 The first item on the agenda is the agenda of welcome emotion. If we're ready. Without the agenda. So. That's agenda second by present Tracy discussion. The discussion will go to vote. Although the fair and motion please say aye. Aye. Any opposed. Motion carries unanimously. We have an agenda. This brings us to. I don't remember to. Public forum. There anyone in the room. Speaking addressing the board by it. Okay. When you come up here. Stand. You can have a seat. We will run. Okay. Absolutely. So my name is Jeff. I'm going to permit for balance. My. Representative. I wanted to address. I'm 4.7 on the board of finance. This evening. And I'm 5.5 on the city's. Authorized. I. You may read in. My name is Kevin. I'm 4.7 on the board of finance. I'm 5.3 on the board of finance. Thanks. Dawson. And I particularly wanted to draw your attention to section 70 of the license. Whereby city. Which provides the city shall terminate all existing places. License and other instruments granted possessory interests for other occupancy or use. Rights and convert in the license process. The issue that we have with this is the definition of license premises. If you look in the license agreement, it means the area within the fence lines, base one or fence line, base two depicted on exhibit A, passed here too. Unfortunately, there's no exhibit A passed to the license so that the council has no guidance about what leases can be terminated and what area we're talking about here. So I think that this particular item is problematic for several reasons. As written, the license to get the city blank and authority or no authority potentially to terminate leases or other possessory interests in the airport. And if leases or other possessory interests are terminated, that could be in violation of those instruments, like my client's lease, where there's no such termination rate for the city. And then lastly, it's not in the public interest to terminate leases like my clients who have been paying rents, making plans for their future and otherwise complying with the terms of the lease. They're the only air taxi at the airport. They believe that provide a valuable service to the city and the state. Okay, thank you very much. Yes, I would. And it's all the same, but you have the item. My name is Jim Richards. I'm the president of the Arroyo Valley Road in South Burlington on airport premises. Potentially also affected by these rights being for this license to be granted to beta technologies. I'd like to say that the valley area of the airport, which has been serving GA for 50 years, is a very vibrant general aviation community. We serve concentrated right in that small area, either within or immediately proximate to beta plans. We serve the Vermont Flight Academy in partnership with Vermont Technical College. We serve Burlington Technical Center, the Burlington School District. We serve the Civil Air Patrol. We serve Mansfield Heliflite. After we just pressed, Aerodime Corporation comprising at least 50 pilots, 125 student pilots, 20 aviation maintenance students, 25 high-tech aviation jobs, 57 aircraft. This community is long-standing. My own occupancy is now 19 years. So we are very worried as of Friday morning, construction flags began going out completely surrounding these gas ways, electrical runs, et cetera, all being extensively flagged out. They completely surround us. And if we're to begin in those areas now so marked as though that they are so ago, they'll potentially interrupt our access to our facilities immediately. So again, the Civil Air did not seem to be available. So we were unable to fully study exactly what the short-term impacts would be. I'd also like to mention that an airport and its plans, our subject, as I'm sure you folks know, are subject to FBA review from time to time in the form of a five-year plan. And we had reviewed that and been along in that process on a regular basis. That plan had identified no such impacts in the valley for at least another five years. But then there were potential impacts to our community in the five to 10-year bracket and the 10-plus year bracket. So we were in the process of drafting and ordinary response comments and so forth to the FAA, which we're going to be submitting here later this week, when this urgency fell upon us, which was realizing coming to our attention that you would be considering very, very broad far-reaching the airport, actually the airport was requesting, granting of some fairly far reaching, sweeping rights to beta. So it would appear that both in terms of that long-term planning in the FAA, we'll hear that all of a sudden several potential areas have come into the time frame, I suppose, maybe the extension to accelerate it. So we wonder how did these fit to get the proper planning to stay at the long-term plan, which is what we are watching and using as our guidance. How do we understand that in the context of some actions that seem to be very crunching? Thank you very much. Thank you. Yes, Tom Durso, Executive Director of the Vermont Flight Academy. And we directly support the flight training efforts of Vermont Technical College. Many hundreds of students over the last several years. Termination of our lease would basically bring that operation to a complete and total halt at a time when the Technical College is under restructuring and planning that road through state diversity system. And it would literally have no place to go in a complete flight training. And I don't seriously believe that anybody was going to contest. So I think this whole thing is just fully crafted with sufficient details. That's a shame. Thank you. Follow-up. Might I address the concerns of another party? Who is the party key to be the first? You have to take the, if that's going to be, but if you have a learning to tech center, it could also be. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Is there anyone else who would like to address the board by this time? And seeing none, you know, other speakers, we will close the public forum. Senate agenda. It's being adopted in the Senate agenda or a promotion for this. Welcome. I'm going to take the action to the case. Excellent. Thank you. Second and point of order. I'm not sure if Karen is in the room, but I see that she's one of the attendees on Zoom. So I don't know if she needs to be promoted to panels. Thanks very much. Nope. I'm just leaving that down. Okay. Welcome, Councilor Powell. We are on item 3.01, which is the consent agenda. We have the motion. I believe Councilor Hightower, you seconded that, right? So any discussion on the consent agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to vote. All those in favor, motion to please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. This brings us to 4.01, which is approval to enter into the project. Hardgill Inc. for FY22 Road Salt Prepairment. WIM, we're going to need to stay here for a quick summary of this. I'll turn it over to the Director Lee Perry to do that. Okay. So annually we contract out for around 4,000 funds of road salt or maintenance of the streets and sidewalks, city laws, fire stations, and in years past we were able to piggyback on the state contract, but the last two years we've been going after it on our own. Pointing we're getting a better price, getting it individually better, hunking all the elements of the project. Well, that's what we are today. As we've met the approval to enter into a contract with Hardgill, for reasons that were called out by the House, that's provided. Very good. Are we ready for a motion on this? Don't move, Mr Mayor. Okay, thank you, Councillor Jang. Second back. Okay. Councillor Tracey, can you do it? So I'm going to present Tracey for the discussion on this project. Seeing none, we'll go over those. If you have a motion, please say it. Aye. Is there any opposed? I believe so. The motion carries unanimously and that brings us to 4.02. Which is an important portion of the contract, I think. Or thank you, Lee. We saw here before, for the groceries, the, this is coming. A 4.02, ready to enter a project. It's an Indian award of design. It's here in contracts and consultant services, Inc. Phase A passes for the EPA process selection for alternative. Who would like to take this up? I'm sorry, thank you. Okay, so I, you know, as a project, we'll be moving forward in advancing that. That's the space we're looking to get authorization for this contract in Santa. The idea of this phase, or this phase is the big question that we're getting a lot of the investigations completed in order to get all the documentation put together. So timeline is a very tight one in order to maintain the project schedule that we had were casted with the southern foundation plan. So today we're going to get the presentation to proceed with this contract. And where I am that is the budget. The other item on the project, so I'm looking to authorize a total budget. The stage work for 1.22. Can you remind us just how that budget works with respect to federal, state, local, finance? Yeah, the federal grid is the 90 ton state, federal, and 10 to 7. Okay, great. So about 150 seats drawn down would be local funds. Okay, very good. Floor is open. Are there any questions about this contract or a discussion or are you ready for a motion? I'm going to make the motion as indicated on board that. Okay, it's very good. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Seconded by Councillor Tracy. Any discussion? Okay, we're going to go on a second. I just want to say that I'm appreciative that we're at the stage. And as it is after really years of going to state and trying to advance this forward, this represents a substantial acceleration effort. A substantial employment for state and federal partners. This really has a, this practice is going to very possibly impact us up there. But I'd like to say that you can see this movement. Thanks for coming today. Thank you so much for your time. Now we're going to move on to our favourite motion. Please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any questions? Excellent. The motion carries unanimously. And we're going to do updates to the left camera on that. 4.03, work assignment agreement number seven with utility services company, Inc for design of the Redstone Bank structural afforded cases. WERM right back next year. So you folks had earlier a year ago approved the work assignment agreement number six to design a corral, an antenna corral, put on a wrist on tank so that we can clean up all the relocation of the self-payment letter up next year. They did a structural analysis of the corral and found that there were some members of the 1934 tank that are a little deficient for handling the wind load associated with the corral. So this work assignment agreement number seven is requesting additional funds in order to lead the design of the corral, including modifications to the existing tank. Very good. You've sorry about that. Any questions or are we ready for a motion? We may have lost. We can vote it again. Pull this off. There you go. All right. Councilor Powell, you're back. Councilor Powell, you're back on. I'm not sure when we last did. My apologies. I needed to go from a phone to a computer. I'm sorry. I can't be with you in person. No worries. We are on 4.03 and just got a short summary. We are waiting discussion or a motion on 4.00. Moved to take the recommended action. That's assisted on board. Thank you. Councilor Hightower, is there a second? Second. Do I council the call? All right. Discussion of this end. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion may say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I want to pose. Motion carries the other side. Thank you. Thank you both. That brings us 4.04. Reclassification of distribution, superintendent, reorganization of McNeill, public electric department item. I see the same PDB here. There's the mayor. Welcome. That's a short summary. Certainly. So this packet is for updating the job description for our distribution superintendent, which is the position that supervises the line workers. The position is now vacant. We are updating it in order to post it to develop. We also have organizational changes at McNeill, the reporting structure. We determined that we had really a significant reporting burden on the senior engineer position. We wanted that position to be able to focus on the engineering duties at the plant and the different generation facilities. So we've converted a shift supervisor to a supervisory position that would manage a number of the line reports for the senior engineer. So that that position can focus on engineering. We have a better reporting structure overall at McNeill as a result of that. We've worked with the IPW on this. They're supported as well. Councilor Paul. I'd make a motion to to take the action as recommended in Board Docks. Great. Do we have a second? Second. Okay. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Any discussion? Do if you vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there, is anyone opposed? No. That's unanimous. Councilor Hightower, just so you know, I didn't think you would say yes. Okay. Great. Great. So that is unanimous and we will go to 4.05. Thank you. Thank you. So before you get into the camera, we're expecting Nick Longo to be here as well. I just got a text from him. He's not in the room. It sounds like this is going to be a significant discussion. So I'm going to suggest it's for just a jacket. We can do some of the other items and thank you back to this item for Nick, correct? Is there, is there anyone else here from the airport? Okay. Sorry. We can go ahead with 4.05 and get to, all right, we have the 4.07. So 4.05. Are we ready for a motion on this or? I move to approve and recommend that the city council approve a property and secret agreement for suite 4 at 3060 Blocks and Road to South Drone to the Shempford Valley. On the terms provided and substantially important to be attached, please to authorize the mayor of Burlington, Texas, and police, subject to the final action of the second city tonight's office. All right. Good. Thank you President Tracey. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Councilor Powell. Discussion? All those favorite motions, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Imposed? If you can carry unanimously. That's approved. Thank you. Please a support point of 6. Requests to get a contract with VHB for services to develop a long-term sustainability sustainability implementation plan for the airport. This is, could you guys speak those sentences? We'd like to move forward with scope of services to review what we've identified in our program. Next point with respect to sustainability, I think it's forward from here looking forward with what we can do from all aspects of sustainability to include current offense, which we would consider for the airport. Great. So the building, the facility itself, as well as whether there's something that can be done to mitigate the carbon impacts of that. And is the goal as defined as a net zero building? Yes. So the floor is open for motion or comments. Councilor Powell. Thank you. I'd make a motion to approve and recommend that the city council authorize the acting director of aviation to approve a contract between the Burlington International Airport and Vanessa Hangen, and I'm sorry, I'm probably not doing this name justice in Brussels to develop a long-term sustainability implementation plan for the Burlington International Airport in an amount up to $178,200 subject to the final review and approval of the city attorney's office. Yes. Thank you, Councilor Powell. You'll note just that everyone calls on DHB for that reason. Is there a second? Second. Thank you, Councilor Jing. Discussion, questions? So can you just say a little bit more about the carbon onset piece of this, where you would be offset or reduce carbon? Well, first of all, we'd reduce. We would look at all aspects and we try to know with respect to sustainability. However, where we can influence carbon reduction in certain aspects, we would look to offset where we couldn't influence carbon up to reduce that to zero. We would have to do something in the short term. Okay. The long term, there's a lot of responsibility with the airline and stuff like that. I'm sure they're working on these types of things, whatever. But we would really, you know, go without it. Eventually, but I hope the airline couldn't have prevented that from reducing carbon. Okay. So this isn't just a planning effort, but we'll get some different options or differences. Right. We would influence the airlines as well with respect to reduction. But then we would also look at the ability of the airline where we don't have total control. President Jase is right. This is the securing and planning contract. Yeah. And they'll come back with a report. We'll come back with options. And then we'll come back with recommendations on how we proceed to have the greatest stable ability of that. Any, I think we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Okay. We still, Nick is not here yet, right? So there's no objection. I'm going to temporarily just walk in now. So I think Nick needs to be brought up to speed with Ann Richardson before we start the center. So we're going to come back to 4.07. And we'll let Nick go ahead and direct the other side of the page. And let's go to 4.08. First, authorization to extend let's grow kids contract. Cover early learning as to manage your family leave up to $20,000. So back in fiscal year, 2018, let's grow kids through the R&D process was chosen to assist us in our early learning initiative. As you know, just recently, we have a member of staff who has taken over as the early learning initiative manager. That individual is going on family leave and let's grow kids contract was slated to end at the end of December. And we're just asking she should be going on leave at the beginning of December. So we're just asking for a few weeks additional support for the early learning initiative program until that individual can come back. And the reason we're bringing it to quarter finances, the overall contract since fiscal year 2018 exceeds an amount that requires. This is only $20,400, which really was a part of our finance. Exactly. And if I may, when we were doing the budget process, we were aware that this family leave was coming. So I did budget 25,000. So this isn't changing our early learning initiative. I have a question, Mr. Mayor. Yeah. So the question is, I just want to understand the dynamic. Let's grow kid about this work because it seems the early learning initiative manager, I mean, was working hands on with families and also programs, but let's grow kids. Do you have exactly how would that work? Because it was service provided to families that are very direct. Exactly. So they have been currently working with the early learning initiative manager to reach out to the family. So the families have them as a dual contact. They were, we are phasing them out of work in the city now that the manager has taken over. So this is just an interim period while she's on leave. And the goal is that we will be running this program independently ourselves. We needed let's grow kids initially to help us structure and get this going. But now that we have this individual in place as a manager, as I said, let's grow kids because we put her in place as a manager, they were slated to sort of exit at the end of December. And I just need their added support to continue with these contracts. In addition, the state is changing some of the supports for these families, increasing them with their ARPA funds. And I need some help at the table to try and understand how we can get those funds out to the families in the previous manner. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Further questions or are you ready for a motion? So I make the motion as indicated on board. Thank you, Councillor Tehran. Second. Second, Vectors and Tracey. Thank you. Discussion? I'm going to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. We will go to 4.29. Keesley Park, one of our newest parks. Cindy goes to the great event. A couple weeks ago, I was on this Keesley Park and now there's so much work to be done. Yeah, let's give you a few minutes here if you would mind. So we're seeking up to $250,000 to construct your legacy funds for the improvements to Keesley Park. 311 worth that. The conservation legacy of contribution for and the first commission vote approved unanimously that month. Improvements include the restoration of redstone cots, paid accessible path down to the greenway, and the natural surface trail from our cap to the B cap. The $250,000 represents 27% of the project. And the conservation board asked that it's up to $250,000 and that it be the last money spent that we continue to try to see grants and private dollars. We have applied for the historic preservation grant, which is up to $20,000. At the opening that we have, which was just a glorious day, I think we could have asked for a nicer day. And a lot of folks came up to celebrate our newest park. Ben Doyle was president, who's the president of Reservation Trust in Vermont. And he really saw the vision of what we were trying to accomplish there. And so I'm just excited today to announce that we are recipient of the fall, a Bruin Preservation Trust grant. Well, it's a small amount of dollars. It's basically a ceramized piece who's been just a wonderful friend and mentor through this process says, we just received the Good House Dean in seal of approval from Preservation Trust of Vermont. I'm just going to read, it's just a short letter that they sent to us today. They said, Dear Cindy, on behalf of the Preservation Trust of Vermont, and its board of directors, I'm pleased to inform you that the trust will contribute $5,000 towards the preservation and revitalization of redstone cottage against the park. Funding for this project is made possible to call a Bruin Fund to preserve the essential character of Vermont. The fund exists to support the kind of projects called champion throughout its long career is the founding president of the Preservation Trust of Vermont. Paul would have loved this project. Redstone cottage is an excellent example of an early craftsman, Bob Lohan, in rare connects executed in stone. It retains key architectural features such as its stone construction an interior floor pan which features a stone fireplace built in beam ceilings vertical panel weight scooting and square posts. The cottage was listed on the state register of the store places on November 22, 1993. Beyond its architectural significance and the important role of the site in Burlington's history, the redstone cottage has the potential to become an inspiring community hub for Burlington's future. Once restored, the cottage will be a gathering place for residents nearby housing developments and neighborhoods. Provide a venue for cultural programming and serve as an accessible gateway to outdoor recreation and lake shampoo. Under Paul's leadership and continuing today, the Preservation Trust of Vermont works to build community through the preservation and revitalization of historic buildings. That's what this project will do. We are thrilled to support it. Thank you for your leadership and vision in this project and please continue to call on PTV who can give additional assistance. Great. Thank you, Cindy. And thanks, Officer Murray. And I think that is our call on what we would appreciate this project. It's going to be a great project. If you're probably going to love this project, the Council is going to love it. We're going to go on toward building the United Kingdom in terms of what we want to get out of this. It's going to be a very exciting addition to the arts resources. To just remind us, in addition to this 250-year $5,000 lead from Good News Back, we also take any philanthropic grant to 100,000 dedicated to this as well. Exactly. And so we have $250,000 being held by the Purse Foundation in Burlington that was a gift from the health family when they made the original gift of a million dollars towards the purchase of the land, the pay pathway down to the Greenway, and then money towards the Preservation Trust. Excellent. Are we... Questions for Cindy? We're ready for motion. I would like to make the motion as indicated on board, Dr. And thank you, Cindy. Thank you, Councilor Jayne. Here's our second by President Tracy. Discussion? We will go to others in favor of the motion. Please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Aye. Sorry. That was an aye, not a... Yeah. That's so good. You've voted unanimously. And the next one is... What can we expect from this? We'll take... Well, hopefully you can get that out to the public. Awesome. Great. Thank you very much. Thank you. So, okay. We have one last item and then we will go back to 4.07. And just 4.10 is a market factor for adjustments to the Planning Director compensation. We're appointing a Planning Director City Council on this important related item, Councilor Faulk. Thank you. Make a motion to take the action as recommended on board, Docs. Thank you, Councilor Faulk. Is there a second? Second. Second by President Tracy. Discussion? We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. All right. Any opposed? We'll take it unanimously. We'll take the support there. It's very important. And we will now return to item 4.07, licensed with a date. We could have the end of the month come on up for the date. I think it would be helpful to everyone to summarize what we're doing tonight, making a distinction between what is being done tonight versus future agreements we're helping to forward and the City Council as well as maybe address this question that says that's what they came up with for the forum. Anything else you see there? Have you heard of that concern as a press address? Sure. So I'll go first and I'll let, just because I can get some of those financial legal points and then I'll let Nick and Jeff fill in some of the other pieces. So what you have before you tonight, if I may pick up my mask to make sure everyone can hear me, what you have before you tonight is a license. There's a distinction between a lease and a license. License is less than a lease in a sense it's a non-possessory usually right. That's in fact what we have here is this is a short-term agreement between the city and beta technologies about doing some first work. Now I think it's fair to say that this is a privilege to further and ongoing conversations that this is not the only thing that will ever happen between city and beta but really what you have before you tonight is the first sort of step and it's an initial agreement that stands by and of and by itself which is that the city and beta worked out an agreement where beta is going to come and do some earth moving for already permitted project into the city of South Burlington and active 50 have approved. So the scope of this work is really only a public record. This is not to occupy buildings. This is not to remove existing tenants. This is to prepare ground and it's an agreement that beta has said well we see a future here and it's to our benefit and we're willing to do this work in the city of Burlington has said this is work that we have to have done and so if you're willing to do it we're willing to let you do it and the agreement really follows along those terms such that you know come the end of March that's over so that if there is no further agreement if the parties aren't able to sort of come to the table into a meeting of minds you know this agreement ends and it doesn't say create a long-term relationship. I think it's part of a long-term relationship but I don't want to be want to be clear about that but what's really before you tonight and the only thing though I think the airport in the city are asking is is this very limited lease the license isn't this very limited license approved and I should say my office asked for this that we brought before the city council because it does involve land and while you know there is an argument that could be made that it was not a full conveyance of land I think we took a fairly little approach for this purpose because we wanted to make sure that the city council had opportunity to do this and that it was brought forth and approved by you so that we didn't create future problems at this very first step so really this is just a very limited license and it probably would be a different lease if we were talking about our longer long-term relationship that it is of itself really a small and limited use not intended to displace existing tenants so attachment A does not appear to be an important asset something that we are able to represent yeah but as I said before it does cover the already permitted material I think there was some concern with sharing it in an open meeting only because that the actual document not been approved but you know it does cover only land and it's also the the footprint made shift is the building envelope or the sorry ground being prepared is shifting and I'll let Jeff maybe address some of those issues as well yeah Jeff do you mind if I just add a few things to that so that the land that we're talking about right now is not occupied when this is an old quarry that beta technologies is moving forward like Dan said with the first works package there are tenants that are impacted as part of this initial deal that are non-emmerged on the area as part of this license that's one of the reasons why we're not getting a background to present this in a public format because not only is there's ongoing negotiations with beta there's ongoing negotiations with those particular tenants as well out of the airfield I do want to make it very clear to that the general aviation community member of many of the members here tonight I do 100% support that community as well as beta during our negotiations has presented alternatives as we move forward none of these buildings right now as part of this license are impacted because of and I just want to make it very clear can you put up like none of the people we heard from are there tonight on the phone form are impacted by this license that's Chef, do you want to add? No, I didn't I have a few back here Thanks I did want to amplify that the affected parties are ground blessings and under this license there are two ground blessings who would have some relocation responsibility to accommodate this license but this ground work is a permitted scope of work it's a benefit to the airport even if there's never a transaction beta in terms of moving fill where it needs to be to provide a suitable hand site for the airport's water terminal development there are building policies some of whom spoke this evening would not be affected by this license as as Nick and Dan say could be affected by the future bigger transaction frankly that was a reason to break this into smaller steps to come to a grand lease transaction that would enable the development of beta's facility will take some time to put those terms together because this ground work was previously and is a benefit to the airport regardless it seemed logical to create a plan that would allow that work to move forward while the work to negotiate the longer-term transaction and to negotiate with existing tenants takes place that would come back to the board of finance and the city council after there's a meeting of the minds with all those parties and after there's FAA approval of that bigger transaction so there are many steps and many opportunities for input among interested parties before there is any long-term ground lease in effect we're talking about near-term transaction that runs through March to accomplish a small scope of work that had been previously permitted that's what this initial previously permitted to the parties you said that are impacted by that this permit are aware of that they're not tired to heard from tonight they were aware and not too awaited during that permit process and in terms of firing you know the airport is working with them from correct if we locate them correct and the city has certain rights under those leases that are different than the city's rights under the leases for those parties who spoke earlier so certainly the city can't by fiat terminate leases to which it does not have the ability to do so there are two parties occupying ground the city does have the ability to change in terms of those agreements because of the status all right thank you for trying to this um let's go to the for now there's some tracing so so there's an access issue that we're raised and so this is that one piece that I I wasn't sure from the exhalation it's in terms of access to the the the folks who spoke this evening are is that access going to be impacted by this license so this is this is all within a within the geographic area of the existing quarry area or old quarry area as well as adjacent to that area outside of the roadway systems or access to existing buildings what you care for yourself so this license agreement is not in that access to our general information facilities okay and so absent the the exhibit is is this sustaining it I mean how do they what resources that should be one of the questions we would folks have in terms of making sure that they're able to have diversity to use their their exfoliating tools they certainly have their their their they certainly have their their their lease records um and you know I think what we're representing tonight is that it's not this basic that too um um alter to those lease rights and just as just as if there wasn't a project here for one day the airport to sign the barricades from the road they would have the recourse being able to enforce their lease that that could be anything from you know certain letter have you knocked on next door um to legal election um and and potentially penalties if there was you know those type of things and that's a normal recourse that a private less or less seat would announce um and it's our representation tonight that that's not intended to occur here um but they would continue to have those rights to enforce their free agreement okay thank you very much thank you very much thank you very much there are there questions from board council ball um I I actually am referencing more the question that and I don't know if council Barlow was there but um I know that there had been an email that had been sent earlier and uh thought that you know that those were that was certainly a question that I had and wondered if we could get an answer to that that council Barlow is here council Barlow do you want to reiterate your question to serve one so Mr. Paul Stigerman sure I I had a question about the ability of the exhibits and that's been answered although it's still be good I mean people that showed up for public comment probably wouldn't have you know where what area of the airport was affected by um this proposal so it'd be in the community's interest and probably the city council's interest to have access to those that some form of making decisions about um these leases but the other thing was there was provision in um section seven under city obligations are being about vacancy about the city terminating existing leases license leases licenses and other instruments granted because that's where the inputs are of other occupancy or user rights encumbering the license premises and then we just heard that it doesn't involve any premises so could you speak to why this language isn't there there are no premises being um still a question here or or or we see there are licenses who need to be terminated up there there's the leases of sex so clarification I would offer is there are no um uh lessees who occupy buildings on the airfield whose interests would be affected there are two ground lessees whose interests would be affected by this license and they do not have long term lease rights does that make sense yes okay is there any uh Councillor Paul that that that's about you as well yes thanks very much there are no more questions perhaps we're ready for a motion any questions from further questions from the public um that is not typically the way we um handle these meetings however uh I think this I would um I would enter allow me I think it would be healthy if you can I mean you speak to believe there's been something with this understanding um that it's part of the do you believe that it's active that they're not by this uh by this license so I'm Jim Richards without uh the entire area is flagged right on the school that's the office like like like at over right on not a routine these are access to our facility right up to the door from the Institute of Health like uh a thousand construction flags and you know asset identification rights uh as of this morning the airport and and it appeared to be to be aware at at a place in this down to help us figure out what was going on normal need to know if you're going to post our order delays you get into our facilities so after that investigation of before uh uh again just an interest we we need to be going on on the you but but but but what's 100 percent here tonight is and it's my understanding that that might mean it's the ground license it doesn't directly lease spaces the city attorney's record that if somehow that is that is the intent of this transaction I don't I don't think anyone's represented that might be instruction that could be near you but there it's going to be no uh uh symbolic impact is there on on the you should your space um is just what's contemplated from this license if if that is wrong um um you have a right at the at the at the and exercise this doesn't have to take them away and then you um you believe that they're I'd like to if you think that is inaccurate in some way um and that kind of position and then we have lawyer as well yeah so I I you know I um pretty richard said pretty Park's did send me the exhibit a um during the meeting and I had a chance to do with my client but not not really a meaningful manner so we have to be able to term determine whether this license would impact our our property or my client's property and I guess we have a greater notice concern in general that the public order wasn't notified about what areas would be in fact what noted areas would not be in fact if you wonder how the city council to make a decision what sounds again something that has been extensive notice around affirmative it's property less is being I can pursuant to to affirmative there's been something wrong about that notice or right here about that you'll have legal rights for pursuant is that I don't know if the activity notices have those a little very similar stuff I agree that it's it's yeah well you of course if there's something that's wrong about this you and I we're gonna have something on that that there's also some on reference okay we're gonna we're gonna have a minute for VCs you know those it's not existing leases but I was a different knowledge that the airport is just you know we're gonna set this up maybe VCs we're gonna we're gonna cut this off now given more but then we generally dip from Tray Richardson anything further we're gonna speak to you no yeah are we ready are we ready for motion on the side of Council Paul well I hadn't didn't have my hand raised but I'm I'm happy to happy to make the motion as I recommended in board docs thank you Council Paul sorry the the your your box and lit up I thought you had more here that's what's that second I'm gonna say yeah yes thank you Council we're gonna vote all the the motion please say aye aye aye is there any opposed motion carried unanimously thank you and we are we're here in this board of five and and six yeah we get into the work session itself however we will need to do our agenda um pledge so let's get it to make a motion on the agenda Councillor Stromberg may please have a motion on the agenda thank you I move to amend adopt the agenda as follows add to the consent agenda item 5.19 communication wheel zekai regarding safety in Burlington would be the action to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file note revised the diversion of agenda item 6.05 resolution the fairness of the reappraisal process and the property tax system revised councillors McGee Hanson high tower Stromberg Tracy her councillor McGee okay we have a motion on the agenda is there a second seconded by councillor McGee is there any discussion of the councillor Barlow yes I'd like to take item 5.15 off our consent agenda and put it on our deliberative agenda as item 6.06 okay thank you and that is something that I don't believe would require a second because any councillor is able to request that in advance of the meeting so let's include that in the in the agenda just note that that item will be taken off of the agenda and we'll deal with that at the very end of the meeting is there any further discussion of the agenda this evening okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting our agenda please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously we now have our agenda which brings us to item number two the work session on short-term rentals so I will turn it over to our wonderful planning staff to have them give us an update on where things stand on the short-term rental regulation conversation welcome thank you councillor mason would you like to start this conversation off as the chair of the ordinance committee or would you like us to dive in more than happy to let you dive in okay okay all right so we're here tonight to provide you with an updated version of the short-term rental proposal as it was referred to you by your count by your ordinance committee we're gonna Scott and I will just briefly highlight a couple of the changes that came out of that committee process and then what we're looking for tonight from all of you are any other edits or suggestions that you have about this proposed policy before it comes before you to actually hold a public hearing and consider adoption so Scott and I in talking about how to share this