of them have a slightly different path forward for that adoption but ultimately what we're looking for is some vote of direction on which version of these documents you would like to further and then for you to take action to actually schedule it for a further discussion and potential adoption at a future meeting so if I'm hearing that correct all that literally is happening as we are opening the discussion on the agenda item there is no action that we are seeking until there is direction provided to the planning staff unless Kim is telling me something differently directive litigation sort of it no that's right I mean at this point we're asking for direction and then should make an appropriate great motion at that point okay so I'm gonna scramble I appreciate there are two I favor the third option which is not up on board docs which is going back to the Montreal compromise which was put forth by the joint commission and I'll give my reasoning and start the conversation off before I do so though as chair of the ordinance committee I thought for the benefit of the council as well as the public I would sort of take us back a little bit as to how we got here and I will be brief but back in the summer of 2019 the mayor convened a housing summit hundreds of our constituents selected officials and others convened in this room this was pre-covid provided wonderful thoughts and comments and out of that the council then sort of moved forward with an ordinance resolution that was passed in October of 19 that provided in essence direction forward on a number of policy initiatives one relating to energy efficiency one about creation of accessory dwelling units one relating to city's approach to minimum housing on transportation quarters one about increasing the level of dedicated funding the housing trust fund and then this last one relating to regulation of short-term rentals I want to read just for the benefit of the council the direction that was provided in October of 19 because I think it colors my view on the proposals what we passed in October 19 was direction to the joint committee to create a regulatory framework for short-term rentals protecting the city's housing supply by limiting the number of housing units that be converted excuse me for short-term rental purposes and ensuring that those conversions are contributing to the city's efforts to preserve and expand permanently affordable housing while also preserving some flexibility and ability to earn greater income for burlington homeowners and recognizing that some supply of short-term rentals benefits the burlington economy so that was the direction that was provided to the joint committee which has met really over the course of the last five years not exclusively on short-term rentals but this is really the last piece the joint committee I think weighed those competing goals as put forth in the resolution and advanced a proposal that permitted some degree of off-site hosting for short-term rentals within multi-unit buildings and for one and two unit buildings if the host had owned the property for three or more years that was not necessarily and for the public to understand the joint committee consisted of both the planning commission as well as the ordinance committee however the ordinance committee didn't get the vote so I don't want to imply there was you know there was clearly concern within the members of the ordinance committee who changed I'll be honest we had an election cycle and the ordinance committee did change during the course of those discussions so I think it's fair to characterize the feeling of the majority of the ordinance committee also changed based on the election but what became apparent throughout the discussion was really the policy level lever of owner occupancy was one of two ways to really get at how do we limit the number of short-term rentals in the city of Burlington to the planning office's credit you know we spent an inordinate amount of time asking them to investigate other alternatives whether that's a cab you know look at other jurisdictions and unfortunately you know there was not another solution that came back that seemed to be better or at least had more support so the compromise proposal that was put forth I think and I can't say it better than a number of the public commenters who have been you know not just those who are here tonight but you know dozens of our resident our constituents and hosts who have been participants throughout this entire arduous process and I think you know while it was a compromise I think it was I won't say universally accepted but certainly by those and you know who are actively participating it was accepted that then you know after first read at this council got referred to the ordinance committee it was pretty clear or clear quickly at the ordinance committee that the compromise was not something that a majority of the ordinance committee was prepared to the to move forward what through I'm guessing three hearings at the ordinance committee what came forward was then a slightly modified proposal relating to the host you know being there whether that's the tenant or the owner that was presented to this council I don't even remember when three meetings ago or you know before followed by the work session at the work session what the planning office did here was in essence I think even a lack of support for that option so what what has come forth before so I'm gonna have to let Megan and Scott explain the details because even the details of these proposals are somewhat lost on me is is a further modification and I would say even a more restrictive and tightening going either toward requiring you know owner occupancy or something pretty close to it is my interpretation I understand and we've heard I mean the other concern I've heard from a number of people who point to Portland, Maine sort of as the example of something similar on we can you know that currently requires owner occupancy it has had the unintended a consequence of limiting the number of non hotel options for those visiting I'm not close enough to the data to know you know what the impact has been I am cognizant we heard from a lot including those tonight in terms of the unintended consequences and I appreciate we do not have specific data but a number of hosts that are using either you know the income from the short term rental to in essence subsidize other longer term tendencies within their building or in other buildings as well as a number of Burlington residents who use that income in order to pay their own property taxes either in you know in another home that they might own in Burlington I was comfortable moving forward with the compromise because of the brilliant way that the planning office with legal counsel have structured this it's not all in our cdo such that you know we're grandfathering everyone in the minute we make the change the way this has been proposed is that you know the most a lot of the changes are in our minimum housing which in essence means if we guessed wrong we can fix it we can change it and I was comfortable with that understanding going down the path of trying to compromise and seeing how it worked out if I'm wrong and the council was wrong it can be changed next election cycle next annual registration my concern is if I'm wrong and this compromise doesn't go forward I think we've heard you know there it will have the impact you know a lot of sales going on and I think everyone thinks presto that means we'll have more housing rents are all going to go down I don't personally believe that's the case so for that reason as much as I appreciate the work that has gone into both of the two compromises that are up on board docs I don't support them and I would support going back to what came out of the joint planning commission leaving aside the seasonal you know the the other minor adjustments that have been made after that came forward so with that introduction floor is open I guess thank you thank you councilor mason we don't have a motion on the floor yet so we're still just hearing the council's the council's direction correct city attorney richardson that's my understanding okay thank you council shannon are we discussing five sorry hang on a second are we discussing 5.03 and 5.04 simultaneously just 5.03 am I confused because I thought a lot of what councilor mason was speaking to was 5.04 if I may I lump them together councilor tracy I mean I from my perspective the direction is the same I don't think you can bifurcate one from the other whether it's the changes to the mem housing I appreciate they are separate agenda items but from my perspective the direction is the same I understand that that's why I allowed it but to get big full context but yeah all right we're in terms of like a motion council shannon we we don't have a motion on the table regarding item 5.03 was my point sure go ahead so with regards to the zoning changes in 5.03 we have a couple different options we're looking at going with in terms of the chapter 18 changes but is it your opinion that either way we go with chapter 18 these are the changes that are needed with the zoning okay yes yes there's just one version of all of the changes under 5.03 related to the zoning amendments and they stand regardless of 5.04 okay that was my understanding I just wanted that verification thank you thank you councilor shannon council hi tower um yes in terms of direction I unfortunately do not agree with councilor mason I appreciate the summary I I know that there was also a memo that was asked to us which I think kind of differentiates what the different versions are but I'm supportive of the council's ordinance committee version as amended um for this meeting by the administration and the planning team um I think that it strikes a balance I think that we've been kind of continuing to search for throughout the last at least as long as I've been on council so well over a year and a half um in terms of like mostly limiting things to on-site owner occupied scenarios um which I think is important both in terms of limiting the scenarios and then I think for the policy reason of allowing folks to whatever that looks like age in place stay in place um while limiting it on investment properties I think is really what it comes down to limiting short-term rentals on investment properties um I'm not supportive of what went out of the the joint committee which again took her councilor mason's point the ordinance committee did not have a vote in what came out of the joint committee and I was never supportive won't be supportive of what was proposed last minute as a compromise before that came out of it which was the three-year rule um and so I think it's both as the administration has noted very difficult for us to enforce and keep track of but also I think isn't a particularly equitable way of um allowing additional uses for properties so um I am not in favor of councillor shannon's proposal although I think that both councillor shannon's proposal and the current um ordinance version would be an improvement over our status quo thank you councillor high tower I don't have anyone else in the queue I believe we do need a motion councillor councillor shannon councillor carpenter are you trying to get in the queue a clarification I guess in um so 5.03 is that what we're looking for a motion on correct councillor and as I understand that from director tell that would be necessary or would stand anyway no matter what version we might recommend in 5.04 so if we vote on 5.03 that really doesn't impact the discussion around 5.04 it does not however as has been noted by councillor mason and also planning staff they've also let us know that it really is it it is important for us to move these two items concurrently at the same time so we could choose to not take action on 5.03 however I think what the recommendation that I've heard is that it is important for us to keep them together so if there is any if it it it's just not um advisable to take action on one and not the other this evening so that does that answer your question councillor could we weigh in with the point of clarification about what the action is for 5.03 sure so the uh original recommended action was actually not to adopt 5.03 it was to just take action to warn it for a future public hearing and to consider adopting it at a future public meeting with zoning amendments that's a statutory process that you have to put an amendment through before you can take action on it so I think if you wanted to understanding that 5.03 is unlikely to change regardless of your decision on 5.04 you could take the action to indicate that you want it to be worn for a public hearing we can hold that then until after you've made a decision and adopted the chapter 18 pieces to actually put that into action but you would basically be authorizing us to do that after that point in time so this could be cleared off your agenda for tonight's purposes and you could move on to the substantive discussion of 5.04 okay sorry it's