 Yeah, I'd like to welcome everyone to our April 10th meeting. And one technical announcement before we go. And that's it. We have, I think, five microphones, two wireless ones that are sort of in the back and two wired ones that are closer in ones here and other ones over here. And then there's a third wired one here as I see at the back left corner. And then for, for speakers who are going to be sitting at the table, we have wired mics over here as well. So again, thanks for coming. As usual, we're, we're going to start with introductions and I'll start my name's Tom Darenthal. I'm in, I live on Nash Place. I'm part of the steering committee. And we're going to start right here with this gentleman. He will work our way around the back and then through the front. Hi, Jim, Jim Barr. I'm from the old East end. I'm Carol Livingston. I live on Calarco Court and I'm part of the steering committee as well. Gary Golden also Calarco Court. Susan Lenz. I live on Colonial Square. I'm Julia Linem and I live on North Street. Breck Bowden, Brooks Avenue. Oh, you're good. We're going around the bar and we'll come around. Breck Bowden, Brooks Avenue. Katharine, Vermont, North Street. Karen Long, Henry Street. Selina Colburn, Latham Court. Kathy Owell, North Prospect Street. Yeah. No, we don't know on this side. Keep that like that way. I'm going to hand North Street. Marjorie Corpman, North Street. My name is Carter Nubizer, ward one city counselor. And I'm over off Riverside. Hi, my name is Lisa Kingsbury. I'm the associate director of planning at UVM. Tony Libra. I'm the chief operating officer of AM, which owns the Double Tree Hotel in South Burlington. I'm Michael Colada, Tony Chase Street in the Old East End. I volunteer with GMT and Vermont Walking College. Samantha Ayotte, Old East End and member of the Steering Committee. Richard Hilliard, High Grove Court. Angie Chapel Sokol, North Prospect Street. Jonathan Chapel Sokol, North Prospect Street and a member of the Steering Committee. Sharon Buscher, East Avenue. Catherine Block, North Prospect Street. Lynn Martin, Macaulay Square. Peter Likowski, East Avenue. Cheryl Green, East Avenue. Burlington Co-Housing. Oscar, do we have anyone online? Oh, I'm sorry, sorry. Bedtime ran long. Matt Price, Prospect Hill. Karen. Hi there everybody. This is Karen Batzkeen. I'm the UVM Medical Center and I live in Ward 5. Sophie? Sophie, we couldn't hear you. Now we can hear you. Sophie Quest, Old East End. Jason. Jason Stoffel, Colchester Ave. And Sarah. I'm going to throw a flash off of East Ave. All right. And we have. Tim Doherty. From Colonial Square. All right. Thank you very much. Next we have announcements. If you have an announcement, just raise your hand. And you can make. Sorry. Evening everybody. I have a few announcements. Yes, I can remember them this time. First, welcome back, Fosca. We're so happy you're here. We know that the AV is going to run perfectly. Really appreciate it. Thank you. We know the town meeting TV did their best last time and we really appreciate what they do. But we know it's going to be perfect this time. Thank you. No pressure. No pressure. I want to just make a quick announcement this weekend. The Friends of the Fletcher Free Library are holding a book sale. There's tons of books and they're all at $4. There are some real winners in there. You'll see price tags of up to 15 on some of the books. All $4. And because you're kind of a political science, social science kind of group, we have a ton of political science and social science books that we want to sell. That's number two. Number three is Ruby Kleinman, who was elected to the steering committee last month, found that he was unable to fulfill the duties in essence, because of some change in life plans over the next several months. So he has decided not to be on the steering committee. At the same time, we have somebody who has expressed interest and I'm going to put Selena Colburn's name and nomination to join the steering committee. The way the bylaws work is we nominate one month and we vote the next month. But in three words or less, Selena has served as city counselor, served as state rep, serves the community, serves the state. She's done tons of stuff. She's going to be bored on the steering committee, but we're going to really be happy she wants to do it. So I would like to nominate Selena for steering committee. And it's seconded and then we can maybe release yourself to say hi. Sugar. Oh, she'd use it. Hi, I'm Selena Colburn. And I think I know lots and lots and lots of you. And you should come to these meetings all the time as a city counselor and, um, and state rep and have really missed them, but took some time off after stepping down from elected office to just reconnect with my family and delve into a new job. But I've been really wanting to get to these meetings and, um, figured that joining the steering committee would be a really good way to motivate myself to be here. And just I've always valued our community in these meetings and just, I think it's a really exciting time with the recent elections and just how much community engagement there was and how much interest there really was in revitalizing the NPAs and continuing to, to just bolster what happens here. Um, so I'm really excited to be a part of that if you'll have me. And just last of all, I'm holding the, um, attendance list. Are there people in the room who have not signed the attendance list? We are doing our best now to keep better track of who's attending the meetings. So, um, if there's other people besides Kathy, there's a second page you can go to just keep your hand up or raise your hand and we'll make sure it gets over there. And that's all I got. Thank you. Thank you. Um, I was looking to see if Dave Colley was here, but I don't see him. Um, uh, you know, Dave is our representative with the Winooski bridge and he's been doing a really good job of, of trying to get people involved and he was, there was going to be a walking tour, I believe, um, last week, which was canceled. I think that it was supposed to be slated for tomorrow, although I'm not sure I've seen anything to confirm that. Um, it's going to be next Wednesday. They canceled it tonight because it's too green. Okay. So it's next Wednesday. Okay. It's on a limited number of people that are involved. Right. So, um, so the reason I'm bringing this up is that I, I've, I follow a lot of meetings. Um, and so last night at the board of finance, um, there were some financial requests and one of them had to do with, um, the intersection of inward one of, uh, Riverside and Colchester and, um, Barrett and Mill Street, that intersection. And, um, there have been some tweaks to that, um, based on some input from locomotion. And so they were before the board of finance to ask for money. That's not my focus. Well, I care about the money, but that wasn't the focus. The point was that I made the request that DPW get in touch with the steering committee. Um, because I think it's, I made my point that the big meetings that occur between Winooski and Burlington have huge agendas. And this is a local issue for the people that really live in that vicinity. And I felt that it would be really good if the NPA could potentially accommodate DPW. They said they would get in touch. There's a meeting. I'm going to remind them again. Um, but I just wanted people to know that I think we'd like to know what the final design is. And, um, it's not going to start immediately, but they are going to start, um, the state is actually going to be the one in charge of making the improvements, um, working with the city. But I just wanted to let people know that besides that walking tour, there will be, I'm hoping an opportunity for more people to see it on, uh, on CCTV and, and to come to the NPA if you can accommodate them. Okay. They set a date for that meeting. For which meeting? I mean, the, not the walk, walking through, but the meeting you were talking about about the security design. Um, no, well, they've, they asked for money approval and the board of finance gave that approval, but they're coming back to the board, I believe in May, the beginning of May to ask for, um, the final approval and give the council an opportunity or counselors that wherever you are, uh, to weigh in on this. But, um, but I feel that, you know, if we could also weigh in on it, it's really for information only. I'm not, I don't think we're going to, it's fairly, you know, set in stone, but there is an opportunity to see what's going to happen. And I feel like I always like to know in advance if I can. So that's it. Thank you. Okay. Um, Sophie. Dave, Dave and a number of other people are working hard to make sure there can be some separation between bicycles and pedestrians in both Kobari intersection and on the bridge. So we're all working for that, but so far it hasn't happened. Okay. Thanks. Any other Richard. I've got two things. Um, so Karen and I, I think we're probably the only ones in the room. Is that right? We attended a meeting about three months ago. Yes. Uh, uh, Winooski High School on this subject and Karen and I both spoke up in favor of a roundabout. Uh, Um, the Burlington end of the bridge and they seem to pour, be pouring cold water on it. Um, which I think is unfortunate. I'm just back from, um, a country with a higher per capita, uh, uh, incident incident of roundabouts than even England. And, um, you can see how smoothly they work. And at one time there was a notion that it would be a sort of gateway to Burlington. Uh, but, um, the desired, the consultants that hosted the meeting seemed to think that was on. If anyone else thinks it's a good idea, um, I would encourage them to keep involved in this because it's, I think it could be a, uh, a way to resolve an almost intractable problem. Okay. Okay. Go ahead. Look at the floor. So as I was away, um, March the 25th, I think it was, um, I think it was, um, I think it was a good idea to vote on, uh, the zoning happened. And I'm not quite sure that what I gathered from seven days and the free press websites adequately covered it. And I wondered if someone could give an update. In, uh, 10 seconds or 15 seconds. Um, I don't know how it all went down. Um, does counselor door. Yes. Maybe. Let's do a city council. Let's do it. A city council update. Yeah. All right. Yes. She's, and then you. Go ahead. I just want to let everybody know that Christopher McCandless died. And you probably all know him. Because this was his. This was his. Place. And he loved this place. And he was always trying to get more and more groups to use it. And so he was very happy that we met here every month. So he died on March 22nd. Could I speak about the roundabout. Sophie, is that you? Yes. I'd like, I'd just like to say that for three or four years, many people have been asking for the roundabout and we've, and we've heard no all the time. And I suspect that's the way it's going to be because it's been very clear and very loud. No, no, no, no, no. They say they have to pull a house down and it's an ancient house. And they can't pull that house down. That's one reason for no. Um, I know that Tim is going to give an update about the city council. But I just personally like to say I sat through the entire council meeting the other night and you are on the 25th and you may agree or disagree with the outcome, but we saw democracy actually functionally in action. And I just want to thank everyone who was involved with that because it was just an outstanding display of democracy. Any. Yes. Hi folks. Thanks. Sorry to be a full in slow. I don't know if anybody's mentioned. Oh, sorry. Yes. Over on the Grove street 60 Grove street. I'm just start to your point. I can't remember if you. Sorry. Yeah, just so folks know may not have sat through the whole thing. There's kind of another shoe to drop, which is that we don't. And I'm sure Tim will probably speak to this during during his update and Carter as well. But folks need to stay engaged. This is not, it's not done. There's a number of things that we need to do. I mean, there's a number of things that we need to do. I mean, there's a number of things that we need to do. We need to stay engaged. This is not, it's not done. There's a number of items that can still be improved with the representative. And I just want to encourage folks to remain engaged with her neighborhood code discussion. And I just want to encourage folks to stay engaged with her neighborhood code discussion. And her statement when she was still mayor elect indicated, but she, you know, she certainly supported the outcome from, from the other night, but that it was quite clear that more needed to be done. And there was a pledge from her to be working on it over the time that might have affected the mayor the most was actually postponed until October 1st. So there was at least six months to look on some improvements. So just wanted to say that. Well, that thanks for that update. Um, Sarah, you have your hand up. Uh, it's true. I just want to briefly respond to Sophie's comment about the no, no, no for the roundabout. My understanding is that a single lane roundabout will fit without disturbing any historic or any other kind of building in that spot. So again, my particular preference happens to be in terms of the bridge, single lane for motor vehicles, one in each