these changes with you felt like it was helpful to just very briefly touch back to the direction that we've all been working under as we've been trying to get this policy right and to acknowledge that the goals that we have outlined for this policy are very different and throughout this process we have been trying to find the right balance between these goals limiting the number of housing units that are converted to short-term rental purposes ensuring that housing conversion contributes to the city's efforts to preserve and expand affordable housing to provide some flexibility and ability for property owners to great gain income and residents to gain income and to enable some short-term rentals to benefit our economy and we've heard a lot of different perspectives about these goals from some folks who feel one goal is a priority more so than another and ultimately is why this has been a really challenging policy for us to all get right. So the policy was sent to you by the joint committee the planning commission referred it to you after the planning commission and the ordinance committee work together on it in July and the council ordinance committee took up that version of the ordinance and considered a couple of additional questions that staff had recommended but also raised some of their questions some of their own questions about the policy so there are four main changes in the version of the policy that's on your agenda tonight based on when you received it in July the first is that the committee eliminated the provisions to allow for off-site hosting of short-term rentals in most cases and they added a few new exemptions that didn't exist before the first is to enable seasonal homes as they're defined by the city assessor as a situation when a host can have a short-term rental when they don't live on the property and also added an exemption or really an allowance for a host to have a short-term rental in a building where they're creating an affordable housing unit in that building or property the other change is that we have reduced the number of individual bedrooms that can be let as short-term rentals in a dwelling unit from five bedrooms to three bedrooms this was one of the staff recommendations that the committee considered we've also in an effort to further streamline our different definitions of lodging types and short-term rental types we have further eliminated bed and breakfast as a standalone use in the zoning ordinance which was also one of the recommendations from staff and in discussion with the committee about who is a short-term rental host we have provided some additional language that strengthens the relationship of a host to the short-term rental itself which is provided in the ordinance so again this ordinance continues to include two different pieces of the city's code of ordinances the first is the zoning ordinance which we often refer to as the CDO this includes a definition of a short-term rental enables them as a special residential use anywhere residential uses are allowed and then as I mentioned updates and clarifies different definitions of lodging the minimum housing code piece chapter 18 is where the bulk of the regulations that pertain to short-term rentals are located this section defines what a short-term rental is as a form of rental housing details the limits by building and when a host must live on the property includes minimum life safety standards for the short-term rentals and establishes rental requirements including rental registry requirements including the annual fee this table I think is the piece that has been the piece that most have been interested in so I mentioned at the beginning the committee the ordinance committee looked into the allowances for when a host could have a short-term rental when they don't live on the property and made some changes so this chart summarizes how the proposal was referred to you by the after the joint committee process on the middle column you can see situations where a short-term rentals permitted when the host lives on the property essentially one short-term rental is allowed in properties from one to four units and in buildings of five or more short-term rentals were only allowed when they were the host actual primary residence so somebody you know renting a condo or an apartment in a building could rent their own unit for that purpose situations where a host could have a short-term rental when they didn't live on the property were more limited they were permitted for buildings of three or four units when the host didn't live on the property and for buildings of one or two units they were permitted only if the host had owned the property for three or more years coming out of the council's ordinance committee this framework has been revised in the following ways most of the situations where a host can short-term rent when they live on the property remain unchanged the only change that I mentioned at the top was that we've reduced the number of individual bedrooms that could be let within a dwelling unit the column on the right is where the majority of the changes to this policy have come in the version of the ordinance that you have in front of you tonight allows for a host to short-term rent when they don't live on the property only if the property is a seasonal home or if another unit on the property or in the building is an affordable unit and just to clarify this doesn't mean that the unit has to meet all of the perpetual obligations to affordability that we do for inclusionary zoning units it simply means that the rent price needs to meet the definition of affordability that we outline in article nine and then finally I mentioned the definition of the host when we say that the short-term rental policy is based on when the host lives on the property we mean the host and not the property owner this is something that we've talked about a number of times over this process the definition of host does enable either a property owner or a tenant of a property to be the host of a short-term rental this can take a couple of different forms one being that a tenant of a property may have permission from the property owner to rent their own unit as a short-term rental and it was clear to us at the outset of this process that the counselors were interested in enabling that kind of situation there was another situation that we talked about at the ordinance committee level in which a property owner may be able to designate a tenant of their property as the host of their short-term rental as long as that host lives on the property there was some concern that the way that the definition of host was construed originally left some loopholes for this system to be abused so we've tightened up and provided some clarification about who a host can be in these situations and you also received a communication that's posted here tonight through some support from the short-term rental host community that just helped provide some further clarification that the staff supports so both of the language of both of those suggestions are here on the screen for you for your consideration and then we always wrap up these conversations by just mentioning you know what comes next after we are able to successfully adopt a policy for short-term rentals the first is that as we've mentioned before the vast majority of the short-term rentals in the city are currently operating without any zoning permits at least so the proposal to implement this new regulatory framework is to continue with a one-year grace period before active enforcement would begin in order to allow operators to make a plan for phasing out a short-term rental if they need to or for getting the appropriate permits if they're able to continue it's really important to note that folks that have been operating a short-term rental that have obtained the zoning permit for it in the past will be allowed to continue doing so under today's current standards as a non-conformity until they discontinue that so people who have been doing it legally today will be allowed to continue doing so and then we anticipate a couple of pieces of information from the city to help people understand and navigate the system of when short-term rentals are permitted and how we acknowledge that the current system today is not clear for many short-term rental hosts and how they should have been or could have been applying for permits so we want to make sure that that's much more clear and we do anticipate contracting with a company to help us with monitoring and enforcement of the policy going forward so I think with that is that it? that's it all right that's all so we we're looking forward to your feedback great thank you so much are there any questions or comments from councillors? go ahead Kim Sir Mason thank you President Tracey thank you Megan and Scott for the presentation can we just sort of talk for a second I think it's important for the council and the public to sort of understand a little bit about the debate relating to owner occupancy and how we got there I think it's important for the public to sort of understand that as a tool the conversation around owner occupancy has been one that's been used to try and limit the number of short-term rentals we really have not had a conversation either at the joint committee or the ordinance committee about either a host or owner rock from a public health and safety requirement a tool to try and get at precluding the proliferation of short-term rentals the committee both the joint committee and the ordinance committee considered I would say you know every other option that we could you know we we heard about other municipalities at foot and outright cap we heard about the challenges that that municipalities were facing with a cap there are enforcement and oversight challenges so we sort of landed on this I would say in artful but effective thus far tool when it came out of the joint committee it was a little bit different than what's in front of us now at that point based on a few of the charts before it really was more owner occupied not host the sort of this magical or this change in terms of host really showed up at our last ordinance committee meeting and I want to make sure everyone I didn't get it until we were talking about like what that meant this notion that it wasn't you know because we previously were talking about owner occupied and whether that owner had to be on site and now it was moving to a host who could be a tenant in a multi-unit building if that's what the you know the str was where this unlike the joint committee's recommendation which the Montrell compromise that sort of did have a bit of a carve out for single family which this will not because you can't have a host who's not living on site in a single family they can always rent their own but you know you can't be off-site still has to be a principal residence as I'm thinking about that I'm not sure it works if I looked at and I just saw the most recent numbers the number of STRs has dropped I think we're now around 246 and I also saw the statistic which I'll have to ask you may or may not know still accurate that you know 80 percent of the STRs in the city are single family residences so I don't know if we know how many of those my guess is we don't you know our primary residence someone you know doing it on a short-term basis as opposed to someone it's not their principal residence my concern is this compromise you know is going to wipe out pretty much a material portion of the short-term rentals and I respect it was helpful to look at those four goals they are at such odds as you try and balance them and we've heard that as a committee you know there are a number of people that have presented very powerful stories about you know what they're doing in terms of moving between short-term long-term how they're using the income maybe from their short-term in order to keep rents low and I don't know what the you know I don't think any of us knows what the right mixture is I am somewhat comforted that this is only potentially for a year or a little bit more than a year and we're not you know stuck if with this we're just strictly in ordinance we'd have grandfathering and it would be a host of issues so a little bit that's just my rambling but I would just wanted to set the stage also for if we have any more numbers or have any understanding you know of those 246 what that makes up and my assumption is no but if you know more please let me know yeah what what we know was summarized in the memo for you so counselor Mason did refer to the fact that what we know of right now is from a market data provider is that there are 246 unique short-term rentals in the city which is down from about 360 this time last year 80% of them are entire dwelling units that are being rented which just means it's a it differentiates from people who might just be renting bedrooms within their home so 80% of them are the whole dwelling unit and about half of them are in what the the market data provider terms as single family residences we don't know and Scott and I were just talking about this before that this has always been the key data question as part of these debates is what is the overlap between the whole units and the single family properties we don't know that number we don't also know how many of those are owner occupied or have the host living on the property because we don't have registration for the vast majority of these to have address data thank you my other question I don't know if it's a you or a bill question is how how are you intending to monitor the host component you know we had a conversation and I appreciate the tightening up of how potentially big a hole this was so I don't know how we're envisioning monitoring you know if a designated host on a form is actually the person who is responsible for I forget you know compliance and other made matters relating to the short-term rental well this pertains to contracting with Granicus I think they're a national I think international company this is their bread and butter the municipalities monitor enforcement minister short-term regular short-term rental standards so we don't know how many of these are owner occupied right now because we haven't contracted with them and as Megan said we don't have a registration set up for them when we do have registration up and running and contract with Granicus we'll have an idea of who's renting these who owns them and can verify primary residency based on that so we will have we will be able to fill that gap in information that we presently have okay can I have one more quick even though I appreciate there's a one-year delay when will registration you know will we will we be requiring registration even though we won't necessarily be requiring compliance to start to pull in that data to see exactly what is going on in the market I see folks having a full year to come in and register and the data we would get will increase incrementally with that and then the last someone asked me a question today which I really thought of or expressed a concern relating to with the one-year delay that's not necessarily I mean that's across the board so it's not necessarily allowing those who have a short-term rental the one year to move you know if I bought a new building I would still have I mean for all intents and purposes it's just the regs don't go into effect for a year so there's nothing that sort of locks what's in place as the date of enactment with the one-year grace you could and they were expressing a concern that we might be creating a loophole where people are rushing to you know STR and capitalize as much revenue as possible before we're shifting to a different income stream that's reduced and I I have to confess that's something I had not thought of I don't know if that has been related to you or you've had thoughts on that I've not heard that one you know look a lot of things are conceivable the year-long grace period has been talked about for a while now and what we're talking about here is complex and it affects a lot of people I think it's prudent and I think the I think it's the prudent way to go to let folks have a year to adapt and either register or or make other changes if they can do it under the proposal like it's adopted and just I wanted to make sure that we're we're very clear about what we mean by the one-year grace period it's not that the ordinances won't be in effect and applicable it's that the city wouldn't this what we have talked about is not taking active enforcement against people who are not yet complying that it would be more of a friendly relationship to those hosts to get them to actually come in and register and comply versus issuing violations yeah and that's that's a good point nine once once they're adopted they're effective thank you thank you councillor mason councillor carpenter thanks I hadn't clued in on this one year and the fact that they would not register as opposed to enforcing enforcing the change and I guess I would strongly encourage we consider registration every other rental in the city has to register and I think it's April one so I would ask maybe consideration that anybody who's renting register April one whether you want to do the compliance for however many more months that is I think that's respectful because people sometimes need me time to make changes but I think we should get the rentals all on the same date and get them get them registered okay councillor shannon thank you I have I have a number of questions I wondered if I'm unclear as to how enforcement happens both both how you would identify somebody who is not conforming to the regulations and what the penalty is when they're caught penalty I think I will defer to director ward as this will be primarily under chapter 18 how will we tell you know again we will be able to link our property information address property type owner with who's doing short term rentals by working with granicus so we can tell who's doing it when I'm sorry I'm having trouble hearing you I'll get a close and personal like this thank you so in contracting with granicus right they will have the city's information right now that they don't have in terms of address property type who the owner is and be able to tell who's doing short term rental what type how often and we can put the pieces together to see is this owner occupied if it's not owner or occupied is this the tenant post and is so is this the tenant's primary residence so we we're not doing it yet right now and that's the obvious statement of the evening but I think we'll have the pieces in place to be able to do it I think the only nuance with what we're doing that granicus hasn't commonly done is opening the door to tenant hosting but again I think we can figure that out simply by verifying the tenant host primary residency and that's that's a million dollar question in these cases okay thank you do we think that the short term rentals we have now are mostly registered as rentals of some sort even though they're not registered as short term rentals but they've been inspected and complying with other rental registration requirements the sense I get is that no it's not the case but again nobody's registered these so it's sort of I'll say speculative but I get the sense that most of these are not registered as long-term rentals there may be some out there but we just don't know we don't have a good sense of numbers for how many okay and how many when you talk about you didn't use a term but it sounds like you're talking about grandfathering how many do you think that that would be well for pre-existing non-conformities to be legit right they need to be okay at the time that the standards are adopted in this case we've got what do we have to know Megan like three or four dozen that are actually permitted out of the few hundred yeah I think the last time we looked at the list it was about three dozen so those permitted short-term rentals will be fine regardless of what happens with this proposal every operating without permit or permission is not a pre-existing non-conformity because it's not legit right now are you saying that that's the way it's written or that's what is required if they're operating legally today then it's required that they be allowed to continue the use that that's a function of law it doesn't need to be in the proposal if you're illegal today and the standards change you can continue to do what you're legally allowed to do indefinitely how did they become legal if we never I mean we don't allow they didn't they didn't we don't allow for bed and breakfast at all of these places how did they become legal most of these actually are permitted as a bed and breakfast and I understand it's a square peg and a round hole but most of these are permitted under the B&B standards and most of those have boiled down to owner occupancy we do have a handful that were permitted under hotel motel it sounds funny but there are some areas in the city where these fit into the hotel motel box okay thank you is it do you just want us