really confusing because these are two different parts of the ordinances so two different rules apply um but that's what this action is about okay thank you for that clarification councillor carpenter are you clear I guess so if I vote in favor of this I'm voting in favor of having you warn it and um we'll vote on it in substance another time so to be clear and to be clear we don't have a motion yet okay I just uh so I have councillor Hansen to be followed by councillor mason and councillor shannon were you trying to get in I'm probably trying to do the same thing council okay councillor hanson I'll come to you first because I see your hand is raised and then I'll come to you councillor shannon um well it sounds like based on what director title just said um we should just make the motion so I'll move to weigh the second reading and set for public hearing thank you moved by councillor hanson seconded by councillor shannon is there further discussion on this side of information I'm not sure that's just if we can clarify that the warning for the public hearing would come after the um chapter 18 uh changes are effective councillor hanson is that in your motion yeah please thank you okay all set is there a second I think councillor shannon councillor shannon okay thank you for that is there a further discussion of this item this is just 5.03 and it's just on the motion to weigh the second reading and warn it for a public hearing seeing no one else let's go to a vote on this all those in favor please say aye any opposed that carries unanimously so now we move to item 5.04 um which has another ordinance related to short-term rentals um and specific changes to chapter 18 of the housing code um councillor mason what I said before this one I'm not sure there is a motion other than to open the floor for discussion I think that planning and zoning office is looking for direction in terms of at least the two opposed or competing proposals that are on as I articulated before I would be my my advocacy is for the option that's not on board docs but one that was put forth by the joint commission committee okay thank you floor is open councillor shannon to be followed by councillor hanson it was my understanding that your desire president tracy was for something to be moved and then I was going to move to amend it but I can move my amendment is a strike all amendment if there's nothing to strike then it's just moving the ordinance and I don't know would you like me to make a motion to move the ordinance as I think it should be moved or does somebody else want to move the move an ordinance move something else yeah the floor is yours councillor shannon if you wanted to make a motion you're able to make a motion that was your opportunity to stop me from making that motion but I mean the floor is open the motion has not been made it's my understanding that you know a councillor could make a motion at this at this point so we have not a motion has not been offered on this move to waive the second reading and notice the ordinance that reads well actually maybe we should defer I just want to make sure what I'm doing is legal so one second councillor shannon so we do have a councillor barlow is on and has joined us I'm just going to promote councillor barlow sorry okay so so let me just check but could I ask if we had we had a first reading so that's the other confusing thing there's already been something that had a first reading so I think I have to amend what was read at the first reading is that correct city attorney Richardson yes that's my understanding because the first draft has been read it's been entered so if you wish to amend it or change it it would have to take into account what has already been put forward in the first reading okay so with that I will move to amend the ordinance that had the first reading with the version that is on board docs as ordinance alternate read councillor shannon short term rentals and ask for the floor back after a second councillor shannon has moved the ordinance is there a second is there a second yeah second seconded by councillor hanson councillor shannon you have the floor thank you this version really brings what's been termed short term rentals back to what it started out being which is renting out a room in your home if you have an extra room or renting out your home if you're away it was pointed out to me by an affordable housing provider today the short term rental is a misnomer what we're talking about here is lodging short term rentals would be weekly or monthly rentals what we're what we're talking about for the most part is weekend rentals mostly less than seven days every person at this table has acknowledged we are in the most severe housing crisis we have ever seen we need housing units every single one the debate before us is primarily whether we allow people who are owner occupying a unit to convert to a convert a second unit into a lodging unit rather than a housing unit what purpose or value of this council would allowing these conversions serve even effort is that it serves home ownership affordability so let's look beyond individual situations and consider the market impact of this policy as a policy does this make housing either owner occupied or rental housing more affordable no it doesn't this policy will increase the cost of cost of housing two ways one it reduces the number of available rental units decreasing the supply of rental units can only drive rental prices up in addition to being more expensive every unit that converts is a unit denied to someone seeking housing secondly if you are looking to buy a duplex to occupy one side and rent the other the bank will consider the income you get from a lease in determining if you are qualified to buy the property they will not consider the income from Airbnb or an STR unless you have a tax return to show them the income history for a period if that is your plan your finances will need to support buying the property without that income and many people are able to buy these properties because they have enough wealth according to the lender to afford it without showing additional income if they can't afford to buy the house without that income the bank will not make the loan on the property for the purpose of using it as an Airbnb however the owner will make more income from Airbnb lodging than they will by providing a housing unit this makes running such Airbnb's highly appealing for those that can afford to do it without the lender's help a lot of people are in this category and outbidding those that require more help from a lender the ability to make more money on these properties will continue to drive up their value and put increasing pressure on others to do the same the people who will win the bids on these properties are the ones that don't need the income from Airbnb in order to qualify for the loan another value we have is property rights owning property in burlington is a privilege and we have always taken the position that the city has the right to regulate the property based on our community needs and values our housing shortage has been put up by everyone as one of the our priority issues why would we be sacrificing any needed housing units it doesn't serve our values but it's a compromise with hosts it's a compromise with hosts that doesn't affect that many units we can't afford to lose any units but this is potentially hundreds of units it's a very popular trend you cannot look at this policy as something that only affects the units being operated today we have received many letters from people who tell us they don't currently operate in Airbnb but they want to keep the option open in the future as it is a very lucrative option landlords have to deal with the full spectrum of the struggles as a landlord I can tell you some of the issues I have had to deal with that could be avoided by by turning the units into Airbnb's divorce new partners people moving in who were not on the lease drug dealing drug use losing a job inability to pay rent terminal illness and even death Airbnb is a very attractive alternative whether or not it achieves our goals and values it has gone through two years of process and we can't undo it we are warning this tonight for public hearing there is still more process yet to come the council has been asked for input many times over the last three years and each time I have consistently voiced the same concern about allowing these conversions as have many others around the table the fact that the committee decided to make concessions with Airbnb hosts does not justify those concessions to me the only people who have contacted us in favor of allowing Airbnb conversions who are not Airbnb operators are those who want to convert in the future neighbors do not consider Airbnb's good for the neighborhoods for a variety of reasons neighbors did not dominate the conversation though housing providers and advocates are not coming to us telling us we need to allow lodging units lodging unit conversion in order to keep housing affordable they came and spoke in the beginning of the process and weighed in and that input seems forgotten over the many subsequent meetings where they asked to weigh in on this final product where they asked if this would provide more or less affordable housing I asked the answer I got was that they don't want us to allow housing to convert maintaining housing is the low hanging fruit what is much harder is building housing we cannot afford to lose dozens or hundreds of housing units lived here for a period of time and I bet every one of us has seen a housing project be opposed by the neighbors and it takes typically about five years to build a housing project and get through the process we don't really like development in this city and it's something our constituents and social media reminds us of on a regular basis development is painful it may be needed and we need those housing units but we hardly ever like anything that anybody builds we complain about every tree that goes down preserving the existing units is the easiest thing we can do as a council in order to to maintain housing not just affordable housing housing at all some of the things we heard tonight I'm not taking housing off the market it's an ad you that I built it was never on the market this council allowed all kinds of waivers to build more ad use because we need more housing we did not change those policies to allow for lodging we did it to create housing it is great because I've invested all this money and it's much nicer than it would be if it were a rental that is probably true in most cases we should hold the bar higher for minimum housing however this is the worst kind of gentrification this is gentrification not for the benefit of a new neighbor but for the benefit of providing tourist lodging which is this which is at a scale increases and destroys neighborhoods limiting to owner occupants will probably prevent the disruption of neighborhoods but it certainly doesn't meet our housing goals going down with or without this policy but maybe they won't go up so much and however many units we disallow is lodging is that many units where people can live glad it's in chapter 18 which gives us some flexibility when we have a five percent rental vacancy we should consider allowing conversions and more flexibility for homeowners and property owners now we have less than one percent vacancy and every unit counts whether we're talking about a dozen units or several dozen units or hundreds of units we can't afford to lose those units so I would ask this council to take air bnb back to what it was intended to be which is renting the extra space in your house making good use of it subsidizing your income that way renting it when you are not there and not allowing the conversion of units that we need for housing thank you thank you councillor shannon i have councillor hanson to be followed by councillor mason great thank you um i support this version as well that councillor shannon has put forward i think we have to look at the big picture and what our goals and priorities are it's often easily forgotten in a lot of these spaces but 60 percent of burlington is is renters this allowing air bnbs is going to have a clear negative impact on renters by taking away more units in an already extremely tight market and that's true even under councillor shannon's proposal where there are potential bedrooms that could be rented out long term that are going to going to air bnb but at least we're limiting it away from investment properties and and reducing the overall amount and also targeting and balancing who's profiting off of this externality because i think we all agree that it is a negative externality it is something that you know individuals who have air bnbs are making great money there's no doubt about that you know our goal isn't to punish them or prevent them from making that money but our goal as city government is to control when someone's ability to make profit is coming at the expense of the majority of