 and accept the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.27, communication Catherine Shad, Chief Administrative Officer, and Amy Bovee, Assistant City Clerk, regarding November 9th, 2021, special election calendar with the motion to waive the reading, accept the communication and place it on file. Add to the consent agenda item 5.28, communication Nathan Edwards regarding complaint with the motion to waive the reading, accept the communication and place it on file. Note approved BPD permit for agenda item 6.03 per BPD. Note final version of agenda item 6.07 resolution, divestment from weapons manufacturers, Councilor Stromberg per Councilor Stromberg. Thank you, Councilor Stromberg. We have a motion. Is there a second? Second by Councilor Freeman. I need discussion. Councilor Shea. President Tracey, do you want the second agenda, do you want to vote on this first and then the next? So you'll vote on that. I'll complete your second agenda item. Any further discussion on the agenda it's taken? Okay, you're done. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye, aye, aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Councilor Shea. May I defer to Councilor Jayne? Sure, Councilor Jayne. Thank you, President Tracey, and I would like to make a motion for the amenity agenda with the addition of agenda item 6.04 resolution, and I will also pass on that Councilor Tomino to create a draft task force. I will pass on Councilor Tomino. Here we have a motion from Councilor Jayne. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Councilor Shannon. Any further discussion? Let's go to vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye, aye, aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us into item number two, which is the work session regarding short term rentals. We're going to be hearing from our wonderful planning staff this evening about all the work that they've been doing in coordination with the Climate Commission and the Coordinates Committee, looking at short term rental regulations for members of the public. If you are interested in commenting this evening, you may sign up for the public comment. In that corner over here, we have sheets that public comment harbor won't be until 7.30, so we're not going to be taking any action on this. On this, we're just getting information on this. We'll be taking action at subsequent meetings on this this evening. But again, public forum signup is there. For, there is not a remote comment option for this meeting. We'll be moving towards that for the next meeting when the technology will be fully installed at City Hall. So we'll be seeing that as an option for this. I was not confident that we'd be able to give in the lack of that technology to effectively bring people in. So I didn't want to have people sign up and then not be able to comment. So that just down was where things are for this meeting. So once you've signed up, if you could just hand your paper to the same clerk, that would be incredibly helpful. So I'll turn it over to Megan Tuttle from Planning. Okay, thank you very much. It's great to be back here and thank you to all of you. I'm Megan Tuttle. I am the Comprehensive Planning Office of City Planning. And this is Scott Weston, who's a Principal Planning with the Department of Permanent and Instruction. We've been working closely together with the Joint Committee of the Planning Commission and City Council Coordinates Committee on this and we're happy to be here tonight to present an update to you on what we've been working on. We want to present the general outline of what the proposal is that's been referred to you, but we thought it'd be helpful to actually start by giving you a little bit of background on some of the really difficult and important topics that the Joint Committee worked through over the last year plus. So that's where we're going to start and then we'll kind of conclude by sharing the actual proposal with you. I wanted to note too that the discussion of short-term rentals while it was referred to the City Council and ultimately the Joint Committee coming out of the Housing Summit, it actually dates back a few years beyond that to some requests that came from the Development Review Board. You may know that short-term rentals are currently regulated under our ordinances through the bed and breakfast or hotel definitions in our current zoning ordinance depending on the circumstance. And the Development Review Board is having some difficulties with actually considering the few permit requests that they received under those standards. So they've been asking the Planning Commission to reconsider short-term rental standards and make them explicitly recognize the type of short-term rentals that we think of as their duties. So this item became part of the policy agenda for the Housing Summit because like many of the other agenda items that were on that work plan, there was important work that was underway and many other things that we needed to tackle to continue making progress on the City's Housing Challenges. So I do think it's important to say that this is a complicated policy issue on its own. It was part of the Housing Summit because we recognize that it has an important role to play in the overall kind of body of work that the City was doing around housing. But we do know that this is not a standalone issue for us to consider. It's just one of the tools that we have to help us address our housing challenges in Burlington. It's also an issue that many communities have been grappling with not just Burlington and in fact it's one that even the State has been contemplating. There were two bills that were introduced in the Vermont Legislature this year. Neither of them ultimately were successful for a couple of different reasons. But it is an issue that's of statewide interest when we think about housing issues across Vermont. So coming out of the Housing Summit, the Council passed a resolution in the fall of 2019 which gave the Joint Committee some guidelines in terms of the work that we were doing to develop a short-term rental policy. I don't need to read this for you. I think you've all seen this many times before. But I think it's fair to say that both kind of continue within the goals of this policy as well as in the comments and feedback that we've heard about this issue. There are a lot of different opinions and a lot of different objectives that the Committee had to wrestle with and ultimately was trying to achieve. When we think back to what we've heard about the Housing Summit, a lot of the feedback really was within the context of our broader housing challenges and broader housing solutions. And a lot of the feedback that we've heard at that time was in the interest of creating a short-term rental policy that helped us to manage the impact to our overall housing stock in Burlington. As we moved into the Joint Committee process we were many of whom were not part of the conversations at the Housing Summit and represented some different perspectives on how to treat short-term rentals. Anything from the fact that recognizing that short-term rentals do add some positive contributions to the city, give property owners additional tools to manage their properties, and can also be largely from the most perspective managed through some of the tools that the short-term rental. So while the, and I think these are the key topics because we came back to them many times during the process and Councilor Tansen and Mason can certainly attest to that and Hightower can attest to that. So I wanted to briefly walk through what these discussion topics were. The first was just what type of short-term rentals would we like to see in Burlington? We're not. Based on some extensive feedback that we received from short-term rental hosts about just all the different ways that short-term rentals manifest in the city, the committee actually done really far into the details and considered a number of different type of short-term rental scenarios. There were a lot of things that they agreed on in terms of things that types of short-term rentals that we would like to see in the city and are happy to permit in the city, as well as types of short-term rentals that we wouldn't like to see in Burlington. So the things that the committee really strongly agreed on in terms of permitting short-term rentals really had to do with using short-term rentals as a tool to help include allowing anyone to short-term rent the primary residence that they've been in, whether they're a renter or a cleaner, allowing people to have one additional short-term rent, I'm sorry, one short-term rental in a different unit within a building that they live in, for people that have a single-family home and do lots of tri-files, allowing people to rent bedrooms within their home, and allowing people to infrequently short-term rent their property. So fewer than two weeks out of the year, for example, just for kind of in and out of these situations. The committee was also in agreement about types of short-term rental scenarios that we didn't want to see in Burlington, including properties that we use entirely in short-term rentals, for more than half of the units in a property or building to be used as short-term rentals and for short-term rentals in larger multi-unit buildings. The part of short-term rentals that was most difficult and that we talked about the most was what to do in a situation where we have small multi-unit properties, single-family, two-unit, four-unit properties, when a host doesn't live on them. And that was something that the committee had mixed opinions about in terms of how to move forward with this policy, which brings us to the second thing, which is the tools that we have available to us to help us regulate short-term rentals. When a host lives on the property, it became kind of the main policy tool that we talked about in our committee meetings. It has the greatest opportunity to impact the number of short-term rentals that can actually happen in the city, and was the one that we heard the most feedback about overall. To be clear, the main reason for considering a requirement that the short-term rental host live on the property is not about kind of neighborhood quality of life or regulating furniture houses, which is something that other communities have been very concerned about, but it's actually not something that we've heard a lot about in Wellington. This specific policy lever was one that we were considering specifically to help us limit the conversion of properties to short-term rentals. As Staten and I have heard from other folks that work on short-term rental policy, one particular, this is often considered to be the gold standard tool for regulating short-term rentals. So we understood that based on how permissible or restrictive we were around off-site posts, we would have a major impact on the number of short-term rentals that could operate in the city of Wellington. And ultimately, the committee recommended a sort of hybrid approach around this policy based on different types of scenarios. We did talk about a lot of other potential policy levers to help us regulate and limit the number of short-term rentals, which weren't recommended for a variety of reasons, ranging from just their complexity to the ability of staff to actually enforce in one under them. The next issue was just about how permissive or restrictive to make this policy be. This was one that the committee, I think, really wrestled with in terms of trying to find the right balance between the sometimes competing policy goals of this overall policy effort. The feedback on this was really mixed in terms of whether or not we should try to allow more short-term rentals or really have a tighter box on them. And there were some people, both committee members and members that were participating in the conversations, that were interested in other data points that we weren't able to collect and present at this time that would help inform a more fine-grained approach to this policy. So with the understanding that changing zoning policy takes time, and once things are permitted under zoning, they have a vested right to continue doing that. The committee ultimately recommended to you a policy which largely places the short-term rental regulations in the minimum housing public. The significance here is pretty big in terms of the fact that all of the major people in terms of when and how short-term rentals can be located in the city live in the minimum housing public, and are subject to annual rental renewals. So if the policy changes, the opportunity to impact how the short-term rentals is manifesting happens at that annual renewal process rather than a much longer term. And then the final, I think, major issue that the committee talked through on several occasions was just around issued fees related to short-term rentals. The city currently collects rooms, annuals, taxes, as well as the state on short-term rentals, and we have exercised our full authority to do so at this time. But the committee also discussed the opportunity of using a short-term rental fee as a tool to generate additional revenue to support our affordable housing work in the city. There were also some committee members who were interested in the potential of some kind of a fee as a sort of disincentive for people to operate short-term rentals. So ultimately, the proposal that has come to you tonight does not include any new language or introduction of new fees, but it does come with a recommendation from the committee that the council may want to consider other fees at a later time through other mechanisms. So what's actually in the proposal then in terms of how these conversations came to a conclusion? The last joint committee meeting happened in April, and the documents that have been posted on board doctorate tonight actually were forwarded on the vote of the planning commission. So the council ordinance committee members participated, but did not actually vote in the referral, is to you. But they do include two separate pieces, two separate resolutions related to amendments to the city's core ordinances, the zoning ordinance and the minimum housing bill. What ultimately ended up in the zoning ordinance as part of this proposal is really simple and straightforward, creates a definition for short-term rentals and enables them in the city, wherever housing is allowed. We through this process also realized that there were lots of places where our current lodging definitions were somewhat unclear in terms of how they would need to short-term rentals, and in fact created either some conflict or inter-community among themselves. So we also included here some recommendations to clarify the definition of other types of lodging. So the bulk of this proposal really then is in the recommended amendments to the minimum housing code. These amendments define a short-term rental as a form of rental housing. Detailed limits on short-term rentals by building and when a host is allowed to live off the property or when they must live on site, includes minimum life safety standards for short-term rentals, and establishes rental registry requirements including the annual rental registry fee. So this chart is an attempt to summarize a very complex ordinance that essentially looking at when a host lives on the property and when they are allowed to short. As I mentioned before, the committee was largely in agreement that we wanted to offer the greatest flexibility and the fewest barriers to people who are short-term renting on the property that they live in. So you can see in the column, the first column, that one short-term rental is permitted in buildings anywhere from one unit to four units. And short-term rental hosts can also rent rooms within their home individually. The committee also wanted to forward a recommendation that allowed an individual to short-term rent their own primary residence, regardless of what type of building it's located in. So you can see that here, particularly in larger buildings where short-term rentals are otherwise not permitted, that someone can rent their own primary residence into circumstances. In the other half of the chart, you can see where short-term rental is allowed if you don't live on the property. Again, essentially, in short-term rent, one short-term rental in buildings is anywhere from one to four units. But if you have a building that is just one or two units, there was a caveat that was added to this proposal at the end of the process that says that the host has to have owned that property for at least three years. And that was essentially trying to create kind of a balance between this concern about the impact on certain types of properties and limiting property speculation. So it requires some level of continuous investment before a property can be short-term rented. So there's a lot more in the actual ordinance language. I'm not going to go into the details on the life safety issues. And there are a number of other pieces of the ordinance, but I think that summary really captures the bulk of what people are looking for when they're trying to understand what's been recommended in this policy. There are a couple of things that we've heard some kind of additional conversation about some of the joint committees were wrapped up and definitely related to things that didn't have unanimous support of the joint committee that we think the council should consider as we take this item up. The first is that the ownership standards that I just mentioned for people who have, who would like to short-term rent in a one or two unit property that they don't live in are confusing and they create some inconsistency with where others have to short-term. We think that they may also be difficult to enforce because they get into the issue of who owns a property and how long they own it. So some things that the council might consider would be to just always require the host to live on the property or allow a host to live off the property for all types of scenarios. If you like the idea of having some kind of a minimum time ownership as a prerequisite to offsite hosting, we would recommend that it apply to all the scenarios rather than just one or two different building types. So some options there for you to consider if you would like to make any changes to what's been referred to. We also have two other minor changes that we would like to suggest that I don't think would be very controversial at all. These are things that the committee I think largely supported. We heard a proposal after the joint committee process to actually reduce the number of individual veterans that can be individually let from five to three, which we think is a reasonable change to be made as part of this process. And then we also have identified an opportunity to further reduce some of the redundancy in the different types of lodging definitions that we have by eliminating the bed and breakfast standard and just relying on the either the individual rental of bedrooms as shorter rentals or on our historic and standards that are coming for you. So the last thing I just wanted to share was we've heard a lot of questions over this process and we've had conversation as a joint committee about what actually happens after the council takes action on the proposal. So these are things that we have recommended that we can do following the council action in order to actually implement new short-term rental regulations. There's a lot of concern that the vast majority of short-term rentals operating in a safe relative currently do not have so many permits and probably many can also do not have rental permits. So just actually implementing this process will take some time. And for people that are hosting currently, they have obligations to clients and renters that they have pointed out would be impacted by a change of policy. So we've recommended a one-year grace period for active enforcement against unpermitted short-term rentals would actually begin to take place by the city so that people can actively come in and get their permits without being subject to any violations. We would also look to create some information that I'll kind of like we talked about with ADUs when we have that item for you. Creative user guidance and FAQs that help people understand what's actually required. There's a lot of confusion about the fact that you're even required to get a zoning permit or a rental permit to operate a short-term rental city. So we wanna make that information as clear as possible. And the other item that we are asked about a lot is just how do we keep track of these as they are so nascent and can come and go so we've actually been talking for a little over a year now with a company that we intend to establish a contract with that can actually help us to monitor and enforce our requirements for registration. So those are what we would anticipate being next steps regardless of the policy outcomes. Say that, you know, through this whole process there's four or five key components here. And I think it's safe to say that there was mostly agreement on all but one of them and the one remaining sticking point that we made the point of debate up to the end really was whether to allow off-site hosting and if so, under what conditions we'll be able to. Great, thank you so much, very nice. We'll get it up to you as the rest of the motion. Thank you very much for this very thorough presentation and to all of the Joint Committee members for all of their work on this. I know I had run into you Megan in your off hours, militant in my position and gracefully explained to me the many, many nuances of this policy and the potential for unintended consequences which I've gained a lot more appreciation for. Still as this goes through the Coordinates Committee I think that in 2019 we were facing a housing crisis but the magnitude of that housing crisis in the last two years has really multiplied. We're in a very different place today and the pressure on housing while it was pretty extreme in 2019, it's much, much more so today. And I think that that should play into the decision that we are about to make in terms of where we draw the line in the sand. I wonder if you've looked at other community models as this is kind of a hot topic everywhere, probably internationally. And what other models weighed heavily kind of in the decisions. Specifically I know I have looked at Cambridge and I think that what Cambridge does or I mean if I'm wrong is they allow short term rentals in the unit that you occupy only. I'd be a little more inclined to raise that bar to that point but I appreciate that there's a lot of different considerations. So you could just share kind of what the other models were maybe if you saw disadvantages to holding the bar a little higher. I mean we looked at dozens of other models that were not the first ones grappling with this by any measure. And I can also say that the proposal before you tonight is not any regulatory