asking questions or commenting on your call okay so I I appreciate the allowance for seasonal properties I think that that makes a lot of sense those are not properties that lend themselves to being housing units they're often at least if we're talking about seasonal properties built as seasonal properties so I do support that but as a general policy I think we have a housing crisis we don't have a lodging crisis I support the short-term rentals in support of lowering housing costs and to me that means allowing them within a person's own primary dwelling unit but really not allowing short-term rentals as a whole rental unit that means taking a rental unit off of the market and making it unavailable to people who need housing in the city I don't see how um under under these regulations I think that we will continue to see units convert into short-term rental units of the ones that I'm aware of they would they would all be able to operate under this I can think of one that has off-site management but that one also has a um long-term rental unit that could become the host for that building and I suspect that's what would happen is that they would those that have at least one long-term rental unit would would make the long-term tenant the host fairly easily so I I would like to take this further and I appreciate that for some people who are operating businesses in this way it's going to negatively impact those businesses but we have to look at the whole community interest and that's hard when you have individuals before you who will be negatively impacted by that decision but our community is in a housing crisis and I think that that does need to take precedent over the individual's desire to keep running a particular business so I guess I'll I will leave it at that oh and there was one thing Chip I'm sorry Councilor Mason you had said that I didn't understand or maybe misheard you said if this were an ordinance you indicated it was changeable and I didn't understand that Councilor Mason did you want to answer sure I'm also happy to defer to the experts but that's the benefit of this being in chapter 18 minimum housing as opposed to in our ordinance if it were just in the ordinance once we locked it in as Scott was just referring to anyone that got a permit could never you could never change it to be more restrictive without allowing them to grandfather in because it's minimum housing subject to changes in the rules under chapter 18 on an annual basis so these are both the cdo and chapter 18 are parts of the city's code of ordinance there are statutory rules that apply to zoning ordinances specifically that is what Councilor Mason's referring to that don't apply to your own rules about amending chapter 18 so changes that are made in chapter 18 can be applicable at the time of someone reapplying for a rental permit unlike a zoning permit would okay Councilor Mason just one I'm sorry Councilor Shannon are you all set? I am okay go ahead Councilor Mason just the point of clarification on the b&b because I don't want to lose sight of that what's the requirement in terms of owner occupancy on a b&b so everyone doesn't think we've created this or we have this existing loophole where 33,000 people are now running an air b&b they are required to be owner occupied and they're limited in terms of the number of bedrooms that can be included within them based on the zoning district in the city thank you 100% of the bed and breakfast short-term rentals have been approved because they're owner occupied also Councilor Mason thank you I don't have any other councillors in the queue Councilor Barlow and if there are we have a number of councillors participating remotely so if any of you are interested you can either text me or use the raise hand function on there and I will recognize each of you as I see you Councilor Barlow thank you President Tracy I had a question about the definition of host you went over some a definition earlier on the slide deck and you said that and I don't know if you could pull it up again for everybody I can come back up sorry I did that so that you could see the councillors raising their hands but I had a question about whether or not it was you anticipated to be a requirement that the host be compensated or is that just something that could happen or is that part of the definition that is intentional in response to comments by the ordinance committee the intent here is for the host to have some skin in the game the prior definition was pretty broadly construed and there was concern that any offsite owner could say hey this tenant in this multifamily building is the host will be done with it so we tried to strengthen the definition tighten it up and really as I say ensure that they actually have some skin in the game they're actually doing management they're actually benefiting economically from doing this so the the requirements are not only about compensation but responsibility for the applicable rules and also some kind of access by the guests to them for support so in the term compensation could it be like I know that there's rental arrangements sometimes where a tenant might mow the lawn in exchange for a reduction in rent could that would that be considered compensation if you reduce the rent I mean or does it have to be like a transaction I'm just trying to understand more about what that means or what the intention is I think the intent is that they receive payment in part of the short-term rental operation okay thank you thank you Councillor Barlow Councillor Highcower yeah thank you for this I just and I apology I apologize if you all address this in your presentation I just missed it but I just know that one of the last items that we discussed very late in the game was adding the affordable housing thing did you all address that in your presentation and I guess now that you all have had maybe at least a week or two to think about it how you're thinking about that piece with the inclusionary zoning so yes we did share that the proposal that's posted on Board Docks tonight includes an exemption for off-site hosting if the property owner creates another affordable unit within the building one of the key questions about this proposal that was introduced at the last ordinance committee meeting was just kind of how the mechanics of this would work the way that the language is proposed is that the unit itself does not need to be perpetually affordable for 99 years which is what we do for IZ units inclusionary zoning units but that it just meet the that the rent meets the definition of an affordable unit that's outlined in our inclusionary ordinance and that that is for the duration of the short-term rental period so as long as somebody is short-term renting that the other unit would need to be affordable and follow up question to that the short-term rental period in terms of how long somebody is in the short-term rental or if it is registered at all as a short-term rental for the duration that is registered as a short-term rental so it would need to be at least for a year right because they're yearly registrations and then and this is more a comment I think but I think Councillor Mason and I were supportive of having more tenant possibility of hosting in a unit and I feel like I'm hearing Councillor Shannon say that her preference would be that you know we close the door on that even more I think that given that this is a possibility so that there is another avenue for non-owner occupied rentals I would be okay with if we wanted to make amendments as being one of the you know people who was supportive of not having that door closed I think now that we have a mechanism for who don't live in the unit having some way to do it that is you know around affordability for other other housing I think that that is a sufficient avenue and I'd be supportive of changes to restrict some of the tenant off-site hosting which is what this slide it's about that is all Thanks Councillor Hightower Councillor Hanson Thanks and thanks for the presentation and just all the hard work over two plus years that we've been working on this maybe not quite two years but close about yeah so I definitely agree with what Councillor Hightower said I think the affordability mechanism is the right mechanism to use in terms of allowing off-site hosting rather than the tenant managing a different unit in the landlord's building in the property owner's building um and my question is around that affordability so just to be clear I think we talked about this in committee a little bit but it it has to be an affordable unit above and beyond what is already required if if they already are required to have an inclusionary unit they would have to have an additional right that's how the language is ready okay and that's baked in do we have any flexibility within this context around what constitutes affordable or are we pretty stuck to the the formula that's that's used for inclusionary well I mean we sure yes is a short answer there's flexibility in what we call affordable here I would advise against that because we've defined pretty clearly and extensively under Article 9 of the CDO of what affordability is for a given unit type and for the sake of consistency and clarity it makes a lot of sense to us to simply point to that but as Megan said not tag on a 99-year affordability requirement okay yeah I agree with the you know the 99-year aspect but I I guess I'm wondering can you explain a little more the concern because I feel like there would be really great value in having it be more aligned with what is actually you know affordable for working people so yeah what is the concern legal or I think as Scott mentioned the concern is just the consistency that if we have different different parts of the city's ordinance is establishing affordability thresholds for different types of situations that it can just lead to inconsistency in terms of the application and confusion for applicants in terms of what standard of affordability they have to meet okay understood and then I guess my final question is just we've talked about it in committee but just clarifying for everyone the process going forward my understanding is that it's with the full council now and we'll take it up at a upcoming meeting as a full council and can make final amendments and and adopt but if you could just reiterate maybe the process from here so I think the next step is that we would bring this to a deliberative agenda for the full council where we would be seeking your input either on additional changes to the language of the ordinance and or an action to actually warn it for public hearing ultimately that would be the next step in moving this on to some level of passage thanks so much thank you I don't have any other councillors in the queue councillor I have one I can go ahead because you you haven't yet and then I'll go to councillor Shannon and Carpenter go ahead councillor Jane thank you President Tracy thank you Megan and Tim for this and I just haven't heard a little bit about parking requirements for these owner-occupied units or short-term rentals are there any parking requirement for the owner or the occupied that he or she need to provide to the tenants no is the short answer there's no parking requirement associated with a short-term rental there may be a parking requirement associated with dwelling units right depending on the district location that they're in but not now specifically for the short-term rental right because because short-term rentals are located in other forms of housing whatever parking requirement applies to that housing unit is what would apply to the short-term rental so there's not new and additional parking requirements on top of like if you had a a home and you were using it as a short-term rental you would have been required to create two parking spaces for your home that's the same as if it's your your own home or you're using it as a short-term rental we don't require more parking to be created just because it's a short-term rental so therefore if I'm applying I have to meet all the requirements that my own house should have before I I think I can accept it for the zoning permit part of it yes perfect and now I think Constellation did ask this question about you know the enforcement piece I don't know if we heard a response or should we connect with somebody else in this from in the city what was the question I'm sorry which part of Councillor Shannon's like why should we adopt this ordinance without enforcement measures built into it the enforcement if we allow this to become an ordinance there should be at least some and for enforcement pieces baked into it when people do not respect you know the agreement they have to rent so there will be enforcement I think there may be some confusion about the one year period prior to enforcement but the enforcement on the administrative mechanisms would be similar to those on other chapter 18 violations ticketing is the most common enforcement method as for conditions at the property they would be subject to the same conditions or enforcement actions as rental units and those can be reinspection fees additional tickets and enforcement through a court process for violations so it has all the same provisions for enforcement that a anything else in chapter 18 would have but I think from the administrative aspects the things that you've been talking about so far those are ticketable offenses the enforcement aspects of whether a house housing unit is safe those are the types of things that we could bring to a court for enforcement if that becomes necessary yeah thank you and it seems also my last question would be around after the adoption of this ordinance do you anticipate maybe hiring a position to manage this short-term rental you know this ordinance itself re-anticipate that I'm sorry Megan was Claire so the ongoing administration of this registration enforcement general oversight is something that will partner with Granicus in doing and that is it is better than revenue neutral their their fees are based on the number of short-term rentals we have the short answer is we would be revenue positive with their cost and our rental registration fees thank you guys thank you so much thank you councillor Jing I have councillors Shannon and Carpenter in the queue we are at seven so just please be mindful and kind of keep it brief yeah councillor Shannon thank you I wanted to clarify after councillor Hightower and councillor Hanson's comments that I don't want renter hosts treated differently than owner hosts but I don't think that I don't agree with the idea that a that an owner should benefit from having a tenant host the Airbnb and it may be that I am misunderstanding this it is really complex so I appreciate the opportunity for this work session but I my objection is to I think that both owner occupied or renter occupied should have the same privileges of renting within their unit but it's renting whole units that are not that are not occupied as housing units that I object to and if it creates an affordable unit if we're talking about creating an affordable unit in replacement of the unit that's being short-term rented I'd consider that but the idea that there's some other unit in there that's going to be declared affordable I don't think that the same standards should be applying to a lot of our regular housing stock that applies to new construction to have that kind of definition of affordability it's a very different thing when you're talking about I don't know what the affordable rates are but you know $1,600 a month for a two-bedroom in new construction is very different than your average two-bedroom in Burlington so I just would want ultimately I don't want us losing housing units to short-term rentals that that's for me the number one goal thank you thank you council Shannon I have councilor carpenter to be followed by councilor hightower by council carpenter two questions on the on the registration if a unit is both will they register twice if a unit is both what I mean so they run it six months a year long-term and three months short-term I think it would be registered as both in that case okay for the year the other just comment about the affordability concept which I like and I understand the consistency with the IZ zoning regulation but we might want to look to see if there's any other standard in law that we use I mean I don't think we want to set our own for this ordinance but you know we might talk with CEDO if there's other standards the current standard is 65 percent of median and it's $1,400 for a two-bedroom unit so I just toss that out for consideration thank you councilor carpenter councilor hightower yeah I just wanted to explain some of the affordability piece because I think there's both the affordability of if you're living of your own unit so if you are renting an apartment or if you have a single family home or whatever it's the renting bedrooms within that I think there's also an affordability piece though around things like duplexes and so maybe you have a duplex where you have a three-bedroom and a one-bedroom and you live in the three-bedroom and you're you know staying in place is you know renting the one-bedroom unit or something like that so I think we try to allow for also renting one other unit in your building if you live in that building because then we at least understood it to and it wasn't about like councilor Wesson said it wasn't about health and safety or anything like that it was about affordability of you staying in the home that you are in and so I think what we're talking about potentially changing is so it doesn't matter if you're a tenant or a owner you can always rent within your own unit and then the only thing that we're talking about changing is if you're a tenant do you get to rent another unit in the building as a short-term rental is I think to me like the one question mark that's left in this and previously I think the committee was divided on this and I was leaning towards yes just because of the amount of feedback that we got but I think now we've got a less flat instrument for because so many people were saying oh like like I make the other units more affordable I think it's just something we heard over and over again and I think we've got a much more precise instrument for having folks put their money where their mouth is for lack of a better expression on that which to me is whatever we want to do with inclusionary zoning or some other percentage of our standard and so I would be in favor of removing the tenants being able to own and or being able to rent out another unit in their same building just to clarify what that discussion was okay thank you Councillor high tower Councillor Carpenter go ahead just and and I appreciate I really like the affordability option but I've also heard from a lot of people who only have one other unit so creating an affordable unit may not be an option so I think we just need to think that through because they don't have another unit to make affordable okay they only have one they're renting out are you looking for that was a comment okay all right any further comments from Councillors all right seeing none thank you very much appreciate it and thank you for also outlining those next steps we'll look for this to come to council soon in the next little bit here so thank you very much appreciate that and we will continue on with our regular City Council meeting now having completed the work session component of it it is still a little early for public forum for folks who are interested in speaking at public forum this evening and who are in person you may do so by signing up at the table right over here so you just fill out the form and then you hand it and then put it on the clerk's table over here and they'll get it over here to me so you'd like to speak please do that the and are in person if you are someone who is participating remotely you may comment remotely this evening by signing up at Burlington vt.gov slash City Council slash public forum that's Burlington vt.gov slash City Council slash public forum that'll take you to a fillable form but then that then I get and I'm able to do that regardless of if you're in person or participating remotely we will be prioritizing Burlington residents and just for your own forecasting you'll have two minutes this evening for your comments so with that we'll go I'll go past actually the public forum because we don't want and we won't take action on any deliberative items but we do have a number of different reporting items that we can get to prior to the public forum so I'll move past number three public forum and into the climate emergency reports did any counselor have a climate emergency report that they wanted to offer Mayor Weinberger go ahead thank you President Tracy I just thought it was important tonight to note that really one of the most important sustainability decisions that we're going to have as a community is before voters for a vote right now in a special election that will culminate December 7th