people and i think those profits and those private benefits that are going to air bnb hosts should go to the homeowners who are struggling to live in burlington and who need to rent out a bedroom in their home just to make it work here it shouldn't go to the very small minority of people in burlington many of them don't even live in burlington but the small minority of individuals who can afford property in the city of burlington that they that they don't even live in that is a very small group of people and it's a group of people that has vastly more economic mobility and access by the fact that they own this this incredibly valuable asset you know a property in burlington is really valuable even if you use it as a long-term rental that's in this market you know being a burlington landlord is you're going to make money because it's such a tight market i understand that they'll make more money off of air bnb potentially but again we have to balance the impact of of that private profit and i think if we're going to balance it the way to do it is to restrict it from those with the most means and limit it to people again who are just homeowners um you know they're not necessary they're not landlords but they're homeowners you know renting a room out in their own building just just to make it work here so the other thing is you know looking at that big picture looking at the negative impact on renters it's really important that we start more restrictive with this policy if it's not as bad as we think and we don't lose as many units as we think you know we can look at expanding it further but it's it's much more difficult to start more expansive and then try to tighten the policy later on um i'd rather start safe and try to protect us from losing even more rental units than we need to um in the situation that we're in and if it's not as much of a problem as we think we can we can expand from there so i really hope that we prioritize renters and homeowners um you know ability to to live and work and stay in burlington which is really on the precipice right now and i really hope we prioritize that over extra profits for for those that own investment property in burlington thank you thank you councillor hanson councillor mason uh thank you president tracy i respectfully see this from a different perspective than my colleagues you're both approaching this as if it doesn't exist and it does we're not arabian bees have been around or short-term rentals have been around unfettered with no regulation for years so this notion that somehow i mean i'm not sure i would disagree if we were starting from scratch but the reality is they exist and for two years we heard from burlington residents about whether it's the flexibility or or ways that arabian bee were benefiting them and we're allowing them to stay here and we were not able to grandfather them and the compromise was in essence a concession and in terms of i completely disagree that we're starting as tight as you can and then loosening right now no regulation exists so i don't see how a compromise is going to open the spigot the spigot's open it's 256 units and that's not at one given time we've heard time and time again that's measured over a course of time so this is potentially the worst it only you know goes down from here so i appreciate we have a difference of opinion of that but my view is formed by having listened to you know people who have come and testified and what i believe is in essence the three-year restriction clamps down on rank speculation um i want to in addition to the comments i i would like to ask i almost think we have to go into executive session we received in essence a litigation pre litigation letter from someone on behalf of the short-term rental and in my opinion before voting on this proposal i would like to hear from the city attorney in in terms of whether in in his or their opinion there is some risk for the city if we were to adopt uh prussian and resolution so i don't have and i i don't really want to go into executive session but i don't know how we hear from the city attorney that yeah this is legit or no it's not legit without going into executive session is there am i correct that there is we cannot hear that unfettered advice without going into executive session that's correct i would recommend if you want any sort of legal gloss on some of the fundamentals uh under section one vsa one vsa section 313 that's the classic type of attorney council that was intended uh to be given to the council as far as legal uh descriptions as to rights and and potential liabilities of any type of legislation so forgetting and you might have to help me a little bit i recall it's a two-step process the first is a finding you know based on i guess a pre litigation letter that we received based on action that we're contemplating taking that we'd like the advice of the city attorney's office or i would like the advice to the city attorney's office i'm not sure the magic language on the finding but it would be along the lines of that premature public knowledge would cause prejudice to one or more parties in this case i would suggest that any um response that i would be giving either directly to that letter or uh based off of the uh issues stated in that letter would be prejudicial to the city if it was uh given in public session i make the motion based on what city attorney richardson said because i didn't write it down we have a motion from councillor mason to on a finding is there a second seconded by councillor shannon any discussion okay here now we're going into a we'll go to a vote on the finding is in favor please say i hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously now based on that finding councillor mason i would make a motion to go into executive session i'm not sure who the participant should be other than the city attorney's office is there anyone else that should sure i would recommend both the uh both myself and attorney sterven and uh the mayor and the chief of staff as well as the um director of planning and zoning the manager of the zoning division correct so moved okay we have a motion to go into executive session is there a second by councillor shannon any discussion okay all those in favor please say hi hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously so uh i did not anticipate executive session because i had not heard a desire to go into executive session this evening so um councillors just bear with me especially those of you who are who are um participating remotely um what i think the best course of action so we don't have to clear the room um would be would be for us to go downstairs and then we can get the councillors um who are participating remotely on a different zoom um so we'll keep this zoom going um and then we'll send the five councillors who are participating remotely um a different zoom link for the executive session um so keep an eye on your inboxes for that we have councillors hansen hightower barlow and jeng and bremen all participating remotely so um if we could just please send those five a link to a separate link um if folks here um could hold tight um we will we'll come back up um and continue with um this item and the rest of our agenda this evening if you're still participating if you could just please promote me to panelist up perfect thank you the councillors on once once we get everybody else um all the councillors participating remotely only one more okay now we have all the all the councillors participating remotely and everybody um who is here um in the room um so I'll reconvene the council at 10 33 I think I'm out of executive session by being 10 33 we do need a motion on on the uh to suspend the rules councillor stromberg I would move to suspend the rules uh to go through the rest of the deliberative agenda thank you councillor stromberg second seconded by councillor mason any discussion okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favour please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously and we will complete our deliberative agenda for this evening so we are back um in the debate and we do not have um where we left off I don't have anyone in the queue councillor carpenter the first question is where are we councillor shannon made a motion to adopt the version she presented that accurate yes and that would be a meant for a warning so in terms of providing direction if we vote for that amendment we're saying that's the version we want warned yes right you all set okay uh councilor shannon go ahead yeah just uh to be really clear we're not adopting it we're warning it that's the motion thank you so we will have another vote to adopt which could be amended after the public hearing we're warning it for a public hearing it could be amended after the public hearing based on what we hear in public hearing yes just to be clear that the as for the process um so a zoning amendment requires a worn public hearing um the amendment to the ordinance um in the code of ordinances does not have that same requirement for the worn public hearing so potentially you can have just a public hearing at the next meeting without the statutory warning period um conceivably you could adopt tonight I mean because this doesn't have that same requirement that was yeah great thank you for the clarification but the the motion I made was for warning it not to adopt it tonight thank thank you councillor shannon is there a further discussion of the resolution councilor barlow yes sorry sorry I was late to this discussion I was following along on zoom and I appreciate all the um the um the table that um director tattle provided us to show the differences and in the various versions that have been presented um I just want to um give a perspective that I have that I heard councilor Hanson say that the people that might participate in this or some of the people the greatest means in the city but I know for someone even like me when I was starting out I couldn't afford a home I did have I did buy a duplex and I know that I've heard from people who have duplexes who do short term rentals in the non-owner occupied unit and they do that as a way to make ends meet and be able to afford the high housing in burlington so I know it's sort of circular but I just want to point that out because I do think it's not necessarily a bunch of you know wealthy privileged people that are participating in the short term rental business right now and so I struggle to prevent them from being able to use their non occupied unit as they see fit to um to to make their ability to afford housing in burlington more easy easier for those okay thank you councilor barlow council shannon thanks I just want to respond to that and and also I also want to say that you know there are lots of people doing short term rentals that are providing a wonderful service and they are wonderful people and um and I don't mean to in any way malign people I think that they've made a very reasonable choice given that it's an option but as a policy for the city it's it can be a very good option for individuals I really don't think it's a good option as a policy for the city and for those who have an owner occupied duplex that they have decided to short term rent when they're purchasing that duplex they can't use they can't use the potential income from short term rentals in order to finance it they need to be able to qualify to buy that duplex as something that would be a long term rental they can then um based on that they could buy it they could then do it as a short short term rental but that wouldn't be considered as there it wouldn't be considered by the lender so you have to be able to qualify without that that income so so a lot of people are buying them because they don't actually need to show income in order to be able to buy them so it's not really enabling that marginal buyer to be able to purchase the duplex once they purchase it and maybe they do long term rental for a period of time then they can convert it to a short term rental and they will make more money on it but they qualified to purchase that without that provision thank you councillor shannon councillor carpenter I think we're a little bit confusing the rationale um councillor shannon's right for a mortgage qualification you could only count the amount of rent probably that would be relative to a permanent rental and I'm just gonna make up numbers here let's say the permanent rental gave you a thousand dollars a month extra and short term gave you two thousand you can't count the two you can only count the one but it's cashing your life pays your health insurance pays for your child care so the motivation like mark is talking about isn't just qualifying to buy it it's qualifying to um give you uh an affordable life and in fact banks qualify you way too high these days anyway you know you can get a mortgage you know 40 plus percent of your income so I just don't think that that's a reasonable argument I did want to ask um director tuttle just a clarifying question we have