direction and plenty of protected lane areas for bicyclists and pedestrians. So, you know, it happens that both Colchester Avenue, Riverside Avenue, and potentially the bridge would all be single lanes feeding into a single lane roundabout. So I encourage people to, I don't feel like it's too late, even though people say it's set in stone, I think we still need to advocate for a bridge of the future, not a bridge of today. And even if it degrades the quality of the traffic, um, intersections from a C to an F, I think it's an opportunity to voice our values and say, Hey, we really care about offsetting our carbon and really make this a point of, yeah, we're going to go for what makes sense for pedestrians and bicyclists and motor vehicles at the same time. Okay. Karen, I think you were next. Okay, thank you. So I just wanted to make sure I've been trying to get the word out as much as possible. I just wanted to make sure that you all were aware that UVM Medical Center and the planning office are going to be hosting another question and answer session on the renewal of our land use MOU. For those of you who aren't aware of this, when I presented at the February meeting, we heard you that a lot was going on and you asked us to postpone action on our MOU renewal work, which we've done. And so we have more time for you all to engage in the process. So again, tomorrow night, we'll be having a Q&A session from 530 to 7 at our building on, it's actually UVM's building, but where we have a bunch of clinics on one south prospect. So we'll be in room 4411. And I'm going to be putting a lot of signs up so that you all know where to go, but please join us. Okay, thanks. Jason, you have your hand up. Yep. Yeah. So Jason Stuffle, I'm also on the Winooski Bridge advisory committee with Dave Colley. I actually represent the Burlington Walkbite Council. And so I do encourage people if they would like to see a different design on the Kobari intersection to raise that with your city counselors and the mayor. I'm also in favor of a roundabout. It was when the vote happened about five years ago. And while the bridge itself is Winooski and Burlington working together, the intersection is fully on Burlington. And this infrastructure once in place is going to be there for a long time as well as the bridge. And if you look at our goals as a city for climate reduction, walkability, bikeability and other things that really lines up with that similar what Sarah said with a single lane roundabout. The current one proposes adding additional lane to traffic downhill on Colchester Ave, which I don't think suits anyone. So as much as we've heard no for a lot of things, I would encourage you to advocate with everyone you can bend an ear with. And please feel free to reach out to me with any concerns or questions you have. Thanks. Sure. Okay, I just wanted to, so I'm Charlie. I'm actually living more too. I just want to share a couple of things. One's a technical thing and another thing is a nice story. So the technical thing is, is that the NPA has upgraded all the most equipment that we're using tonight. So we upgraded the mixer. We upgraded the something called the capture cards and we upgraded the computer. So we're hoping to have fewer problems. So town meeting TD is actually working to make everything work better. The second thing is that Ward one actually got us a couple of phones. And so that's going to help these meetings as well. So we're trying to make these meetings go as smoothly as possible. I apologize for any inconveniences in the past. So now for the nice story. So during the eclipse, I was assigned to, to be in the church street city hall park area and interview people. And so basically I said the same thing to everybody. So who are you? Where are you from? What do you think of the eclipse and what do you think of Burlington? Now I heard hundreds of people saying how lovely Burlington was, how wonderful it was. And then I said, how about parking and housing? You know, you made it here obviously. And they all said, no, we overcame that. That's fine. But I heard hundreds and hundreds of people saying over and over how wonderful Burlington was. And I just wanted to tell you that. Thank you. Just a little bit of information on the Kobari intersection and the Winooski bridge. I would advise people to reach out to Dave and Jason. And I would suggest to take a walk on called Chester. If you have the ability and walk down called Chester, walk on Barrett, walk on Riverside and then walk across the bridge and don't just, don't just do it on a nice day. Do it when it's rainy, do it when it's, you know, there's high traffic, do it in the morning, the afternoon, all different times so that they can have a really good gauge of all different types of information to help with the design. And especially Jason mentioned adding that left turning lane on called Chester. If anybody has ever walked on that, on the sidewalk, like next to the cemetery, it has barely any green belt and that is essentially what would happen towards that intersection. They would take away part of that green belt, which just makes it really devastating to walk next, like be right next to cars, especially people speeding down the hill. So definitely take a walk and share your information. You're also more than welcome to share your information with us and we can relay it to Dave and Jason, but it's really good to have all different types of perspectives, especially like I said, a lot of different times during the day and different weather and stuff, so. I'm going to jump onto the Colbarri intersection here. If they do add the left turn lane, which is the current proposal at the bottom of called Chester, there'll be a left turn lane in addition to a straight through lane, they will be removing that green strip. If you walk up and down Colchester or really throughout the city, when you look in the green strip, you see tire marks. Cars are regularly running over the green strip and just yesterday as a little girl was hit in a crosswalk in the New North End, a week or two ago, a man was killed on the sidewalk in South Burlington. I know that public safety has been a big discussion. It's been a miss that we haven't talked about cars and the damage they're causing to our communities, to our own people. I looked it up before I came. I'm going to go into my, what's it called, the speak out here. The cars are insane in Burlington. If we took the 70 Vermonters who died each year in car violence in car traffic, that would be the equivalent of one small plane crashing out of BTV airport every year. If we took the amount of Americans dying to car traffic, to car violence, to car crashes, I'm not going to call it accidents. It is always negligence. It is always operator error or it's infrastructure designed poorly. If we took the 49,000 Americans that die in car crashes every year, that would be the equivalent of 250 Boeing 747s crashing a year. What would our response be? Would we say more regulation, more licensing, more restrictions? Or would we say, eh, you know, that's how we get around. The traffic is, I guess, I think it's insane. I think we have a long way to go in this country. It has Americans as Vermonters. I get super passionate about this. Keep that in mind as we're going forward with these bridges and roundabouts and all this discussion. Thanks. Are there other, I guess we're really in speak out. Somehow I fail almost every month to stop announcing to start speak out. I think that's a good point. And you guys have quite well. So I actually want to add something to what Sam said, and that's if you're going to walk around the neighborhood in. The vicinity of the bridge or walk across the bridge and you have a dog, you should take your dog with you. It's a totally different experience when you have a dog on a standard leash, which is like six feet. And you realize how small the sidewalks are, especially if there's someone coming towards you with two dogs. And then you're trying to decide, are they going to move into the street to get around or am I going to move? And I mean, it's just something that you do have a dog walk across. It'll give, it'll change your perspective a little bit. I'm going to just add one thing. If anybody with all the things that we're saying is frightened to walk across the bridge or to do anything, please feel free to reach out to me. I am very privileged that I get to work remotely. And if you just shoot me an email or you can shoot me a text and let me know, I will gladly walk across the street and walk all around the neighborhood with you. Anything else for to speak out? Yes. For a finance state, they did say that because of locomotion, they have made a two-way bike lane on the proposal. And they haven't done anything to really separate, unfortunately, the pedestrians from the bicyclists, which is still, I think, a problem. By making that two-way bike lane, it adds a foot to the bridge. And so they had to send that back to the engineers to see if indeed that could really be realized. But they're listening. That was the point that they made. They're listening and they're trying to respond to, as all of you were saying, all of the comments that people are giving them. Initially, they didn't seem like they were going to respond after that big first public meeting, but there's been a change. And so they are much more receptive to comments. So I think there's hope. Thank you. All right. I actually want to move forward to the next item, which, oh, it's something I need to say. It's a segue from what Charlie said, and that's that we have a couple wireless mics, and I have a proposal to basically double that number, go from two to four, so that we don't have to worry about all the wires. And it turns out that in our budget for the year that's going to close at the end of June, we have enough money to buy two more microphones. They're not cheap, but they're not terribly expensive to get the microphones and rechargeable batteries is about 600 bucks. So I'm looking for approval to spend $600 to buy a couple extra microphones for our NPA meetings. Uncommitted. About 1100 at this point. Yeah. But some of that's committed, right? No, we've paid for the friend's meeting house. We do have to still keep paying Sam for her food. And yeah, the couple of hundred bucks and then the mics we were hoping. So I think we've looked at the budget and I hope that it, you know, bottom line is that if we don't use it by the end of the fiscal year, which ends from a practical point of view, if we don't spend it by like the end of May, we're going to lose the ability to spend it even though the year closes at the end of June. We do have enough money in our budget. I'm moved to approve the purchase of two cordless microphones from our 2023 2024 budgets. Any, any discussion, comments? Yes. This is not a friendly motion. It's I'm just wondering if we were just to wait until closer to the end of the fiscal year, just in case there's some other costs. Or do you feel like we need to do that right now? Nothing. So the fiscal year really does effectively in May 15th. Okay. So in theory, we could make this motion at our next meeting, but that's very tight. Okay. Yeah. Because we take us three days to get the invoice and you know, I mean, I'm not sure. I'm not sure. So yes, we taken, but we don't have a ton of time. We did. I just to add to what Jonathan said, we did sort of go through the budget and said, what do we expect to spend money on? And so we're in pretty good shape. With regard to what we're out here. Thank you. So should we take a. Oh, sorry. I just want to voice strong support for the proposal. You know, as someone who helped doing the video and audio for about 10 years or so, I'm very impressed with the new purchases and the proposed purchases. It all makes sense. And I'm so happy for CC TV. And I'm so happy for Ward one NPA. Congratulations. Let me ask a question of Sarah. Sarah, what year did you start recording the Ward one NPA meetings with the camera? So. 2000. It's probably six. It could have been five somewhere between six and seven. So maybe say I started six or seven and I ended at the pandemic whenever that was. Okay. But we can go back and look at the archives. I know that that's an upcoming. Reality that. Community that CC TV wants to. Promote and I'm hoping to have. A presentation at co-housing early this summer. And so I'll let CC TV. Speak to their desires, but I. You've probably. Can guess. I feel that. What CC TV provides for our community is beyond worth every penny. And it's just such an important feature that we're so fortunate to have. Any other discussion. Seeing none. We're going to take a vote. All in favor say aye. Opposed. It sounds pretty unanimous. Thank you very much. We'll. It turns out the lead time for these microphones is not. Very long. We should probably have them for our next meeting. So. And again, thanks for your. Approval. The next thing in our agenda is a school commissioner update. Gary. Good evening. So. Gary Golden on the East district. School commissioner for the birds and school board. Once again, I want to thank. Many of you for voting yes to our budget. It's sort of a mixed blessing to be, you know, second vote in a row that was in the 70% range. We appreciate the support. But if you're one of the. More. Fiscally conservative