the Burlington Electric Department net zero revenue bond will play a enormous role if successful in pursuing our goal to becoming net zero energy city by 2030 which is and we believe one of the most ambitious local climate initiatives in the country is basically a goal that would have us moving towards the elimination of the vehicles and heating systems using fossil fuels and replacing those with electrification this bond is critical for achieving that in numerous respects it helps us build the infrastructure in the grid that is needed to be a net zero the bond is critical to freeing up resources to allow the green stimulus incentives that have led to an enormous jump in adoption rates of heat pumps and electric vehicles over the last 18 months it allows those to continue for at least the next three years it basically this is probably one of the most significant steps that the city will take over this decade to achieve these climate goals by 2030 is before the voters for action right now people are voting already and just welcome the council's assistance and getting the word out on this measure and I hope voters will be will be paying close attention to this between now and December 7th there's a lot more information about this revenue bond on the Berlin Electric Department website and that encourage people who want more information to go there thank you President Trace thank you Mayor Councillor Hightower I see your hand up oh I think that was still from the last discussion I'll lower it okay all right did any other councillors have climate emergency reports to offer okay seeing none we will continue on we'll move past consent agenda and our deliberative agenda to item number seven committee reports did any committee chair have a report that they'd like to offer Councillor Carpenter as chair of the HR committee we met last week to get updated on several things including city staff equipment and like many employers in the state we are struggling and I just wanted to note that there's a lot of good jobs with the city of Burlington but we're particularly concerned about the Department of Public Works and their capacity to compete for those kind of trade jobs so I'm just alerting folks that I think there's some work that's going to have to be done to give the department more flexibility and more capacity to keep up where we need things like snow plowing for example so thank you very much any other Councillor Paul thanks very much President Tracy so the Public Safety Committee is going to be meeting on November 23rd from 5 until 6 p.m. downstairs this is going to be basically an organizational meeting to figure out how we are going to approach the CNA report and the recommendations the 150 recommendations that are in the report and how we will be working collaboratively with the police commission the administration and other stakeholders to advance these recommendations with the goal being to come back to the council as per the resolution with an update in a report in January thank you very much any other committee chairs wanting Councillor Hansen yeah so the transportation energy and utilities committee we did not meet in October but we are meeting on the 23rd of this month and we're still picking a time so hopefully by next Monday I can give a time on that but we're definitely meeting on November 23rd thanks excellent any other committee chairs Councillor Chen go ahead yes President Tracy thank you the racial equity inclusion and belonging for the city of Burlington will be meeting on the 16th of this month and agenda items include update from the racial equity inclusion belonging department as well as reflection and next steps about the resolution calling for peace and justice between Israel and Palestine again this is not a BDS resolution but the resolution itself the members of the council will be discussing what are the next steps as we move forward thank you thank you Councillor Cheng any further committee reports from any chairs okay seeing none we will move to the next item which is city council general affairs did any councillors have any general affairs that they'd like to speak to Councillor Paul I think I may have there was something I wanted to mention and I sort of doesn't fall under any one category but President Tracy and I are the two councillors that are members of Comstat and keeping with the resolution that we passed to give you a quarterly update we've gotten a little bit behind only because we haven't had time at council meetings for councillor updates and committee reports so my apologies there we did have a very interesting Comstat meeting in October with a very informative presentation from Dr. Park who is an assistant professor in the division of general internal medicine at Brown University she's also a researcher in harm reduction substance use disorder overdose prevention sites and she has done extensive work on these sites and sees them as part of the continuum of care she's also a lead author in a three city study that found strong support for overdose prevention sites and the report was published in the Journal of Urban Health 77% of the participants reported a willingness to use safe consumption sites a willingness to use these sites was even higher at 84% among people who relied on public places such as streets, parks, abandoned buildings to use drugs Dr. Park was quoted as saying that on the on the whole we found a strong willingness to use safe consumption spaces this is important because often the voices of people who use drugs are not always included in policy debates or in the implementation of public health interventions the other thing that we did also discuss at the meeting was some exciting news out of Rhode Island we got a we got exciting news a couple of years ago out of Philadelphia but the news out of Rhode Island I think is perhaps even more promising in July Rhode Island became the first state in the country to authorize the use of safe injection sites statewide and the landmark legislation was signed on July 7th it'll create a two-year pilot to establish harm reduction centers permitting people to consume drugs under medical supervision and the centers will also provide health screenings needle exchange and recovery support there of course are challenges that lie ahead with these in order for them to become permanent we all know what those challenges are but progress is definitely being made and Dr. Park's PowerPoint presentation is available I don't know if it's online but if anyone is looking for it or would like to see it I'm happy to send it to them it was an extremely informative meeting so we're continuing to work to advance the resolution that was passed in 2020 for an operational plan to bring a site forward in Burlington as the legal climate will hopefully evolve to make these sites more possible thanks thank you councillor Paul any further city council general affairs councillor jane thank you president Tracy I just wanted to invite Burlingtonians at the new northern city councillors in collaboration with Miro Weinberger will be hosting a discussion around the ballot items it would be on the 11th and it would be like 6 o'clock and for people to understand the approval of the general obligation bound for the city of for the capital plan project of about 40 million and also what the mayor just talked about the revenue bound for the electric department 20 million in details we will ask people to please show up ask questions and hear from the experts thank you thank you councillor jane councillor mason thank you president Tracy as many know the fall sports season has just ended we're still a little bit odd times if i feel like if council hartner would hear we'd have two teams before us to congratulate Burlington on on state champs both the bhs girls cross-country team i'd try to think a week last a week ago knocked off cvu after what seems like a lifetime of victories led by some very fierce but tiny women that run for bhs that many of us know as well as the boys volleyball team knocked off and i believe took home the state championship this week i will i appreciate we're still in covid so it's a we're not out of it yet but i do think and i'll work on getting some formal resolution and actually bringing them into congratulate them on their success so i didn't want this opportunity to pass without congratulating both of those teams thank you thank you councilor mason certainly would welcome them whenever they whenever you'd like to and they the teams would like to join us for council i think that would be certainly a very very a very nice recognition of the incredible effort put forth anyone else with general affairs okay seeing none we'll close that item i do not have any council president updates so we'll move over to the mayors update go ahead may one better thank you president tracy a few a few updates for me first since we last met i believe we had the burlington first fall burlington half marathon and the reopening of the flin two really remarkable events that represented a significant step forward for for the for the community coming out of this challenging pandemic also another opening recently from our park system the got to throw out the haven't never done this before got to throw out the first shot at the opening of our disc golf course out at shiflety park out in the new north end and followed up with and played a few holes and it is a great addition to our park system and encourage anyone who has experienced disc golfers trying for the first time to get out there and check it out it's a nine hole course right next to the new softball field that is being rebuilt there as well finally two other items one I did want to mention another event that happened since our last meeting is we had a groundbreaking for a new housing development in the downtown on on pine street just by the intersection of pine and bank this is known as the nest it's next to the former people's bank building and it just it's I wanted to bring a little attention to it here just because to me this project is in some ways a culmination of many of the housing reforms that we have been attempting to bring about together for some time you know we've just had this debate about changing short-term run all these these debates and these changes in the rules they matter when you see this project and reflect on some of the changes we made in in recent years this project would either not being being built at all likely or be very different if we hadn't made a number of changes first of all about a decade ago we eliminated the requirement that said all projects in the downtown needed to be at least 50 percent commercial this project couldn't have gone forward with that that provision this 49 home 10 permanently affordable unit project wouldn't have wouldn't have happened with that there second this project is the first to being built without the requirements of parking requirements and is building about half of what would have been required under the old zoning ordinance and I think this really shows the wisdom of that zoning change and that it this is adjacent this project to to city-owned housing sorry parking garages that underutilized the great majority of the time and so there's no reason to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars building more structured parking third this project is permitted with the prohibition on using fossil fuels as a primary heating source and this building will all be heated and cooled by coal climate heat pumps because this building as a new building will be so tight there's confidence that there's no backup system necessary because the it won't be needed with a high-performing new building of this type so 49 49 new homes hopefully this is an indication of more to come now that we have these rules in place for the downtown and then finally there's two more quick notes on the on the special election on December 7th thank you councillor jing for pointing out we are having this new north end discussion I will continue to be going to making presentations at other mpa's as well there's a great deal of information about both ballot items up on the city on the city website the general obligation bond is a critical step forward for continuing the 10-year capital plan that this council and the administration have worked on since 2014-2015 and this again more information on the city's page for that information and then just I mentioned the revenue bond a moment ago and one part one thing I didn't mention I think should become more and more of our discussion about net zero I think first and foremost we focus on net zero because of the climate emergency and because of the the risk to so much as important our lives that the climate emergency represents I think it is also worth noting and often overlooked that getting to net zero will also make this community better and stronger and more enjoyable in many ways replacing gas burning vehicles with electric vehicles will improve the quality of our air electric vehicles are better cars to drive they have lower maintenance they will free up savings for people for berlintonians to to put into other areas of our life on the cold climate heat pump front going to electric heat similarly improves indoor air quality it gives owners in many cases much more ability to control the temperatures of individual rooms so as we move towards December 7th vote and there's a lot of discussion about this I just hope we can more and more talk about not just the existential climate benefits but also the way in which getting net zero will make this a better community and one that the people will benefit from in many ways thanks person Tracy that's what I've got for me thank you mayor that completes our reports we're still a little early for public forum but I've got a couple of folks who are here in person so we can go to that before we get into the public forum if you are a member of the public who is interested in commenting this evening and are in person you may do so if you have not already by signing up with the forums that are on the table over here in the corner if however you are joining remotely and would like to comment the way that you can sign up for that is to go to burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum which will take you to an online forum that I then have access to on the back end and then we'll read off of that our practice in terms of the order of speakers is that we have Burlington residents who are in person come and then we have Burlington residents who are not in person or remote then we go to non-Burlington residents who are in person and then non-Burlington remote for the public forum please folks will have two minutes this evening you'll have a clock right behind the table here as well as a light system that also has a beeper when the the time is when your time is up green says you have plenty of time left yellow your time is running out read your time has run out please stick to the two minute time frame as soon as we hit that two minutes I'll start to ask you to just please wrap up and then in terms of the content of the forum itself please direct any comments to the chair and avoid personal attacks this evening really important please do not use profanity in this and then the other piece is also please allow folks to please don't react to people who are speaking either while they're speaking or after they've spoken it's really important that people feel comfortable with with their with their ability to to share their thoughts this evening so please do not react or cheer or make comments while they're speaking it's really important that we're able to hear them when they have their time everybody who who signs up will it looks like we have plenty of time this evening so please just respect folks and their their comments this evening and after people have spoken and go back just if you disagree with them please just leave them alone it's not an invitation to go and have a conversation with them in fact it's really difficult for us to keep our meeting going if people are trying to have conversations in city council are in the council chamber while the public forum in the meeting is ongoing so just please above all else just be respectful during the public forum so we'll get started with the burlington resident in person list our first speaker is Lee morrigan to be followed by matt summer with or I have a difficulty reading that so hello can you all hear me yes hi my name is lee morrigan I live in ward seven in the new north end my pronouns are they them here in support in solidarity with sears lane and the people who who live there presently and who have formerly lived there at this point I think everyone's minds are made so I don't want to whistle into the wind I guess you know I I guess what I've been reflecting on for such a momentous an important decision in the past weeks especially anyone who I won't speak in specifics because honestly specifics are just a symptom of a larger problem but in I just will say in relation to counselor McGee's resolution and and anyone who might have any had any sort of decision-making on that if if you had not based your decision on things you have really witnessed personally at sears lane then you made a mistake relying on media and frankly other people for your information is wrong people at this table have made faults statements to the public and to the media and whether that was a lie that's wrong and whether that was pie ignorance well that may be a bigger mistake and I'd like y'all to consider that there are people who have been there in the last 72 hours and if you haven't I suggest you get yourself down there thanks thank you our next speaker is Matt some Somerville thank you I appreciate that thank y'all really appreciate it my name is Matt Somerville I'm here on short-term rentals this area has been my home for 24 years but I've only really been able to be a full-time resident for about six of those years due to the nature of my work on church street for tetratech ard where ironically I actually help other countries write their property rights laws to protect vulnerable populations many years I would only spend two or three months a year in our house here in the south end of Burlington but it was enough for our kids to feel like it was home short-term rentals allowed us to have the flexibility to keep our life grounded in Burlington and there's a number of other people who want to be based here but have a hard time and have to come back and forth I no longer short-term rent only occasionally between long-term renters and so ironically I actually don't know whether I'm a short-term renter until after that 30 days has been achieved so I might not even know until the middle of the summer when most people leave you know so I don't know whether I'm in the 246 or the 360 but we did register with the state you know so our number is with the state and I encourage you all to to chat with them there's a registration number on the website I don't know how it relates to the city but it's there we did write numerous times to to folks and I know a number of other people did there are about 50 of us who communicate frequently on an online chat so I just encourage you all to come and you know have a side meeting with the 50 folks who are largely in my same situation the current proposals present a breakdown from some previously negotiated compromises on three-year ownership that would be avoid speculation so I really felt the regulations are a bit presumptuous about how Burlingtonians put their lives together and choose to live here I took a walk down my street tonight and about half of my neighbors have already left for Florida where their purpose flee not resident in Vermont so they don't have to pay property tax or sorry not property tax income tax so basically if you could please please wrap up this is occupied in a round thank you our next speaker is Todd look please don't do that if our next speaker no Todd LaCroix you're next to be followed by Robert Presto Johnson once again happy anniversary to occupy Wall Street 10 years ago and I might be just like the last one alive still arguing with you people thinking it's something meaningful you see 10 years ago you all ignored the peaceful revolution and now you're dealing with the violent one that's come home because you ignored the problem of your children for so long and here is what I worry about 10 years from now I don't know if I'm going to be able to come here and argue with you over democracy anymore because I think that you might have already killed it you have been turning away from your children's problems for so long get this this really happened to me today I ran into my social worker from cvoeo from five years ago guy helped me out with some you know bus tickets and stuff you know that loose change you people all hand out and he was so burnt out and he was so messed up his father was following him around and he was worse off than I was five years ago when he was helping me because of you all failing me five years ago how is that for a cycle of how