about 250 short term rentals we think in that range yeah the number has moved over the time that we've been discussing this but I think the most recent numbers that we received uh from the company host compliance that's been helping us keep track of this was just around 250 and I've heard the figure that 70 percent of those are single family homes is that let me just double check it do you remember this off the top of your head Scott it's in our memo but let me just pull it up really quickly so almost 70 percent of them are whole unit rentals the other third are partial unit rentals um that has increased to about 80 whole units in the most recent months about 54 percent of them are in single family property types the other 45 percent are in what they categorize as multi family property types for the clarification the version that came out of ordinance committee would not allow any um offsite hosting the version that came out of the ordinance committee allowed for offsite hosting in two very narrow circumstances one was for somebody owning a seasonal home as is categorized by the assessor's office um and the other circumstance was if someone was providing another unit on a property at a rental rate that meets the definition of affordability those were the allowances that came out of the ordinance committee version so if you had a duplex you you couldn't meet that right if you had a non-owner occupied duplex in theory you could meet you potentially could meet that if you were short term renting one of them and the other one was offered at an affordable rate okay you don't have anyone else in the queue oh i just oh Councillor mason go ahead um thank you just to respond briefly to the fact they asserted that somehow the policy objective should be x i you know increasing the supply to bring us back to the october 2019 that was one of three policy objectives and my concern is if this action is taken you are going to see the number of short term rentals drop precipitously as in what has happened in portland main i tried to go there this fall not knowing that they had restricted you know more restrictive yeah short term rental regulations we did look for one there wasn't available the only available options were a hotel which was 600 bucks a night so i hope i'm wrong but i don't know that this is not going to have the same unintended consequences if we fully ratchet down as much as this proposal does thank you thank you councillor mason mayor weinberger thank you president tracy um so this is uh this has been a long and winding road to to get to tonight um this conversation many ways began from my perspective in the 2019 housing summits where um we after um initial uh public feedback identified for putting new restrictions on short term rentals as one of five major strategies that we would pursue because we were concerned two years ago um about the impact of that a growing short term rental market was was having on our um on our on our rents on our on our housing prices um and um the arose in a city where it has been so historically so challenging to create new supply um what uh what this new technology and new um market was doing and um i appreciate that um a lot of work has gone into getting to tonight um i think it's uh it's it's high time for us to to take action this conversation has gone on a long time um i uh um understand how um what has been proposed by councillor shannon is um very concerning to some folks and it is clear that some uh people who have been um yeah attempting to serve this market which is uh which is a valid um and as a couple comments have noted this is something that can make a city a a positive place to visit there are definitely positive impacts of having these short term rentals the problem is that our housing crisis has only intensified in the last two years and i think it is very hard in a city that is seeing the extraordinarily low vacancies we have today that is seeing the um challenges with homelessness that we are seeing today that continues despite uh despite the efforts of this administration of others that continues to um struggle to uh produce a sufficient new supply of homes it is uh it is very challenging to um i think justify anything other than a very restrictive policy here and i and that is a shame i think this is another casualty of our decades of very problematic land use policy it is another casualty of um really this long road that has has brought us to this place where we just simply don't have nearly enough homes and we are in this deep hole that is going to take us a long time to dig out of so i think the council should move forward tonight and warn council shannon's language for further public hearing i think it will focus the debate at that upcoming hearing there may well be arguments we haven't fully heard and flushed out that could justify some further further loosening i think it's an uphill battle i will say um with with me um and with others i think at a time when we are facing such an acute housing crisis i hope we are not always in this in this situation i don't think we always i think this we are this is something that we we and state policy makers can can control and we can get to a place where uh you could have a healthy healthier mix and where you could have more of of these options and where you could have uh smaller entrepreneurs benefiting from the desirability of of uh berlington to visit um but that's not where we are now and i think we uh until we are there um we're gonna have to hear uh it's it's gonna be it's gonna be hard to justify getting there but i can see you have an open mind after we have a hearing but i appreciate council shannon's leadership her remarkable statement earlier tonight and her leadership bringing forward um a policy that will um i think have an impact on on the supply concerns that we are um really currently faced with thank you mayor i don't have anyone else in the queue okay seeing none we'll go to a vote um will the city clerk please call the roll uh yes councilor carpenter no councilor jang yes councilor freeman council freeman let me know that they've dropped off okay councilor hanson yes councilor hightower yes yes councilor mason no councilor paul yes councilor mcgee yes councilor shannon yes councilor strongberg yes city council president tracy yes nine eyes two nays one absent the motion carries thank you very much for the all your work and and and assistance with this as well as um just helping to advise us this evening you know it's been a very long process so very much appreciated so we'll be back in the new year to bring this for you for your official vote and adoption then great thank you for the hearing in the adoption great thank you so much okay we will move into our next agenda item which is a resolution on hiring a chief of police for the brillington police department councilor hanson um i will move to waive the reading um and adopt the resolution and would ask for the floor back up to your second okay we uh have a motion is there a second seconded by councilor stromberg go ahead councilor hanson great thank you um so burlington needs to continue towards a public safety system that focuses on providing people with resources and support um reducing harm and repairing harm costs we need to move away from punishment incarceration and we need to build towards a system that protects racial justice and not one that reinforces and exacerbates racial inequality this is these goals and and this direction is is so much of what this council has been dealing with um over the past few years and trying to get on that trajectory in order to get there i think it's critical that we have a leader of the burlington police department who's really committed to that transition and that vision um and is not resistant to it we need one who is willing to do the hard but necessary work of changing the system from the inside and one who has experienced leading public safety models that successfully provide safety through support and resource allocation as the priority to get strong candidates that fit that description we need to bring in a search firm that is going to do the type of targeted outreach and recruitment needed to identify those those candidates and that's really what this resolution lays out that is an idea that the administration has also you know laid out a while back and and i agree is that we we need to take that step if we're going to to find these these folks who fit that bill and what the resolution also lays out is that if a search firm is facing obstacles in attracting specifically those types of individuals they can come back to the council and let us know what we can do to ensure that these transformative leaders are applying that may very well be salary i know salary has been brought up um a lot that could be additional positions at the department it could be um that a transformative leader would want you know greater community oversight in order to be effective in the role i think there's a number of things that we may hear from these folks but it really starts with getting the recruitment firm to have those conversations with those leaders and if if those folks are refusing to apply the recruiter can really do that work to understand why and come back to us i don't think we need to preempt that work by making larger changes at this time there's two main arguments that i've heard against this path forward i think there's a lot of support for this path forward in many ways but there's two main arguments i've heard against it one is that we've already have strong applicants through the initial search process and there's really not the need to keep looking the other is that there's no point even trying to keep looking unless the salary is raised and and this new position is out of those arguments are obviously at odds with each other because if it were impossible to get good applicants under the current salary we wouldn't have we wouldn't have gotten them especially not without the help of a search firm so i my feeling is that you know whatever applicants we got with the current salary posted and without a search firm i think we're going to get stronger applicants with with the help of a professional search firm um and this this really sets us down that path if the search firm is unable again to do that and get those um we've laid out in the resolution that they can come back and and let us know what they need but i think we should give them a chance to get out there talk to these folks do that work um and really work with them um the mayor obviously has the authority to appoint a chief of police but the council does have the authority to approve or reject that appointment and so i think it's really critical that you know we need to get to a place where we the council and the mayor agree on a police chief and that's going to take a lot of work to do that um so i'm proposing that we move forward and hire recruitment firm and start start doing that work you know it might not happen overnight we're already well well into this this search um for for a new police chief we've we've been out of one for quite a while um it might take some more time to get there there's no pathway to get there overnight but i think this is something that sets us on a pathway where we actually have a chance at at achieving that um so that's the idea and i hope that others will support thank you thank you councillor hanson councillor mason thank you president tracy um if i may indulge my question is more to the mayor because we have a memo from november 12th that requested five action steps that needed to be made in order to move forward one option option two was if not all five were not met this resolution addresses one so i'm while i'm happy to get into discussion about the resolution i'm not sure it's worth the time if the administration's position is this is insufficient um thank you councillor mason um yeah this uh this resolution is extremely disappointing um especially if uh if it is intended to produce the uh goals that its uh sponsor suggests which is to um uh um successfully reopen the search and secure um uh a broad applicant pool um the we are well into this search um it is uh it is problematic that um we are so many months um in into this search uh extended search periods are um always uh challenging for a the department um that is under an extended period without a permanent leader um and in this case um this an extended search belongs the time uh uh b for a um the the department can um move forward um with the council with the public with the police commission with a permanent leader to address the many um uh public safety concerns that are um very much on the minds of of our constituents and to address the reforms and the changes that um uh we're also committed to so that's why you know i did write that letter a month ago which came um after an earlier attempt all the way back in september to uh strengthen this search was uh rejected in this council at the end of september i wrote to this council i said we are having