scheme that we sort of tweaked around the edges. This has really come from very different sources really tailored to the input we heard starting at the housing summit and all the way through. I can't say that there's a single one like Portland Main or Cambridge Assets that's really kind of like communities span the spectrum from very permissive to super restrictive. I would point out that it seems, I guess this is anecdotal, it seems that the more restrictive communities have the higher levels of less restrictive communities. And that goes without saying, San Francisco has an example there. But we really didn't show us from a variety here to really tailor this to bring it down. The one thing I would add to that as Scott mentioned that the other examples we looked at really ranged from permissive to restrictive. I would say in general the places that had more restrictive policies were ones that were facing serious housing challenges. So San Francisco being one of the most restrictive examples that we saw. I think in San Francisco it is required that you live on site in order to have a short term rental and know how their scenarios are allowed. Then we see communities on the other end of the spectrum that are more tourist oriented that maybe just require life safety and very little else in the way of regulation. We were just learning today though that there are some other communities in the Northeast that in our region that are typically destination communities that have also been recently like in the last few months changing their short term rental policies to preclude them from certain residential overheads in their community. Also because they're setting challenges with passing. So we have seen a lot of evolution. There have been lots of different approaches that can be. Thank you. I just asked that going forward if the main downside of a more restrictive approach is our ability to enforce maybe looking for how enforcement is being done in different places and seeing if there is a way, what specifically is producing the best results with regards to enforcement and if we can both raise the bar and hold it there. Yeah. I don't mean to suggest that enforcement is the only downside of having a stricter policy. I think that's one of the challenges that the committee was grappling with in terms of the charge that was given to them. You know the balance of preserving some benefit to the local economy and that was something that Post actually talked about on a very frequent basis that we're bringing people to the city that otherwise may not be able to afford to come here. It's affordable accommodations. It's creating these sort of third sector jobs. People that are cleaning and caring for, they're not being cared for, I told us that we haven't impacted these stricter protests in the past. So there are other impacts if we take a much more restrictive approach beyond just the first one. Closing. I would say in response to that that housing needs come above vacationing needs and with regards to the jobs that are provided it seems to me that there is no shortage of employment for people willing to clean in this community. There is a shortage of people willing to do that work but there are not a lot of unemployed cleaners around here if from court form as any measure. I'd also note that in other communities there are sometimes very hefty taxes in New Jersey I think the taxes over 11% if you go through something like Airbnb or VRBO specifically. Oddly if you book the same thing in a different way you don't pay that tax but it has been a way of getting more community benefit out of if these things are going to be allowed to extract more community benefit from allowing that to happen. Thank you Councillor Shannon, Councillor Aikin. Great thank you. This is more for other councillors because Megan and Scott know how I feel about most of this. I do just want to call out which Megan noted but how exciting it is that we found a way to have this in the minimal housing code just in terms of the flexibility that that gives us going forward and I won't go into what I like about this policy which is a lot because I was one of the people on the DRB who originally asked for this but I do just want to call out a few things as council asks more questions and starts to discuss and I think the first point I just want to make is that once you allow something it's really hard to unallow it so I would make sure that I would ask us to take that approach and then I also have to say that the whole committee who discussed this, the entire committee and the vast majority of commenters if not all of them were property owners which already put them in the highest 40% in terms of income and normally 10 most likely. And so I think that even what we came up with is a compromise among property owners and therefore I don't think that it is as strict as it should be. In particular I think allowing folks to rent out in units that they do not live in and especially in single family homes and duplexes and I think I want us to recognize that again this is single family homes and duplexes that are extra homes that people have which is a lot of wealth that is being held and we're not telling them that they can't rent it we're telling them that they can't short term rent it. We're not telling them. I would hope that we would consider telling them that they can't short term rent it which does not mean that they cannot make a profit off of it as we all know in Burlington. The three year mark I like even less I think it not only makes regulation more difficult as Megan and Scott talked about but it also creates kind of a huge old hierarchy between old wealth and new wealth and who can do what and maintains old wealth and says that they can do what they want and if the barrier to having a home is whether or not you can short term rent it or owning a separate home is whether or not you can short term rent it. I don't know why we would want to maintain folks who already have wealth here in Burlington being able to have more wealth through short term renting. So I feel pretty strong about this issue. I appreciate what Councillor Shannon just said and I hope that we see this again kind of as a compromise on the more permissive side and that we take some action to make that last year. Thank you. So I think our thoughts are perfect. Sort of clarifying we're set back today if you short term rent it, ie rent it out for a period of less than 30 days. Are you supposed to get a permit? Are you supposed to register as a bed breakfast? I think so perhaps, rent a registration. Well, so I think you're talking about the definition of a short term rental as the rental period being less than 30 days. Yeah, so today, if I choose to short term rent it. Why don't you like to get a permit for it? Yes, so you should be coming in to register as this bed and breakfast for my zoning perspective. What Scott was referencing is that we do have some minimum threshold if you do something really intermittently you don't have to get a permit. But generally you would need to get a bed breakfast permit which would require that the most little on property. If you live in certain zoning districts of the city so the mixed use districts like downtown you may be able to get a permit under our lodging standards without living on property. But you should be getting a zoning permit and you should be getting a rental house permit. So, current short term rental holders unless they've done that, it is not an allowance. That's correct. So it is effectively currently widening the zoning permits if they've got a permit. That's correct. That's a good point. Thank you, President Pritzker. Thank you for this invitation. My question is very quick. I just wanted to understand the logic behind the three years, half the longer house that is three years in order to access the permit. The proposal came from one of the planning commissioners and was actually again, it was something that the committee was really mixed on as a solution. But the logic for me that was that there was a desire to enable some degree of short term renting for single family and duplex properties that previously weren't permitted in another iteration. But understanding that there was a risk to property speculation or just that dynamics with those types of properties representing the smallest portion of our overall housing stock to losing too many of them to short term renting. So that was an attempt at a compromise to allow some short term renting in those units but having some kind of minimum threshold of investment that we had first before doing so. So are you able to just clarify what the next steps are for us in this process? So the next steps that we would anticipate would be to bring the ordinance back to you at a council meeting for our first read and I think we would be interested in some indication if you would like that to then be referred to the ordinance committee or if you would like to consider it as a full count work session and move the items that are not before related since we're not 7.30 quite yet, we will move to the floor in which I have some kind of emergency reports. That's our shout out. Thank you President Tracy. Yeah, so I realized today that you can actually literally look up the heat wave that is taking place in the Pacific Northwest. I'm just gonna read it right to you. It says the 2021 Western North American heat wave, it's defined as the 2021 Western North American heat wave was a deadly heat wave that broke records across much of Western North America in late June and early July of 2021. It's right now. The deaths are up to 831 and that's just in Canada and it's 186 in the United States and that's in Canada. Like I just wanna like paint that picture. Like that's happening right now and all of the articles are referring to like power lines melting and roads buckling and I just like wonder what people think that the ecosystem is going through and how it's handling this because it honestly is not and I don't wanna be alarmist but I do wanna just bring this up and just remind us because as a council and as a community we have the means and the knowledge and the capabilities to keep moving forward through greener future and just because Lake Champlain isn't flooding this room right now like we need to take this as seriously as if there were fires in our backyards because we do live in an area that yes we do see the impacts of climate change but we don't see it as particularly as severe as what is going on right now for people, real people in this country in a Canada in this world. So I just wanna remind us of that and that's it, thank you. Okay, do we just have anyone else have any climate emergency reports on the agenda? Other non-deliberative items will move in the committee reports, any committee chairs wishing to offer a report? Chairs wishing to offer a report? Thank you President Lacy, the racial equity inclusion and belonging committee will be the area for the 20th and we have two main agenda items, one of them is the exploration of a racial equity inclusion commission. We have the city after this office and the second one is the strategy planning is ready by the racial equity inclusion and we don't need for the city of London and we will be with them as well, thank you. Thank you, any other committee chairs wishing to offer a report? That's all right. We're still working on setting the date but the public safety, I just want, this is more of a general committee update is that the Toliva consults is done with their work. I'm gonna close their contract and the next public safety and police commission joining committee meeting will go through those results and also we'll get an update from CNA and that will probably happen in around two weeks and the chair will not be there but I'm sure other folks will be. Thank you Councilor Hightower, any other committee reports? Okay, seeing none will move into the next item which is city council general affairs are there any general affairs? President updates, I do just want to let folks know that I'm still looking through that question on whether to cancel the August 30th meeting just to understand if there are any time sensitive items on the table for that plan for that meeting so once we get a sense from administration I'll let the folks know about that. That's the only meeting and then the other piece is that just in terms of our transition back in the city hall and certainly I want to welcome everybody back in the city hall, I really appreciate everybody coming out tonight and just want to let folks know that we are in the process of transitioning to hybrid meeting technology. We've as you can somewhat hear we have to meet the mics and you do still need to lean into them in order to hear well but we are going to be transitioning into having offering hybrid meetings at the next, at our next August meeting and there'll be technology that's going to be installed to support that so we're going to be implementing a hybrid system that will allow us to have public comment both in person and not in remotely as well so we'll be installing that for the next meeting and we're going to be working through some of the things that we talked through as a council in terms of who to prioritizing that in terms of order of speaking and see how all of it works together but that's our goal and we're going to, I think we're going to do it as I said before because it's an iterative process so looking forward to being able to offer that increased access at future meetings. If you are interested in signing up the public comment at this meeting what you can do is just there are forms in the corner here so you just spill out a form in the corner and then hand it to the city clerks over here and then they'll get those forms to me and it will be transitioning to it will be a new way of public comment as we historically don't know but we're going to be transitioning to an entirely different system shortly so that's just going to be at the end of the next meeting. Don't see Mayor Whiteberger transition to... I just got a note from a member of the public who stated that they cannot hear that the audio on the council was not coming through well that the council are stronger than a suspect because she's closer to the cameras and I wanted to let CCTV know in case there is anything different that they can connect with our mics here. Okay, all right. Yes, I was just going to loop around I think I had to plug in back there because this box is not working I've been catching up this other mic here but I will do that. All right, let's take a five minute recess and we'll have them to do that. Thank you. Appreciate it, thank you. Test, you're good? Okay. Please take their seats. You can be in their meeting. We were just finishing up with the council president update so Mayor Whiteberger I'm going to go to you. Thank you President Tracy. It is great to be sitting at a table with all of you again for the first time since March of 2020 and it's great to be able to be with and have an in-person public forum as well for the first time. Since then I do want to note the next time we meet August 9th the plan is to have the ability to have public comments to this meeting made either here or remotely. I also want to comment that since we last met we the city once again hosted a July 3rd celebration and it was after a year hiatus is excellent event and really want to appreciate the Parks and Rec and Waterfront team and all of our partners for both the excellent event itself and the quick cleanup from it and it was really as a whole community great to be able to celebrate together again and we do have another major city event coming up before the next time we meet the Festival Fools event returns on July 30th through August 1st and that is a free event that will be taking place throughout the Church Street area and City Hall Park and encourage people to go to the city webpage for details on that and that is the General Affairs Report President Tracy for tonight. Awesome, thank you Mayor Weinberger. There were a couple minutes early we'll get into the public comment so I'm gonna give folks two minutes this evening to speak on the public comment. There's lights at the table there so the green, yellow gives you a warning and then the red, if you could please just wrap up your comments as close to that two minutes as possible. I'll let you go a little bit over to finish the thought but please just don't go too far beyond that at which point I'll start asking you to just please wrap up and then in terms of just the comments themselves just please try and address me as the chair within this that's how our city council rules in terms of public forum function so with that I will open up the public comment. Our first commenter is Amy Magyar to be followed by Julie Masuga. Hi, so good to see everybody. My name is Amy Magyar and let me just say as an extrovert it's amazing seeing all of you in person after a year plus. Thanks for all you've done to keep us the general public part of the process. Love, zoom, or hate it, it's worked to keep us all together when we physically could not be. Tonight, I would like to take a moment to bring a perspective on short-term rentals. I have a feeling I know what each of you is thinking about short-term rentals in Burlington. You most likely believe that short-term rentals have created a housing crisis in Burlington and they have very little upside for the city. You maybe have heard of someone making hundreds of dollars a night to host someone who's come to town and you believe that it is the easiest money-making scheme you've ever heard of. You may think that there are professional real estate developers running into Burlington to turn homes into short-term rentals and that they're taking over neighborhoods in mass force. You may have heard of party houses across the country that have popped up that were booked on platforms like Airbnb, VBRO that have destroyed the feeling of a neighborhood. What I ask is for you to keep an open mind and listen to the hosts that will be sharing their stories in the coming weeks. I am a short-term renter. I'm not a developer. We're Burlington residents who use short-term rentals to be able to keep our homes in Burlington. Many of that are our actual homes, not our second homes. We're rated by our guests so we keep our homes clean, welcome and tidy. We rate our guests so we are rated by our guests so we keep our homes clean, welcome and tidy. We rate our guests so that we make sure that they keep their noise down, garbage contained and in step with the neighborhoods they're staying in. As hosts, we do believe in making sure that we're registered with the city and maintains life safety standards for the overall health of our guests and our neighborhoods we live in. However, a heavy-handed approach based on guessing what is happening and not listening to the hosts in the area who use short-term rentals to be able to stay in their homes between guests would alienate a number of folks of all ages, stages and wages of their life. I am a short-term renter. I am the face of short-term renters. I just wanna keep that in mind that during the discussions, the staff was incredible in terms of taking all of the different stories that come through short-term renting and I just ask you to be open to listening to all perspective. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Julie Masuga to be followed by Ethan W. Thank you. Thanks. My name is Julie Masuga. I live in Ward three and I wanna make a quick shout out to the other neurodivergent folks finding it a little hard to readjust to big crowds. I'm here to support Councillor Freeman's resolution which would open a path to decriminalizing sex work in Burlington. I had the privilege of working on the research behind this resolution and what we found was a resounding call for decriminalization by sex workers, sex work advocacy groups and many, many reviews of research on the subject. And I'm excited for this to go to the ordinance committee so that we can dig into this even deeper. As always, I believe legislation that impacts a group of people should at the very least be informed by that group of people. And I want to offer that I'm really excited to engage with folks with that obviously with whatever amount of confidentiality is comfortable so that we can create more ideal legislation. Okay, brass tax times. If you have ever watched porn, if you have ever reused a phone sex line, gotten a lap dance, watched a stripper, anything of that sort, you have encountered sex work. If you have paid for any of it, you are a client of a sex worker. The majority of Vermont's laws around this type of labor were adopted more than 100 years ago and they have remained largely unchanged since then. They offer no protection for sex workers or their clients. Often when police are involved, it is at a police officer's discretion what happens. In much of the U.S., you can be arrested for the intent to commit prostitution if they find that you're carrying condoms. Based on systemic review of 87 studies from several continents, research developed, research found that HIV transmission model concluded that decriminalizing sex work could have the greatest impact on curbing the HIV epidemic. This has to do with the criminalization of carrying condoms and the criminalization of sex work. I'm excited for my friends and neighbors to be safer. Sex work isn't going anywhere whether you agree with it or not and decriminalizing it would lead to reduced police violence, safety from violent clients, better access to healthcare for sex workers and clients, advancing LGBTQ equality, and fighting mass incarceration for something that shouldn't have been a crime in the first place. I could continue to list out ways that decriminalization keeps people safe, but I'm hoping that the resolution, though just a start, speaks for itself. Please reach out if you have questions or want to be involved. And as a final note, I enthusiastically support divestment from weapons manufacturers. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Ethan W. To be followed by Deb Ward Lyons. I'm here to speak in support of resolution 606 and 607. I believe I got that right. In regards to decriminalizing sex work and divestment from weapons, I believe firstly that I hopefully don't speak here for myself that I do not feel comfortable with any of my city's funds, investments, et cetera, going towards any violent weapon manufacturers, let alone any nuclear weapons manufacturers. So I believe that that should probably pass unanimously. And regarding the sex work resolution, I firmly believe that any form of government, let alone a municipal government, should tell women, or as a matter of fact, should tell anyone what they can or cannot do with their own bodies. So I believe decriminalizing sex work in that resolution should also pass unanimously. So yeah, I don't believe that there should be really any real opposition to this, or to either of them, as I believe they would greatly benefit Burlington as a whole, its residents, its workers, and the attitudes and feelings of its residents. So yeah, thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Deb Ward-Lions to be followed by Holly Bushnell. Good evening. You know who I am, Deb Lyons. I am the face of both a short-term and a long-term renter landlord host. I'm 65 years old, even, and I work two part-time jobs as well as rent my small standalone three-bedroom home for, again, long and short-term rental periods. That means weekends, weeks, and months at a time. I'm really lucky. I am blessed to have owned the house that I rent. It's just one. I was able to buy it through owner financing by the previous owner. Many years ago, so I'm very lucky to own my home, and I admit that. But I am not a mega-landlord. And in fact, if you do the work to find out what other people think about this at our mega-landlords, they don't want anything to do with short-term renting. Even though I am a short-term renter rental host, I still fall into, by Burlington's HUD standards, the very low income and the low income limits by what is considered your annual income. I help people with many different needs in this job that I have, particularly I'm committed to people with mental health challenges. But I need my rental as both long-term and short-term to survive, especially with the coming property taxes that are about to hit everybody. I encourage you to please follow the collaborative process that has been worked on for two years by many different people. And I'm happy to talk with any of you individually about my experiences and my thoughts. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Holly Bushnell to be followed by Jean Berger. Good evening, Councillors. President Tracey, Mayor Weinberger. Some of you know me in my capacity as a city employee both at Lakeview Cemetery and the city clerk's office. Or in my role as a staff person for PAC or the Cemetery Commission. Tonight, however, I'm speaking to you as a constituent and resident of board three for the past four years. I'm here tonight to request that you reject the proposed changes to the outside entertainment hours for Orlando's Bar and Lounge, One, Lost and Lane, agenda item 6.02, or at least send it back to committee for further discussion. For clarification, my apartment is at the bottom of Lost and Lane and my bedroom window is approximately 50 feet from Orlando's outdoor stage. The hours currently allowed by Orlando's entertainment permit were carefully considered after two sworn complaints against them and a public hearing to deal with excessive volume and late hours disrupting the neighborhood. At this point in time, outdoor entertainment is required to stop at 10.30 p.m. Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday. The situation, while unpleasant, is a bearable one. At the March 17th, 2021, Licensed Committee meeting, Sean Beauvais, one of the owners of Orlando's, assured the committee that they would be providing some sort of outdoor, of sound dampening structure to further mitigate the volume of the performances. There has been no structure and the volume remains loud to the point where I can barely hold a conversation in my own home without yelling until the music stops. I would request that any hourly change require the addition of the promised sound dampening structure before said changes take effect. Additionally, at the public hearing on 10.14, 2020, I provided over 40 instances of Orlando ceasing their music after the end of their permitted hours. The committee saw fit to move the permitted hours to 10.30, Sunday through Thursday and 11 p.m. Friday and Saturday, as previously stated, this time change has made the situation tolerable. Orlando's was warned at the time that they needed to follow the permitted hours exactly. There have been five additional instances of them ceasing their music 10 to 15 minutes after their permitted hours within the month of June alone. This might not seem like a big deal, but when you have a chronic illness and your body requires that you sleep eight hours a night just to function the next day, 15 minutes can make a huge difference. Changing the permitted hours, particularly to midnight on Thursdays and 12.30 a.m. on Sundays, will harm my physical and mental well-being by preventing me from getting the sleep I need. I will wake on Friday mornings, feeling nauseated and bloated, meeting, likely needing to vomit and possibly having to call in sick. My weekends will be spent attempting to recover, but again, I will not be able to get the proper amount of sleep due to the music stopping on Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights at 12.30 a.m. By Monday, I will begin excruciating intestinal pain and my joints and my legs will be swelling, making it difficult for me to walk. You could please wrap up. Yes. I know I'm one person and in the face of a business economic fortunes, it might seem like one person isn't an important factor. I'm not trying to be unreasonable. I'm just trying to keep myself healthy. I know that while, I also know that while I'm only one person present speaking to this issue, there are four other departments in my building not to mention the 65 residents of 101 College Street. Thank you for your time and consideration. Thank you. All right, our next speaker is Gene Bergman to be followed by Christopher Aaron Felker. And if folks can please just lean into the mic and speak directly into the mic, that way we can... How was that? That's a little bit better. Better? Yeah, please lean into the mic. Hi, I'm Gene Bergman and first I'd like to support counselors Freeman and Stromberg's resolutions that you have before you but really I'm focused here to support the municipal consolidated collection option. It will be the most cost-effective model for residents and the most effective in combating climate change and DPW's memo reveals both of these truths. Franchising raises serious questions and concerns. It promotes monopolization in the industry since consumer costs decrease as the number of customers increases so only the biggest players will have the capacity to submit the best bids. As time goes on, this will only get worse. If collusion among callers is prohibited, as it must be, then franchising districts will lead to different parts of the city paying different rates. Without a district model, monopolization is exacerbated. Monopolization without democratic control is a terrible economic model as we see in the tech industry and saw in the first gilded age. I appreciate the hybrid model because it stops the privatization of the current recycling program but the hybrid model negates much of the climate change advantages of consolidation by doubling the number of trucks picking up waste and does nothing about monopolization. The more regulations we impose to deal with these things, the more big haulers will increase their prices. We hear echoes in this policy in the policy arguments about the housing crisis. The municipal model places the power of this essential public good in democratic hands. It allows us to run it on a not-for-profit basis and therefore be innovative in promoting waste reduction as well as being cost competitive. It builds our capacity, including running a drop-off center which we haven't had in the city for a while now and having additional drivers and mechanics for slow removal and other work. It saves good union jobs for privatization and adds to them, thereby building the regional middle class, people with benefits and pensions and job protections, all things this pandemic have shown us are in short supply. I do think a municipal program will take longer than franchising, but not that much longer and the benefits will be very long-term. A one or two year difference in standing up a municipal program is not too long to do it right. With this in mind, I ask you to get a lot more information on the debt questions that have only recently been raised. And finally, I ask you to have staff do that. If you could please say that. Getting information, I am. With a can-do attitude in Obama-like, yes, we can approach our electric and water utilities or models of cost-effectiveness, ecological care and innovation, we can do the same with our solid waste. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Christopher Aaron Felker to be followed by Lucas Jensen. Good evening, everybody. It's good to see you all in person again. I'm here to speak about the consolidation measures of waste collection. It's been brought to my attention that the city is considering a consolidation measure to assign certain collection zones for our different neighborhoods. I'm here to speak against this this evening. The city's proposed waste consolidation members will eliminate a property owner's ability to choose their own providers and eliminate competition which naturally keeps costs down. A municipal monopoly on waste collection will result in higher waste collection costs, no ability to change providers and only will further burden Burlington families. It will likely also result in an increase in taxes and fees to accommodate for the additional services and employees that we need to regulate this. So I know we're not voting on this this evening, but I ask you to seriously take pause in thinking about the ramifications to Burlingtonians, to the free market and what will happen in the long term. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Lucas Jensen to be followed by Zoe Kennedy. Good evening. My name is Lucas Jensen and I'm here speaking about short term rentals like Amy and Deb. I am also the face of a short term rental here in Burlington. I am a long time, small scale landlord within this city and I can tell you that I am not a wealthy person. I don't make a lot of money owning the properties that I do in Burlington. Burlington is a very expensive city in which to own property and I expect it's going to become even more expensive in the very near future with increases in taxes and other things that are coming down the pike. My ability to rent short term allows me to continue to offer long term housing within this city. And if I'm not allowed to do that, I will not be able to afford to make improvements on the properties that I own, that I do not short term rent. So I ask you to take that into consideration as you learn more about who we are and how we operate. We're not big time landlords. We're not grossly rich people. We're just trying to make ends meet within this city. The second point that I wanna talk about is what is really meant by the housing crisis in Burlington. And I think that that often gets lost in this conversation. I wanna make sure that everyone remembers to keep that in mind as we're having this conversation. What we are talking about here is whether or not there are properties available to rent and whether or not those properties are affordable. The question for you when it comes to short term rentals is will placing limits on short term rentals in Burlington provide more housing and less expensive to the rental market and you can also substitute that for people looking to buy a house. There's very little data that supports that notion. In fact, prior to the pandemic, there was an increase in the vacancy rate while the presence of short term rentals were increasing. Basically suggesting that there is no correlation between short term rentals and the vacancy rate within Burlington. There's just very little data to support that placing limits on short term rentals is going to affect housing affordability within the state, within the city. There is actually a report which we're happy to share with you that shows that on a national basis and we'll hopefully get an opportunity to do that in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Zoe Kennedy to be followed by Isabella DeClyver. Hi, I'll keep my comment pretty brief. I just wanted to come here and say that I support the Colchester Ave redesign that's being proposed tonight to implement protected bike lanes along the entire corridor as well as improvements to the intersection at East Ave. This will increase accessibility and safety throughout or on the corridor and hopefully throughout our city as this can be sort of a .2 project to increase bike lanes throughout the city. And it will also help to move Burlington towards a more sustainable transportation system which at this point in the climate crisis is essential. I'd also just like to quickly state my support for decriminalizing sex work in Burlington and divesting from weapons manufacturers for all the reasons stated by earlier commentators and I yield the rest of my time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Isabella DeClyver and if anyone, if I pronounce her name wrong, please by all means correct me. I'm really sorry. Yeah, you pronounced it correct. Okay, thank you. I'm also here in support of the Colchester Ave bike lane. The way it is now, it's pretty narrow and not very safe for a lot of people biking on that corridor. So the race and separated bike lanes would definitely improve that and encourage more people to use it and promote more sustainable form of transportation. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Will Keaton to be followed by Sharon Busher. Okay, so my name is Jada. I live in Ward, something. My name is Will, I live in Ward 1. And my shirt is sponsored by the iPhone ringtone. So let's give it a hand. Okay. All right, anyway. We're here because we want to hold a city council or a particular accountable for his actions. When you do harm, it comes at your doorstep or it comes to city hall. Yeah, and I mean, hypocrisy of a city council trying to decriminalize sex work while shielding abusers from accountable is pretty absurd. Also, we know who suffers the most harm from the criminalization of sex work. Most laws in America, as we know, this one is just an excuse to brutalize and tear apart black communities. So, and Jack has sometimes really just kind of trampled all over the works of the work of black fans in our community, so. Yeah, what they said, and who side are you on? Don't be silent. You have the name, so do something about it. Yeah, we're really done with the political games to protect the reputations of politicians. Right. Stand with survivors and call out your colleagues and who knows, y'all could be next. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Sharon Busher to be followed by Jean Hopkins. Good evening. My name is Sharon Busher and I live in Ward 1 and I'm here to speak about item 6.0a, which is the Colchester Avenue scoping study. I certainly support bicycle safety, but I am concerned about the complete elimination of parking on that street and I'll explain why. There was a process where parking actually existed on both sides of the street and the process spearheaded by DPW brought together businesses and residents and property owners and after a lengthy discussion we went to one side of the street. There were about 10 spaces lost in that process and at that time I represented that ward and tried to find a solution for those people who were left without parking and I looked to UVM but UVM unfortunately had just found out that they were short parking in their parking study so they were unwilling to help in that process. So now we come forward and we're going to eliminate all of the parking on Colchester Avenue. My problem with this recommendation is that we know there's a problem. The problem is where is this parking going to go and we don't have a workable solution. If we don't address it, we have small businesses on Colchester Avenue. I thought the city was supportive of small businesses yet we know that they can't be sustained by the people that just live around them. They need drive-by traffic and there's no way to support them if there's no place for them to park. Also if people live on the street, the residents themselves, a lot of these homes were large homes. It's an old part of the city. The driveways can't accommodate a lot of cars. These old homes have been broken up into apartments and now those apartments need some on-street parking. So now where are they going to go? And if you're an elderly person and you have limited parking, what if you wanted to have a visitor? You're going to have elderly be more isolated because a visitor can't come. I don't understand. I mean, we tout ourselves as a livable city and yet the problems that I've identified are real and there's no workable solution. So yes, I'm for bike safety but I'm looking at the time. Yes, sorry. And I am for bike safety but I do believe that it is appropriate for you to address the problems that I've identified. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker is Jean Hopkins to be followed by John Renwer. Ruer, I apologize. Thank you. Hello, I'm Jean Hopkins from Ward One and I'm urging you all to vote for the divestment from the weapons manufacturers. We really need housing if we could invest in construction companies instead, instead of destruction companies. We need to invest in housing, not weapons. Hopefully we've learned from this pandemic that housing is healthcare. Let's invest in these construction companies and make sure that everyone in Vermont, at least in Burlington, has a safe place to sleep at night and everyone needs their own bathroom. So let's encourage plumbers to get some work too done. So please, I've met a lot of people who are homeless on the streets here and I don't wanna find any more homeless people. Everybody deserves to have a safe place to sleep at night. Let's keep that going, okay. Thank you. Our final speaker for this evening is John Ruer. Dr. Ruer, I'm a long-term member of Physicians for Social Responsibility and have been speaking about the dangers of nuclear war to the public for many decades. We made a tremendous difference in the past. There are 80% fewer nuclear weapons in the world now than there were in 1980, largely because places like Vermont and the city of Burlington all said yes to the nuclear freeze and no to further weapons back then. The world has largely forgotten that. It's becoming more dangerous with endless wars in the Middle East and Africa and there's a new nuclear arms race. A lot of the danger comes from simple weapons proliferation because national security decisions and weapons acquisitions are no longer made based on the actual security needs, but rather the inordinate power of lobbyists selling their weapons and the revolving door between every defense department contractor in general that goes and serves on the boards of Ray Pion and United Technologies and Lockheed Martin makes the decisions for buying the weapons from those companies back and forth. And so the federal government is not going to stop spending inordinate amounts of money on weapons that take away from all other aspects of our life and actually decrease our security in the world by taking away from diplomacy, international court system and international law and spending it on weapons. So the purpose of this divestment campaign is twofold to allow us as localities to speak our mind by bringing our investments, the money that we have for our future and the future of our city into alignment with our values that we want life affirming purchases, not more weapons than destruction. And secondly, to put the weapons companies on notice that they do not run the country that we want to make our secure decisions and military decisions based on real needs and not their profits. So I appreciate your support of this resolution. Thank you. We have another sign up, Robert Bristow-Johnson. So sorry, this is last week's agenda and somebody was actually drowning in my neck of the woods and I just totally forgot about the city council meeting last week. So I want to just say something about the redistricting and remind people kind of what was going on in 2013 and 2014 when that was happening. And what we did was exactly the opposite of gerrymandering. If you had a population that was emerging and just suppose they happened to live on college and church street and this emerging population of Bosnians or South Asians or something. And we decided to slice them up so that they could never get a representation in council, slice them up and put them into ward six and put them into ward one and put them into ward two and put them into ward three. So they never get a majority in any, they're always going to be a minority population in every ward and get zero or very little representation in council disproportionate to their population in the city. That would be gerrymandering. And what we did was exactly the opposite of that. And so there was an emerging population and the, you know, I really like Andy Montrell but every single 13 councilor map that he drew was just unacceptable in the new north end because we saw that as just simply a reduction of our representation in council where the rest of the city had no such thing. When the issue was an emerging population that needed to be represented. And that's what we got. And as a consequence of that, the rest of the city was mostly undisturbed. 82% of the city got to stay in the same ward, vote in the same place. Of the 18% that didn't, 13 of those 18% says ward eight. So they're not going to. Only 5% of the city was in one of the seven wards and ended up in one of the other seven wards. And for the most part, they're not complaining. I don't think anybody in the Linkview Charis is complaining that they're back at ward three. So I'm just letting you know that the ward was going down eight years ago. Thank you. And that concludes our public forum for this evening. We will move back into our agenda. Having already completed the climate emergency updates, we will move to the consent agenda. Councillor Stromberg may please have a motion on the consent agenda. Sure. I move to adopt the consent agenda as amended and take the actions indicated. A motion from Councillor Stromberg. Is there a second? Seconded. Seconded by Councillor Freeman. Any discussion? Okay. Hearing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. We will, I will now recess our city council meeting and move us into the local control commission. So I'll give folks a second to click over to that. We'll convene the local control commission at 7.59 PM. First item on the agenda is the agenda. May it please have a motion on the agenda, Commissioner Mason. Thank you. President Traciade would like to make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented. So we have a motion from Councillor Mason. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hanson. Any discussion? All right. All those in favor of adopting our agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us into the deliberative agenda. Item 2.01, Commissioner Mason, may it please have a motion? Thank you, President. Oh, I'm sorry. That item was removed. Item 2.02, please. Thank you, President Traciade. I'd like to make a motion to extend the, sorry, hours of operation for the Wallflower Collective. Okay, we have a motion from Commissioner Mason. Is there a second? Seconded by Commissioner Hanson. Any discussion? Okay, see. I'll just, for introduction. I was not on the license committee a year ago, but my understanding is this is a new business a year ago when they came in requesting hours as now the extension request. And the committee decided as they were a new business, they would give them some time to operate. We have not heard any complaints or issues with existing operations and no one has come forth to object to this now. Thank you. Thank you. Any further discussion from counselors? Okay, we're ready to go to a vote. All right, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to item 2.03, Commissioner Mason. Thank you, President Traciade. I'd like to make a motion to extend the outside consumption permit hours for the Wallflower Collective, 71 South Union Street. We have a motion from Commissioner Mason. Is there a second? Seconded by Commissioner Hansen. Any further discussion? Okay, hearing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Motion to adjourn is in order. So moved. Seconded, moved by Commissioner Mason. Seconded by Commissioner Hansen. All those in favor of adjournment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? We are adjourned at 801 and we'll move back into the regular city council meeting. President Traciade. Yeah. Thank you. I, the Consent Agenda went by me a little bit quicker than I was hoping because I needed to just simply add that on items 5.23 and 5.24, those came before the Board of Finance. I recused myself at that time and will be recusing myself from the Consent Agenda items 5.23 and 5.24. Just wanted that noted. I apologize for not saying so sooner. Thank you. I appreciate that, Councillor Paul. All right. We will move back into the deliberative agenda. So we have item 6.01. Councillor Mason. Let me catch up. Sorry. Thank you, President Traciade. I'd like to make a motion to extend the indoor entertainment hours for the Wallflower Collective 71 South Union Street to the hours set forth in the application. Thank you. We have a motion. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hanson. Any discussion of this item? Okay. Seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to our next item, which is extension of Orlando's entertainment permit hours. Councillor Mason. Can I ask a point of information to the city attorney? Sure. So normally we would go to licensed committee, but we're now here. I don't support the expansion, so am I supposed to make the motion to get it on the floor, or can I make the motion and then vote against it? I think I can, but I wanna make sure I can do that. All right. So I will make a motion to expand the hours of operation set forth in Orlando's application, but if there's a second, I will state why I'm objecting. Okay. Is there a second to this? Seconded by Councillor Hansen. Thank you, President Tracy. So we all received the communication from Holly Bushnell, and this was, or the existing hours as they exist today was the topic of a lengthy discussion before the licensed committee. From my perspective, nothing has changed that would, in terms of conditions getting better, nor have the concerns that were raised, which frankly relate to hours of operation have been addressed, and I'm not sure how you would address them other than to not be open during those hours. I say that with respect for what Orlando's is asking. It has been a challenging time, and I think the committee has delicately tried to balance those needs with those of the residents who are impacted, and I stand by what the committee did and will not be supporting the request to extend those hours at this time. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Is there further discussion in this item? Is there anyone from Orlando's present? So please, please come up to the table. So I was just trying to... Please speak into the mic. Just a point of what can I identify yourself with? Yes, Brandon Mossman. And I was just trying to extend for Thursday to 11 p.m. and Friday, Saturday to midnight. It affects the hours, you guys, we have all reopened the bars to the regular hours now. Our clientele is coming out later. Permit ends 10.30, Thursday and Wednesday and 11, Friday and Saturday. And so I was just looking to extend it for one hour on the weekends and 30 minutes on Thursday. Thank you. Any further comments or discussion from Councillors? Councillor Shannon. My understanding is that there has been a problem with the entertainment permit in the past and that this was after public hearing and much discussion, these were the hours that were landed on, which really is a compromise to try and allow both the business and the residents to coexist together. And I wondered if prior to making this request, there was outreach to the residents and if the residents demonstrated support. I do think it's important as we want vitality in our city. And I think downtown residents generally are tolerant. And there is demonstrated tolerance in allowing the existing entertainment permit. So I wondered if the applicant could just speak to what outreach has been done to the residents. Sure. If you could please lean into the mic. Yeah, so last time we had a meeting about the permit the first time. Please lean right into the mic. Can you hear me now? Yep. So the first time we had a Zoom meeting and we were dropped a half an hour on weekdays. We're actually only open Wednesday, Thursday of weekdays. Our permit actually is seven days and we just want the two weekdays to be extended to 30 minutes, the weekends to one hour and the last Zoom call we did have, there were a couple people on the Zoom call that did have complaints and we had actually addressed them over the Zoom call to come and meet and come to an agreement amongst each other what we could do to coordinate the sound to be better and they just weren't really into the idea of doing that and to coming and just speaking with us personally. So I mean, I don't really know there was, yeah, I think Holly Bushwell at the end of the alley and there was one other gentleman, I forget his name on the Zoom call. Okay, Councillor Shannon, you still have the floor? It doesn't sound like there has been any outreach since the last meeting and what we heard was that there was an agreement at that meeting that there would be further sound mitigation that was not, that did not follow. So I don't see any reason, anything that has changed that would lead me to support expanding the hours beyond what was agreed to in the previous meeting. Thank you, Councillor Shannon, Councillor Hightower. This is just a question to Councillor Mason, which is just, would you have any interest in having this referred to back to license for any kind of compromise or are you? Councillor Mason? I mean, I'm willing to do what the council wants from my position, I'm not particularly interested because I'm not sure that there's anything that will change. I do feel, I mean, we all balance this, the needs of the residents versus the need of businesses and I feel we landed in a good place. I'm not hearing, I don't know how you could adjust those hours without moving it one way or the other. So, unfortunately no. Councillor Henson? Yeah, I'm wondering if we could hear from our guests if there has been any noise mitigation efforts over the last several months. Yeah, so the last summer we've actually hired a sound guy that has a decimal reader, he goes around and basically checks with the decimal reader, flatbreads of business literally right next to us. They like the music, their clientele likes the music. Like I said, during COVID, we could only be opened it was 11 and back to 10 and now it's back to two and people are going out later. They're going out to the bars at the regular hours. They're not going out to see live music at 7 p.m. They're going out more like nine, 10, then we have to close at 11. So that's basically, we'll lose in a couple hours of business and we've hired a sound guy, he controls the levels with the bands and I mean, it's hard to really, I mean, I don't really know what else we can really do to dampen the sound. I mean, it is an alleyway, I understand how sound travels but it's just nothing, there's nothing more we can really do besides try to keep it at an appropriate level for the guests and that's what we try to do there. Okay, Councillor Hanson, you have the floor. Yeah, I don't want to get too far and do back and forth but when we last discussed this, I had my recollection of it was that the decibel reader and that was already in place at that point and the discussion was around adding some type of physical structure, a sound barrier behind the stage. Yeah, so behind the speakers, so the speakers used to be in the alleyway. Okay, they were on tripod speakers. Now we stick them on the far side, that's a brick wall that connects the building, it goes like this. So we move the speakers to one side, we put the other speaker higher up closer to our building and it's got a wood barrier behind it. So that's what we kind of, we played with the sound so it's not shooting straight down the alley. It's really hard to explain without photographs before it was shooting straight down the alley so I can understand why that would kind of congest the sound and push it down. Now the speakers are, we also put the speakers in other areas. Okay, and when was that changed? That was changed once we reopened this, I think like a month or so after we reopened and hired a sound guy and he kind of went around and played with the sound and he said that that was the lowest decimal read for the speakers at that area. Okay, and have you gotten any feedback from neighbors after that change? Did anyone say they noticed that? We haven't had, before we did that, we used to get calls all the time from neighbors and we haven't had calls from neighbors but we're also abiding by the city ordinance. We're cutting it right when we're supposed to and I don't know if the residents know that's when it's gonna be cut and maybe that's why they're calling but we haven't had any more complaints since then. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I mean, I, I, do I still? Yeah, I would be open to discussing it further in committee but for now I don't, I'm not ready to support the expansion at this point. Thanks. Any further discussion? Okay, hearing none. Councillor Jane, go ahead. Yeah, I was just wondering if the motion is on the table yet. The motion was made on the table, it was moved by Councillor Mason and seconded by Councillor Hanson. The motion to refer it back. Point of order, so the motion on the table is the motion to approve the request to expand the hours. Thank you, Councillor Mason. Any further discussion? Okay, Councillor Jane, go ahead. Yep, thank you for being here and for also trying. I, based on what you just said, it seems you've been trying, right? But at the same time, you know, the city staff who just spoke here and it seemed been speaking with you as well. You know, we respect her, we like her and she never complains and when she does, this is a great writing she shared with all of us. I do not wanna vote no, but I think you also would understand if the council wanna move this item back to the committee for further discussion. I think it would be a win-win situation and I think it will also allow you to look further about what type of sound mitigation you could come up with, right? We love the business, I like the business and we want also you to be successful, right? So, Councillor President Tracy, I was just wondering, should we vote on this or should we bring another motion to refer it back? It's up to you, Councillor. If you'd like to make a motion, you can do so at this time. Otherwise, I'd like to go to move us towards a vote. Okay, so I would like them to make a motion in referring this item back to the committee. Okay, we have a motion to refer this back to the licensed committee. Is there a second? Point of information, is that a motion to amend this? Yeah, it's a motion to amend or refer. Great, second. Seconded by Councillor Hightower. Is there further discussion on the amendment? Councillor Shannon. I just really think that when a business is having problems with their neighbors, it behooves that business to reach out to the neighbors to work things out prior to coming and asking for more from the council and expending a lot of council time and resources when that groundwork hasn't yet been done. And for that reason, I will not be supporting the motion to refer. Okay, any further discussion on the motion to refer, Councillor Hanson? Yeah, I would just say I'm fine with referring it and I'll support that. I would just say that from my perspective, if nothing changes between now and then, it's probably not, I don't think that it's gonna go anywhere, but if it does get referred, this is an opportunity for Orlando's to do some of that outreach. And if things have changed by the time we take it up in committee, then maybe there'll be a different outcome. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. Councillor Carpenter. A question for my own information. What is the process for the business to come back at some, if this fails tonight, can they come back at some future point? Is there, how does that work? City Clerk Goldberg, do you have an answer for that? I don't mean to put it. Or they can come back. Yeah, they could come back at a different point is the answer. Any further discussion on the motion to refer to the licensed committee? Okay, will the City Clerk please call the roll? Councillor Barlow. No. Councillor Carpenter. No. Councillor Jang. Yes. Councillor Freeman. Yes. Councillor Hanson. Yes. Councillor Hightower. Yes. Councillor Mason. No. Councillor Paul. Councillor Shannon. No. Councillor Stromberg. Yes. City Council President Tracy. No. Five ayes, six nays. The motion to refer fails, and we are back to the original item on the extension of the hours. Is there further discussion on that? Okay, let's go to a vote. Will the City Clerk please call the roll? Councillor Barlow. No. Councillor Carpenter. No. Councillor Jang. No. Councillor Freeman. No. Councillor Hanson. No. Councillor Hightower. No. Councillor Mason. No. Councillor Paul. No. Councillor Shannon. No. Councillor Stromberg. No. City Council President Tracy. No. 11 ayes. The motion fails, and the hours that you currently have remain. Thank you. Brings us to our next item, which is 6.03, a special event outdoor entertainment permit application. Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. I would make a motion to approve the one day only special event outdoor entertainment permit application for Commonwealth Financial Group, South Champlain Street between Main and King, August 27th, 2021, 5 to 9 p.m. Live DJ, amplified music, celebration for business owners and residents. Motion from Councillor Mason. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hanson. Any further discussion? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to our next item, which is a communication regarding the water resources rebates and temporary waiver of water and wastewater fixed meter charge for low income and senior non-profits and senior housing customers. With us we have Division Director Moyer and Director Spencer. I will turn it over to Division Director Moyer. Great, thanks everybody. Good to see you in person. So tonight we're seeking approval of two policies that formalize several of the provisions of Burlington's Water Resources Assistance Program that was approved by Council on May 24th. These policies are in addition to the approved structural changes that you all made to the rates themselves. Those structural changes serve to protect access of as many residential account holders as possible regardless of income, but these policies start to dial in to really helping those who may be already experiencing an economic hardship with paying their water bills. Specifically the piece, just as a reminder to folks that is helping everybody is that you all approved a lower rate structure for the initial block of water. So for that initial average amount of water that a single family duplex or triplex property uses that initial amount of water is actually cheaper which results in typical users if you use the same amount of water as last year around 400 cubic feet you actually won't experience an increase in your water sewer bill over last year except for the stormwater component. The Water Resources Assistance Program established a key affordability measure in the form of a bill discount for our account holders who may be more impacted by the rate increases that we are finding that we need in order to properly steward our infrastructure. This discount or what's referred to as the temporary waiver of the water and wastewater fixed meter charge will apply to three categories of account holders. Primarily the account holders who can demonstrate an economic hardship by showing proof of having qualified for some other income-based program that's tied to either 200% of the federal poverty limit or 50% of the HUD AMI. We also do have a senior discount for folks who are over 65 because of some of the unique economic hardships that seniors can face. And when and if and only if a senior can attest that without this program they would have a hardship paying their bill. And lastly we are also offering the waiver of the fixed meter charge for non-profits senior and affordable housing properties. With the RAP fixed meter charge waiver the typical user, so somebody who used 400 cubic feet a month last year, this year would actually see a 16% decrease in their overall bill. So they'd save about 100 bucks a year. So we're really hoping that not only is that gonna help people with their water bills now, but as we work with you all to make sure that we're raising enough money to take care of replacing the pipes and the plants folks are gonna be protected against some of those rate increases that are necessary. In addition to the waivers we're also bringing forward two rebate programs. I believe the first ones that we've ever put forth. First of all we're offering $75 to account holders who can show proof of having purchased and installed a water since fixture. One of the best ways to keep your water bill down is to not use as much water. And as we've discussed it's hard to control your kids, your spouse, whomever may be in your house using water and sometimes it's good to engineer that out by actually putting in a low flow fixture or putting in a toilet that doesn't flush as much water. So we're offering $75 towards that for I believe up to 160 account holders. And then the other piece is, I don't know if Sharon Busher is still here. No, sort of a Sharon Busher special. It's leading into where we wanna go. So sewer laterals are entirely the responsibility of the private homeowner from the sewer main all the way to your house. And as many people are finding when those have problems not only can you not flush your toilet you're often looking at a very substantial bill. While we're not yet ready and we don't have the funding to provide the loans and grants that we would like to do to help people replace this piece of their infrastructure what we'd like to do initially is offer money towards filming of those sewer laterals. So having a list of companies that people can hire and we would pay up to $250 for people who are income qualified or $200 towards the cost of filming which we understand to be about 250 bucks. So that people can really get in and see what keeps causing a clog and work with a contractor to figure out what that estimate is and start planning for the replacement. We're also interested in collecting that data understanding how many pipes when we look at them is there a defect to then maybe work with you all to come up with some sort of program if we can to actually provide loans to folks to really get these pipes fixed. Cause you need water but you also need water to leave. The last thing I will say or two last things I'll say cause it did come up when we were talking is the bill discount program or the waiver program does not yet apply to renters. It's only able to apply to account holders. So the occasional renter who has worked with the landlord to get the bill in their name, they would be able to apply but the vast majority we know there's a lot of renters in Burlington and we acknowledge that our current program like many affordability programs across the country don't yet know how to reach them. There's brand new programs coming out of DC that we're watching closely and we promised to you all in our memo when we approved the program that we would be coming back to you by 2023 with a proposal of how to reach those renters cause we really understand that they also are having a burden. And lastly, the waiver application process, the new rates did go into effect on July 1st and so people will be seeing whatever their new bill is come August, August 19th is when the first bills go out, understanding that people need to get in and apply and we're gonna have materials available should you approve this program on Monday. If anybody applies prior to December 31st we will make any discount retroactive back to July 1st. So I don't want people to panic and think because they haven't gotten their application and that too bad so sad their August bill is gonna be stuck with that charge. We are willing to work with folks on that. I don't know if there's anything else. It's been an incredible effort from the Water Division team and also with City Attorney and the CAO and many other entities in the city, City Assessor. So really appreciate all the time in the past review of this council as we are ready to bring your intent into fruition. Thank you. Thank you very much. Before I open it up to the council I'm gonna go to Councillor Hanson for a motion. I'll move to approve the attached to policies to facilitate the Water Resources Assistance Program. Number one, policy for temporary waiver of water and wastewater fixed meter charge for low income and senior and non-profit affordable and senior housing customers. And number two, water resources rebate policy. Okay, you have a motion from Councillor Hanson seconded by Councillor Freeman. Now I'll open it up to the full council. Councillor Hanson. Just to reiterate what Director Spencer said, thank you all so much for all your diligence and work on this and I'm really happy with where we're headed. Me too, thank you. Thank you. Any further questions or comments? Councillor Metson. Thank you, President Tracy. Director Moore, do we track currently the sewer? I'm just trying to figure out like what in the absence of the rebate is there any other way that the city's tracking that or no? Tracking the condition of people sewer lateral. Yeah, or I'm just, I mean like do you see streets? Yep, we could pull information on excavation permits that are pulled to repair or replace sewer. So we do have that data point. And