you are failing even your social workers are out there now fucking desperate and sick don't use profanity excuse me your social workers are out there sick tired you want to talk about money for your police you need to remember your healers tammy buddha is exhausted trying to help create band-aids for you people slashing our children's wrap up veins please wrap up they're bleeding out and all you offer is band-aids if you could please wrap that's a true story can you please wrap up I won't name his name and I know you all know it can you please wrap up for his family's respect can you please wrap up but I'm sure you all know the person I'm talking about and you have failed him in his family just like you failed so many please respect the two-minute time limit folks our next speaker is Robert Bristow-Johnson to be followed by Jada Bearden so I'm here to speak to the Board of Civil Authority which is 13 of you and it's about just please speak right into the mic okay it's about a very important decision you get to make right now and one that we're going to get to live with for 10 years and there's two papers that are on the agenda for you to see one's an addendum which was in response to VT Digger Commentaries and they laid the minority card and so I'm going to read something from a research called the context matters the effects of single member versus at-large districts and city council diversity in the American Journal of Political Science by Troustine and Valden and they conclude that compared to that large systems single member districts can increase diversity only when the under-represented groups are highly concentrated and compose a substantial portion of the population and that single versus multi-member has significant and opposite effect only for African-American male and white female counselors it has the white female did better with at-large but the African-American did better with single member districts and then the proportion of African-American women and Latina counselors not are not affected by use of either single member district or at-large systems so here's what we got we've got in Vermont we've got a bunch of middle-aged white guys playing the race card to get us to adopt a plan that will guarantee that we call about 23 house representatives from our from the house of representatives in Vermont three of which we know are from Burlington and the majority party is going to be affected by that by more than what the minority parties please wrap up and these guys are from the minority parties that are calling for this please wrap up single member district plan thank you if you please wrap up thank you our next speaker and final Burlington resident in-person speaker is Jada Bearden will then transition to Burlington residents who are participating remotely after this hey there I have two things I want to say tonight the first is in support of Sears Lane I've been down there almost every day for the past three weeks and I want to invite the chair and whoever else wants to you know get your hands dirty to come down and grab a trash bag we've been making Sears Lane more habitable and it's a beautiful place and it would put all of you people who had so much to say about its atmosphere to shame because if you come down you can see exactly what community looks like and the second thing I want to say is about my waste and recycle proposal it's winter is coming and I think it'd be a great time to add some trash containers and recycling containers all across Burlington I think it doesn't make sense for us not to have any of any containers it's easy it'll be a very beneficial to our city and it'll help keep our neighborhood safe and it doesn't cost that much so let's get it done we already have a couple hundred dollars raised so who you know whenever y'all want to tap in let me know and uh yeah how you old my time thank you thank you I did get one more Burlington resident in person sign up so we'll go to that person Christopher Aaron Felker I'm from the Burlington GOP I'm here tonight to speak in favor of single-member voting districts I have sent a commentary from the president of the Ethan Allen Institute to the clerk's office and to all city council members for you to review I will read an excerpt from this this evening in general it is more difficult for candidates to run in multi-member districts it requires more money more fundraising in order to be able to purchase more flyers more lawn signs access to more money and more funding usually comes and benefits the incumbents this creates an atmosphere that does not promote equitability and does not promote grassroots efforts in our community in addition the multi-member districts are from a bygone era they are a relic of our past that are often used in conjunction with gerrymandering to limit the votes and the voices of the most most diverse groups of people in our society gerrymandering draws district lines with the purpose to influence future election outcomes it's always a hot topic around reimbursement time everyone is publicly opposed to gerrymandering but tends to be quieter about the topic when the lines drawn benefit their own partisan interests from a non-partisan policy perspective the best steps that we can do take as the best steps we can take as a board is to eliminate the many tools that enable gerrymandering as possible multi-member districts are such a tool I'm running low on time so I'll yield the rest of my time you do have this commentary in your emails I please encourage you to read it promote diversity in the queen city thank you thank you all right we will now transition to brillington residents who are participating remotely the first such person is abby german abby I have located you and have enabled your mic thanks for getting the timer up abby it looks like yes can you hear me yep we can go ahead okay so hello city council and thank you for your time tonight my name is abby german my pronouns are they them and I am a resident of ward 2 I will be using my time tonight to present clear and concise definitions of sex work versus sex trafficking as we approach this conversation around criminalization and decriminalization to ensure that we know their important differences when approaching these conversations sex work is defined as the consensual transaction of erotic labor between adults sex work can take the form of full service formerly known as prostitution performing webcam shows stripping or lap dancing performance and pornography escorting phone or internet sex professional domination and any other exchange of sexual services for financial or material gain sex work should not be confused with sex trafficking when a person takes part in the sale of sex through threat abduction or other means of coercion all commercial sexual activity with a minor even without force fraud or coercion is also considered trafficking there is no consensual sex work when a minor is involved nor when coercion fraud or force is at play conflating consensual sex work to sex trafficking is dangerous and furthermore disrespect and disempower is the experiences of both survivors and workers those who oppose the decriminalization of consensual sex work will weaponize accounts of trafficking to instill fear in the community the decriminalization of sex work cannot be conflated with the decriminalization of human trafficking these are separate nuanced issues and should be treated as such going forward I hope that we can use these definitions to analyze sex work and sex trafficking in a manner that is accurate and respectful to the respective matters thank you please thank you very much all right Amy Magyar I was not able to locate you if you are signed up under another name please use the the raise hand function just so that I can locate you okay now I see you okay great I have enabled your mic Amy go ahead thank you so much the reason for me speaking up I'm actually out of town right now is that I just wanted to say that the opportunity to have Megan Tuttle run and be the director of planning for the city of Brillington is possibly one of the best fires that I could imagine that the mayor does fortunately or unfortunately for Megan she's worked very closely with me on topics like accessory dwelling units as well as short term rentals and she's been nothing but incredibly professional around sometimes some pretty heated conversations in terms of the passion of the people speaking she's level headed very thorough very thoughtful and always thinking about how to do a long term sustainable plan for the city so I just have to say again I could not think of a better person to fill in David White's shoes and I know that she and Scott will continue to do incredible work but I just wanted to say I am so excited for the chance for her to be voted in and I think you all should vote unanimously for Megan thank you thank you our next speaker is Laurie Koderman and then that's the last Burlington resident who's remote so then we'll transition back to some of the in person folks who are not Burlington residents Laurie I have located you and I've enabled your mic hi thank you very much I just want to say first of all I'm here to speak on the short term rental subject that I'm very deeply concerned about the housing crisis in Burlington and and quite frankly around the country different areas you know to wonder here another experiencing that but for the specifically for off-site hosting so my husband and I purchased a duplex in Burlington in 2013 it was toward excuse me a single family home toward the idea of retirement income it was not cash flowing as the taxes began to increase we created a very small unit in the back the legal duplex that's not suitable for long-term housing there's no closet in the bedroom it's just 400 square feet very small and it has allowed us to absolutely keep the tenants in the front at a very reasonable rent we've been able to improve the prop property this year our taxes went up from 7,700 to 11,350 I have not yet raised the rent but I did look I did a quick search our tenant pays 1,500 the average is 22 to 2,500 for the size unit and the number of bathrooms and so there is an absolute benefit they are hosts for us we co-host I do the majority of the work but they are a support person for me and I just don't understand how us not being able to off-site host is going to correct the problem or fix the problem that we see with the housing crisis and I need more time but thank you very much for listening I appreciate it thank you our next speaker I'm shifting back to in-person folks Jeff Paul Obinski to be followed by Jim Richards good evening my name is Jeff Paul Obinski I'm an attorney at Gravel and Shea and I representing Mansfield Heliflight a tenant at the airport and I spoke earlier tonight at the board of finance so I'll try to be brief I'm here to provide comment on deliberative item 6.06 that's to authorize the airport and to enter into a license agreement with beta technologies and in particular I wanted to draw everyone's attention to section 7b of this license agreement that provides the city shall terminate all existing leases licenses and other instruments granting possessory interests or other occupancy or use rights uncovering the license premises the license premises is defined as the area within line fence one fence line phase one and fence line phase two as depicted on exhibit a unfortunately there's no exhibit a attached to the license so this city council has a little guidance as to where exactly the licenses to be located it had been represented earlier tonight that the license doesn't impact my client's property but my clients nor the other tenants of the airport have not had an adequate opportunity to evaluate that representation as such the city council should not consent to this item tonight without exhibit a as written the license could give this the city unclear authority to terminate we see the airport without exhibit a the city should not consent to something that is not complete or that was not adequately noticed if leases or other possessory interests like my clients were terminated that could be in violation of their valid legal instruments like my clients lease we request the city council delay action on this item until the city council has an opportunity to review the entire package including them arguably the most important item of the license and until such time that the parties have put on notice it had been suggested that my client had been notified of this particular project through other permitting mechanisms but that is not in indeed the case thank you our next speaker is Jim Richards to be followed by actually I have two Jim Richards signups so you can only go once so Jim will be followed by really I can't read this one think it says Brown I'm sorry okay I'm sorry thank you go ahead a question Mr. Chairman we don't really have a back and forth here is I wanted to speak under two different identities how does that you're not allowed to do that can't do it okay so I will address you this evening thank you all for your time on behalf of Aerodyne Corporation we are an aviation OEM manufacturer we are residents of the airport we're a high tech employer have been an airport tenant for 19 years I question the wisdom of displacing the 50 year old valley general aviation community in order to license potentially all of the airport's remaining space available to the general aviation community to a single private entity considering the airport's long-standing grant of an FBO monopoly to heritage flight and the contemplated new license there may not be sufficient space remaining at the airport for the independent GA community to reconstitute itself we expect this license and subsequent comprehended actions to have substantial impact on Vermont Flight Academy Vermont Technical College Burlington Technical Center the Condo Association of Vermont excuse me Mansfield Hella Flight and Aerodyne Corporation this is comprising 57 aircraft 50 pilots 125 student pilots 20 aviation maintenance students 25 aviation jobs two FAA part 141 flight schools one FAA part 147 mechanic school one FAA part 145 repair station Vermont Flight Academy is the largest flight school in Vermont Burlington Technical Center is the only A&P school in Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine Aerodyne operates the largest 3D printer in Vermont and is one of few Vermont technology companies using five-axis CNC machining construction flags have been going up this week excavators have started digging we are worried much of this activity seems inconsistent with the airport's master plan which does not currently set forth any impact to existing valley stakeholders for at least five years please wrap up review of the proposed licenses please wrap up by the lack of exhibit you could please wrap up thank you our final in-person speaker for this evening I'm sorry Ken Brown I really apologize that I'm not able to make this out if you could please just say your name when you get up to the table my name is Joanne Brown formerly from this area thank you if you could just use the mic please right here yeah yeah okay see I noted from the the online information that the mayor is expected to address policing issues next week on the 15th and I would like to bring to his attention a specific issue where the current acting chief is concerned John Murad it's my understanding from online information which is as you know not always entirely accurate that John Murad has served as acting chief since December of 1990 or um that the last police chief resigned on December 16th of 19 or 2019 and uh John Murad has reportedly served as the acting chief in that from that during that interim and I'm kind of interested in knowing if um the city has um are interested in knowing from the mayor next week as to whether or not the city contemplates term uh higher hiring Mr police chief John Murad for the permanent position for the permanent position it seems like an inordinately long time two years they should act as acting I wonder I question what has been his compensation during that time does he have full benefits does he have the kind of benefit package that would go to a permanent hire your time is up thank you all right we will shift back to non burlington folks who are participating remotely I have Sandy Zelka to be followed by Christopher Weinberg Henry June Banks and Christine Rigo Sandy I have located you and have enabled your mic good evening President Tracy and Council I'm here representing Curtis Lumber I'm the CFO for Curtis Lumber as you had noted earlier there is a housing crisis and this is something the community would benefit from and it all relates to 5.12 when it comes to railroad enterprise project the three options that have been laid out as opportunities will considerably impact the Curtis Lumber Burlington location we have served the community for countless number of years and we're an essential business throughout the COVID position COVID issue what I find is the importance of trades which have obviously been brought up this evening and without a lumber yard a building materials yard trades will become non-existent I hope everybody considers the business of Curtis Lumber as it represents and it supports the Burlington community without us there you're going to obviously be detrimentally impacted and will also serve to to not allow housing to continue this railroad enterprise project has been going on for some time and moving to project A is a concern when I look at the project B section and the way it will impact the feasibility of our location thank you thank you our next speaker is Christopher Weinberg to be followed by Henry June Binks Christopher I've located you and have enabled your mic good evening Chris Weinberg I'm a resident of Shelburne I'm an assistant professor in the Vermont Tech professional pilot program I'm also a flight instructor and also an aircraft owner that has flown over 50 patient airlift missions over the last three years further to the issue that Mr. Richards and Mansfield Hella flight have raised I spoke with the acting director of aviation today regarding the proposed leaf with beta our license agreement with beta and the airport and inquired as to why attachment A was not provided and the acting director of aviation specifically told me that it was left out to not raise concern of tenants that might potentially be impacted by this license agreement he gave me verbal assurances that all of the current tenants that have lease agreements will not be impacted by this I asked whether he would be willing to put that in writing and effectively was told that we should just trust that that he is pro GA and will provide space for any tenants that are negatively impacted I would ask that the city council consider the lack of transparency and how this is transpired and seek additional details regarding exactly what will happen as a result of this life agreement whether hitching the wagon of the airport to a single large tenant as has happened previously with heritage aviation is good for the long-term future of the airport and I would encourage the city council to speak with the broad stakeholders of the airport including the general aviation community thank you thank you our next speaker is Henry June Binks to be followed by Christine Rigo um Rigo Henry June I have enabled your mic good evening thank you for your audience tonight my name is Henry June Binks I'm the co-director of the S.T.R. Collective we're an anti-trafficking organization out of Montpellier Vermont with an emphasis on sex worker rights I'm here today to clear up a few misconceptions around trafficking and sex work while the popular narrative has been since the man act circa 1910 that sex work is a branch of labor that is rife with exploitation saturated so it's impossible for consented adults to interact with the industry without coercion and violence when I hear conversations like this about my career in such a tone I do feel silenced and misrepresented for 40 years the ACLU has been a major advocate for the decriminalization of sex work experts in the nonprofit sector major universities like Yale and human rights organizations like Amnesty International have rallied behind decrim because the factual data shows that we cannot address the issue of trafficking while we detain and arrest the very demographics these laws would claim to rescue my work in the industry does come as a point of privilege and while not every person in erotic labor has the same experience as you will find in any workplace I have been enthusiastically consenting to my job for a decade I do not want the dialogue around my work to be one of victimization and powerlessness I simply want a safer environment to do the work that I do in our community we do have a saying that goes nothing about us without us so as we approach the important conversations around decriminalization in Burlington I hope the members of this council will leave a seat open for me and my community so together we can set a president that shows the nation that Vermont accepts