trouble with the search we are not getting anywhere near the applicants that we got when we did this uh five years ago um we uh have um a fraction of the number of of applicants that we um want to interview that we had years ago this is a concern if the council wants this search to be a success search committee is unanimous uh and it's feeling that the the that we um have a problem here and we need to take action we need to raise the salary and bring on a search firm um we need the council to move quickly uh to address this um that was at the end of september that that first effort was totally uh rebuffed by uh by counselors so then um uh when as predicted the effort just to keep searching um didn't succeed we um uh suspended the search and i wrote that that memo and um invited and and and laid out what um it uh it's going to be necessary from my perspective at least my idea is what are very necessary for a successful search uh there was basically no response to that uh that memo for the better part of a month a week ago um we got a request to extend this for another week um and what has now come forward is this uh this resolution which is essentially non responsive which um uh sets up a process um where at best we are wasting months more before even the minimal action of clearly taking this step to offer a competitive salary the market might be addressed um and none of the other concerns um that uh i laid out and that the council could have taken action um are addressed here so um yeah this is from my perspective disrespectful uh to um the uh mental women of the burlington police department who we should be supporting now not continue to waste their time but most importantly it is very problematic and disrespectful to the people at burlington who have uh serious concerns about public safety and are basically just being played games with here so um yeah uh this is non responsive um uh i will be moving forward um uh as uh as laid out in my memo regardless of what uh what what council action happens here i would certainly welcome uh counselors striking this down and showing their uh disapproval for um this um really disappointing and uh problematic um attempt at setting leadership for for our our police department council mason you have the floor um thank you for those comments uh mayor weinberger uh in light of that statement i i don't see the few you know seems futile to move forward on this in light of the administration's position um i will not be supporting this this resolution i do however want to acknowledge and appreciate attempts that were made by certain members of the scouts of the time some come to some acceptable compromise and i'm disappointed we fell short so thank you thank you council mason counter strongberg thanks um a lot of thoughts on this i guess i'm a little confused because we kind of bring forward this resolution but if there was agreement with what was just said i'm kind of why hasn't there been another resolution brought forward that kind of collaborated all of those things um or not but just i feel like that the five steps could have been tailored a little bit better and could have actually been made into a resolution so i'm just curious as to why that doesn't exist um but i think we do need a pan out like actually just really rethink why we're here and having this discussion obviously disagreements in public safety are the theme for us which is fine because we're having these conversations it's a good thing as much as it hurts and it's heavy and it's emotional and we're hearing a lot of feedback it is a good thing um you know law enforcement and our systems that support law enforcement in our country have historically just been horrific to individuals that we care about and people in our community and historically marginalized populations throughout time obviously right we've had this conversation um and i just want us to really focus on the fact that issues in policing just like they don't go away over time so while tonight's a cold dark quiet night entering in the winter as far as the first day um and it's not in the heat of the battery park protests those feelings and so like all of those voices are still here with us and people have been impacted so greatly and so deeply for for their lives um i spoke up and told very personal stories and that matters and that matters right here tonight and while we're obviously going to disagree on this and i understand that i understand why um it's it this is a good discussion to have and i am very proud of this resolution because we're trying and i've been asked multiple times about the defunding of the police and how that went last summer and all that not to rehash that resolution or anything like that tonight but what i say to that to just the general sentiment about that is that yeah we didn't do it perfectly and um so just stay can you stay focused to the chief i can yes sorry um so i just want i do want to admit that i'm moving forward is literally our job and we we i'm taking what i've learned throughout all of this and i am trying to do that and so why i'm proud of this resolution is that it does allocate up to 75 000 for um hiring an executive search firm to assist the mayor and to and the search committee which i had the honor to be a part of um to narrow down and ultimately find a permanent police chief which is a good thing um but this obviously can't just be any police chief like we actually do need one that's specified to the needs of our community and we want to just be able to provide that clear direction and while you have i mean sorry i don't want to call anybody out while the mayor has authority specific charter authorities and the council has specific charter authorities i don't see that as too i see that it's two separate actions but the process in getting there is collaboration um so i honestly truly believe that our city does deserve the best and i know that our definition of what that is differs um but we do need to tailor our policies to the needs of the city and that does take a lot of trial and error um and so i just i want there to be more applicants um we need more applicants that meet more than the minimum requirements our city deserves that we deserve that after all of this time um and we do need you know real transformative policing in our city so um i feel like people have waited and not not only have they waited but they've had to like sift through years of very strong media narratives on each side and all the sides and all the angles um and that honestly just completely diluted the entire discussion of racial justice and kind of where we began and how we you know i don't like where we've ended up because i don't like the process of what took place and i don't think anybody feels totally comfortable of you know how time is gone by with all of this going on so i think we do need to recenter and continue our work tonight and that is why i am proud of this resolution i do think it is a path forward we're not going to agree on that i get that um but you know we're not we're not trying to start any issues or or continue any any negativity or anything like that because that's ultimately that never was the goal that was never even part of it um so i just i want us to move forward tonight and i know that that's not an easy ask but just putting that out there thank you thank you i have councilor hightower be followed by councilor barlow um thank you president tracy um i think i have to admit that i'm also a little confused i am supportive of this resolution um and i think we need to do a real search and just from someone who wasn't involved in the search process is what i got out of it was that it wasn't a great search process one person resigned i both sides the aisle didn't seem terribly happy with the way that it went and the first official thing that i heard from the administration is that we need a special city council meeting to increase the salary with not a whole lot of information given and i think the response was what why and can we have more information and do we need a special city council meeting i'm honestly not opposed to potentially raising the salary i think that the question is like are we raising the salary for a reason are we raising it to actually get good candidates are we raising it to just raise it for the current candidate pool are we going to raise it and then still only have the current candidate pool i think that there were questions that we had um i think the memo that we got i think goes honestly to me like a step too far because we haven't found the candidate we don't have the candidate i think it makes sense to widen potentially the salary in order to get more candidates but i think some of the other things like if the new person that we hire wanted to prioritize one hire and we've already hired a job description that we've written without them i'm not sure that that's as someone who has stepped into an executive role it's like it's nice to be able to come in and have a position that is flexible so i think it's i think we're putting a lot of carts before the horses in terms of how we're showing support i think that the police chief is a very difficult job i think that we have raised other director salaries over the past couple of years as the memo i think that we originally got showed i don't think it's unreasonable to raise the salary and i think that combining that with an executive search firm makes a lot of sense i don't think that all of the actions make a lot of sense in terms of deciding for a future chief who we don't even know who that is yet what the organizational structure should look like of the berlington police department before they've even potentially applied to the job so i don't mean i don't mean disrespect in supporting this resolution i think that we need to start to do the things that we will need to have a progressive police chief some of all of which i think was outlined by the mayor some of which i agree with and i think some of that is in this resolution so i will be supporting this i think that i am supportive of hiring um a firm which i think the administration has gone to good lengths to interview and give counselors a chance to talk to um and also um that if we think we can get new candidates and that requires a higher salary band increasing that salary band thank you thank you councillor hightower of councillor barlow to be followed by councillor mcgee uh thank you president tracy um this resolution i think um fails for me because it it doesn't it's not a complete package i i do think we need consensus on more than just um a search i think a salary is important we need to make sure we have a salary we've been told by others that our salary is low and to be competitive with other communities are also looking for chiefs um a higher salary i think would be helpful the other thing i think we need is some consensus around um you know what the chief will have in terms of disciplinary authority um in the mayor's memo he said it was a critical leadership tool for all executive managers i agree with that i mean it doesn't mean that we it doesn't replace the need for reforms to increase oversight but i think we need to have agreement on that as well um going forward um those are two that i'm that i'm sort of stuck on and without those my fear is that we'll go and spend seventy five thousand dollars on a search and be and be sort of in the same place i do think and not i think the climate we've created personally i think the climate we've created makes it difficult to find a candidate that would want to take on that role and i think that may be in part the reason why we only have two candidates um one of which i think the acting chief is doing an exemplary job right now so um i won't be supporting this tonight but i look forward to continuing the conversation thank you councillor barlow councillor mickey thank you president tracy um i will be supporting this resolution tonight um with some reservations most notably that we seem to continue to spend money on consultants that are telling us what we need to do with our police department when we haven't listened to the reports that we've already received um so i that's a concern that i have um and to the point of this potentially being problematic for us to move forward in this direction i think it would be problematic for us to pick a chief without doing our due diligence on behalf of the people at perlinton and i think it would be disrespectful for us to pick a chief without doing our due diligence and hiring an executive search firm for this process because we simply don't know that we're getting the best candidate right now and you know i just want to further say that i think our ability to implement so many of the transfer transformations that we have um heard that we sorely need in our police department is hindered by the fact that our state law and our city charter make it difficult for us to look for qualified executives outside of a sworn officer pool um i think it would be helpful for us to in the future look