members. That gives the board a little too much confidence about what will happen next year. I think we're going to pass. Next year. In effects to our, you know, less capability. Financially sound. Neighbors. I mean, just canvassing for. Carter just found this street and around the block. You know, met several who were just looking at, you know, we were like, what? 16%. Increase in our budget. That's just not. That's just not right. That's just not right. That's just not right. If the budgets are set up. It is our future. So we have a couple of choices tonight about what information you might want from me. I can either. Ontificate about my suggestions to the state about how they may change. School budgets or I can talk about the three construction projects. We have going on at the moment in the district. As well as personnel, which I know Tim has. I'll leave that to you. Which of the two would you like to. Me to yak on about. All right. You're going to let me off the hook. All right. So we are still looking at two more two years and probably three months before the high school is complete. It's just a huge project. A school of. We're currently down to about 930 students. We're currently at 1130. So the baby boomer. Slide is affecting us. There are many confident members of the board who are predicting that. This new 21st century high school will draw many families. To Burlington. That is a hope. Otherwise we're sort of stabilizing our. Global majority families have really saved us the last 20 years. I'll bore you again for my story. I was in the. An employee of the district when the Somali band two wave came. And every. Elementary school as a barns now sustainability academy. Had a had to form a classroom within like two weeks notice. For all the new American students that are coming in with virtually no English. So. I think. All that staffing. Making a space. Was a challenge. But that population has. Allowed us to. Withstand that. Slide that every other district in the state has gone through. That does not have a similar population. So. Our superintendent was saying at the last meeting that he feels like the number of students in the pipeline as well as. The numbers just leveling out. But that's an expensive proposition. You know, $160 million. At least construction and then the servicing the bond. So that is ongoing. All the buildings are down. You drive by you'll see that it's completely leveled. The tech building was the last because it was. It was the last one. It was the last one. It was the last one. Perhaps the most contaminated. Not only the PCBs, but all, you know, they've had a. Two auto programs in the building. For that time. So all that CO2 build up just everything that comes with. That. Yep. Sure. Of course. Oh, no, no. Good. I know of the, of the number of students, the change of about 200 plus students or whatever you identified. How many of those do you know were still the family still live in Burlington, but they've opted to send their children elsewhere because of Macy's being the high school. Do we know that we do. So that number has actually flattened back up. Most of the, many of the parents have brought their students back to the school. And they've heard from their. Neighbors that the education that was happening was quality. That is a funky building, you know, there's nothing, no two ways about that. You know, if you walk through. There's still the coal signs and some of the different advertising. And they've just named it's the Coles cafe. You know, they've just, they've just taken in stride and had fun with it. My favorite. My favorite. My favorite. My favorite. My favorite. My favorite. My favorite. My favorite. Of course, I find my stuff very entertaining is that, you know, they'll be able to tell their kids and grandkids. I went to school in a mall. The problem is the grandkids will say what's the mall. Other than that, you know, it's still a nice story. And everything is fine. The administration has stabilized the. We did have the hiccup in the fall. But I mean, I'm sure, I mean, I've stepped in from assistant principal to interim principal, and that's been renewed for another year. So she's added some stability. The. Issue. There's, we had, had, had two risks. Reduction of force in the building and still negotiating our way through one of them. So, but that's just again, the declining. Numbers. So that building's on track. A couple of the agencies are putting a lot of conditions on the $16 million at the state awarded us for construction and working either to have those conditions changed or the legislation itself reworded to free up the money without, not necessarily without conditions, but the conditions were anything we spent up into destruction could not be reimbursed. So that was crazy because that's all your planning, that's all the initial removal, et cetera. And then there have been new conditions placed on getting the money since then, all the other efforts. So that's our main battle around the high school. We did our legislators on the federal level were able to give us, I think a couple million in wastewater management. So that's come and then that's a good segue to the second big project, which is out at the airport. We have a huge aviation program. I mean, used to that was also in the tech building and you walk up and there's this bell helicopter, literally a helicopter in the classroom that they take apart and put back together. And now out at the airport, I think when I did my tour, there were at least 12 or 13 airframes that they worked on and could fly if they got their licensure. How's that for a final? So, I'm going to fly what I just put back together. Competence. And those students are stepping into $60,000, $70,000 jobs next door, either at Beta or Flying School or National Guard. But we're also finding that that's the place that we can house our advanced manufacturing that we can house our remaining auto service. We're combining our auto mechanics and auto shop because the shop was declining enrollment and one teacher retired, the remaining teacher can do both. And so they're going to do both. And that will likely be placed at the airport as well. That was a $10 million grant that I think was kind of a Leahy going away present. And then actually there are two more projects. So those are two big ones. There's slightly big one, 10 million at the integrated arts. That is a 1890 building is the base has been upgraded once in the 30s. So it's no air condition or no good ventilation. Just everything's bad. So the geotherm rods just got drilled in to do heating in air from that. So those actually, I think they got delayed so they're still in their way. And then the whole of next year will be, the students will be at St. Mark's or at Sarah Holbrook, K1 I think or Sarah Holbrook. So it'll be renting space. So that whole building is just going to get a remake. Pretty much like if you've been into Edmunds middle is also 1890s building that has been remade along the years and added to the middle building, within the last 10 years was refurbished. Finally got a cafeteria. So those are those two projects. And then the last one is we have secured a long-term lease at Rock Point for our two high school alternative programs on top and horizons near my heart. That was a group that I, those faculty I was a part of not directly, but when I worked in the district. So two great programs very now moving more toward a experiential learning. So they're out in the community doing whatever they, you know, strikes their interests and then building credit through those efforts. So that's a long-term lease that's going to cost us a little over 400,000 a year, but we couldn't, they don't typically high schools in Vermont and probably more so across the country, at least Northeast, house their students with behavioral challenges in a different building. And it's just for their sake. I mean, if we, my, when I was doing trainings, my favorite line was if we wanted to create a high school setting that would drive the most students nuts just how it was with all the transitions, all the people, we couldn't do a better job than what we created high schools. So the ability to just have a better setting is really what drove this Rock Point was, we've rented from them. They were interested in giving up, it's that last build, it's the old cafeteria meeting room with some dorm space. That's at the very end of Rock Point's drive. And it's going to be an amazing space. They can use leg, they can use Rock Point itself for science, it's successful to the high school, 10 minute walk. So if they're in tech or they're in a program that they want to do at the high school or meet with an expert at the high school, they can do that. So those are our construction projects. I'm gonna talk a little bit about state budget in that window is that that's just folded into all school budgets. And it's just, we are looking at what, $4 billion, conservative estimate of repairs that need to happen to schools in Vermont. And where the hell is that money coming from? But as long as that's tagged onto our school budget, that's when you have a third of your budgets going down. South Berlin just went down again. One of our board members is a language teacher there. She got her RIF notice right before I made him last week. So we're very fortunate, but lots to be talked about on that end. Any, Sarah? I saw a post earlier today and I just, I'm gonna read it to you real quick and just see if you've heard anything about it. But Vermont public posted that lawmakers unveil educational finance overhaul that would diminish local control. And they're gonna vote on Friday and starting in 2027. It could be that the state makes the initial decision on how much the school districts spend and then they can be taxed on if they go over or not. So I just, if you have heard anything or if you wanna speak on that, it's... I have not heard, so thank you. So all, and I think the state's gonna find themselves in some trouble. Anything around state funding has to happen in the shadow of the Brigham decision from the 1990s. So the Brigham family's from Whiting, Vermont, and they had sued the state because they felt like based on what their daughter, in this case, was offered at school, was inferior to other districts that had higher funding. So if you, in that time period, you were looking at Essex Junction with IBM, incredibly low taxes, you were looking at Vernon with Vermont Yankee had zero school taxes, yet amazing programs, buildings, et cetera. So I'm predicting another lawsuit based on Brigham, which was a Vermont Supreme Court decision that said funding has to be equal but it's up to the legislature to determine what that would look like. Gotta love them. So that's out there. And that has to be what every new piece of legislation has to really go by, foundation failed. And that was one that I think the gentleman in Vermont Digger, Republican from Northeast Kingdom was his idea to go back to that. That's kind of should be dead on arrival. But I mean, my suggestion on the funding would be to start parsing out what schools don't have any control over. The mental health funding that comes from the state is really just paid to those schools but they have to include it in their budget. So you've now raised your local budget a percent for that mandated service. If you're talking about the CLA, which is the leveling, the common level of appraisal which makes all property in Vermont equal, that impacts us even though we had, the schools have no control over that. If you remember from my presentation, we were looking at a half percent gain of operating costs on our initial budget and then it just kept getting added onto by construction and then the CLA. And then the redoing of the weighted pupil money. So we, if we were just looking at the money that we have control over, we are doing, most districts are doing a good job. We don't have control over our buildings and budgets that are being voted down because of construction costs and the CLA. I just want to say that my understanding of that is the legislature's attempt to curb property tax. So I don't want to perceive it that it's the state trying to get control over local governing, but I think it is, I think that we have runaway property tax in this state and it's affecting so many problems. The local control is that property taxes of how we pay for education in Vermont is that aren't probably not, but it also is one of two sources of income you have control and it's been allotted that, because you have a lot of towns that may not have, we're going to get into weeds. We'll look at this and I'll be back. Why don't we bring this up at our next meeting and just talk explicitly about it. I'll call in from Portugal and we'll have a secure Zoom line. Yeah, thank you. No, no. So thank you all. And again, thank you for your support. And if you have questions, I'll do a post, maybe I'll just do a post in response and you can use my text or email me to say what the hell. And we'll go from there. All right, thank you. Thanks, Gary. Next in our agenda is city council update. And you guys want to come up here. And I'll relinquish this mic in just a second here. And that's subjects I've got on my list and they may have changed was community safety movement on Riverside. Thanks everybody. I just want to say for the