for citizens and protects for workers thank you thank you our final speaker for this evening is Christine Rigo or Rigo Christine I have enabled your microphone thank you are you able to hear me yes go ahead thanks good evening thank you for your audience and your time I'm addressing the city council as a member of the Ishtar Collective a local nonprofit dedicated to sex work advocacy harm reduction and anti-trafficking however my views expressed here tonight do not necessarily reflect the views of my organization or my employer jumping right in the ACLU's research brief on sex work decriminalization reviews existing research on the impacts of both decriminalization and criminalization of sex work to inform recommendations for policy and practice the brief provides an assessment of the growing evidence base on the potential benefits and harms of the decriminalization of consensual sex work by or only criminalization and full criminalization and concludes with specific recommendations for policy makers and law enforcement I will submit the full ACLU brief as well as an amnesty international's official policy on state obligations to respect protect and fulfill the human rights of sex workers I implore every city every member of the city council to absorb these documents for their own education and informed decision-making I will also submit a high-level comparison between the impacts of the equality or entrapment or Nordic or end-demand model and full decriminalization with credit to the organization DSW or decriminalized sex work unequivocally research-based evidence shows that full decriminalization is the only way to increase health and safety and decrease trafficking the entrapment model allows exploitation and violence to proliferate the majority of individuals involved in the sex trade are consenting adults on another note if you are familiar with logical fallacies the narrative that all sex work is coercive is a false dichotomy or appeal to pity all legal employment I have ever held has first and foremost been out of necessity for economic survival just brutal yes sir my colleagues and I look forward to working more closely with our lawmakers and officials at local and state levels and we extend our expertise in decision-making and implementation processes thank you is there somewhere I may email is there some place I may email my statement sure you can email it to city council at burlingtonvt.gov thank you thank you that is our final speaker for this evening so we will go ahead and close the public forum and we'll get back into our agenda for tonight we already went through item number four which was the climate emergency reports it brings us to item five which is the consent agenda just please note counselors that item 5.15 has been removed from the consent agenda and has been placed on the deliberative agenda as the last item so we are not in fact voting on that item as well councillor stromberg may please have a motion on the consent agenda I move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated thank you we have a motion from councillor stromberg is there a second seconded by councillor McGee any discussion okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favour please say aye aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously we are now into our deliberative agenda we do have a couple of other meetings that we have to get into this evening those being the tax abatement and board of civil authority meetings I will do that after we get to item 6.01 which is a communication from mayor Weinberger regarding appointment of a planning director mayor thank you president tracy I am very excited to be bringing forward to the city council the appointment of the mega title to be the city's next planning director and Megan has joined us here at the table and we'll share a couple of remarks in a moment before she does let me I would just like to touch on several highlights of Megan's background and reason for why I think this is going to be such a significant and positive appointment for the city Megan has served as the Burlington's principal planner for more than six years and brings more than a decade of planning experience to this role in that time her work has been recognized by many as being exceptional she has received even in this year two very significant honors she was recognized by the Vermont planners association as the professional planner of the year for Vermont and she received the same honor for from the northern New England chapter of the American Planning Association this year as well she is her you can also see her colleagues respect for her and that she is serving as the president of the Vermont planners association and president elect of the northern New England chapter of the American Planning Association but even more significantly I think for all of us is just the consistently high reviews that Megan gets from Burlingtonians and from people who have worked with her in this community as we heard from one member of the public in the public forum she has earned resounding support from her colleagues on the city team from community members and from countless partners because of her boundless professionalism her collaborative style and her strong work ethic I think it also is notable what a team player she is represented by the fact that she has stepped up and served as the city's COVID-19 leader COVID-19 response leader since the middle of this summer stepping into an entirely new role I'll be a one that she had become expert in as being a key member of the analytics team from the beginning of the pandemic on Megan will be the if she is appointed tonight she will be the first woman to serve in this role and I think will be exciting to have that new perspective on the on the city leadership team I would just say after six years of working closely with Megan on some of the administration's highest priorities and most high-profile high-profile initiatives I could not be more pleased to appoint Megan Tunnel as a planning director thank you thank you mayor hello again I'm incredibly grateful for the opportunity to continue serving the city in this new capacity I've sat before you all in countless meetings since I've started working here in the planning department and over the last six years and I can say that I've deeply enjoyed the work that I've done with all of you and with the many members of the community the planning commission and the dedicated city team in that time it's really a privilege to me to be considered to now lead the department that I've been growing in and working in for the last six years I also really want to say that I'm grateful to the legacy the 26-year legacy that David White is leaving in this department David has been my boss and mentor and friend during this time and his legacy of collaboration and foresight has been one that I've really enjoyed working closely with in this department as we help plan for and support solutions to the challenges and opportunities that are facing our city these collaborations are really important to me and I'm passionate about being part of the collective work to build on Burlington's uniqueness guide its growth and contribute to our community being a more inclusive resilient and better connected city as you all know the planning department's role has been transforming over the last several years first with the creation of the department of permitting and inspections then with our role on the analytics team for the COVID response and most recently in this fiscal year with the formal joining of the planning and analytics functions of the city I'm excited and look forward to the opportunity to lead the next chapter in our department by bringing together the multidisciplinary perspective of long range planning with the cross departmental focus on data to help address our city's top priorities thank you for your consideration of my appointment and thank you again to the mayor for the opportunity for me to lead this department and the confidence in me to do so thank you very much did you want the floor back there I too just want to add that these appointments are always a bittersweet and that we are losing a key member of the team as well from the leadership role I want to thank David White too for his over 25 years of service to the city certainly thank you very much for your service David really appreciate it Councillor Mason thank you President Tracy before I make the motion I think the only praise that I didn't hear the mayor give was from this side of the table you know the effort and the work that you've done with those of us who are intimately involved I will echo you know I've had the pleasure of working with you Megan on a number of initiatives over the last six years and I would also echo the statements that you you are a superstar you approach everything with a very professional manner the way you engage with the public you know is a model for those of us who may not have the patients that you have at times and I am very excited and thrilled that you're choosing to make this next step with you know with us as we continue to face these these challenges and opportunities so with that I would make a motion to confirm the mayor's appointment thank you so we have a motion I don't believe we need a second but was that a hand you wanting to speak okay certainly okay so we have a second I guess a second from Councillor Shannon were there councillors who wanted to speak councillor Hanson thanks yeah I just wanted to echo some of the thoughts that the mayor shared and councillor Mason really thank David for all your work over the years and decades and congratulate Megan on this new role I'm really excited to continue working with you and I hope as well that you know on this side of the table we can we can provide the resources that this department needs as they're playing this leadership role and some of the most important priorities of the city and I think we have amazing leadership and we'll continue to have amazing leadership and I think we need to provide additional resources and support so that we can we can tackle these issues and move forward strongly and quickly thank you thank you councillor Hanson councillor Paul thanks President Tracy first I just wanted to say that I can't believe it's been six years I was very fortunate that David asked me to be on this on the interview team for your role and Megan has heard this story a hundred thousand times before but for those who haven't heard it we had a number of candidates we interviewed all of them in six years ago we weren't using Zoom we use Skype and without going into all the details we got off the interview with Megan and we're like totally blown away to the point where it was like should we do the rest of the interviews you just wowed us then and you have wowed us ever since and couldn't be happier for you to take on this new role but as the mayor said with that comes the loss of David however it's a loss to the city it is a gain to Sue is a gain to your children grandchildren and hopefully a little bit more leisure time than you've maybe had in the past so that's that's that's the good news and so it's a it's a win for everyone and a win for the city thanks thank you Councillor Paul anyone else okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favour of confirming Megan Tuttle as the next planning director for the city of Burlington please say aye any opposed that carries unanimously congratulations thank you now as I said before we have a couple of other meetings to take care of this evening so the first of those is that we're going to get into is the abatement of the board of full board of abatement of taxes so I'm going to recess the city council meeting at 8.18 pm and convene the full board of abatement of taxes at 8 to 18 pm the first item on the agenda is the agenda may please have a motion on the agenda moved by Councillor Carpenter there's a second seconded by Councillor McGee any discussion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favour of adopting the agenda please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously and we have an agenda brings us into our consent agenda may please have a motion on the consent agenda Councillor Mason thank you President Christy I'd like to make a motion to adopt the agenda thus taking the actions as indicated thank you Councillor Mason we have a motion is there a second seconded by Councillor Carpenter any discussion okay seeing none all those in favour of adopting the consent agenda and taking the actions indicated please say aye aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously an motion to adjourn is in order moved by Councillor Carpenter seconded by Councillor McGee any discussion all those in favour say aye aye opposed we are adjourned at 819 we will now shift over to the Board of Civil Authority which I'll hand over to Mayor Weinberger thank you President Tracy I will call the order of the Board of Civil Authority at 819 p.m. and would welcome a motion on the agenda Councillor Shannon moved to adopt the agenda and do we have a second add to the oh I there's a little more than that sorry add to the consent agenda item 2.03 communication Robert Bristow-Johnson RE 2022 Vermont House redistricting within Burlington addendum with the action to waive the waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file and add to the agenda item 3.02 communication Catherine Chad Chief Administrative Officer City of Burlington adopting the House redistricting tentative proposal with the action to the Board of Civil Authority with the action to the Board of Civil Authority directs Chief Administrator Officer Catherine Chad to submit electronically and via electronic mail the above member random to the Vermont legislative portion of the Board represented by Chair Thomas Little thank you Councillor Shannon is there a second seconded by Councillor Mason discussion all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye aye aye are there any opposed we have an agenda we'll now move to item 2 the consent agenda and I would welcome a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated as amended so moved thank you Councillor Shannon seconded by Councillor Mason discussion of the consent agenda seeing no discussion we will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye aye aye aye are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously and this brings us to deliberative agenda discussion regarding proposed House District legislative apportionment board and there are two communications under 3.01 which are posted and I believe at this time and correct me city attorney if I don't have this quite right but any discussion by the council at this point will be captured in minutes and communicated as well to the legislative apportionment board as further record of the community's input on the proposed change in the districts yes that can be included so with that the floor is open for any any any discussion Councillor Shannon do we have the ability to communicate independently of this meeting to that board which of course would reflect only our personal opinions but not the opinion of the the council itself yes I believe you can communicate with the board you can communicate with the board as an individual obviously you would it would not be representative of this board unless this board voted to take such action but I believe that the statewide apportionment board is still taking public comment or accepting it at least I will just add then to be included in the record that I am supportive of of the proposals brought forward by Robert Bristow- Johnson in in concept um and I hope that that is something that the legislature will take a take a good look at in in making their final determination thank you Councillor Shannon so at this point I would welcome a motion to take the action indicated in 3.01 which would include submitting the comments just made by Councillor Shannon I believe as well as any other comments in this discussion Councillor Hanson should I make comments now or does the motion come first certainly this is a little bit of a chicken or egg problem but I think you can make comments now if you were to make comments later I would be my understanding that those were not necessarily be transmitted because they would be debate on the motion itself this is really the opportunity pre-motion to have those comments added because there may be comments in debate that are relevant to the passage of the motion rather than the substance of it okay all right I'll make comments now then thanks so I'm supportive of the change outlined and really moving to one member districts I've talked about this at the city council level as we go through that redistricting process I also support simpler you know single member districts at the house level I think in smaller districts too is what we're talking about so I think it's there's more accountability between constituents and their representatives there's more simplicity in terms of the races themselves and understanding who your representatives are and how you can support them there's more it's straightforward in terms of it's the same statewide as if everyone has a single member district they have the same representation and I also think the multi-member districts create difficulties you know if if you have two representatives and you support one but not the other it's difficult to know how to interact with that like if you were to mount a campaign you could be knocking out the member that you actually support rather than the one that you don't so I think there's there's flaws to the current system and I think you know this isn't probably the exact map that I would draw or anything like that but I do think it's an improvement from the way things are now so I'm supportive thanks Councillor Barla thank you mayor I guess my comments are that I also support in concept the notion of remaining where we can with two-seat legislative districts potentially five districts with two seats each as Robert Burstow-Johnson has suggested and in six one where I live you know we have two representatives it works rather well actually and so without a compelling reason to to change it I which and I haven't heard one I would suggest staying with what's working for us already so those are my comments thank you Councillor Barla Councillor Carpenter I too having probably spent 25 years working in legislature have seen the two district two person districts works well and I've seen one district work well it really depends on the geography so I'm concerned that the LAB has a one-size-fits-all you know if your one person district is very rural in the northeast kingdom you probably do want to make it as physically small as you can but as one of our district reps said you know hiking over to the Miller Center is not like hiking over a mountain you know in the city of Burlington where we're really quite dense I think the two persons work very well and so my my comments to the LAB are you know we can do two and one person districts depending on the geography of where you live cities lend themselves I think better to the two person districts and I think it gives you some real advantages in terms of the level of folks you have to pick from and the pool of people that you want for talent so I would encourage us if Burlington wants two persons I think we should state that and endorse that and the LAB in other parts of the state might choose one person districts thank you Councillor Carpenter are there any further comments Mayor Councillor Hightower has her hand up okay great thank you Councillor Hightower go ahead yeah I'm also supportive of the multiple or two representative maps I think that I and don't necessarily think that it should be the same for council as for the state offices I definitely think for council it is more nuanced because you're representing at a city level whereas I think at state level we are much more a cohesive unit and it's not necessarily broken up in the same way so I think it's a difficult decision but I think just wanted to thank you Councillor Hightower President Tracy I'm not sure if I can see if there are other Councillors online that would like to speak I am not seeing any others okay thank you if there are no further comments then I think now would be the time for a motion that addresses the comments we just heard that takes the action indicated in 3.01 Councillor Shan I move that we submit the comments that we just heard recommendations and materials to the LAB through the online form number 4 by November 15th 2021 thank you Councillor Shan is there a second to that motion second by Councillor Carpenter discussion of the motion seeing none and Councillor Hightower assume your hand is up from previously just seeing no comments we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye now are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously we have one more item of business 3.02 which is a communication from Catherine Shad the Chief Administrative Officer to submit it electronically and