at potentially making changes to our charter and advocating for changes to state law that would allow us for allow for us to interview candidates that are um social workers and have adjacent experience to status quo policing i think that is a vital step for us to examine going forward and i hope that we can consider that but um with this being the resolution we have in front of us tonight i will be supporting it in hopes that we will find a very qualified candidate to help us implement these changes thank you thank you councillor mickey councillor jane thank you president racy um and i think i have more questions than comments about this resolution and i think i need to start with the mayor and asking him the question about you know the previous chief did you hire a consultant to find that search i think it was 2015 this question mayor weimberger did you want to answer that question sure i'd be happy to know the city in my 10 years has never used a search firm for a department head search um before so nobody did not use one in 2015 thank you um and now the second question is about the process you know it seems we appointed a 11 member you know hiring committee task force and was just wondering i heard that the process was not well thought out it was not well done and to tell you the truth today i took a day off just to be able to do my diligence about this important issue for our community i think uh burlingtonians deserve for us to come together and to make one decision that we all feel very good about but from this resolution and also the comments doesn't seem that we are there and it's unfortunate whatever we do you know it's not a win for me because what i was striving for is the council itself in collaboration with the mayor to appoint a perfect person for the job right as part of my due diligence i did talk to some police chiefs around the county staff burlington colchester winewski even the deputy chief at the state level and to just you know ask them questions about one of the candidates we are contemplating who i think has done an amazing job has done very very very well during a pandemic and to keep the both steady and to also you know have an open line of communication with the council and to try to raise as well the moral of the police department whatever it is it's not a great wonderful process from my perspective now this is a question for those of us who played a significant role about the hiring process how many applicants have you received and was just wondering if you vetted them all by yourself and also have you interviewed the best of two candidates we are talking about the mayor is talking about that has the qualifications councilor stormberg or paul question for you councilor stormberg or paul did you want to take that can you repeat the question please you know paint me a picture about please about the hiring process how many applications were received did you look into all of them and how did you come up that we have only two best candidate for the job i can i can start and then if i'm wrong about something i believe we had something in the high teens right were applicants and then it was kind of whittled down to two that met the minimum requirements for what we were looking for so i'd say two is that right or there were there were several more who met the minimum requirements in going through vetting that was done by the hr director and the mayor chief of staff that that number was that number was narrowed down but there were more than two that met the minimum qualifications i mean i think that i think the better the better person to answer that question was the one that actually did the work and we have either the mayor or the mayor chief of staff that could speak to that councilor jing would you like the mayor to speak to that peace yes wine burger okay thank you first of all i do feel in need to respond to the idea that there's anything wrong or not professionally wrong about the search i can categorically reject that we put a great deal of effort in into this into the process as far as it went i've never put as much personal time into a process and we were worked very hard to keep a large and diverse a committee that represented many different perspectives in the city as well informed as we can of course it's always possible to to see you know it's always possible to quibble with with process we worked hard to respond to any concerns that were raised the initial um advertisement brought in um i believe was there 18 or 19 um applications those were um divided into categories by the hr director and the chief of staff of uh applicants that did not meet the minimum requirements of of applicants that were recommended for interviews and then a middle group that was sort of uh not recommended but was sort of uh we wanted to make sure the committee looked at those people that met minimal qualifications and see if they disagreed which the original um analysis which said that uh there were four um applicants that were worthy of that met the minimum requirements and were worthy of of interviewing um there was no every member of the search committee got all 19 of those resumes and that categorization and was asked in multiple emails whether uh people agreed with that categorization and i don't there were some questions that were raised uh by email and ultimately i don't believe uh any any changes were made to those categorizations so um and we at one point there were four people that we had identified to interview um when we had identified sorry to screen further and then interview the it is accurate that the screening um process identified um serious problems with two of those four candidates those problems were transparently uh communicated to the search committee and no one disagreed um hearing um the problems with those candidates with them being removed from the the interview pool so that left us with um uh only two candidates to interview um during that period sort of parallel with that period as i recall i might have this not quite right but uh when counselors were not supportive of raising the salary and wanted to re-advertise we did re-advertise and i believe we got uh two additional applications um during during that period and um uh neither of which uh were um roast the level that they should receive an interview so that is and that is where the process stopped is those in those there's not been a committee interview uh of the two candidates um up to date the only the there were these screening interviews that took place for the chief of staff and the HR director but those were always intended to be preliminary to a uh full interview process um uh by with by the search committee and then ultimately for finalist candidates by me and others okay so it seems also members of the committee some of them did quit i mean all of these that i'm asking here today i'm just making sure that i would make an informed decision because all of it we did not get any update about what was going on it's today eight o'clock that i started just to understand what was happening but the more i ask questions and the more i'm getting more confused from my perspective the search process was not could have been done better because i participated for the city and it was very well done um but now this is a question mr mayor for you and it is specific to what if we vote in support of this resolution in front of us then what would be next part of action from you mr mayor if we support this resolution to go on mayor so council jane as as i tried to indicate um earlier i from my perspective this this resolution is almost completely non responsive to the memo that was sent and you know i which was you know the second letter um that i sent to the council about about the search about where we were which is on top of some prior email communication so i'm not quite sure i understand the idea that we have not been communicating methods we've certainly been attempting to communicate about what's been going on with the search process um this um again from my perspective we are in an urgent situation we need to find a permanent leader of the police department is a situation made even more urgent uh by the broader um uh challenges that we are facing um with public safety in the city and that our constituents are demanding action on um so this is why yes i called for a special meeting back in september to try to give this search process a better chance to succeed i did think it was worth the special meeting to try to uh re change the trajectory of a search that was clearly in trouble and was not going in the right direction um my memo a month ago lays out said if the council is serious about wanting to as i think we all are i think we all agree it would be good for the city to have a broad pool of applicants to to select from um if the council serious about the being that goal we have to take urgent um uh action we have to pull every lever we can to change the trajectory of the search that only has produced to uh to qualify candidates and um what has come back tonight is uh is is a resolution that does one of those five things doesn't introduce sort of it doesn't introduce any new new ideas which i also invited and made clear when we had to count the the floor discussion five weeks ago that you know these were my ideas if anyone had any other ideas about how we would could uh restart the search and be successful and welcome them so um you know basically what i take this resolution as is in the face of like a call for urgent action there's been after five weeks a very um a de minimis response and i don't think this leaves me any choice but to do the other alternative they laid out there which is to uh move forward um uh with the the candidates um uh that we have and and and go through the interpreting process and move towards uh appointing one of one of them you know i will say um uh just you know to so counselors can kind of totally understand there's no no surprises here it is it is always my position when searching for department heads that uh the position remains uh open until filled um and thus um uh if it could be that there there could be some other candidates that could materialize between the time now and when we are moving towards an appointment i think that would be um possible uh and so if i don't want there to be some huge surprise if you know another one or two candidates came forward i have heard from several search committee members we've always throughout this process we've asked for help from search committees and recruiting candidates and maybe that uh there are one or two uh more candidates that become part part of this finalist pool um and i would be we would be moved very quickly after tonight and my hope would be our art to try to have a candidate in front of the council for confirmation um by by the end of uh by the end of january so um that's that's what we're looking at and i you know i do just final point of this like i i it is no one should be fooled into thinking that the vote uh a vote for this resolution is a vote for a broader pool um no the the if count the i was attempting to secure a broader pool and have been trying to do so since the end of september have been trying to deliver what i think the people of berlington want which is a broad pool that does have uh candidates um of a variety backgrounds we had no women in this pool that was very concerning to me that's why part so that's what i have been trying to secure that broad pool throughout this process i raised the alarm flags the alarm bells on this in late september and that has been for three plus months now just completely ignored so the let let no one think that the other side is in good faith attempting to secure a broad pool okay councillor jane yeah um thank you thank you president crazy um those were my questions okay if you're all set i don't have anyone else in the queue councillor paul uh thanks president tracy um so i'm i'm disappointed with uh i'm disappointed with this resolution um i guess the reason i'm disappointed is because we have an enormous opportunity um and i think we're squandering it um you know i've been on i don't know i've sort of lost track of how many i think i've been on five maybe six search committees and my time on on the city council um i was on the police commission when uh we hired a new chief um um and this has been a challenging experience um i think most of the reason it's been challenging is because this is not uh i don't know if any any department head is is um sort of ordinary or you know uh straightforward but certainly the uh searching for a police chief right now is by no means straightforward um you know i'd like to just talk about salary for a minute and i think to a large degree this is really an economic argument it's supply and demand we are not the only city in the country that is looking for a transformative police chief um we all know that that is not news to anyone um but who is telling us that we need to raise the salary um experts are telling us that and for some reason people are