record, Gary, I attended my first city council meeting as a city councilor from Portugal. So there is a, there is precedent for that. So if you want to get left off the hook, I'm not sure you necessarily can be fine. I just want to handle this. Do you want to talk about the neighborhood code first and get that out of the way? So we, there was a request for a summary of a 10 second summary of what happened in the neighborhood code. So let me, Let me give a shot at that. Oh, well, Carter. We had at our second to last city council meeting, we had a final vote on the neighborhood code. As I think many of you know, I was in favor of returning it to the committee for the committees for more work. There wasn't even close to enough support on the city council for that. It enjoyed pretty broad bipartisan support to move forward. So a lot of the meeting was focused on the various amendments. A series of amendments were passed, several of which were introduced by our former city counselors, which dealt with things such as the wildlife corridor over on Riverside, as well as adjustments to the definition of the newly defined residential medium zoning definition. Those passed. I supported those as did most of the city council. The other amendment at issue kept our. A section of ward one from being moved double double up zoning from residential low to newly defined residential medium. It kept it at newly defined residential low, which despite some of the political discussion and rhetoric is a significant up zoning as those of you who followed it are well aware. And then as air heart alluded to another significant amendment was introduced by councilor Travis and perhaps others that postponed the implementation of the second building piece of the neighborhood code for six months. And so to air hearts point, those of us who are still really interested in this, you know, you should really still be engaged and focused with the planning commission. So that lives with the planning commission right now. But, you know, I think there's plenty of room for additional discussion and advocacy on these issues. And, you know, whether or not there's enough momentum to change that particular provision or whether that's really what we want to do. I think our open topics, but I don't think at all. This is a, this is a dead issue or an issue that is somehow set in stone. So I'm eager to keep working on it. I'm sure Carter is too. And more to come on that, but stay, we should stay focused on that because I think it matters. And I think that there think my sense from the folks who have stayed on the city council is that there is plenty of appetite to continue to think about this and continue to tweak it. Oh, thank you. So it was referred back to planning and not to the city council ordinance committee. I think that it now lives in the planning commission, although I guess I could be wrong about that. Recall. It wasn't very clear at the end. I didn't know. And we have been talking among ourselves wondering who really has control of this. And I would have preferred that it go to the city council ordinance committee, but that's just my preference. I just didn't know planning has phase two of the neighborhood code that they're going to take up. And their next meeting is on the 23rd of this month. And that, and phase two is on their agenda, which has oversized lots, RL lots, et cetera. There's a whole laundry list, but I didn't know where this landed. And I was hoping we would find out who's going to control that. I think it's the planning commission, but I guess I could be wrong about that. Recall that this went through a somewhat unusual committee process and that it wasn't planning commission then ordinance. It was a joint committee. Yeah. Which seemed like a good idea to me at the time, but in retrospect, I'm not so sure it was, but in any event, I'll make sure I get you an answer. Okay. That would be great. That's what I think. Do you know that I'm wrong on that? No, I don't think it's clear where it's, or I didn't, I didn't have clarity on where it's landing. My plan. I think it would be really important for both of you to get the communication out to all of us to know who, what committee we should be looking to, to track to find out what the next steps are. Thank you. Yeah, I will do that. My, my hope is to get a group together of folks, Earhart being one of those folks. I know the mayor is putting together advisory groups, which she mentioned during her state of the city address. I'm sure I know of those as affordability. So looking to pull together affordability advocates specifically to continue addressing some of the negative externalities that were brought up. I was just appointed chair of CDNR. So if it's ordinance, it's ordinance, but I think that that was a good place that I'm hoping to take it up and continue it. And I'm hoping to get caught up in the last three weeks of onboarding meetings and all those good things. But that's sort of priority number one. With the ordinance committee. So I zoomed into the ward six meeting. And Joan Shannon actually, she gave an explanation of neighborhood code that I wish we all had heard in January. I remember, I mean, it was really clear. It was, you know, the, all the changes, whatever. I thought it was really great. And she meant, and she did not. It wasn't clear though, as Sharon said, like what, where it's going now. But I agree we need to all, you know, chip in and help this because it did pass with all this ideas that these things need improvement. But on the ordinance committee, I am feeling a little concerned that there are two ward six people. Like, how does that get divvied up that, that, that mean there's only four people and two of them are the ward six, the East district or not East, whatever their district is and their other one. So the committee assignments are, you know, a negotiation process between the two political parties. Is the short answer to that question. So there is a considerable amount of inter caucus discussion involving who, what people want, what kinds of committees they want to be on, how much time they have, how often they meet, what their interests are. And then political considerations was the majority on the city council and therefore who's going to, you know, put whom on what committee. And do you know who else besides Joan and Becca, are the other two, the other two are? Yeah. There's only, there's only one other. There's it's a three member ordinance committee and Jean is going to be on there. Jean Bergman. Okay. Right. Thanks. But I just want to add to on neighborhood code. It's a good plug for my council blog, put a post up on my website Carter for BTV.com detailing neighborhood. Detailing neighborhood code a little while ago. Talk louder. Yeah. I could talk louder. Yeah. I'll talk louder. The other piece was just a breakdown of last council meeting as well. The initial council meeting, the swearing in, I threw on there as well. So some folks were talking about getting a breakdown of that as well. I think at one point. So folks can check that out and it should be on front porch form as well. And then I did just have a bunch of different updates too. I want to throw out, but are there more questions or more discussion on neighborhood code? I love reading about urbanism and housing. It's really exciting zoning is going to keep changing. There's, I can't remember which US municipalities did this. I know that main has an interesting one. I'm speaking to try and address the really valid concerns that some big out of state landlords are going to plop down stuff and be absent and just run stuff into the ground. I know Maine has a first time home buyer program that encourages, I don't know how they do it, but they encourage millennials to own multifamily housing. And so they try and encourage people to live in the building that they own. And another municipality, I can't recall which it might be Minneapolis. They just straight up require that if you have between four and eight units, you have if, and you own the building, you have to live in it. And I think there's some other interesting stuff we can consider here. So yeah, let's keep working on it. Yeah. So I would encourage you guys to ask off for an actual opinion from the city attorney about the exact status of the, especially the component that has, you know, the six month timeline before it's implemented. I don't have it right in front of me, but you know, when I was looking at the whole neighborhood code and deep, you know, enmeshed in, in that a couple of weeks ago, I was looking at state land use planning where, which governs the adoption of zoning amendments. And something I read that really kind of confused me as to how something that gets passed a zoning ordinance that gets passed that doesn't get implemented for six months, like what its actual effect is. Because there, there seem to be some provisions that once something gets ruined, you can actually a planning commissioner development, development review board review a perspective project, like around lakeside that I think a number of us are aware of that actually has a second building on the same live record. So there's a provision in state land use law that basically says once the zoning has been ruined, you could actually review under the zoning proposed zoning zoning amendment and how that meshes with something that, you know, is not supposed to be implemented for six months is it just, I think it's a little gray, gray ground. And I think it might be something that needs to get looked at, especially as folks, developers come in and propose, you know, something that isn't supposed to be actually implemented for six months. So if, if you guys could get some attorneys to look into that, I think that would be really helpful. And then the only other point to make is, you know, for me, I'm not sure. Unresolved issues is affordability. You know, the code as passed has absolutely no affordability provisions whatsoever. It's kind of a linear project based on, you know, today's class of development. It basically guaranteed to get two better apartments that cost at least $2,700 a month rent and one better apartments that at least, you know, in the $1,800 per month without utilities range just so that developers, you know, so they can make a reasonable profit, which of course they're entitled to giving the risk and investment. So affordability for me is one of the things that we need to look at. And for folks who didn't go into the roadside, particularly in the institute, it's nearly a code. They only went up to six additional units and they required half of them to be affordable. So I don't know, half of them would be a bit too far. It will be too much for the project to pencil out. But I think we need to figure out some way to make our current inclusionary zoning, which only applies to developments with five or more units somehow to make that applicable to the neighborhood code. Yeah, one more there. And it's also just worth noting that inclusionary zoning, like we talk about it as affordable, but that's really like middle income, lower middle income folks. It really doesn't hit folks in more extreme poverty. Well, maybe a question or maybe just a comment. I'm just reading the minutes of the council agenda and the minutes on the motion. And it looks like Councillor Travers, the maker of the amendment about the six month thing said, I'm sorry, now I have my glasses on. I can't read the print this small on my phone. So let me try again. Said that this addresses concerns by constituents and will allow the planning commission to work on improving the language around the ordinance. So it seems to be the intent of the maker of the amendment that the planning commission would be the primary entity if the minutes are accurate. That was my understanding too. But I'll make sure I get a final answer. I just say one thing. One last thing with this. We're going to go to public safety or we're going to stay in this one night. So I've got, I've got updates. Do you want to talk after maybe? I'm sorry, what do you want to talk after maybe? Yeah. Cause I don't want to not get your feedback. I need to say this affordability was brought up by me in October and November and the planning commission was deaf to this. So you all need to advocate. Thank you. Yeah. I have a quick laundry list that includes public safety. If it's okay. Some are quick updates we've talked about and then some are bigger discussions. But GMT as Tom knows, the fairs are resuming. So I have a link. If anybody wants that with just a breakdown on their website, I can share that with you. Just give me your email afterward. DPW street cleaning is going to be happening. Our zone is zone E. Most of Ward one, I think all of Ward one is zone E, which is going to be on May 1st. So if folks are parking on the street, even if it's resident only parking, the car needs to be off the street or it's going to get towed. The reason that they do street cleaning is because it keeps the lake healthy, bike infrastructure stays cleared. So it's safer. So just wanted to give folks a heads up there. I had an update on neighborhood neighborhood code here. I won't go into cause we just talked about it. The mayor just started these meetings convening our Burlington delegation in the state house and then city counselors, folks from her office