what if anything do we do with it currently or what are we planning to do with that information once we start tracking it more closely because of the rebate program? I mean my intent is I spoke at length with the city of Philadelphia and their program. They have a five year, zero percent interest loan program which is what I would like to do because from what I've heard, we're looking at eight to 13 grand per sewer lateral. That's not money that anybody has laying around. And because we don't do the work, when we do waterline work, we can put people on a payment plan because we're doing the work. We don't currently have a mechanism to be able to help them with the sewer. So I would want to use that data to kind of bolster the need. If we're gonna be asking for rate payer dollars to fund a loan program, we kinda need to document I think better what the exact need is. I think it's there, it's just a matter of collecting the data. I see, I didn't know if it would, for example, on my street, my house is what, 80 years old. I don't know whether the sewer main has ever been replaced. I'm wondering if we'll be used to data to say, look, just FYI, everyone on SCARFAB should know we replaced one at the lower. You may want to start banking reserve in order to deal with that because it's going to break. It's just a question of when. Right, and that's one of the reasons that I was so appreciative when division director Moyer brought this forward because it's actually gonna really help on our paving coordination as we are approaching streets to have this extra tool to incentivize property owners to understand the condition of their lateral. They'll be more motivated to take advantage of replacing it prior to paving and not after. Or at least filming it and knowing, because I think we spent a long time not knowing what the inside of our pipes looked like and so we didn't have programs to fix them. And once we started looking, we're like, oh gosh, and I think that's the natural reaction and we'll compel people to do what they can before the paving comes through. But I really am interested in working with you all to figure out how we can fund some other type of program because it's the next big thing. Thank you. Any further comments, questions from counselors? Mayor Weber. Thank you, President Tracy. I just too wanted to thank Megan and the water team for making good on the commitment that the administration had to look for ways to expand affordability programs. Not, this is important today and I think it becomes even more important as we head forward from here with the intention of continuing to make needed investments in water infrastructure. We, if we're, I think we need to be able to do everything we can with customers that are particularly challenged with affordability to make those investments while doing it right by some of the most vulnerable people in the community is critical and that's why I think not only is this a key affordability program, I think it's key to us continuing the proactive infrastructure investment work that is intended in the years ahead. Thank you, Mayor. Any further comments from counselors? Ready to vote? Okay, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to six. Thank you very much. Thank you. Brings us to our next item, which is another DPW item. Before we get into that item, may it please have a motion, Councillor Jang? Accept the, make a motion to accept the communication and place it on five. Okay. Let me repeat for the, okay, perfect. Okay, we have a motion from Councillor Jang. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Hightower. All right, now let's open it up. Go ahead, Director Spencer and Division Director Perry. Thanks again for joining us. Thank you for having us. Pleasure to be here in Contoy Auditorium in person. And similar to this last item, where it was a council resolution that spurred us to action to look at how we implement affordability programs for our water rate payers, this too, consolidated collection, came out of a council resolution in 2018 for us to look at how to reduce cost and improve service for customers seeking to have their solid ways recycling and organics collected. So we're very excited to be here with you this evening. Many helped us get here tonight. I wanna acknowledge our consultant GBB and are they able to join us on the phone? Yes, so I'm going to need whoever has the phone access. I don't know that we have. Laurie gave me a call in number. I'm sorry, I didn't know that you were gonna need to get them on. I don't know how to use this. I'd say Lee, why don't we see if we can text the consultant and see if they can call in and get on the speaker phone. Can we call him if we have the number? Yeah. Yeah, he has given that. Okay, great. Perfect. The old school hybrid meeting is still a working progress. We'll just get him on a cell phone and then we'll hold it up to the mic. Okay. Great, well thank you so much. We'll work this out, I'm sure. So our consultant GBB helped us do the study, the initial study of the franchise model and hopefully joining us soon will be Jennifer Porter and Sam Lybrand from GBB. Also want to thank CSWD, again, of the city administration, city attorney and CIO, the DPW commission, the TUC, the Hollers Union, specifically AFSCME and members of the public. And tonight, we're here to update you on our staff recommendation and on our process to get there. We want to hear your questions tonight and get initial feedback. We are not looking for a decision tonight. We are seeking your counsel and guidance next month. That said, based on our input, on all the input received, division director Lee Perry and myself are strong in our opinions that we feel that the hybrid recommendation that we're bringing in front of you tonight is the right recommendation for the city at this time. And we look forward to going over the reasons why we think that this is the right direction. So with that, Lee, why don't you take over? The consentements and thanking everybody and thank you for having us here tonight. We'll move over to the wave plaza. If you could just talk into the mic. Sorry. So consolidated collection evaluation. We did a study, as Chapin said, with our consultant GBB and they studied the franchise option, Public Works, studied the municipal, staff did an evaluation and created a budget for the municipal operated consolidated collection program. A little background, there are many ways communities coordinate collection of trash, recycles, and food scraps. In Burlington, it's a subscription basis where residents subscribe with area hollers on a subscription basis or they sell haul and bring their waste streams to one of the area drop off centers. According to a survey of 461 communities nationwide, the subscription arrangement only occurs in 11% of communities. Whereas consolidated collection on the other hand is more common with 83% of communities having either the municipality or a private hauler contracted through the municipality collecting the waste streams. Some more background. In 2000, October of 2000, there was a city council resolution directing DPW to do an evaluation for consolidated collection. And again, in 2009, Chitton-Sallways district at a county-wide evaluation didn't really gain any traction. Again, in 2018 to 2020, the franchise model was evaluated by our consultants. And again, in 2021 with recommendation from the Transportation, Energy, and Utility Committee, DPW did an evaluation of the municipal option. And what are the benefits of consolidated collection, which are many, reduced cost to residents, reduced environmental impacts due to root consolidation. So better consolidation of the root, less trucks on routes, less fossil fuels and emissions, increased safety and reduced impact to city infrastructure, as well as reduced noise in neighborhoods. Increased diversion by using consolidated collection as a means to capture all three waste streams, including food scraps. Sorry about that. And also we could allow residents to opt out if that choice was wanted by residents and they could haul to either a drop-off center, public outreach and feedback. What we've done so far, GBB did the survey back in 2019, reaching out to Burlington residents. And as you can see in the slide, 39% expressed support for consolidated collection as a whole, 23 expressed opposition, 20% said they didn't have enough information, 18% didn't. Of those responding and writing and spoke at meetings, more residents expressed support for consolidated collection, either a franchise or a municipal operating model over the current subscription model. And a lot of the proponent sites, the same benefits that were listed earlier as environmental safety cost and noise impact, as well as an interest in a municipal option. Residents who opposed cited wanting a freedom of choice to choose their hauler they wanted, flexibility in their pickup schedules, whether it's weekly. Director Spencer, is your mic working better? I'm just having a really hard time here. Is this better? Yeah, thank you. You're welcome. Okay, so residents who opposed consolidated collection citing needing flexibility in their pickup schedules as well as choice of hauler, and written comments are attached to the memo. In the former operating models we explored or the franchise model, which is the study done by a consultant where you franchise with a private hauler, franchise model with city bid, which is also known as managed competition. This model is similar to franchise, but the city retains a right to bid on districts against private haulers. The municipal operation model, which is where the city would collect all-way streams as well as billing and operational oversight. And then the hybrid municipal franchise model that we recommended where the city would continue to pick up the recycling within the city and franchise out trash and food scraps. In the prevalence of each model, this chart kinda breaks down that 83% of communities where 58% is franchise hauling and 40% would be municipal hauling. The 2% is that hybrid model where the either managed competition or the municipality picking up the trash and then franchising the other streams out. And projected cost, you can see in this chart, won't go through everything. We broke it down into the franchise model and municipal model with three opt-out options, zero, 15, and 25% opt-out. And based off of the zero percent opt-out with the Flint Avenue property and the municipal model with the 15 and 25% opt-out with the 339 Pine Street property, which is the old street department yard. As you can see, the prices are fairly similar between the franchise model and municipal model until you increase the opt-out numbers and the spread becomes a little more significant. And these estimates from GBB do not include additional city costs for oversight because in any model there is, you're still gonna have to have operational oversight of either the contractor or if the city does it itself. All right, thank you. So we have put together, while GBB looked at just the franchise model and we put together a study of the municipal model, we know that there was great interest in comparing the various models. And so for the two, we presented all four, but for the council tonight, the two that were of greatest interest are presented here. We evaluated them against 13 criteria. You'll see down the left where the scores, we scored them one to three points. Three points would be a great benefit or little risk. Two would be moderate benefit or a moderate risk and then one check if it was of negligible benefit or a significant risk to the city. So you'll see the top five are generally ranked the same. The only note I would make is that on customer cost, we gave the municipal option kind of equal footing even though as we have projected, as more people opt out, the spread is that municipal costs more than franchise. But on a 0% opt out, they're relatively similar. Moving down to six through 13, we've highlighted in blue where each option was more beneficial for control of service, clearly in a municipal model, if we own and operate the service, we are gonna have the greatest level of control. And then with union labor and pay, all employees of the operation would be city employees, many of whom would be AFSCME employees. We can through any contracting arrangement, of course require livable wage and any additional protections that we as the city would like under a hybrid option. It is important to note for union labor, both options increase the number of unionized employees. Under the municipal option, it would be approximately nine to 12 new unionized employees. Under the hybrid model, it would be three additional. So under either scenario, there is an increased commitment to our unionized city workforce. Under effort to launch, this is where the hybrid in our mind is better in that there were fewer hurdles to achieve operation. There is not the need to set up an enterprise fund. There's not the need to build a new facility to house a drastically expanded operation. We are already in the recycling business and would just be continuing that effort in our existing infrastructure. Upfront capital costs, this is where the hybrid shines. We are projecting over $6 million of capital needs in a new building, land, new vehicles, and all the carts for the three streams. That's $6 million from our understanding from the Clerk Treasurer's Office. Because the enterprise fund would not yet be set up, we would need to go to voters and get a general obligation bond to launch that service. That is a $6 million general obligation bond. It would count against the general fund's debt ceiling, which would mean it would compete with the high school, the upcoming sustainable infrastructure plan and other debt needs of the city. It would, there's a distinction in terms of legislative approval. On the hybrid, we do not need a new enterprise fund to manage a much larger and expanded operation. If it stayed in the general fund, it could continue to operate as it does. With a fully municipal operation, we would be running over a $5 million a year operating budget, which is larger than all the remaining general fund revenues in DPW currently. So as a result, we believe it would require a charter change to set up an enterprise fund and then get legislative approval, council approval and then state legislative approval. Risk to city government, given the number of steps that we need to go through with the municipal operation, including acquiring property or redeveloping property, building a building, getting a geo bond launched, getting legislative approval, there are not a lot more steps that bring risk to the city for launching municipal action. As discussed in the memo, the time to launch is also less with the hybrid option since we don't have to build a building, don't have to hire as many new staff, don't have to acquire the new vehicles. We can be up and running in two to three years instead of three to five. And lastly, future flexibility. Should there be interest in the future of substantially adjusting the models, there is certainly more wiggle room with a hybrid option. We could move into municipal in the future. We could also move back to subscription because the city would not have invested $6 million in assets. If we go municipal, it will be a service that I'm sure many in the public will enjoy and it'll be very hard for the council to make a transition where we would have to let go of a unionized workforce, liquidate assets. It would be difficult to unwind. As a result in our scoring, the hybrid came out ahead. It was just one benchmark and not the entire piece, but we did look at, if you could hit the next slide, the various components as to why we are recommending the hybrid option. And I touched on many of these, but let me bring forward the ones I did. It does build off the structure and capacity that the city has already built with the recycling program. It would be very similar to what we operate today. We've talked about the savings of a $6 million bond for new capital, talked about the shorter timeline. We talked about the reduced risk. I did highlight that it would be three additional union positions under the hybrid option. And those three union staff could help us with winter maintenance and other urgent items that would help us deliver our other services during busy times. And lastly, it is very important to us that 645 Pine Street could accommodate the operation, keeping all our teams together. One of the ways we can fund the additional employees for the recycling program is through the simple council approval of the increase of solid waste generation tax. And the hybrid option also would be a savings of impact on our existing employees. We could have the haulers under the hybrid option do the billing as they do today. We just passed the solid waste generation tax on to them to collect. So our billing teams and our customer service teams would not be further burdened under this option. We talked about the flexibility in the future. Another point that we haven't discussed is this maintains a role for the private haulers who have grown their businesses in our city. And the fact that there would still be a role would likely reduce their level of opposition and mean the implementation would likely be smoother. And last but not least, having clarity on direction sooner than later will help us resolve the outstanding issue of 195 Flynn Avenue, where the city has an option to purchase from CSWD for waste management needs. Next. So the Public Works Commission on June 16th voted five to one in support of the staff recommended hybrid option. The Transportation Energy Utilities Committee met the following week and voted two to one for the municipal consolidated collection model for a number of the reasons that you heard in public comment tonight. Next. So one of the things it's important to touch on is just what we'd need to really have a successful consolidated collection implementation of the hybrid model. We'd need to do additional engagement with the public to understand the service levels. Allowing opt out or not, are we collecting bi-weekly or weekly? We'd also need your council support to have a project manager to help launch this smoothly. If we don't have extra resources while we're launching this new effort, it will hurt ongoing operations. We need, your understanding is not flipping a light switch. This is building a new business and we need your support to launch this multi-year effort. And last but not least, willingness and support to fund this effort sufficiently through the solid waste generation tax so that we can operate effectively. Next. All right, getting close to the end here, the conceptual timeline for the hybrid option. This shows a two and a half year launch period where as of January 1, 2024, we would be able to initiate this consolidated collection service. One of the important steps in the middle that you'll see is that we need to negotiate with CSWD and Casella for tip fees because they, each in their respective waste streams, have the only option in Chittenden County. And so we need to negotiate the tip fees with them so that any franchise bidder will be understanding the playing field that they will be bidding on. Next. So we're seeking your input and Q&A tonight. Really no decision tonight. We're really excited to have done this work. Sorry that our consultant couldn't be here. But we do have, it looks like Jennifer Porter from GBB on the phone. So if there are any questions, we could speak them to her. And if that doesn't work, we're happy to get you the answers between now and next meeting. Thank you. Thank you. I'll open the Florida counselors. Councilor Shannon to be followed by Councilor Carpenter. Thank you President Tracy. Wow. Thank you both for the presentation for all of this work that has been needed for decades. Whichever way we're go, we decide to go on this. It's a huge advancement that really should have happened long ago. And I so appreciate all that you have done to finally move the issue forward. I just had one, definitely what I'm hearing from constituents is concerns about adding to the cost of municipal services. People are feeling, yeah, whether renters or homeowners, everybody is feeling taxed. And I don't mean that in the sense of property taxes, but just financially taxed. I think of the pros and cons list, the thing that hit me that was most concerning is the capital investment piece, knowing what we need for our schools. The idea of a capital bond at this time, I just don't see how that alone is something that the city can consider right now. I hear from my constituents that they really want to maintain their ability to all their own trash, actually. And forgive me if I missed that in all of this presentation because there's a lot of information. But can you speak to that? Would they have the ability to opt out? That is part of the service level evaluation that we'd proposed to have once the council gives us direction. There is the option to allow opt-outs or the option to not allow opt-outs. What we have understood, there are pros and cons. If you have no opt-outs, you spread the cost of the program over more households and therefore reduce the cost per household. However, you reduce choice. So the question is whether we want to allow choice or reduce cost per household. What we have heard through public comment is more people expressing a desire for opt-out than not. And so that's been feedback we've heard to date, but part of why we want to do this additional outreach is to get that additional feedback so we can state definitively that the public's interest is in opt-out and to advance such an option. So in both the scenarios you've laid out, that can be an option. Yes. Okay, thank you. Councilor Carpenter to be followed by Councilor Stromberg and Hansen. A couple of questions. The survey did in 19 was the organic, or the composting pickup in effect at that time? I don't know if it went in effect. And I- If you could just please lean into your mic, Councilor. Sorry. I just curious if it was in effect and how that, now that it is in effect, might have influenced the conversation. And just your guess about the compliance rate on that part of the business. We can look into the compliance rate of the business. As Lee was saying, when we did the survey in 2019, the prohibition of organics being in the trash had not come into effect yet. And one of the benefits of Consolidated Collection is that by pulling everybody together in the same area and getting those efficiencies, our projection is that we can offer all three streams for the same cost that trash and recycling are being collected for today. So same day a week, put everything on the curb. Simple, easy, convenient for the customer and being able to offer that organics across the city should reduce, increase diversion, reduce the amount of organics in the trash. You phrased it better than I do, because that's kind of where I was going, which is to say, my gut feeling is that compliance is still low. I being one of those people who was not opting out and I pay my $13 a month, and I wonder how many people who are not complying are putting that into their calculation because they're not doing it. So I'm just encouraging you to make sure people understand that you in fact are supposed to compose and if you choose to do it, you're either bringing it down to Pine Street or you're paying your $13 a month. And I just think a lot of people are not, that's not in their head. They just look at the trash bill. Right. So that's just an important thing. I had one other thing, but I guess I'll pass it, so thank you. Thank you, Councilor Carpenter, Councilor Stromberg. Thanks, President Tracy. Chief Inn and Lee, thank you so much. I know we've been through this before. So I don't wanna sound like a broken record, so I will ask legitimate questions rather than my own points about this. But I did notice that you had the same number of check marks next to the environmental category in there. And I just kind of wanted to know why because I feel like, I personally feel like the environmental benefits of municipal is a lot higher and I just kind of wanted to hear that other side. Because I don't feel like it's equal, but it was presented as equal. Great. There are a number of ways that the service could be operated both on the hybrid option and on the municipal option. So there has been some conversation about whether you could run split-pack trucks and have two different waste streams collected by the same truck. That is possible. One of the challenges with split-pack trucks and why you might just instantly think that that's the most efficient way is one, they have smaller cavities, so they're gonna fill up more quickly on the one that has the greater volume. And two, therefore there are gonna be greater runs to the transfer station. Because they don't have the same capacity. So either model, we could look at split-pack vehicles. Obviously if we were to do the hybrid model, you wouldn't have the municipal collection of recycling and the franchise trash be in the same vehicle because they'd be operated by different entities. But the organics could be mixed, could be collected with a split-pack truck with the garbage. So fundamentally the important piece that reduces the environmental effect is the fact that a district, say the New North End, would be all one hauler instead of four different haulers. So the net benefit to either model is that we have one hauler. That hauler could be a private franchisee or it could be the municipality. But we're picking up every household, not every fourth household, and having three other companies coming behind. So it is possible for us to get more into the weeds and understand precisely how we'd operate and how we'd require the private haulers to operate. But ultimately the private haulers can have some discretion in terms of do they wanna run a split-pack truck or two separate trucks. Fundamentally, a split-pack would have to run to the transfer station more often. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. Thanks, yeah, just a comment on that briefly. I mean, I do think that the municipal option, there's a lot more opportunity to get more environmental benefit just because we have more local control and we could transition more quickly to electric or could look at different, the split-pack truck or other. So I do think there's more opportunity with the municipal, but I understand where you all are coming from with that. My two main questions, they don't have to be answered now necessarily. One is around this debt ceiling issue and just getting a better understanding of what that means, what our options are and is that essentially a non-starter or is there a way to just, I think we could be more clear on legally and otherwise the implications of that with the municipal option. And then with the hybrid option, my question is gaining a better understanding of legally and functionally how we would prevent monopolization because I'm unclear on that. I think there's, it seems tricky when you're talking about these different districts and if Cassella, for example, comes in with the lowest bid and all four districts, how you would in a fair way to residents decide which district Cassella got versus, so I just think I wanna better understand how monopolization could legally and logistically and fairly be prevented. Thanks. Those are good questions. We're happy to get your thorough answers before the next meeting. Okay, any further comments or questions? I have Councillor Barlow to be followed by Councillor Freeman, Mason and Carpenter. Go ahead, Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Tracy. In the GBB survey that was done, 61% of respondents did not support consolidated collection, either because they opposed it or because they needed more information or didn't know. In your implementation plan, you talk about getting direction from council and then going to the public to do more outreach. Why, it seems backwards to me, why wouldn't we, if there's 61% of respondents that didn't express support for it, why not do that outreach first and get a better understanding of what the community wants before getting direction from council? So that's a question. I guess before I have your answer, I'll also say that I was the one member of two who did not support the motion. I still have a big concern about the impact of the small businesses that provide hauling services either through trash or organics. I don't think they've had a lot of voice in this process and there are businesses serving the city will be severely impacted by either of these, obviously more so by a municipal option that displaces everybody. But even under a franchise model, there are small startup outpost businesses will be put out of business potentially. So that remains a concern of mine. Thanks. Great. As to your question, thank you council Barlow about why not do outreach first. We've been doing outreach since 2019. We've gotten a lot of feedback that survey result you reference was from 2019. We are many years beyond that and have done a fair bit of outreach with Front Porch Forum, public meetings, articles in the North Avenue news to get input and the input is shared in your council packets. One of the advantages of having the council provide us direction is it gives us and the public clarity on how we can move ahead now. If the interest is to set up a municipal model, for example, that's gonna take many years to launch the enterprise fund to prepare for the votes. And if we don't start on that now but do another round of public outreach, then that three to five years is gonna be five to seven years. And so the thought was that we feel like there's enough information to make a directional decision. If the council decides otherwise, we will take your direction, obviously. But it's helpful for us to know when we talk to members of the public about the service levels to explain who would be picking up your trash, how it would work and not have that large question be undecided. That said, if the council requests additional outreach at this time, we will do additional outreach. Thank you. I have commissioner, counselor Freeman to be followed by counselors Mason and Carpenter. Thank you, president Tracy. Thank you both for the presentation and for all the work on this. I did just wanna voice my support for the municipal option. I think if you would be surprised that I would support the municipal option. I understand that a metric was used and it put the municipal option as slightly less preferred, but I think there are so many reasons that it would be a much better option. And I've enjoyed the debate so far. I'm sure we'll continue to discuss it. I do hope the council and the administration does move eventually to support the municipal option. And I'll be hanging in here for the rest of the discussion. Thank you. Thank you, counselor Freeman, counselor Mason. Thank you, president Tracy. How many haulers exist? Or how many do we know of? I'm just... We have five that service. Could you identify? We have five that service the city of Burlington. And who are the, I mean, I've seen Kasella and an occasional Myers truck. So Myers, Gothier, Kasella, Barnier, and Duffy's. Okay. And then the compost haulers. Right, which is a new, and I've seen many. Okay, that's helpful information. Something I didn't see that, and I've spoken with both of you about this, is I have, have you looked at the traffic impact of a new building on Flynn Avenue? We've been dancing this delicate dance in that area of the South End as we've permitted businesses to come in. But without the Parkway construction, we've sort of been on hold. I don't know. I didn't see on the list of pluses and minuses, but certainly we, Councilor Shannon and I, get concerns all the time about the Pine Street-Flynn Ave intersection. And I know that DPW was working on that, but I'm somewhat raising an eyebrow, wondering why we would move forward with the new facility, new drivers, heavy trucks moving through an intersection that our elementary school kids go to. So I don't know if maybe you could speak to what the traffic impact would be. If we were to move forward with the municipal model. Yes, happy to. We would have approximately 12 employees coming to work at that facility. We would have six to eight heavy commercial vehicles coming in and out at least once a day, if not multiple times a day at that facility. The city did look at kind of all potential sites that we could locate this. 339 Pine may be another facility. That facility though is still in limbo because also of the Champlain Parkway in that the state has paid for a functional replacement of DPW's facility there to be at 645 Pine Street. And so they are not gonna wanna see an encumbrance on that parcel until there's clarity and construction for the Champlain Parkway and Raleigh Art Enterprise project. So each parcel has its own challenges, which is just another risk as we try to permit a new facility if we were to go the municipal route. Thank you, Councilor Mason, Councilor Carpenter. Thank you and I do wanna thank you for all the work you've done. And just to clarify my earlier comment about asking about composting because to me, because I guess the compliance is low that speaks to the need for consolidated collection. At this point, I don't have, that was not an opinion on which model, just that we need it. Could you, and this is a little bit for the public, but explain the impact on the recycling side. Right now, if you opt out on the recycling, essentially you would shift the burden to those that pay for trash hauling, as I understand it, because it's embedded in the tipping fees. So could you explain that a little bit more? Councilor Carpenter was asking about how if you opt out of recycling, how your recycling fee is collected. As it stands now, or- As it stands now and how does that affect any of the conversation. So if, say it's a resident, one to four unit and they sell haul their recycling to say right now, South Bramlington, they do not get charged that solid waste generation tax through the haul. But if I have my trash picked up, do you have an option of just taking recycling? I mean, I'm not quite understanding how that economics. If I take my own trash, don't I get recycling for free basically? Yes. Right, so one of the questions is part of our public engagement would be around opting out of all, or opting out of one or two of the streams. And so that's part of the public engagement that needs to happen at that next phase. From an administrative standpoint, there's something nice about making it simple. That said, many people have unique situations. They may have a large yard and can compost in their yard and therefore really only want trash and recycling. And with composting added to the collection, essentially you're reducing your garbage anyway. So what might have been a weekly pickup could now be in every other week pickup for trash because you're eliminating that waste stream out of here. Councilor Jay. Thank you President Tracy and thank you again for being here. The public engagement piece I think is very important and it seems there has been some that has been done but I wanted to know the new public engagement you referred to, how it's gonna look like and also what's the timeline of that? Yes, Lee do you wanna go back to slides I think? Our thought was to take four to six months to engage the public. Here we go. We talked about completing in early 2022 this public engagement and our thought was it would be a mix of online engagement and in-person engagement where we could have a dialogue around what people's needs are. There are many unique situations. Do people need backdoor pickups? Are they space constrained? So fitting a large totter in a small apartment is not gonna work. So those are some of the things we hope to hear. The other question that I have is specific to if we go to the, with the private hallers, you know? How many years do we need to pilot the program with them? How long? Great, maybe Jennifer, Jennifer, yeah you wanna? Jennifer can you hear us? Great, so Jennifer the question from Councillor Jang was how long do you need to pilot? Can you pilot consolidated collection and what's the minimum term that you would need to do to kind of run a functioning program? No, thank you so much. And I have Sam Lybrandt on also and I'm gonna ask Sam for comment on that. Sam did you hear the question? Uh, I did hear it some, it would be useful to have everything you did in one place. Okay, Sam the question was around piloting consolidated collection and whether it could be piloted, what the minimum duration of a time period would be to successfully run a period of franchised collection? Is, you need to have a contract in effect or the potential for a contract of a minimum of five years, preferably seven to eight years, otherwise if you do something less than that contract term, the company's at bid on, or submit puzzles, provide those services. We'll have to spread the cost of a far smaller time period. This will increase the city of Burlington's time. You will spend some significant funds going through the process. May also, if you have a small window pilot program of two years or something, end up confusing your residents. I think it would be probably not the best way to proceed because of the waste of resources and time. The fact that most of your private companies may not view it as a detractive option to submit proposals for. So I would recommend minimum of five, probably with five to seven, you know, certainly seven years is the optimum time. That's my opinion though, having been in the business for a long time. Did I answer the question? Yes, I'm just hearing opinion and I don't know who is talking, what is, who is talking? Okay, this is Sam Lybrand. He is a consultant with GBB who did the franchise consolidated collection study for the city of Burlington and South Burlington. Yep, I don't know because he's speaking from his opinion and I was wondering, this is a question for one of the private haulers themselves. A direct question to them and maybe you can find out. Right, and Councillor Jang is asking what the perspective of the private haulers would be and understanding and having discussed this with Sam to paraphrase Sam, my understanding is that the private haulers would not be interested in bidding on something. Generally experience of private haulers around the country without having a term period that's significant enough to be worth their investment to set up a contract and to make a certain amount of money over that time. And what Sam was saying is that five years is a minimum that contractors kind of would see it worth their effort. His fear is if we try to do a pilot, no one may bid or we may get one bid enforced into or we just taking the one bid we got. Sam, is that consistent with your perspective? Yes, it was much better presented than I did. Yes, very good. And I would just add that we would stick this again to increase the cost. For a shorter term. Yes, I agree with Clayton. Okay, thank you. Yes, Councillor Jang. Thank you. And I think the other question that I have is specific to the municipal option. If the argument that I'm hearing, I don't think they are valid because six million, it will take us, let's just think about how we put six million dollars in a park. People use, you know, recycle. People do all of that. This is this culture. People buy things. People need to have garbage. They need to get recycled. We have to act 148. The need is there. To me, six million is too much from taxpayers. It's not a valid argument. What we need to do is to work on this public engagement plan. You know, have a total one in order for this, the community members to definitely have a say that is strong and valid. So just wanted to add that. Thank you, President Tracy. Thank you. I don't have any other Councillors in the queue. Anyone else? Councillor Stromberg. Thanks. Thanks, everyone. This is really great. I just wanted to kind of point out one, I'm obviously a supporter of consolidating. I think that's great for efficiency and kind of the direction we need to move into as a city. But I am really worried about the labor perspective. I think municipal really does generate the most jobs. And, you know, I think also that that's the most democratic process in terms of our waste. And it can make sure that it's compost, trash, and recycling. And I think with the hybrid model, it's only recycling. And that's like, I think we can be a little bit more bold than that. The hybrid model is a great backup. But I want to see us really push and try for the municipal model because it does give us more local control. And it does, it is the most democratic. And I feel like I hear a lot of like, we need more public input. But then we eventually don't need more public input because we can put this in front of voters. And we can kind of have that input. So I value that. And I think that that is something that I do want to see in front of voters with the bond. And I agree with Councillor Jang with $6 million being, it sounds like a lot. And I understand that it is a lot in many ways. But I think that this is so worth it with a city our size and what this can do in a long term, an even medium term, honestly. So thank you. Mayor? Thank you, President Tracy. And thank you, Lee and Chapin, for the hard work, really extensive hard work over a sustained period of time to bring forward this proposal tonight and these fleshed out different options for the city to consider. And I welcome the partnership of the council and bring this forward as well. And it's my hope that we can continue in that partnership. This is an exciting moment for making that we could bring about in a relatively short period of time very substantial change that, as councillors have suggested, have been supported for, there's been great interest in this for many years and now we're on the cusp where we could really make something quite transformative happen and we could achieve very significant environmental benefits, very significant cost saving benefits for our constituents and also improve workplace standards. And I think the way to achieve in the near future those benefits is from my perspective and I am trying to stay open. I appreciate the conversation tonight and we'll certainly be interested in continued engaged conversations. From where the administration stands right now, the route to achieve in the near term all those benefits is through the franchise model. The municipal model, I think, put will, if it is what the council wants to consider, will break down that collaboration that has marked this effort up until now and be done over the objection of the administration if that is where the council goes, which for these reasons, from my perspective and from the leadership team's perspective, the benefits that can be achieved basically very comparably through either model. I think there are some details to probe into if arguments come forward that suggest somehow the environmental benefits are much greater with the municipal model. That would be new information. It's very different from what the team believes at this point, which the environmental benefits can be are comparable. The negatives to the municipal model from my perspective are very substantial. We are talking about the city getting into essentially two new businesses. We do not currently, we're not in the business of handling waste. We are not in the business of handling composting. These are challenging competitive businesses that the city would be moving to enter. We have seen in our recent history the challenges of the city competing in a competitive marketplace. This is one that would have greater protections for the city perhaps than the telecommunications industry, but it would nonetheless be the city entering, putting capital, the taxpayers' capital at stake in a competitive marketplace. It would be the taxpayers' capital. Let's be clear about that. We're talking about general obligation authority being used to make the millions of dollars. We say $6 million now. It could certainly expand as we get farther into this. That's generally the way capital projects, the direction they go. The only option would be for general obligation funds to be used for that unless we were to go through the step of creating a legally separate, charter-changed, endorsed, separate entity, enterprise fund. That, to get there, we are talking about, as we have seen recently, perhaps years of effort in a contested legislative context of trying to get this charter changed through when there would certainly, for my sense, be people lobbying, objecting to that change in Montpelier. So, again, from my perspective, we can have essentially all of the social benefits that everyone envisions here, the environmental benefits, the labor benefits, the savings through this franchise model. I think it's, you can see in the numbers why a significant majority of the municipalities that have grappled with this question have come down in favor of the franchise model. And barring new information, I think that's where the administration is gonna be when this comes to a decision. So it's my hope that we can find ways of working together to ensure that the resolution that is passed by this council and then the ensuring contracts are as strong as possible on those environmental and labor fronts as opposed to a sustained dispute between the administration and the council as to whether this is a wise initiative to pursue. Thanks, President Tracy. Thank you, Mayor. Any further comments? Ready to vote? Okay, let's vote on the, not on this issue, we're not voting on consolidated collection, let's be clear, just on accepting the communication and placing it on file. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right, any opposed? That passes unanimously. Thank you very much for the presentation and answering all the questions. Very much appreciate it. Can you just clarify what the next steps will be? We are gonna answer the questions that we heard from you all tonight. We'll put those in written communication and we will work with the administration, Councilor President Tracy to figure out when our return is at a meeting in August, hopefully. Thank you. Thank you, Sam and Jennifer, bye-bye. That brings us to item 6.06, review of sex worker charter change section and ordinances, Councilor Freeman. Thank you. I move to wave the reading and adopt the resolution and I'll ask for the four black back after a second. Moved by Councilor Freeman, seconded by Councilor Hansen. Go ahead, Councilor Freeman. Thank you. I'm really excited to be bringing this forward tonight. It's something that I've been passionate about for quite some time. I think there was one point, I think initially after being elected, where I was sort of scanning through all the ordinances in charter and it flagged for me, but I think as many of us know who are in this role, we are often just glorified volunteers and there are only so many projects in a day. So it was something that was on the back of my mind to work on and to bring forward. I was extremely excited by the state legislature. There's various folks working on this on a state level. And then, basically last March, when the shooting in Atlanta happened and we brought forward a resolution that focused on the sort of racialized aspects of that, the racist aspects of that violence. What else flagged for me was just the way in which those victims were targeted because of their proximity to doing sex work and just the sort of broader, the broader issues around gender-based violence. And so I went back and I looked at the section, the ordinance, and I'll read it again. And I was like, oh yeah, it's extremely antiquated. And even, so it's more so used the term sex work but I'll use the word prostitution because that's what's in our city ordinance. So it's section 2133 labeled prostitution. And it shall be unlawful for any female to be a prostitute and apply the vocation of a prostitute in the city or subject her person to prostitution and no male shall associate and consult with such female for the purpose of prostitution. And then there's another section called keeping house of prostitution. It shall be unlawful for any person to keep a house of prostitution, permit prostitution in any house or building he may occupy, be an inmate of any house of ill fame or in any manner contribute to the support or maintenance of any house of ill fame. It shall also be unlawful for any person having control of any house or building to lease or rent the same to any prostitute to be kept as a house of ill fame. So there were, there's a lot of issues around that of course, the assumption of gender and that language is problematic. The use of the term prostitution or prostitute is also, those are issues. I think overall though, and the reason why this is proposed as a strike all is because I do really support the effort to decriminalize. It's a way to make people so much safer. Sex work is incredibly and can be incredibly dangerous. It's just, there's so much research, there's so much evidence. I think some of the folks who spoke about it also tonight around why this just allows people to be safe, I think at a bare minimum. For me, I want sex workers to be safe. I also think sex workers are amazing people and they deserve to be celebrated and the stigmatization around it just is something that we need to push through and move ahead with and de-stigmatizing it and really supporting folks who are doing work in our community. So I was excited that a lot of the counselors and the administration indicated support or at least interest in the topic. I didn't really know what to expect. I'd never really talked about it with anyone on the council so I really, really appreciate that. It's really, it's wonderful. I hope that if it's not a unanimous vote that it maybe will be near unanimous. I also just want to quickly thank Julie Masuga who spoke tonight who helped me put this together as well as the city attorney's office who supported putting the resolution together and a former senior city assistant attorney, Jean Bergman, who also often helps me with these types of things. I want to quickly put in two changes if that's okay which is a little clunky and then I'm sure if other folks want to speak on it. We can. So one was a request, so I'll just do it as one entire amendment. I had a request to extend the timeline a little bit so I'll include that and then also I got feedback that on line, line four that there were better terms to use. So I'll move to change on line four, the terms buyer and seller to client and worker and I'll move on line 44 to change the date from September 27th to October 25th of 2021. Okay, so we have a motion to amend. Is there a second to that? Seconded by Councilor Stromberg. Discussion on the amendment. Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of the Councilor Mason. That went faster than I expected. Can I ask a question of the city attorney relating to, because I tried to pull up the ordinances to figure this out. Based on my review, just to help if this does get referred to Ordinance Committee, these appear to be. Councilor Mason, if you could just hold that question for getting back to, we're just on the amendment right now. Oh, I'm sorry. Yeah, we're just on the amendment. So let's vote. Let's take care of the amendment. That's why I went so fast. Thank you. Yeah, so we'll get back to the. Forgive me, my apologies. Yeah, one second. So any further discussion on the amendment? Okay, let's go to a vote on that. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Now Councilor Mason. My apologies for my timing. In looking at the code of ordinances, these appear to be violator offenses that are on the books, there does not seem to be a penalty for them, at least in the penalty section or included in the ordinance. So am I misreading that or is that not correct? Well, I haven't been involved in this issue, but I would assume that they would be, if not otherwise listed, the, I believe it's section one, nine, maybe there would be the general violations is what I would assume, but I haven't, I have not been tasked with looking at that for these yet, but generally the title or the chapter 21 ordinances are do fall into there. So I- Okay, we can, we'll follow up. Yes, absolutely. Let me think. Thank you. Oh, can I just finish? Councilor Feedman. Thank you. So, and I just wanted to bring up really quickly, just because I know that sometimes these things can seem really abstract and how are they, like how is this impacting people on the local level? And I, are right in the city. And I did find an article that talked about someone who was doing sex work in Burlington who was harmed by a client and there was no, you know, and of course there's no pressure I think for folks to engage with law enforcement if they choose not to, but I think the fact that it's, that's criminalized makes people really afraid. And that's something that just, it terrifies me, it terrifies me that someone could be hurt badly by someone and not feel like they have even the ability to talk about it publicly. So, so yeah, that's all. And thanks everyone for, for, yeah, for your consideration. Any further Councilor Carpeter? Just, I am supportive of resolution, but in the resolve clause where it refers it to ordinance and strikes out prostitution, there are other terms there that I'm not familiar with like vagrants and disorderly people. As the ordinance committee looks at this, is it possible for them to look at that as well? I'm not really making an amendment, but it's just a lumped in there together. And I guess I would suggest they also look at that. Great, thank you, Councilor Stromark. Thanks, President Tracy. Thank you, Councilor Freeman for bringing this forward tonight. This may, you know, I'm kind of talking guess more to the broader public, but this might be a controversial topic. I've had conversations with people who definitely believe so. And I do just kind of want to urge us to like really pan out and really look at it as a whole and that this is not a controversial concept. We're talking about the safety of human beings who are at work, who are working. And decriminalizing sex work is something that seems honestly very obvious to me in this community. I feel like that's something that is, it should be built in and it should be like safe, but it's absolutely not. And I think that sex workers deserve the same legal protections as any other human beings. And I completely believe that no one should be living in fear of violence or arrest, especially doing work that's, this is not even criminal. And so innately, I should say. So, you know, there's one thing that the ACLU had kind of on their website about this that I just, I do want to reiterate because this is a point that Councilor Freeman had just made, but digs in a little bit deeper just for the public, just to know how meaningful this is. But it says that the criminalization of sex work feeds the mass incarceration system by putting more people in jail unnecessarily. Those incarcerated tend to be trans and or people of color, two groups that are already disproportionately incarcerated. One in six trans people have been incarcerated and one in two trans people of color. That's an incredible statistic and it's terrifying, honestly. And so, you know, that's my interjection. Back to the quote. Incarceration is violent and destructive for everyone and even more so for trans people. While incarcerated, trans people are often aggressively misgendered, denied healthcare, punished for expressing their gender identity and targeted for sexual violence. So, and arrests on charges of sex work can result in life changing consequences that last long past the end of a sentence. A criminal record can prevent you from accessing an accurate ID, jobs, housing, healthcare, all things that, you know, most people get to enjoy and a bunch of other services, obviously. And it can also lead to deportation for immigrants. And members of the trans community and sex workers already face discrimination in many of these systems. A criminal record for their marginalizes and stigmatizes being trans or engaging in sex work. This is absolutely a step in the right direction and I urge, you know, all my colleagues here tonight and our community to support this resolution. I think this is incredibly meaningful and I appreciate the work of Councilor Freeman and their outreach efforts on this. This is a sensitive topic and it's one that, it's hard to get a public poll on. So, I just, I really do appreciate that in the research of Julie who you had mentioned who spoke earlier. So thank you for doing this really important work and yeah, I'll be proudly supporting this resolution tonight. Thank you. Any further comments? Councilor Hudson, go ahead. Yeah, I would definitely agree with everything that Councilor Freeman and Stromberg have said and I think the Councilor Carpenter's points really highlight just how incredibly outdated this ordinance is and this language is and it's a really long overdue discussion and I'm really grateful that Councilor Freeman has taken the lead and ensure that we're tackling this issue especially given some of the really alarming reporting at least that I've seen from seven days over the last several years on sex trafficking in Burlington around the state and as well, I'm glad that, you know, there's been work underway at the state level as well. I'm glad that we're hopefully moving in concert with some of the efforts at the state level to yeah, try to address sex trafficking and sexual violence and harm related to sex work in Vermont. Thanks. Any mayor? Go ahead. Thank you, President Tracy. I wanted to voice appreciation to Councilor Freeman for her leadership on this issue and her outreach to the administration, the administration supports this modernization of the city charter and hope that the ordinance committee, if it's, you know, charged with this, will work to repeal or amend any language that is discriminatory towards women, to sex workers and to victims of sex crimes. I think this further, I think this change will bring the charter and our formal ordinances more in line with the actual work that the city has been doing for many years. In the nine years that I've been in this office, I have not seen, I'm not aware of the BPD attempting to use this language to pursue sex workers. I am aware of attempting to protect victims of sex trafficking and I think this strengthens in the charter that being the focus of law enforcement activity and is consistent with statewide efforts and really kind of I think is leading on statewide efforts to make similar changes to state statute. So I think this is an important and impactful modernization that I and the administration fully support. Thanks Mayor, any further comments? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor of the resolution, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to our next item, 6.07, divestment from weapons manufacturers. Councilor Stromberg. Thanks President Tracey. I'd like to waive the reading and adopt the resolution, the final revised resolution and I'd request the floor back after a second, please. We have a motion from Councilor Stromberg and a second from Councilor Hightower. Go ahead, Councilor Stromberg. Thanks so much. So this is the second divestment resolution that I've brought forth to this council for consideration. I don't want to oversimplify things but I'm a firm believer in investing what you want and divesting from what you don't want. Money as much of, capitalism kind of bothers me sometimes but I have to say money does have impact and I feel like we can be using every cent possible to invest in things that don't involve violence, symbolize threats or terror but rather peace and the direction that we really honestly just need to go in as a society but also just for the environment as well. So I feel like any organization that has investments in universities and nonprofits and companies and local governments, any organization that has investments all have enormous potential to influence large weapon producing companies and especially nuclear weapon producing companies. A lot of these institutions usually have investments and pension funds and things like that as we see in this city and I want to just kind of mention that Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2016 their city council voted to divest their one billion dollar pension fund from nuclear weapons and I think that that's a well-known city, municipality obviously and that's a direction that we're seeing more and more people go into. So I think that this seems again it's one of those things that seems obvious to me but that could just be me but I do want to just kind of lay out what this resolution does and I'm happy to answer questions about it but it does say that the city council formally declares its opposition to investing city funds and any private entities that are involved in the direct production or upgrading of weapons and weapons systems used by military forces whether conventional or nuclear and decides that it shall be city policy to divest from such entities. This resolution also shall be binding city policy and be in full force and effect after adoption by the city council and that the city council directs any and all persons acting on behalf of city investment activity with regard to funds other than those held by the Burlington employees retirement system which is the BERS board which is obviously what we kind of did through the divestment process for the climate divestment resolution and this would enforce the provisions of this resolution so that board would be in charge of that. It also requests that the board of finance report on the extent of the city's non-BERS investments in weapons manufacturers if any as soon as possible but in any event no later than the city's last January 2022 meeting so this revised version the one that I had originally sent in that's it said 2021 so this is one of the very minor changes that I made and made it correct and the city council this resolution says that the city council requests that the BERS board provide it with a current accounting of the investments portfolio that are invested in any weapons manufacturers including non-stock investments as soon as possible but in any event obviously no later than the meeting in January 2022 that seems far away but it's not and then finally it states that the city council requests that the BERS commit to full divestment from weapons manufacturers and outlines a timeline by which the divestment will be completed and hopefully by the council's last meeting obviously same date January of 2022 and report to the council on the feasibility of one making an annual analysis and review of weapons manufacturer investments in the investment portfolio two making an annual review of weapons manufacturer free investment product availability and three and this is very important in terms of just kind of us leading the way in the world accessing what other public entities are doing with regard to weapons manufacturer investments so that was a lot I'm sorry but it is dense and rightly so I do wanna thank the organizers behind this effort and the councilors who gave me really helpful feedback in this process of crafting this resolution which is actually you know it's crafted from a larger national resolution movement on this topic so this is not really unique it's just been slightly crafted to Burlington and I do wanna really thank Councillor Carpenter and Councillor Paul for your feedback I really try to incorporate as many changes and you know to strengthen this resolution as much as possible and I also know former city attorney Blackwood is not here and hopefully on vacation but she also deserves a thank you in this so I do hope this resolution passes this evening it's a topic that means a great deal to the future of our community you know everything that we stand for honestly the direction we wanna go in in terms of peace and the trajectory of our planet's environmental health so thank you very much. Thank you Councillor Stromberg are there Councillor Shannon. Thank you President Tracy and thank you Councillor Stromberg for bringing this forward like some other items tonight this feels a long past due for me and I'm actually kind of surprised that Burlington would be investing in weapons manufacturers manufacturing after I mean it is not consistent with our self-identity in any way I don't think so I wondered what are we invested in that we would be divesting in. That's a great question so I don't know off the top of my head like the breakdown I saw obviously like a lot of spreadsheets on this but I know that we have actually I could probably try and pull it up but I believe it was like 2.5 million dollars in a certain stock or company that was supportive of the manufacturing of weapons and nuclear weapons which doesn't sound like a lot but it is that's money that could be going elsewhere but the point of this resolution is to explore further if we are invested in more than that more than what I found basically and do a deeper dive and research into this so that's really what Atask is here in terms of like the report that we would be getting back in January of next year so yeah so I can't say in black and white exactly what we are invested in and that's literally one of the purposes of this resolution is to explore that and make sure that we're not and if we are then we have a timeline and a plan to divest. So when you say 2.5 million dollars in support of weapons manufacturing actually that does sound like a lot to me and but what's unclear is exactly what that means I'm not sure what in support of weapons manufacturing means so we'll get the report back and then we'll decide kind of where to draw that line at a later date is that correct? Yes, yes, thank you. Any further comments? Councillor Barlow. Thank you and thank you for bringing this resolution forward. I do have some questions though. If you could lean in your mic please. I'm sorry, I'm gonna bring it closer. I do have some questions though. You know, when I first saw this resolution being a new Councillor I'm probably not up to speed on many things that the city has here already in place but one of them is investment policies so I reached out to Director Goodwin and he gave me information on both the retirement system and in the city's investment policy and I had some questions around the type of investments that we would be divesting of. Would the, if we were invested in a mutual fund that was pegged to an index and it had a component stock in it, there was a hundred stocks in that index and one of them or a couple of them were weapons manufacturers, would we be divesting of that like industry standard industry standard indexed stock that is part of the prudent investment policies of many portfolios or would we be able to keep that investment because that might, it's almost like you're passively investing because you're investing in the constituent stocks in that index, you're not actively making a decision to invest in a weapons manufacturer. They just may happen to be part of an index and so that's something that I'm unclear about and I don't know that I could support divesting of a fund in like a standard and pours index because of general dynamics membership in that index. So I would like to hear a little bit more about that and I know in the retirement fund some of the funds that I saw invested in were index funds that would probably have weapons manufacturers as part of those indexes. So that's one thing I'd like to know and maybe I should just stop and see if I can get an answer to that and then I have a follow up question as well. Councillor Stronberg. Yeah, thanks. Thanks Councillor Barlow and those are very valid questions. I think, again, this is the report's purpose is to get that nuanced and so we understand exactly what the dynamics are like if it is one out of a hundred stocks. Ideally, personally, I feel like that is something that if we were able to divest from and maybe reinvest in something else entirely with a, I don't know if it's a hundred different stocks that have nothing to do with weapons then yeah, that might be the direction that we go in but I don't know all of this so that's why I want this report back because that's gonna really help inform our next steps as a council and as a city. So this is just a commitment to yes, eventually we'll divest. How we do so and with what timeline, that's what the report is for and that's what the BERS board would be tasked with and the Board of Finance to kind of measure that out so. Thank you and then as a follow up those investments that Director Goodwin provided where he gave me a list of investments it's part of a report on the Burlington Employee Retirement System but then he also provided a policy and investment policy for non-retirement assets and there's like 12 investment vehicles that can be used and to me it seemed like none of them would even be available to invest in weapons manufacturers and so I was wondering if we even have any investments in weapons manufacturers in non-BERS investments that the city has right now and that's why it would be really helpful to have like an education session, maybe another work session on city investments before we decided on something like this. Were you looking for a response? Only if one is offered but maybe more of a rhetorical. Okay, all right, understood, thank you. Councilor Mason, were you trying to get in? Sure, just for a point of clarification as a former member of BERS, this body does not get to dictate how BERS invests funds. They're fiduciaries of those dollars. We sort of went through this with climate, the first time this council can make a request but at the end of the day the determination as to what to invest in and whether to accept our request is BERS and BERS alone. That is not true, Councilor Barlow as you alluded to to other dollars but and I believe the Board of Finances tasked with that to my knowledge there is no other investments outside of BERS. So just for the public's benefit, this I appreciate the request but at the end of the day this tasks BERS with making that evaluation reporting back but it is BERS decision whether to act, move out of the index funds understanding and that's part of the conversation we've had before that they are also fiduciaries to the members and trying to ensure that we are able to pay them the pensions that we've promised them. So thank you. Thank you Councilor Mason, CEO Shatt. Just a clarifying point that aside from investment in BERS it seems unlikely to me and of course we'll do the research as required but that there are city investments in this kind of weapons because all of our city investments are in things like treasury bills and very safe investments. Our large investments are with BERS. So just a point of clarification there. We're happy to do the research but it seems very unlikely that there are additional city funds that would be exposed in this way. Thank you. Mayor, were you trying to get in? Okay, thank you. Councilor Henson. Thanks, yeah. I don't feel like we're making this aspect of the decision tonight what Councilor Balor raised but I would support a full divestment including within mutual funds or other index funds. So I just wanna go on record and say that but I don't feel like this resolution is predetermining that and it also is just a recommendation so thanks. Thank you. Any further comments? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? No. Please note that Councilor Balor is a no. All right, that the resolution carries brings us to item number 6.08 a resolution on Colchester Avenue. Councilor Henson. Yeah, I'll move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution. Okay, we have a motion by Councilor Henson seconded by Councilor Stromberg. Do you want the floor back, Councilor Henson? If DPW is gone, I can try. I wasn't expecting to present on it but. Yeah, I didn't expect it. I can do my best shots for the moment. Yeah. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay, well I can speak a little bit. Yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I've been involved in this issue for a while. This is around a redesign of Colchester Avenue, which we had gone through previously in 2019. We had made changes on Colchester Avenue. These are more substantial even than those changes and as you can see in the resolution would create new dedicated bicycle facilities and new pedestrian infrastructure and intersection changes as well that focus on safety and yeah, really would be pretty cutting edge in terms of the level of service for people trying to get around on bike and the level of safety and comfort. It went through a project advisory committee that I was on and I think Councilor Hightower, maybe it was. The alternate. The alternate on behalf of the Council and this version of it was approved through that and then it came over to the Transportation, Energy and Utilities Committee and we advanced it with just one small change, which is around essentially leaving the possibility of around about dependent on funding and subject to further conversation but the possibility of around about at the East Avenue intersection. So that's a summary of how we got here and hopefully if people do have questions, hopefully DPW will come back or I can try to field them. Okay, Councilor Carpenter. Chair Bush's comments about the parking removal and the discussion you've had on that. Councilor Hansen. Yeah, this redesign would include removal of on street parking. It still would retain some on street parking that would be specifically for short term parking and that compromise was really around delivery vehicles and campus kitchen. I was, you know, we could speak generally about businesses but really there's one key business in question which is campus kitchen. There's also cafes, flowers there but they haven't really expressed concerns but yeah, it would be a diminishment of the existing on street parking. Yeah, if you can answer that right away. I think that it's from East Ave down to pretty much where campus kitchen starts. There's like some on street parking the North side that would be removed. Currently it's already not allowed kind of as you round the corner down Colchester Ave. That's already been eliminated with that bike lane. Yeah, the South side. The parking's on the South side right now just for that stretch. We had previously removed parking on the other side as part of that previous change. So this would remove much of the parking that still exists. Just, yeah, and that one stretched the top of the hill to East Ave. Does that clarify for you? Okay, great. Any Councilor Shannon? Wouldn't India House still be affected by that as well or have they participated in discussions? Were they sold recently? It's a different business there now. Yeah, the parking, the on street parking is a ways away from that business though. They don't really consider themselves to have accessible on street customer parking. But the businesses were all reached out to as part of this and we didn't hear concern with this proposal. Councilor Mason? Thank you. And I didn't see a diagram so I can't, I'm trying to visualize this. How are we expanding a bike lane but leaving a parking spot in place? I mean, I sort of think of the Pine Street, if you're coming down Pine Street where it sort of goes on the sidewalk in front of Arts Riot, like is that, how is that constructed if we're leaving some parking but not all? Yeah, maybe now that we have Director Spencer back in field that, maybe a little bit better than I can but yeah, I'll let him go for it. Thank you. Is the question about the on street parking that would be preserved? Yeah, we were sort of, if I may jump in, we were talking about following up on Councilor Bush's comments about some concern. I think Councilor Hanson addressed most of them but indicated that there was going to be some temporary parking left to accommodate Campus Kitchen and my question was really just from a, we don't have a diagram and I wasn't involved so I'm trying to figure out if the purpose of removing the parking was to expand or increase the bike lane, are we narrowing it or what's happening where the parking is not being removed as you had, I guess, I don't know which direction, toward Winooski. Right, so these are conceptual designs, these are not engineered designs so as the engineered design is, as we advance this may change but fundamentally where you are accommodating on street parking, you're losing Greenbelt, you're transitioning from a parking stall to the sidewalk instead of having a tree zone and there is some savings for just the lane width and the road and not having inconsistent lane widths but having consistent lane width through the corridor so it is tight in that area, it is not a full kind of crate street to having the green space that we want but in that section where parking was expressed to be really important, we found a way, then the conceptual design to accommodate it. Thank you, I guess the only other, when you were out, Councilor Hanson did address that there had been outreach done to business, following up on former Council Bush's concerns that no one has talked to neighbors or businesses, Councilor Hanson alluded to that no one, none of the businesses has spoken up or they're content. Have you heard any concerns raised by residents? Councilor, former Councilor Bushers referred to multi-unit buildings that are relying on that, have we? Right, I'm not, unfortunately, I'm not the best person to answer it, Jason Shrest, who is the project manager at the RPC is on vacation this week so he's not here and he was the one who led a lot of that outreach. I have not personally received concerns from residents, but I was not the express point of contact. Fair, thank you. Okay, any Councilor Hanson? Yeah, I would just add that we did hear a lot of support for the project from members of the public in the committee. So, and if people want to look back and there was not only people who showed up to support but there was also a petition that had a couple hundred signatures supportive as well. Any further comments? Okay, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Brings us to our final item of the evening, which is a resolution regarding the DOG Task Force. Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracey. I move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back after a second. A motion from Councilor Shannon. Is there a second? Second. Is there a second? Okay, by Councilor Jang. Go ahead, Councilor Shannon. Thank you. I really want to give a lot of credit to Councilor Jang for bringing this issue forward. This came to the Council a couple months ago, was referred to the PAC for further work to determine if a DOG Task Force would be appropriate. In the meantime, Councilor Jang had really done a lot of legwork talking to all of the different parties and putting together kind of a package of people to bring to the table to engage in this conversation. There's, as many of you know, Burlington has a very high population of dogs on a per resident basis, I think. And there are sometimes conflicts even between dog owners. So there have been some complaints, particularly in the New North End. There has been past work done that really needs to be revived and revisited. So what we have here is a proposal really to bring stakeholders to the table, including the volunteer coordinator from Star Farm Dog Park, a representative from either a dog shelter, dog rescue group or other dog group, a dog trainer, veterinarian or animal health professional, Burlington Police Department Community Resource Office representative, someone from the Parks Department, two community members, one dog owner, one non-dog owner, and a representative from the Parks Commission, which is something that was added because the Parks Commission has been doing some work on at least a piece of this issue with regards to dog parks. So I appreciate everyone's support in putting this on the agenda tonight. We wanted to, hopefully with your support, start advertising these positions to the public. So that we can close the applications by the end of August and the public appointments would then be made by PAC at our September meeting and allow this process to continue to move forward to work out, hopefully, you know, find common ground with these various issues and figure out solutions to problems. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. Any comments on the resolution? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. That completes our deliberative agenda for this evening and we have done committee reports and all of those items. So we'll go into, we did have two executive sessions planned for this evening, one having to do with personnel matter and another one having to do with city place redstone mediation. Mayor Weinberger has requested that we go with the city place redstone mediation first and then the personnel matter second. So I will go for that, go in that order. I believe we can make both sets of motions now and then we'll have the different folks that we need for each executive session, either leave or come in and those are listed in each of the memos, I mean in each of the motions. So let's go, let's make the motion for the city place first. May I please have a motion? It's a two-part motion, so we need Mayor Weinberger. President Tracey, I'm just wondering if you would like, generally when we do these executive sessions in city place, we try to give as much information to the public ahead of time as possible. Sure. So I didn't know if you wanted me to do that before the motions. Briefly, I just wanted to note a couple of things. First of all, there's been some public discussion I think worth noting again because it pertains to part of what the executive session is going to be about and what the mediation that is going on is about is that we've made substantial progress in recent months assembling all of the real estate rights necessary to connect the new streets, the reconnected streets of St. Paul Street and Pine Street. The land for the bulk of the land needed for those streets is now owned by the city, it transferred to the city in May following the completion and sort of full implementation of the council approved settlement agreement with BTC mall associates. And so with that full implementation, the deeds that the land transferred to the city. Further at the June 28th meeting, this council approved the final, or the near final, the penultimate, the real estate right necessary for building the new Pine Street connection when the council approved an agreement, an option agreement essentially for the purchase of a small slice of the People's Bank lot or a lot that's now actually owned by the new builder there. So the former People's Bank lot. The remaining, the only missing property right is the property right that is currently controlled by 100 Bank Street LLC, a LLC that is controlled by the Redstone Company. And essentially this is the land that goes through that building that we have long been contemplating that we would secure in one form to build the new street and sidewalk through there. That is one of the topics that has been discussed in the mediation that I convened last week, and there will be a second session this week. This is a mediation that seeks to resolve all of the disputes or at least a sufficient number of the disputes between the three parties, such that the project can move forward. The three parties being the city, 100 Bank Street LLC and BTC mall associates. I reached out to both parties as it became clear that their differences were deepening and hardening and as the city to our surprise was drawn into illegal dispute as well several weeks ago. And both parties responded positively, favorably to that invitation. And we sat down with Kurt Detman, who was the mediator during the last mediation that we did with BTC mall associates that resulted in that settlement. He is again the mediator this time. And we met for an entire day last week, I believe it was Wednesday of last week. And that was sufficiently productive that we will be having another full day mediation session that I'll be attending as well as representatives of those other two parties and our legal teams as well as Jeff Glasberg who is here tonight. Tomorrow in the hope that we can bridge the remaining differences and announce soon some kind of settlement agreement that would allow the project to move forward and that would remove the city from any legal exposure in this matter. We don't think we are very legally exposed with this lawsuit but we are seeking dismissal of that suit. The reason that executive session is necessary is because this is a real estate negotiation. We are interested in being able to talk for really the first time with the council about several financial, a couple financial details that would be very helpful to have the council's feedback on before entering, returning to the negotiating table tomorrow. So that's the update, President Tracey. Okay, thank you. And for the other executive session, was there anything you're able to publicly share, Mayor? There at this point, there's nothing additional that we can share. Okay, not even the general topic. It's been announced as a personnel matter. It is a personnel matter that has been widely publicly discussed over the last week. Thank you. Okay, Councillor Paula, will you please make the motion? Motions. So I'm happy to. So this is the motion, sorry. This is the motion relating to the first executive session. So I would move that the council find the premature general public knowledge of information related to the recent confidential mediation session, the city's strategy and legal advice related to the pending litigation with BTC mall associates and 100 bank LLC would put the city at a substantial disadvantage. You have a motion. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Carpenter. Any discussion? Councillor Shannon. Really just a point of order to understand what we're doing. Are we going to go through this motion and then immediately go to the next executive session motion? We won't be going into executive session coming out and then voting again for the. Yeah, exactly. My plan is to have us go through these. I'm just doing them in the order that the executive sessions will take place per the mayor's request to have this, the city place one go first. Thank you. Do we have who will remain in the room? That's the next motion. So we need to discuss this. We need to vote on this first motion. Councillor Mason, do you have something? It's a point of information and then a note to the attorney's office. I'm not sure. Well, I should first make a disclosure. I will not be participating in this matter due to a professional conflict of interest. In light of that, am I not supposed to vote on going into executive session or do I just not go into executive session? It seems kind of odd for you to vote on it. Okay. So I will be recusing from myself on the soda not going into executive session on this matter because of a professional conflict of interest. Thank you. Thank you for that, Councillor Mason. Any further discussion on the first motion? Okay. So now let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. Now, based on that finding, Councillor Paul. Yes. Based on that finding, I would move that the council go into executive session to consider pending litigation and confidential attorney client communications pursuant to one VSA section 313A1E and F. Individuals to be invited into the executive session in addition to the council and mayor will include the mayor's office staff, city attorneys, CAO, Jeffrey Glasberg and Downs-Racklin and Martin attorneys, Jennifer McDonald and Tim Sampson. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Is there a second? Seconded by Councillor Stromberg. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. We'll now move to the second set of motions regarding the second executive session that we will go into immediately after the first executive session with the recognizing that there will be different people as recognized in the second motion. So, Councillor Paul, may I ask you to make the first motion, please? Sure, President Tracy. I would move that the council find that the premature general public knowledge of information related to a personnel matter would put the city at its substantial disadvantage. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Stromberg. Any further discussion? Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. I would also note that I will be not voting on this and not participating on this matter. Executive session also under our conflict of interest policy and just a point of information we are not, is there anything we'll be taking action after we come out, meaning should I leave or do I have to stick around? I'm seeing shaking head from the mayor, so. I will not participate in this vote and not be in executive session on this matter either. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, any further discussion? Councillor Hanson. Yeah, I'm just wondering if we can get clarification on the substantial disadvantage that we're talking about. It's legal in nature or? Attorney St. James or Mayor Wemberger? Sure. That's language from the statute regarding, before it's a finding you have to make before you get the confidential attorney client communication, so that's statutory. Sorry, could you repeat that? So that is statutory language, the substantial disadvantage that premature public knowledge would place the city in an adverse position and that's a finding in order to get to the subsection which is receiving confidential attorney client communications. So that's sort of in order to get to the attorney client communications, you need that first piece of that motion. Mayor, did you have something to offer? Yeah, just to make it more concrete here, we're gonna be talking about financial terms for the purchase of real estate rights and we would like to get- Mayor, this is on the second executive session. Oh, sorry, I apologize. Oh, sorry, am I getting- Yeah, go ahead, you can. No, all I was really trying to clarify is that this discussion, this executive session regarding the personnel matter, just that it's a legal, we're going into executive session for legal reasons, not for reasons of sort of public reaction to the situation or something like that. I just, that's what I'm hoping to clarify. Yes, that's accurate. All right, thank you. Okay, any further discussion on the first motion? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye, any opposed? That carries unanimously. Councilor Paul May, please have the second motion. Great, based on the finding, I would move that the council go into executive session to consider confidential attorney client communications pursuant to one VSA section 313A1F and relating to a personnel matter pursuant to one VSA section 313A4 individuals to be invited into this executive session will include, in addition to the council and mayor, will include the mayor's office staff, the acting city attorney, the CAO, and the human resources director for the city. Thank you, we have a motion as our second. Seconded by Councilor Hansen. Further discussion? Okay, seeing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That carries unanimously. So we will go into executive session. On these topics, as we said before, we're not expecting action to come out on the other side. So what I'll do right now is give CZTV a chance to just take their stuff down because we're again, not expecting further action at this meeting and then ask folks not listed in the motion to please clear the room.