at a loss to inter to listen to people who do this every day for a living people who have decades of experience people who have done dozens of searches um even in the last year have done almost two dozen searches and they are telling us people who interact with candidates for this position every day are telling us that we need to increase the salary and yet it seems as though other people know better and i don't understand how someone or someone's who are experts um that their advice is being disregarded um as a member of the search committee um i do think that we very much need a search firm we've never done it before in the time that i've been on the council we have not done it but these are extraordinary times and i think that we do need a search firm so i'm not saying that this was some sort of scientific study um it wasn't um i looked into search firms and extended the offer to you know my well the administration extended the offer to any counselor to meet with a search firm some people took advantage of that some people did not um those people who did if the question was asked it was pretty clear that in order for a search firm to take on a search they want to be able to know that they can be successful that they can find what who we are looking for we have a search firm who is interested in working with us they did 20 searches last year over the course of the time that they have been doing this work 64 percent of the people that they have secured positions for have been from people who are represented they are candidates from historically marginalized groups when it comes to a police chief and yet somehow that just wasn't good enough it wasn't good enough that you've got an expert telling you that you need that you need to increase the salary so it is not a good use of money to to pay a search firm even if they're willing to take the work when you know that they have already told you that they can't really be successful at the current salary range so that's why I say this is an enormous opportunity to to have a robust pool of candidates and we are squandering that opportunity um because of that much as I want a search firm and much as I feel that is our best path forward to getting a really robust pool of candidates um that we are looking for I can't support this resolution thank you thank you councillor Paul I have councillor McGee to be followed by Hanson and Hightower thank you I um did take the opportunity to speak to the search firm that the administration has been talking to um he did offer some pretty valuable insight that said the figures that we have seen to justify an increase in the salary have come from cities that don't seem terribly comparable to the size of Burlington or the size of Burlington's police department um I don't think we've heard here tonight that there is absolute unwillingness to raise the salary I want to be clear on that that there is support for that in this room on this side of the table um and so to frame this conversation as us being unwilling to to go there I think is unfair um I think it's important for us to express that willingness to have that conversation engage the search firm and have them provide us more analysis that shows that uh what exactly the range should be for us to increase the salary range to for us to attract the candidates that that we need and you know I think I also heard some um some points from this search firm that um are in contradiction to some of the ultimatums that have been provided to this council um and so I would hope that we could acknowledge that there have been some flaws in the process we don't have all the tools that we currently need to uh attract a police chief in the competitive environment that exists and this resolution lays us out on a path to contract the search firm to provide us the guidelines and the expertise and the analysis that we need to make certain changes that might be necessary for us to attract a candidate so for this to be framed as us being unwilling to compromise it's um just pretty unfortunate and I hope that we can see this resolution as what it is moving us towards a path of finding a chief that um will help us meet our goals thank you thank you councillor McGee I have councillor Hanson to be followed by councillor Hightower thank you I mean I I think there's no question that hiring a search firm would would broaden the pool especially given that we're we're talking about providing them with the tools they need and yes again as we've all said salary very well might be one of those and we're definitely open to that there also may be other things that the search firm may run into as they're out there having these conversations and doing recruitment and we can respond to that and work with that it's going to take some time it might not happen overnight but I think it's it's unfair and unfortunate that we're being criticized those of us proposing this resolution for you know not acting sooner or not meeting all the demands of the ultimatum any councillor can introduce a resolution at any time we're the first to actually come forward and try to act on this issue try to move forward on the police chief issue with this resolution since the point in time that the mayor has laid out these concerns so we're actually acting more quickly than anyone else on the council and if councillors supported all the demands in the ultimatum they could have brought forward a resolution with all the demands but if you're going to leave it to to us or if it's going to be um councillor stromberg and myself that are bringing forward the resolution we're going to bring forward a resolution that we support that we believe so I just it's just bizarre to me that we would be expected to put forth the resolution that other people support if you want to do that just bring forward your own resolution so that's what we're doing tonight we're putting forward a resolution that we believe puts us on a path towards um finding this type of candidate and part of that means letting the expert the search firm tell us as they're specifically recruiting for those types of candidates what it is they need to be successful and bringing them into the mix because today we've we've not yet brought in a search firm at all thank you thank you councillor hanson councillor hightower um I think that was really well said by councillor hanson I think if anyone else had brought forward a resolution that said let's widen the salary um and higher search for firm I would have been that and that proposal has never come in the form of a discussion in front of the city council I would have voted for that proposal I think that this proposal is a better proposal than what anybody has actually brought to the table um if the proposal is you have to say that you will that you are supportive of the police chief retaining leadership over officer discipline in order to hire a search firm I won't do it I will never vote for that I will never vote for that resolution so to say that we don't support the higher salary um that nobody who is voting for this supports the higher salary um in order to to work alongside the the search firm I think is very unfair and I think that like councillor hanson said he and co-sponsors are bringing this forward because this is what they believe in if I had brought one forward it wouldn't have looked quite like this but this is the one that we're voting on and I think that this is the best proposal that we've gotten I cannot support a proposal that has all of the items that the mayor gave and it also wasn't brought to the table so this is the proposal that we have I am supportive of this proposal because I'm supportive both of hiring a search firm and of considering an increase in salary to the police chief so I will be supporting this resolution thank you councillor it's high tower sorry I thought you were finished there I apologize councillor Paul thanks very much um well it sounds like that there are several uh counselors who um are not averse to the idea of raising the salary that's what it sounds like um and if that's the case then I hope that they will make an amendment to put that in this resolution that's number one the second thing is um in regards to the uh memo from the mayor um in november uh there were five items that were mentioned in that memo one was the search firm one was increasing the salary one was um uh it was actually one of this one of recommendations in the cna report was the hiring of a public information officer it was also um a recruitment and it was a better title than that but a position to do with recruitment and then there was also the issue of police oversight so since it appears as though um um despite some people's best efforts um since it appears as though opportunities to have these conversations as a way of finding a compromise haven't haven't panned out as I think some had hoped they would I think we just sort of need to get this out on the table and for people to understand where where things are so my question is to the mayor in the memo that you put out in november what are the items that are in that memo that you um uh still feel are important enough that in order for you to move forward with a robust search you need to see councillor paul there's a number of things um first of all we need action tonight we've already been waiting five weeks um and it needs to be action that allows us to move forward uh fully and of uh hesitation and our delay to um have a successful search um um again something that is not at all reflected in this in this uh in this um in this resolution um I've been clear from the start that I was asked by one of the councillors the night we discussed this are any of these ultimatums are any of these red lines um I don't see how this could be successful um without um without a competitive salary salary a competitive salary which um has it's not correct to say that the only way that um a competitive salary has been communicated to councillors is through uh the analysis done by city staff um it is also a very comparable range was communicated um by the um professional who has made himself available uh who was a professional search firm has made himself available to numerous calls and Kent also made that representation uh so a search firm the the salary and and then um the councillors uh you know and it who's considering applying here is going to be aware of the the challenges that have taken place in this city over the last couple of years they are going to be aware of uh the challenges that chief after chief have have faced um uh and the way in which their professional opinion has been disrespected the ways in which um their professional opinions have been ignored the attempts that have been made to micromanage uh the budgets of chiefs so I do think it is very important that and if this if there's a true desire from the council for this to be a successful search uh to to signal that the council um uh is going to have the back um of a new chief coming in here and if the council so those are my ideas I laid out the three ideas of how they could do that um I understand that the discipline is chief uh continues to um be a challenge for some councillors uh I don't understand that and that what was proposed there was not that the chief remain in total control um of the discipline in fact I have been against that just that there would be some leadership role preserved for a chief the fact that we appears are going to go through another town meeting day now where uh definitively um uh that is um not going to be on the town meeting day ballot from uh the council bringing it forward uh I think does allow me to um you know I guess we can can wait and continue to debate that another day um if that's uh what the you know where the councillors are at you know the other two I think are important on our ones that should be embraced by the council I appreciate that those are ones you feel should be embraced by the council but what I'm asking you is of the items that you had mentioned in that memo is it fair to say that the uh hiring a search firm giving them the tools to be successful by increasing the salary and agreeing in principle with the cna recommendation of a public information officer would be that you would be then amenable to having this robust search I think the chief the the civilian public information officer um something called out for by the cna report um uh I think it's going to be would be critical it's uh it's something that was called out as a deficiency um uh in the department currently it's not being any chief would would benefit from and uh yes I think that would be an important one to include it could be other ideas as well as I've been saying for five weeks what it sounds like I'm hearing and you know again these are this is I mean I I looked at the resolution um I think that you know there it would be it would it would not be impossible it would be a little bit difficult to this hour but it would not be impossible if there is um and I you know before even going through with that