to get some more synergy with the city's priorities and our representation's priorities. Some of the work, obviously the, our lobbyist in Montpelier sort of baked in because we're sort of a holdover from the last administration. But I just want to note that because I think it's exciting and hopefully is going to lead to better outcomes for us in Montpelier. Yeah, so we did get committee assignments, which you talked about a little bit. I just wanted to let folks know what committees I'm on so that if different issues come up, you know, what I can sort of work on most effectively. I'm chairing CDNR. I'm a member of the parks art and culture, along with counselor McKnight and counselor Barlow. And then I'm a member of the public safety committee, which counselor Grant is chairing and counselor Barlow is a member of as well. The UVM MOU with the university. I'm sure is going to come back up. I haven't heard anything specifically on it. That's any new information. But if you haven't yet, you should check out the auditors report. You should check out Troy, our representative Troy Hedrick's posts on front porch forum. And I think his website as well detailing concerns that I think a lot of us might share. So just want folks to start doing homework so that when that comes up, we all have a shared understanding. I'm glad Karen was here because the UVM MC MOU is coming up. Karen was kind enough to give me some time this week yesterday. So I got some more information on that and was going to plug, but she already did tomorrow at 5.30 to 7. There's a public information session on it. Sharon, yeah, thanks for following board of finance because it was helpful to tune in and hear important questions raised as a new counselor from you. But other than the updates around the bridge, I just wanted to highlight in the intersection over at Colchester, I wanted to highlight that overdoses are trending down pretty significantly, I think, according to fire department data through the CRT program. So I just wanted to highlight that because it's a bit of good news. So they didn't give a definite. I think two things maybe are probably logical answers. One, we've had increased enforcement around drugs coming into the state in recent months. And then on the flip side of that, I think we're growing our ability on the harm reduction healthcare side of things and growing capacity there. So I'm waiting to see what the, what the mayor is going to be doing on that. But Selena is definitely the expert when it comes to harm reduction. But I regularly. If I might, before the microphone goes on, this was addressed at great length at the last public safety committee meeting. And I raised it during the last city council meeting as well and asked the same question of our police chief and our fire chief. Why, and I would encourage and I wish that. I had thought to bring the slides, but I encourage people to take a look sort of. Fall ish. We see our overdose numbers really. Plummet starting to plummet and maintaining a plateau. Through January, February, you know, knock on wood for, for want of a better, of a better term. Understandably, none of the professionals at the public safety committee meeting were willing to say definitively what they really. They said definitively nobody really knows exactly why. As Carter said, there was considerable enforcement from our federal law enforcement officials on out of state drug activity, particularly from the Philadelphia area, which they think might have had an impact. I think that's all well and good. I will say from my own experience as 10 years as a drug prosecutor, I see sustained. Changes in the price of heroin heroin when I was doing it, after even the largest of busts. So I'm not 100% sure whether or not we can directly attribute this this sort of lengthy seems to be fairly lengthy. Reduction in overdoses to a constellation of drug enforcement actions. It probably played a part. The other theory that was put forward was the fire departments, you know, changed approach. They've got this pilot approach. Again, again, in favor of that as well as I am in favor of drug enforcement. I'm not so sure that that's the whole answer either because that of course is a way of effectively dealing with overdoses as they happen. So why are we, why are we seeing a lower overdose rate? So we asked the public safety committee and now Carter's going to be on it. I'm not going to be on it this year. We asked folks to really dig in and try and figure out what we're doing if anything to get some answers to this, but it is good news. Sorry, Celine. I didn't mean to. That's okay. I was also going to mention the fire department's pilot. I think there is some correlation there. And then like you say, we'll need to examine if there's causation. I think there is a fair amount of research emerging that shows that enforcement can actually sometimes lead to upticks in overdose and supply safety issues. So that will be an important thing to watch too. For those just by way of explanation, the reason why enforcement leads to does lead to, and there is a correlation between enforcement activity and opioid overdoses is when you put a short-term change in the market dynamics for heroin into a small market, you cut off supply or you limit the amount of supply. So users are using less than they normally would. That typically is not sustained because more drug dealers come in and fill the void. So then they have more access to product and they use more when their tolerance has been depleted. And so that leads to overdose, more overdoses. The same thing happens when folks leave rehab or leave incarceration. Just a few more quick updates for me if that's okay. Well, and just on the CRT program, just to round it out, right now we rely completely on overtime from firefighters. So I think one of the conversations is how do we properly staff that? Is it continuing with the fire department? Is it wrapped up? How are we actually filling that need in a holistic way without just solely putting it on extra hours on the firefighters? I don't think it's sustainable. No, no, and that's been, yeah, I think that's been communicated clearly. Yeah, the only other, I would encourage folks to go watch the most recent Board of Finance if you are interested in the bridge project because they laid out on one of the slides a bunch of significant dates from 2025 to 2030, which is the estimated project date completion. So just to get a better sense of like different milestones that we should be looking out for. I would encourage folks to look on that or again, just share me your email and I can email you more specifics. I did raise the roundabout concern when I met initially with DPW, Chapin, the director of DPW seems to be under the impression that it's not feasible. I think he did specify that a word as a two lane is not feasible. I definitely agree. We ought to have a roundabout there and it, I guess I need to dig in more. So like want to do that and want to do more homework before I'm throwing anybody under the bus, but it just seems like common sense to me that we can fit around about in a pretty large intersection and that that would be a little more convenient and safer regardless of what motor transportation. But Sam, did you have something? Yeah, I was just going to add one thing that I remember in one of the meetings about the Kobari intersection, the reason that they wanted to stick or that they were trying away from having a one lane roundabout instead of a two is that it's technically a trucking route and so the trucks can't fit around the single lane roundabout. So, and because if you do the one lane roundabout, you don't have to demo that historic house that they were talking about, but I think it's their argument is the trucking route and fitting a semi through it. I'll just point out, I kind of looked at the dimensions of the Route 7 roundabout and it will fit beautifully at Colchester. It's one lane and not a lot of trucks that go down Route 7. Exactly. That's what I was going to say. That is so great. The roundabout on a Sheldon Road, Sheldon Street, I think, and that is one lane and it works with trucks. I bet. Yeah. Thank you for saying. Gary, Portugal's full of roundabout. I don't know, is Gary still here? No, he's gone. I was going to say we can give him a homework assignment. He can take pictures of all the wonderful roundabouts. Yeah. Just two more real quick. Just two more quick, quick updates. I'm sorry, Tom. CEDO for the community development block grant just released initial draft of their plan and is welcoming feedback. So I have a link that I can share with folks if they have interest in providing that feedback or checking out the plan as drafted. And then FY 25 budget presentations are coming up. Mostly I believe throughout May, but those are separate from the board of finance meetings or in addition to, I should say, I guess. So those are all in the city website through the city calendar. So I'd encourage folks if you want to be involved in that or get some background information that's happening to look out for those. There's a ton more updates. I'm noticing that so far in this role, you're just constantly hit every day with more and more things that we ought to be updating each other about. So apologize if I missed anything. I have a request. Can I determine? So thanks very much about talking a little bit about the special program that the rescue people are doing in the fire department. And I'm wondering if it's a possibility. This would be a request to the steering committee that we might have one of those people come to talk to us about the program. And I would recommend John Husbands. Do I've seen in action? He's fabulous. John Husbands. Yeah. I support that. I would just say and I'm sure the steering committee will handle this adroitly. Those folks are working tons of hours. They spend a lot of evenings away from their families right now. And so it's not that I'm opposed to it, but I just we should keep that in mind. Well, if we're out of time, we're out of time. I had, I had hoped to raise some issues on my own. I guess I would propose this after one of our sit, our NPA meetings, I think before the new year, I had a conversation with a number of you about the crime problem in Burlington, downtown Burlington, those of us who work and spend our days in downtown Burlington. And recently, I think just before Carter was on the city council, the end of March, the mayor and the entire city council received a pretty extensive letter from a law firm downtown that detailed their experiences with crime and with being a pretty persistent crime, how it's affecting their business, how it's affecting their employees, how it's affecting their sort of life as matters. And I thought it would be valuable. It is, I would say more detailed than many of the communications that I got, which is why it caught my eye. And I thought it would be interesting for you folks to be aware of, but it is not atypical from the communications that I get regularly and that you're likely to start receiving. And it is also not atypical of my own experience as a business winner downtown. So since we're out of time, I thought maybe one proposal would be, I asked the steering committee to post this letter as an item for our next agenda. I made 10 or 15 hard copies of it, pass it out, and maybe folks have a chance to read it and we can talk about it next time around. But I think it's germane to a couple issues, two in particular. And again, I am mindful of the time, but one is just the sort of general impact and experience of criminal activity that is occurring on a daily basis downtown. And the severity of it and the experience of those who are on the receiving end of it, the cost both emotionally, but also financially. Number one, I think it's just reflecting on it's not something feel like we have a lot of discussion about in this room. Number one, and number two, sort of reflecting on my, my first year as a city council person. One of the things that I was, I was thinking about was is that I don't feel like there has been much discussion either in my committee work at the city council generally, or here at this NPA or my other NPA, about sort of Carter used the word externalities about the sort of external effect of policy making in the city. The idea that Burlington is not a city that is surrounded by a fence or a moat, and that policy does impact whether or not people choose to come to Burlington or stay in Burlington and that those whenever we're talking about policy, whether we're talking about climate change initiatives, whether we're talking about law enforcement, criminal justice initiatives, whether we're talking about zoning, really, I don't think tax policy, education schools, all of these things, I think it's short shrift to consideration and thought that there are cohorts of businesses and individuals can choose to vote with their feet. And I worry about that a lot. I worry about that for our city and continue to worry about that for our city. And I'd like us to have a more robust discussion about that on multiple policy levels. This notion that people can leave, businesses can leave and we shouldn't govern from fear, but we should take careful note of the fact that South Burlington, Essex, our surrounding communities are in some ways competitors for a lot