I think uh if there is an appetite by the sponsors to want to see this resolution pass and to want to bring about a continuation of the search process with the robust search then uh there are probably two resolve clauses that need to be included one um that would supporting the increased posted salary range which is currently 119 000 to 139 um and posting that at 139 to 165 000 which is what the consultant said uh was a doable range and then um for the council to agree in principle with the cna recommendation for a public information officer um before we would even get into the nitty gritty of doing something like that um I think it would the only reason to do that would be if there was um a desire on the part of the sponsors to see this pass um and to see us take this enormous opportunity and and move forward with it um so those are my thoughts um and uh I guess I'll wait to hear from others I'm not gonna I'm not gonna offer an amendment and get into that unless I feel like there is some desire to move forward in that way and so I'll have to wait and to see if there is um I tried very hard um over the last week and a half to see if others could find that compromise and it didn't happen so I'm trying to do that here tonight thank you Councillor Paul I don't have anyone else in the queue Councillor Shannon thank you um I had reached out to constituents after the after the Mayor's letter to get input from them on how they were feeling about the hiring process and specifically whether or not um they thought uh hiring a first search firm was a good idea and I think what came out of that that was particularly helpful was um there are a lot of people in the community that have a lot more experience than I do with hiring and hiring leadership positions and people were very surprised to find out that we have two qualified candidates that we didn't bother to interview and um when they had that piece of information they were pretty disturbed that we had stopped the process at that point there's a very very strong desire in this community to stabilize our police department and um hire somebody as soon as possible and if there are two qualified candidates as um one of my constituents who really had probably more experience than anybody else who reached out to me said every candidate should be treated like gold and um what we're doing with this police search is the very opposite of that if we don't have qualified candidates if we have a failed search then that's when we should look at hiring a search firm taking additional steps but until that is exhausted the fact that the numbers are few should be no surprise to anybody and I appreciate the mayor's optimism that we should have this robust pool with all kinds of different applicants but we have not created an environment here where that is a likely outcome with or without a search firm that was one thing that many people had said who had hired search firms is often the results are not what you would hope it is a gamble to hire a search firm they may or may not produce something better than what we have so let's be sure before we take that step that we have exhausted the possibilities that we have interviewed our candidates that we have um determined that that we we should be giving these candidates a chance the idea that we're asking these candidates to stay in the pool there's a possibility that the the process we have no candidates at all I think burlington is in a position to wait for a perfect candidate we're we're very unlikely to find a perfect candidate and we have good qualified candidates from what we know at this point so the reason I did not offer something new was because I think what should happen is we should continue the process and make every effort to hire from the pool of candidates that we have thank you okay don't have anyone else in the queue are we ready to go to a vote I I want to say councilor jane go ahead thank you please and please um to councilor shaham's points about you know we already created an environment and from my perspective if we do not reopen the hiring search that environment will continue polarization between the council we're not coming together and whoever comes it will be they against us this resolution in front of us it was already portrayed that way they did not bring we brought basically reason why it is important for us to bring this process back forward burlington city council we have a unique opportunity to definitely demonstrate what true collaborative leadership is about with this search process of the new police chief this is a chance of a lifetime and from my perspective we should not rush yes we did cause this body because harm by making decision to slash the police with no due process do I want to repeat it I do not want to repeat that right some stakeholders might think that yes we made progress I do not disagree I completely agree but what I agree the most is every single one of us we want what's best for the city the problem we encountered our problem we created and we need to move forward right this appointment you know of the next police chief should not be by any mean politics yeah we have the opportunity to show our best work yes by coming together with this critical decision by appointing one of the best two candidates for the appointment of this job but what I have heard from the process of you know how did we come down to those two best candidate I was not happy but no one no one that I have talked to today that worked directly or indirectly let's say indirectly with the police chief they only said great wonderful things but have we asked those that he worked with very closely from my perspective I believe that you know because we talk internally that acting chief mirad has demonstrated the commitment you know the expertise in providing the best policing in the 21st century and he never shied away also in participating in critical decision never he's a great great wonderful person but the process from my perspective is not well done and if we allow the mayor to just hire one of those people the polarization will continue reason why I'm going to support the resolution in front of us thank you thank you councillor Jang don't have anyone else in the queue are you ready to vote okay don't have anyone in the queue so we'll go to a vote will the city clerk please call the roll councillor Barlow no councillor carpenter no councillor Jang yes councillor Hanson yes yes councillor hightower yes councillor mason no councillor paul no councillor McGee yes councillor Shannon no councillor strongberg yes city councillor president Tracy yes six size five nays one absent the resolution carries we are now on to our next item which is 5.06 a request for additional funds to provide relief for property tax lag councillor carpenter I would like to move the proposal as presented in board docs they don't have in front of me adequate or so are you waving the reading as well and wave the reading and ask for the floor back okay so we have a motion from council carpenter is there a second seconded by councillor Barlow go ahead councillor carpenter um just to say um first off thanking ceo shat and her team for pulling this together um councillor Barlow and councillor Hanson and I um over the last week I've spent a lot of time should have massaging this it was really difficult to um get our arms around there's a lot of moving parts the intent is to for a some number of our citizens to be assisted with the problem that was created or wasn't created that comes about when getting the homestead credit from the state of Vermont um they based the homestead credit on your last year's income and your last year's taxes not your current year's taxes because we had so much change this year um some number of people were really hard for that they will hopefully be made whole next year but we have this one year problem and there's a lot of moving parts the proposal um uses house value and uses the amount of credit you got last year that being a proxy for um you having some sense of need um the other proxy is how much money you want to put in it which we have capped and that's all laid out in the latest proposal from ceo shat so um again councillor Barlow councillor Hanson and I looked at it we filled with a spreadsheet and I think I feel comfortable best we can this will serve um reasonably the most number of people that we know how to get to because it's got cutoffs we're going to miss people and there'll still be some unhappy people um but I think for the minute this is the best that we can offer and I just encourage us all just to support this thank you councillor carpenter don't have anyone else in the queue council oh sorry councillor McGee thank you I just had a quick question uh for the administration and the ceo um if we pass this resolution tonight how much time will it take for us to roll this program out ceo shat are you available to answer that of course thanks president tracy and councillor McGee um so the way this program is rolled out is there's uh just over a thousand uh preliminarily eligible taxpayers um and if you approve this tonight just after the first of the year we will mail each of them a letter and we will do everything we can to have uh the credits applied for the march 12th uh quarterly property tax payment that is the next payment due great thank you so much I'll be supporting this tonight I and hope that we would uh get this going faster but recognize that there was uh some significant need that uh um we didn't initially recognize so looking forward to uh getting the support to folks thank you any further comments okay don't have anyone in the queue so let's go to a vote all those in sorry I but councillor I have my hand raised sorry um no I just wanted to thank everyone who's worked on this this is really critical people there's folks really really struggling economically right now and this is something that is is getting money you know directly into people's hands that that clearly need it and and this formula you know ensures that it is folks that are that are really needing that support right now and so this is this is it's obviously not enough and and folks are still going to be struggling but this is a bit of a lifeline that we can provide and I'm glad that we're we're moving forward and and using some of this um federal money to to to get directly to folks who have been so impacted by you know not only the pandemic and the economic crisis but also um by the reappraisal process as well and so it means a lot that we're getting the support out to folks thanks thanks councillor Hanson anyone else okay don't have anyone so let's go to a vote all those in favor please say I hi I any opposed hi is that opposed or in favor councillor Hanson sorry support I okay was there anyone opposed okay that is unanimous brings us to our final resolution of the evening the renewal and amendment of the COVID-19 public face covering mandate to encourage safe practices and vaccinations councillor shannon moved to waive the reading and adopt the resolution I don't need the floor back seconded by councillor mason any further discussion yes i'll just go ahead councillor thank you um I think that this is a really smart thing to do especially as we all gather inside it's getting really cold um our numbers are as bad as they've ever been everywhere around us is basically doing kind of the same trend that we are um yeah it's pretty scary everybody I know at least knows one person that is currently has a positive case um and I myself got tested a bunch this week just because of having been out that much but I've just because of people I know and then just quick contact and um yeah it's very real very prevalent and I know we all want to be able to see our families in the new year and start 2022 off well so I think we do need to really double down and and be serious about this in the next few weeks to make sure that we're setting up for success um so yeah I just I'm very supportive of this and I hope uh people can can really kind of follow strictly what it says thank you thank you councillor strongberg any other councillors wishing to speak on this uh councilor hightower yeah and I'll be brief as well um as another breakthrough case I think I just want to take a second I know that we have a lot of contentious issues on council and I think um this is a contentious issue across the country and I'm just grateful that we have a council that passed this unanimously and I hope continue will continue to pass this unanimously despite all the other contentious things that we deal with so I just want to mark some gratitude for how often we actually do vote unanimously thank you councillor hightower anyone else okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously we've completed our deliberative agenda and a motion to adjourn is in order moved moved by councillor McGee seconded by councillor strongberg any discussion hearing none we'll go to vote all those in favor please say aye any opposed we are adjourned at 1208 thank you everyone happy new year