of scarce resources and our policy considerations should reflect that. It doesn't necessarily dictate an answer to any particular policy question, but it's something that I feel like I would like to bring up more. So let me leave that here, given our time constraints, but something to think of and maybe we can give it a little bit more time on our next NPA agenda. Yes. I'm calling on people now, Tom. Sorry. You know, I imagine the letter is a matter of public record. It's a matter of public record. It was sent to the mayor and everybody on this. We can put it in the minutes. We put a link. I just want to add onto that. I would encourage everybody to watch the most recent library commission meeting, which is now being recorded. And the minutes you can find them on civil clerk between the beginning of the year and March 15th. So when there's behavioral incidents at the library, they fall into different kinds of categories. The word that is used is a noun called a trespass. And what it is, is it's when behavior at the library is sufficiently egregious that the staff believes that the person shouldn't spend, shouldn't be in the library for a period of time. It could be for six hours. It could be for six hours. Depending on what they're doing in the library. Between the beginning of January and March 15th, there were 48 incidents that rose to the level of the individuals being trespassed. That's like one every two days. And there were an equal number of incidents, behavioral issues at the library. That weren't, that didn't rise to that level, but had to be handled. And that was the beginning of January and March 15th. And that was the beginning of January. That weren't, that didn't rise to that level, but had to be handled by, by staff. And it ends up being, you know, not, you know, at the very bottom, it ends up being like, like 40 hours, a week's worth of, of FTE staff time. Just managing the, these behavior issues. And, and the staff, their librarians, and they're the most fantastic people in the world. And even as behavioral issues can be taking place in one part of the library, there's music, there's music programs, there's literacy programs, there's educational programs going on in other parts of the library. The library is robust. The library is a great place to be, but the, the, the staff is managing behavioral issues at a rate that they never had to do before. And we understand their issues. We understand their reasons for it. It's just a lot to put on the staff. The, the library commission is meeting with the mayor next week. So there will be a conversation about this at the highest level. And we're very happy that that's going to be happening. So thank you. I'm sorry to be. No, that's okay. Thank you very much. And I apologize. And that's, as you've probably noticed, especially since a lot of you come every month, it's not easy to have a discussion where you let people express how they feel about stuff. And yet make our schedule. All right. And the city council does it amazingly well. So I don't know what you're talking about. So first I want to apologize to our city councilors because they, they get short thrift on a regular basis. And that's mostly my fault. But I'm looking for ideas on how to better manage these meetings. And I don't want to do what I did tonight. Sharon wanted to say something I said, no, I don't say that very often because. Well, I don't like to. I'd rather just hear what they have to say. But, but we have only so many minutes to talk about a subject. And if you have ideas on how we can. Better use the time we have, I am all ears. I would like to, you know, that's like, should we schedule just less items? Although we've got a pretty dynamic city. I mean, it would have, it would have been easy to have twice as many subjects as we had tonight. So I'm asking for your help. I mean, should we. But we'll send emails. Send emails. I mean, what's most important. For Tom to a lot of different people, everything is equal importance. Some people prioritize the public safety. Some people are prioritizing the neighborhood code. So it's equal importance to everybody. And also feels equal importance to us as a steering committee, because we want to make sure that you guys are all getting information. So as yeah, please send us emails and let us know. Cause I, one of the suggestions I had that now I know to shoot down is, I know we're not timing stuff. It doesn't work. It doesn't create this environment that we have that allows people to talk. So that's going to be something that is not an option is to not have like a timer up on the wall so that people are rushing and rushing to get their statements done. So yeah. Yeah. Anyhow, just, it's just food for thought. And again, thanks for coming and I apologize that we're, you're always Angie. I would like to say how much I have appreciated more recently the participation in our community. I see people here who I haven't seen before. And I don't know how the word is getting out, but the word is getting out that we can come here and talk to each other and talk to each other about important things and our city counselors and our school board reps and the other people who come to speak to us with us, talk with us and tell us a lot of things. So I just want to express my appreciation for this community speaking to each other, speaking with each other and speaking to our representatives and our representatives who are giving us boatloads of information and it's only a portion of what it is you know. And I'm just expressing my appreciation for the ongoing conversation in this community. Well, one last comment about that because I noticed at the beginning of this meeting, I think the level of conversation, the volume of conversation, if I could measure it was probably the highest pre-meeting volume that we've had ever. And it's you guys talking to one another. It's not, you know, it's whatever struck you was talking to the person next to you. Well, that's okay, but yes. Yeah, I was noticing that too. And I wondered if we could try to make a commitment as a whole group that if we think we want to speak during speak out that we, if it's related to what's on the agenda down the road, that we wait and have that conversation with the presenting people or with city counselors. And I'm wondering if we have speak out at the end instead of at the beginning for a few minutes. I don't, I don't know if it would make a difference, but seeing what's already in the discussion, I feel like some of the speak out tonight had to do with issues that are coming up later in the meeting too. Yeah. That's a good point. Carol. I just suggesting supporting my moderator that I think Sam probably could give up her presentation. Yeah. Oh yeah. And then that the balance of this time be given to the UVM folks so they can get great. Yeah. So that's what we need to do so that there were no questions. So next up, we have. Lisa Kingsbury. And Tony. Leap bro. Leap bro. To talk about that UVM cadmium woods development. Yeah. That's a different project. That's the cat amount run. We've made a mistake. We're naming everything cat amount. So I can talk about both. Hi, I'm Lisa Kingsbury. I'm the associate director of planning at UVM. I apologize to people who are behind me. And with me is Tony Libreau. He's the chief operating officer of AM 15. They are the owners of the double tree. It is. I have a map. We will show you. Yes. They are the owners of AM 15. They are the owners of the double tree hotel and they are our double. They are our partners in the cat amount woods. Housing project, which we are here to talk about tonight. Also here is Lonnie Raven, our associate planner at UVM. I'm sure a lot of you know Lonnie. We've been coming here for many, many years and Alex Halperin from Freeman French Freeman. They are architects on the project. And I think we may have a couple of our people online as well, but I can't see. So I'm not sure who's there. So just to give a little bit of background that I'm going to stand up for a second because I didn't bring a laser pointer and this map is confusing. I'm sure. Thank you. So yeah, this project is just to clarify. So cat amount run, which is in city center market street it's being built next to South Burlington city hall. That is another project that one's already under construction and actually opening first phases of that are opening this summer. About 550 beds for graduate students and faculty and staff in South Burlington. So that's a different project that UVM is working on. This one is cat amount woods, which is 540 beds of apartment style student housing. It's intended to be primarily for upper class students, juniors and seniors. And this map is a little confusing, which is why I'm standing up because this project is. Well, this isn't why it's confusing, but to give you the background our project. I'm sorry, Tom. I'm standing right in front of you. This project is in South Burlington. So we are going through the process, the permitting process with the city of South Burlington right now. We've had one meeting with the DRB. And now we're in our next phase of the process. And part of the requirement is that we had, we needed to have a neighborhood meeting. And that meeting needed to be scheduled in between putting in our application and our DRB hearing, which is now scheduled for May. And we had kind of had this on our timeline for a really long time because we're trying to stick to a tight timeline to get this permitted and open for summer of 2026. And I had lost track that the night we picked was the same night as the neighborhood code public hearing. And thank you to Sharon for reaching out on that. We had invited South Burlington only required us to invite people who are within 500 feet of the property line. But we extended the invitation to our neighbors on East Avenue and our neighbors on East Terrace in South Burlington and understand that a lot of people couldn't make it that evening. I know some of you did. Nancy was there that night. But I know a lot of people were also at City Hall and wanted to hear about the project. So we do have a video of that meeting. We're going to show basically the same slightly modified presentation tonight. I haven't figured out how we're going to share the video. So we have a, we have a link. We'll talk about that. And if anybody's interested in seeing the video after tonight, we can do that. But the reason the slide is here, just to give you a little orientation, I'm going to turn it over to Tony in a minute and he's going to give you a better presentation. So another requirement in the city of South Burlington for this project is that we have to do a master plan application, which means we have to tell the city of South Burlington if we have any other plans on this parcel. And the parcel really goes from the rugby fields all the way up to Patch and Road. So we have to tell them anything we're planning to do in the next 10 years, right, Lonnie? Six to 10 years. Six to 10 years. And so we have had some preliminary thinking about the rugby field. If, you know, if you've been following along with the MOU discussions, that is one of the, the property, excuse me, the municipal line on the road. This is the rugby field here, the municipal line. Yep, this is Burlington. This is South Burlington. So this map is only showing some potential housing on the South Burlington side because this is from our permit application. But and I'm putting this up there because if you look at any of the public documents, you will see that and I didn't want anybody to say, at least you didn't, you didn't talk about that part of it. Yes. Yes. This is, um, this is Main Street, um, route two right here. This is East Avenue. Um, so here is the rugby fields. And then this is the double tree right here. You're going to see a better map in a second. Um, but this here is the proposed. County Mount Woods project. Um, so we have some very. It's the parking lot. Yes. Yes. Um, and so anyway, my point of showing this is just that we have some very preliminary thinking that maybe at some point in the next year's we'll do something on the, um, On the rugby fields, but that's not part of what we're here to talk to tonight. We're not permitting that. Just some preliminary thinking. Um, so next slide, please. This is going to orient you better. This is much better. Um, so again, this is, this is the double tree here. This is the parking lot that they use for, um, all of their events at the conference center. That's where our project is going to go. And I'm actually going to turn it right over to Tony. Do you want to stand? It may be easier if I stand. Yeah. Tom, I'm sorry. I'm going to, you're going to be seeing the absolute worst side. So Tony is going to walk you through our project and then we'll be happy to answer any questions. Good evening, everybody. And thank you so much for the opportunity to speak with everybody today. Uh, just a reintroduction. My name is Tony Liebrough. I am the chief operating officer of AAM 15 management. We own and operate the double tree hotel. We also own and operate the Marriott residence in, in Colchester. And we also are, uh, the owners of four multifamily apartment buildings in downtown Burlington. So we have a lot of, uh, ties to the community and multiple, um, towns. We employ approximately 240 people in the local community. And our employees come from all over, uh, northern Vermont. So we are very excited to, uh, be partnering with UVM on this project. So as you can see, uh, this is the double tree hotel as it exists today. Thank you, uh, Google earth. And this is the parcel that for many, many years over decades, um, has been, oh, I'm sorry, has been, um, rented by the hotel from UVM. It's UVM's land and their landline. And we have a map that shows us in a, in a second, I'll get to it runs basically right along that driveway in a diagonal line. And so what you're looking at is the hotel as oriented from the back of the building. This port of cashier is where you would go as the entrance to the convention center. Okay. So this project is actually part of three projects that will all be going on simultaneously at the hotel. And so I'm going to walk everybody through all three. One, the one we're here to talk about tonight is catamount woods. But there are two other projects that are happening simultaneous that I want to let everybody know about. They are part of a separate, um, phase in the permitting because they are under form based code versus the, uh, full, uh, design review board code. Um, but they, uh, you'll see how they kind of all fit together. So if we could run to the next slide, please. So this is the, um, back in August a.m. And the university signed a letter of intent on the project. This was the plans that were actually drawn by Freeman French. Thank you, Alex and your team. Uh, and this is what was posted in the newspaper is roughly, uh, this building, um, this is to house approximately 545 students, upper class students in apartment style, transitional housing. So one beds, two beds, three beds, four beds, very few, four beds, very few one beds, mostly twos and threes. This building will be managed by a.m. 15 management. Um, and not by the university in a very similar manner as the redstone lofts parking for this building will all be contained on site. And you'll, you'll see how this all fits together here in a second. Um, this, and we'll go into some of the attributes of the building. One of the questions that somebody's going to say is, well, why are the, uh, courtyards facing that way? Well, it's two reasons really. First is it gives more of the student rooms better views rather than them looking back at the hotel building. They're now looking out at Centennial Woods. The other reason is it puts a very large building, uh, where the students will be utilizing those courtyards, uh, three seasons a year or four seasons a year, um, separating them from the hotel. So it's part of that part process. If we could have the next slide, please. So this is the current, uh, landscape plan of the building. So you notice this white building here and somebody's going to say to me, Tony, that doesn't exist today and you are a hundred percent right. As part of this process, we are losing four and a half acres of parking, roughly 550 odd spaces that we regularly use for events. We need to replace that. And how we're going to replace that is the second project on the hotel portion, which is to build a structured parking lot that is connected to via walkways to the convention space that will replace all of the parking that we are losing by building the student housing. So none of the parking should spill over anywhere else outside of that, including we will be asking for a waiver, a 50% waiver from the city of South Burlington on the parking requirement relative to the student housing. And the reason for that is that this is going to be part of Vermont transit. This is part of the cat shuttle system, uh, bike programs, uh, car share programs, bike share programs potentially all of those programs will be intertwined within this building. In the parking garage on the basement level, you can actually see the entrance to that right about there. Uh, there will be a separate parking room, long-term parking room for approximately 240 bicycles. That will be separated by 185 approximate numbers, 185 normal manual bicycles, and separate parking for electronic bicycles. However, from a safety concern perspective, the batteries for e-bikes, we spent a lot of time talking, uh, with the fire marshal about the batteries for e-bikes. And so what we're going to be putting in is on the backside of this building kind of covered by these red shrubs right there, we're going to be putting in basically post office boxes that will have plug-ins for the e-bikes. And these will be firewalled because this is a concrete and steel building. So it's a two-hour rated firewall safe system where these will be outside the building. No e-bike batteries will be allowed in the student housing. No e-bikes will be allowed in the student housing because they will all reside in this building separate from a life safety concern. Okay? You also see that we are losing our portico share. And the reason for that really is that because the parking for the events are going to take place in the structured parking, there's really no need for the portico share anymore. And what it does allow us to do is to create a much nicer winding road that comes through the building, and we have the roundabout here to slow everybody down. And so they come through and they come back out to Centennial Woods Way, which I noticed actually on Waze. You are now Centennial Woods Way. It was changed today. So you're going to say, Tony, what was there before? Well, that's actually the location, the original old 1955 motor lodge that was there. And those rooms are extremely outdated. And there's nothing that we can do with them. We can't expand that building or retrofit that building in a way that will make the modern hotel rooms where guests of Burlington want to stay. And so rather than try to retrofit that, we're actually going to raise that building to make room for the structured parking. And closer to Williston Road, connected to the hotel via Skybridge, we're going to build 70 new hotel rooms. This will create an increase of about 12 hotel rooms to the overall hotel just because it takes us from 311 to 325. Because we just need to get to a nice round number. And these will be modern rooms that guests to our area and our city want to stay in. So rather than being full foals, they're Queen Queens. That's a primary request from many sports teams and families that are visiting the area make to the hotel regularly as we wish you had Queen Queens versus full foals. And there will be a few more suites although not many suites because they're not generally asked for all that much. Oops. That doesn't sound good. If we go to the next slide, please. This is another rendering. I want to thank Jeff and Cynthia who are landscape architects of how the housing will look. There's actually two entrances. You see one here. That's the secondary entrance. The first entrance actually sits on Centennial Woods Way which you would only see from rendering looking east from west. But it gives you some idea of what this will look like. Now I'm going to foreshadow a little bit. This is a nice lovely parking area. Underneath that parking area is going to sit 180 geothermal wells. This building will be 100% geothermal. And on top of the parking garage, we're putting, we are following, Alex get, make sure I got this right. The proposed June 2024 energy guide. Did I get that right? All right. So we are putting enough solar panels on top of the garage to cover the solar requirement even though there actually is no solar requirement because we're doing geothermal for Catamount Woods, the parking garage and the new hotel building. So we're spending approximately $4.5 million in solar panels to cover the entire garage with solar. It will reduce our carbon footprint across the board. We are using complete green energy in the hotel through electric heat pump from Green Mountain Power and then solar and then geothermal for Cat Woods. Now there will be a emergency gas fired boiler system because if you get below 10 degrees, sometimes geothermal wells don't always work. So there will be about 30% coverage in a backup system so that if the heat ever went down, we would be able to heat the building appropriately. When we were looking at those systems, they said, well, the good news is I've got 325 rooms I can bring them over to if we lose the heat in the building. The next slide, please. So this gives you a rough idea of what the rooms will look like. These are meant to be transitional apartments. So they will have kitchens. They will have washers and dryers. It's going to be very safe, very sustainable. But just rough idea. It's true multi-family housing for the students. The next slide. What's called transitional? Because it's transitioning from dorm style living to what they will face when they graduate from college. So, well, dorm style living generally revolves around communal bathrooms. They don't have kitchens in their rooms. And so this would be have they'd have be, you'd only have the people in your apartment sharing a bathroom. And you will have your own kitchen. Well, you'd have, well, it will be a full apartment. You'll have a living room. You will have a kitchen, you will have and you will have your bedrooms. Yes, sir. So it's one bed per bedroom. What makes it transitional? Well, what I'm saying is they transitions from the standpoint of the dorm to what they will probably look at when they graduate. It's closer to what they'll see when they graduate. Question over here. Yes. Many years ago, Saint Michael's College built dormitories that were transitional and because they're lower numbers of students, they're actually selling I think they're selling a building to Champlain Housing Trust to turn it into apartments. Is that kind of the idea like if there's ever a decrease in student body that they could become apartments? So there is these are apartments. There we will be have we have an agreement with the university that covers several decades that talks about this and this is all still being worked out. So I can't talk too much about it, but the reality is that the intent is that these are for students. However, could these be turned into straight housing? Yes. I think that that may not work completely, but yes they could. And if they ever were, then they would have the affordable portion requirement associated with them. Yes, sir. What year of student would you like to take that one? Upper class students. So it's intended for juniors and seniors. Yes, sir. But wondering about the costs of students in the one, two, three, four, and what sort of a split cost is students. And then there's UVM have any intention or maybe I wasn't sure if I heard correctly, but eliminating students for seven years would you like to cover that? The second half of that and I can cover the first half. No, I don't. There's no intention for both to eliminate students to remain in dorms and on campus. Sorry, we had a mic change. The the first question for anybody who didn't hear it on the zoom link was what is the approximate cost. We are still working with our partners in construction, the university, all of our consultants on determining the actual final cost of the building. Our goal is to make it as inexpensive as possible but have a fabulous, beautiful, sustainable building that is safe and secure for the students. Yes, ma'am. Although you said it was a separate project to the building, like the parking garage, does the cost of the parking garage affect the cost of the apartments since the construction cost of parking garage is pretty So we actually are tracking all of the costs separately. So there's three separate projects. There's the hotel expansion, there's the parking garage and then there's catamount woods. And so the costs that will be born by the students are the cost of catamount woods. Although I will say that part of the parking for the students will take place in the parking garage and will be a cost to that. It's not going to be free. But no different than the cost for UVM students to park elsewhere. Two. One question I think maybe for both of you or each of you. Would the UVM still the MOU still being negotiated? Are these, as UVM's intention to count these toward where the last proposed goal was which I think was one and a half beds. And then, and I think if I'm understanding this right, this is moving forward regardless of the outcome of the MOU. And then the other thing I wasn't clear on months ago and I was talking to a few city counselors was just the impact on this setup between the University and the private business on revenue generated for the city. So is it a situation where we're going to get property tax revenue? Is it a situation where we're going to see and oh, oh, oh, sorry. So sorry. No revenue. You know what, I saw this you know, do we want to do you want to cover this on the MOU? I'm not the person at the University who's dealing with that. So I think if and when the city council decides to take up the MOU and you have those conversations with Wendy Koenig, who's our director of government relations and Richard Kate, who's our vice president of finance and administration. I know they were the ones who were working with Mayor Weinberger and with the former council and if it gets brought up again, they'll be the people. I can just quickly jump in for people who are curious as to the answer to Carter's question. At least when we broke off discussions on the MOU a month or so ago, the Catamount Run and Catamount Woods project would count toward the student count contemplated in the proposed MOU. Yeah, I just want to ask generally I'm thinking about it for the first time. Is the cost of student dorms and these are going to be more beautiful student dorms. I hope so. Okay, so is the cost of student dorms does that help determine how much an individual landlord in the city of Berlin can charge students per room? I can't answer for other landlords. I can only answer for us and the conversations that we've had with the university and I can say there is a direct correlation. Okay, but I can't answer that question for other landlords. Yeah, and I appreciate that but I'm just thinking that some of the leadership people in the room could think about that. I'd be curious. Just to clarify that, you know, it's UVM's intention to try to keep the cost of these as reasonable as we can. So, you know, we're trying to keep costs in line for students. I can't speak for landlords downtown. I don't know how they price their apartment. And how many stories, hi. Five. Thank you, Alex. Five. Do we want to just touch on? I know this is going to be one of the questions that people have is about traffic because we're in South Burlington. We're behind the hotel. You know, we're, I think Lonnie, what did we calculate? We're at least a half mile from the closest neighbor. 1,350 feet. Yeah. But, you know, I know traffic is a concern. So as Tony mentioned, we are asking the city of South Burlington for a waiver on our parking so that we would only provide parking for 50% of what we would normally be required. So less cars than we would be required for. We will have TDM measures. We have a preliminary traffic study. We're still kind of working through that with the traffic engineer, but I just wanted to, we put this slide up just to give you guys a little bit of the information that we've gotten out there. Looking at kind of the two preliminary intersection segments where students would likely be traveling to at the peak PM hour, which is what the state correct me if I'm wrong on any of this Lonnie what the state and the city of South Burlington will be looking at thinking that they would be coming out onto Williston Road and taking a right to head towards the jug handle or going out what is what used to be a drive and we have renamed apparently today to Centennial Woods Way and up to East Avenue and that's the intersection that also as Kerrigan is on the other side. Yeah, Sharon. Yeah, that's what I wanted to bring up. Yeah. Can she have a mic? That road has a gate that has remained open, but when that road was created my hair was black but I was still involved in this and I just want to let you know that the intent was that that was never supposed to be a through way and that's why the gate was there and we were going to monitor traffic because this is Burlington now that you're coming into because that's the interface of Burlington, South Burlington and so I was concerned that was one of the reasons why I really wanted to hear this proposal because there was never an intent to make that intersection for East Avenue and then Kerrigan Drive where people go to and a lot of employees from the hospital use East Avenue and go up Kerrigan Drive to get to their destination. I'm not talking just, you know, like me, I was at, I worked in the laboratory in transfusion medicine. I'm talking about emergency docs, etc. They need to get there and the intent was never to make that intersection really prohibitive for quick movement and I'm very concerned about this and I wondered whatever happened. I mean, that was an agreement that I believe if everyone does their research will find was the intent never to make this a roadway so what have you done to clarify that? I'm not aware of any agreement that we would keep that closed off. What I will say just to go back to the traffic study for a second is looking at what our traffic engineer is expecting. So I'll just go right to the East Ave one that if students were residents of this project were leaving and going that way they would expect maybe 10 more vehicles to go down East Ave. What they're seeing right now at the peak hour is 675 to 735 vehicles. Without the addition of this? Without the addition, yes. You've got a I'm not great with math but 40-50 variation in the peak hour whether it's a Monday or a Wednesday or whatever so adding 10 more by our traffic engineer's estimate it's not something that's going to be felt on East Ave. So just the last piece of this was that because of my new job with the government I visit the lofts a fair amount and there's a fair amount of cars associated with those units at UVM and there's parking right close by but they spill over into the commuter lot where I park when I have to go there but anyways I am concerned that I understand the intent is to try to deter students from parking there but what is your plan if more cars end up being associated with these units? Is there a thought about what you're going to do with that spill over number of vehicles and where they would park? Well there's only so many parking spots so they go on East Avenue I'll be very concerned about where they're going to go, that's my point but they're not allowed to park on East Avenue right? Isn't that resident only? Well I understand but that doesn't I'm just really worried about what's going to happen so I'm sorry I just want to make sure you understand the point correctly so the concern is that over the 151 spots that we would be providing that if another 100 people wanted to park they would be parking on East Avenue Where would they go is my first question Well if they park on East Avenue my understanding is that's ticketed because it's resident only East Avenue couldn't accommodate those 100 I was hoping that there would be a plan I think the hope Sharon really and always at UVM and students are unfortunately I don't think our director of transportation and parking is online tonight but he could tell you before students and I'm not going to call you out Jim's over there too but Jim is retired so I won't make Jim work right now Jim is our former director of transportation and parking at UVM but we do a lot of work to make students understand when they get here they don't need a car but we do a lot of work they have to take a class online before they can get a parking permit I'm not missing the point Tom can I finish? I understand we work really hard with our students to make them understand that they don't need a car and the hope is that when they get here if they can't get a parking permit they understand that they don't need a car the cat shuttle will come directly to this property we still I know GMT right now is fair free for everyone but even when there is a fair UVM pays for all of our students, faculty and staff to ride fair free so it's a very short walk down to Williston Road they can get there and get on the bus the I know this is going to South Burlington we just talked about South Burlington but the pedestrian bridge the bike pedestrian bridge is coming right over that bridge to Trader Joe's or Hannaford's or whatever they need to do they have a lot of other options we don't have a plan for spillover parking maybe we can talk more about redstone lofts because if redstone lofts cars are spilling out into the neighborhoods I'm unaware of that issue no one's raised that with me did you have a plan that was my first question would you park them somewhere else somewhere else on street property and shuttle that was the question to prevent unintended parking on neighborhood streets or who knows where in the hospital we don't right now the other thing I'll mention about redstone lofts is that when we permitted that with the city of Burlington the DRB at the time was a little skeptical also of the 50% waiver but they said okay but you have a permit condition that we want you to do a traffic study in two years and let us know if this is working and we did and it was working so I know that I've kind of nodded my head at three people there's a question there a question there and a question there that I saw I don't care which order if somebody's got a mic and is ready to go I think Kathy might have been that's okay I'm doing the best I can okay my question is more around security and students and I kind of worry as someone who has worked most of their life with teenagers and I know college kids are older but it does matter you're mixing them with people coming and going into a hotel and to a large conference center and that just screams watch out watch out I hear you well I hear you and trust me as the father of a 16 almost 17 year old and a 10 year old who thinks he's going on 45 I hear you but if we could go back one slide I think we'll do it if that's possible I'm so sorry nope keep going there you go okay and the next question is is there any questions to this building the only way to get into that door will be to have a cat card it will be the same cat card that the students are assigned by UVM not only will they need a cat card to get into the building they will also need a cat card to get into their dorm room and there will then be a combination lock on the door to their bedroom so there's three levels of security one is to keep a separation between the hotel guests and the UVM students so this is something that is extreme this is also why the courtyards face centennial woods so that when the students are outside enjoying themselves and having fruit punch they can do so in a safe environment separated from the hotel guests there should not be any mixing and if we find that there are that would be an issue for us the will be the closest residence hall to UVM police which will be servicing this building so we think we have an extremely good plan to deal with security security is something that we take extremely seriously at the hotel we don't have a lot of instances of issues at the hotel we do background checks on every single employee that comes to work for our company regardless of role so the only people who will be able to enter this building is either a student who is supposed to be there their guests or management so we think that we will be able to provide a very safe and secure building for the students sir about the parking we have to keep moving towards a future with less and less and less parking South Burlington still has parking requirements when you build buildings so they are behind the times we should have been pressuring them somehow to get rid of their parking requirements thanks for building less parking keep fill in that parking lot can you fill in that parking lot if there is the geothermal under it does that restrict future building it doesn't because the pipes I believe are six feet down and there is a top level over them so having parking or trucks cross over the top of them is not an issue we actually had that conversation on a call literally I think two days ago we were talking about that yeah keep getting rid of parking it's terrible just a quick question will students be required to get a permit to park in these spaces as they would elsewhere on campus yes 100% but the parking will be managed by AAM 15 it's parking on our property so it will be managed by us but it will be stickered will it be a separate zone these students actually won't be able to students who live here will not be eligible for an on-campus parking apartment yes sir there's actually nothing to our knowledge and we've checked with the local commissions there's nothing to our knowledge that is historic in the old building at this point out in the parking lot I think yeah and I don't believe that that is savable nor do I actually think it's historic but what we are doing is we're doing a nice ode to Vermont so the bridge that is going to come from the new hotel building to the main building by the front desk area that will be three stories up is going to be a free-floating bridge designed to replicate the old Vermont trust bridges that you see throughout the state so we're trying to bring in the look and feel of Vermont a little homage to the original cupula motel okay I will we can certainly look at that and Tom is telling me I'm out of time and I apologize for that Tom can I ask her one more question okay Tom said yes quick questions a lot of the new e-bikes you can't take the battery off are you going to have plugs in the parking areas where the bikes are parked so the e-bikes that we are so we had this conversation with the fire marshal e-bike technology is changing rapidly and so right now according to the information that he provided to us is the e-bike batteries actually can be removed from the bike if the e-bike battery cannot be removed from the bike it will not be allowed in either building so that won't be an e-bike that we can actually have because they have the batteries have to be popped out before we can let them in the building from a life safety concern okay you have to let the students know that before they bring their e-bikes well absolutely there's going to be a very long list of things I probably have to let the students know Tom I'm going to turn it back over to you oh my pleasure thank you that is that concludes our meeting thank you very much for coming and we'll see you next month