be electronic mail the attachment memorandum to the Model Legislative Apportionment Board this memorandum gets into some of the complications of administering an election with 10 single member districts is we ready for a motion Councillor Shanon I move the Board of Civil Authority directs Chief Administrative Officer Catherine Shad to submit electronically and via electronic mail the above memorandum with the endorsement of this Board to the Vermont Legislative Apportionment Board represented by Chair Thomas Little thank you Councillor Shan is there a second second by Councillor Mason discussion of the motion Councillor Hanson Councillor Hanson so just to clarify the what we're doing right now because I think I just heard in the motion with the endorsement of this Board so are we just allowing the communication to go through or are we actually kind of putting our stamp on it as endorsing it I'll be happy to answer well certainly the way Councillor Shannon phrased the motion she did ask for the endorsement of this Board the communication in and of itself is a communication that's drafted by CAO Shad intended to communicate certain technical issues and concerns about the expansion of the house districts you have two options you could obviously pass the motion as it has been framed or you could amend the motion and simply allow I think the the motion to go forward I mean sorry the letter to go forward as an expression at that point would have just simply CAO Shad's position okay yeah I mean I don't have any issue with obviously the CAO expressing that but I don't I don't want to go on the record kind of opposing this change because I support it so I don't know why we strayed from the recommended action but if this is where we're landing I guess I'm not going to be a no on this all amends the motion to read as it is recommended then second by President Tracy further discussions of the Hanson amendment Councillor Shannon it's unclear to me why we would need council endorsement for the CAO to share her opinion it was my thinking that if the council is endorsing it was my thought that if the council is voting on this it's voting on endorsing the letter if the council isn't endorsing the letter it's unclear to me why we need to vote on it because it's just CAO Shad's opinion any wishes we have to address I think I think the initial idea of having this brought before the council is that the council wish to endorse this particular statement dealing with some of the technical issues it was brought before with the idea that as a municipal corporation the city speaks as close as possible with one voice and this was intended I think and drafted less as a reflection of CAO Shad's individual feelings or the office's feelings but raising these technical issues and so it was put before the council is such I just simply raised I think it's a correct observation which is you know you are available to endorse it and then it would carry the weight of the city as a statement as opposed to if you choose not to if there's an amendment that's just simply go ahead and send it but it doesn't reflect the council's will that's another direction to go as well I think it's just so that I think in a nutshell is why this is before the council does the council wish to endorse this and make it sort of a voice of the city or should it simply be the voice of the head of the clerk treasurer's office this isn't an official action I mean taking a step back this is a communication to an advisory board that is seeking public comment and so I think it's accurate to have you know a sense of you know is the city unified behind this particular concern or is this something in which there is dissent or something in which this is the the clerk herself speaking for it as opposed to the municipal corporation thank you attorney Richardson further discussion of the did you want the floor back councillor shan well I'll just say briefly it seems like if we're voting on it we're the purpose of it as I think attorney Richardson just said is to endorse it and I think that the original motion makes that more clear than than the amendment kind of makes it murkier though I respect that councillor Hanson may not agree with this statement and may not want to endorse it thank you thank you councillor shan further discussion of the amendment is there anyone I think the councillor's online wishing to speak yeah just a clarification so we're voting on just the letter right now no the first there the underlying motion is a motion from councillor Shannon to send the letter with the endorsement of the board of civil authority oh right right the amendment that we're about to vote on would simply send the letter but would remove the endorsement of the board of civil authority is where I understand the amendment okay thank you further further discussion yes Mr. Mayor and was just one yeah thank you and can we also eat the case you know one way or the other neutral about this can I vote it has to be a yes or no you're being asked to vote on the Hanson amendment the Hanson amendment would remove the council's endorsement from the communication to the legislative apportionment board so if you do just want to be kind of neutral on how the board should receive this communication from the CAO I think you the way to achieve that would be to vote for that to attempt to through for the Hanson amendment if I understand your question correctly yep yeah thank you councillor mason thank you mayor I will not be supporting the amendment I've read the memo four times why we've been having this discussion from my perspective it's factual and it's pretty accurate I don't understand how anyone what I'm reading as being stated is that creating single-member districts is going to create more work to an already overburdened CAO staff I don't quite understand I don't see a conclusion that we shouldn't this isn't taking the position that it shouldn't it's stating facts from the CAO's perspective and I don't think there's anything that any of us would disagree with in them so I will not be supporting the amendment thank you councillor mason further discussion okay let's uh let's go to a vote and I think we will need to do this by roll call we're good to call the roll councillor barla no councillor carpenter no councillor jane yes councillor freeman yes councillor hanson yes councillor hightower yes councillor mason no councillor paul no councillor mcgee yes councillor shannon no councillor strongberg yes city councillor president tracy yes mayor weinberger no seven ayes six nays the amendment carries so the we are now back to the underlying resolution with the endorsement of the board removed further discussion on the underlying resolution seeing no hands yeah yes okay yes councillor go ahead same thing basically voting no on the motion basically it will allow me to state neutral if I if I so councillor jane I believe the the amendment removed any opinion of the board other than the opinion that this letter should be sent along so at this point it is a neutral communication from the the letter is going from the CAO with the simply the the ECA the Board of Civil Authority deciding to send it essentially thank you if we there are no further hands no further discussion let's go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously and passes with that if there is no objection the Board of Civil Authorities adjourned at 8 43 p.m. thank you Mayor I will reconvene the Burlington City Council meeting at 8 43 p.m. and we'll pick up where we left off which was on item 6.02 a special event outdoor entertainment permit application councillor Mason may it please have a motion thank you President Tracey I'd like to make a motion to approve the special event outdoor entertainment permit application for BCA and economic recovery November 26th through December 21st along Park Lane and on the BCA patio in City Hall Park Thursdays and Fridays 2 to 6 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays 11 to 5 p.m. thank you councillor Mason is there a second yeah seconded by councillor Hanson any discussion hearing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor please say aye any opposed that carries unanimously brings us down into our next item which is 6.03 a communication regarding a request to execute a contract with VHB for services to develop a long-term sustainability implementation plan for BTV councillor Paul thanks President Tracey I would make a motion to authorize the acting director of aviation to approve a contract between the Burlington International Airport and VHB to develop a long-term sustainability implementation plan for the Burlington International Airport in an amount up to $178,200 subject to the final review and approval of the city attorney's office okay we have a motion from councillor Paul is there a second seconded seconded by councillor Jang councillor Paul did you want the floor back no I do not okay thank you thank you for that director Longo did you want to join us and was there anything that you wish to share with the council no I'm well first of all thank you very much for having this item on the deliberative it is a really important item a very large contract that I'm extremely excited to move forward there are a lot of items inside of this contract that we are eager to move forward with VHB to not only look at what our master plan spelled out as far as our sustainability plan but to actually implement this sustainability efforts onto our facility out at the airport so very excited to move and thankful for your support thank you very much any discussion from councillors councillor Hanson great thanks and thanks for working on this are there I didn't have time to go much deeper than just the memo when reviewing this so are there specific goals around sustainability metrics like emissions or water use, energy usage that are built into this the goals aren't yet built into this but part of the scope of work of VHB is to help us define those goals to actually implement and reach those goals over the course of time this is also going to be coordinated with some of the efficiency programs are already out there utilizing some of the companies but also working with our city department at BED to help us define and reach define those net zero goals and reach those goals at the airport great that's helpful thank you and do you know if emissions from aviation itself are going to be included in the scope of this we are going to look at emissions from the actual aircraft I assume from the aircraft correct that's a that's a much broader and more complicated part of the project but absolutely going to be defined as part of this just year one of the project this is going to be an annual implementation process great thanks so much and thanks for your work on this this is this is exciting thanks okay anyone else let's see anyone okay we're all set to go to a vote all those in favor please say aye any opposed that carries unanimously thank you very much thank you it brings us to item 6.04 a communication from cd o director brian pine regarding arpa homelessness homeless outreach plan councillor carpenter may please just have a motion on the communication I would move to waive the reading and accept the communication and place it on file here we have a motion from councillor carpenter is there a second seconded by councillor shannon director pine are you able to to join us director on this row thank you so much appreciate it thanks for coming in thank you the record is brian pine director of the community and economic development office and part on this row a director of the economic recovery and the church tree marketplace and we're here as a team tonight because our respective teams are the city folks who will carry out the council's desire to have meaningful interaction with both former residents of sears lane as well as other members of the community who are experiencing homelessness in terms of identifying priorities for use of arpa funds and what we tried to lay out in the memo that was in your packet is what that plan looks like what activities have already taken place and what we're committing to do over the coming weeks and months as the public engagement process progresses I think the only thing I would add is it was pointed out to me that the on the second page at the top of the memo it references the chitin and county homeless alliance and that meeting is occurring in December that meeting actually includes folks with lived experience with homelessness who will be part of that process to give specific feedback to the city in terms of priorities for allocating arpa funds and I think director alaswari can speak more to the the town hall concept and that the survey is really just one tool of gathering public comment and public feedback and I think there may be better and more meaningful opportunities coming in the town hall process so yeah I'm happy to address that um currently for the survey we have over 3500 responses we've done a lot of volunteer outreach and as you know on the survey there's the ability for people to submit their own ideas and thoughts on each subject so it's going to take us some time to process all of those we currently have a town hall tentatively scheduled for the end of January where we can go back to the public with all this feedback that's all to say that we still have time even if the survey closes right now and we through connections with our community partners we still have time to solicit input from our houseless community and put that that input and those ideas on the town hall agenda as well so even if the survey closes so we can process some of that data the idea and the wording that I read in your resolution is that you're wanting the houseless community members input specifically on how to use ARPA funds for houselessness and I think we can go out there with an individual focus on that topic and take that input and bring it to town hall in January okay thank you very much are there questions or comments from councillors Councillor McGee thank you thank you both for providing this update and for the work that you're doing to solicit community feedback on the next steps that we'll take to spend these ARPA dollars my concerns are considering the fact that the emergency assistance that we were able to secure for Sears Lane residents to reside in hotels and motels for the next what was 28 days will be running out near the end of this month and so I don't hear anything in this timeline right now that suggests that we're coming up with a plan for how we're going to serve these folks when that assistance ends and how we can immediately begin to address the series concerns that we have around those vulnerable in our community and especially as temperatures continue to be dropped here so curious to hear if any thought is going into that and if we've got any plans to that effect sure the state of Vermont has just released their criteria for the program that they operate the emergency assistance emergency housing journal assistance program and under that program they used to refer to it as the cold weather exception it's now the adverse weather conditions it's pretty much the same thing so once the temperature falls below a certain level everyone is essentially entitled to a voucher which unfortunately doesn't always guarantee that you're going to actually have a warm bed but it does certainly increase the chances and likelihood that someone who needs a warm bed in a place to stay is going to find one on those nights so there's long periods of the season that we're coming into where that adverse weather condition policy goes into effect and I did confirm with the agency of human services that residents who were who were relocated will be eligible for that so it's a it's really a it's essentially a statewide program to meet a a need that is very much at the state level as far as using ARPA dollars immediately to fund that I'm not sure if that's I think the you know planning around ARPA is really for money that is coming down the pike in june but maybe director on the I mean it's certainly eligible under ARPA I think the thinking is we we would like to preserve a longer public process and look to spend that money to invest rather than spend it as a solution for this winter which I do understand there's you know fear with the cold weather coming however it my feeling is the process around this money is with the community would rather we invest it into a longer-term solution and that takes a little time we don't want to be spending it too much piecemeal we want to have a firmer plan in place with enough public process around it sure thank you and you know I appreciate that that sentiment that we want to use this money as wisely as we can to invest in longer-term solutions but also acknowledge the fact that we have already allocated many of these dollars to backfill things that have already been budgeted for so you know I think we can all acknowledge the immediate need here and hopefully come up with a plan to support folks during this time thank you councillor McGee councillor hightower yeah I have one question and then now I guess I have two questions which is the first is director pine what did the councillor pine just spoke to you know that the task force at committee I forget what you called it would have members of the public who had been previously houseless and I guess I just want to check on how many members that is and that we don't just have like one token voice but that they'll have a good bit of representation on that and then my second question is I think we heard a few organizations note that they would be interested in supporting self-management of folks who are on public land and I think that doesn't just include Sears land but includes a few other public lands around Burlington and so I guess as part of this plan I guess I'd like to hear some understanding of the city's policy on supporting self-management and using ARPA funds for that yeah the answer to the first question folks who lived experience it is more than just one I haven't been to a homeless alliance meeting in some time but it usually has there are usually several members who have lived experience with homelessness but I would also add that our provider partners who work directly with folks who've experienced homelessness and are experiencing that a new place with Champlain Inn and COTS that operates several facilities and for that matter even CHT which isn't operating anything in city limits but has properties elsewhere have all indicated a willingness to either facilitate a visit by somebody to sit down and talk or provide tablets where the survey is fully loaded to fill out the survey if you will so there is an effort to reach folks who are you know actually experiencing homelessness directly so that's the first piece so if I can your second question is really a bigger one I think around what is the city's policy or position I'm dropping mics no on the idea that we would have a self-governed or self-managed facility and I actually I'm not sure that there is a clear easy answer to that question it's a concept that has come up a few times as this process has progressed and it's really an idea that I think should be on the table should be discussed more and I'm not sure other than to say I think it's an interesting idea and I know it has worked in other you know communities especially around you know cooperative living and I know in some perhaps less frigid communities they've actually had self-governed encampments in other areas of the country so it's not a it's not a completely unheard of concept it's just one that hasn't as we like to say it has really been socialized a lot here I know that there's folks who have been talking about it but that is a an idea that I think that you know the administration hasn't had a chance to really discuss and entertain and I don't think the council has really discussed much either so you and I have discussed it but other than that and and a few other folks I haven't had a time to really develop a policy or position on that great um then just to close out my questions with a comment I think thank you for both of those answers and I think on the last one I think it is something that Burlington should consider especially as you know for months biggest city I think it's going to be some amount of time until we at least not in COVID times truly tackle houselessness and so I think that is a solution that I think carries a little bit more financial assistance sustainability than some of the other ones that than other solutions may while still providing access to housing to folks and I think is something yeah that some of the provider communities are interested in and ready to provide potentially so yeah would just encourage us to keep that on the table and I think also preserves a lot more dignity for folks and then I think yeah just in terms of sustainability creates a community around like what how do we want to be and what are the rules around living in this community in ways that are much more like other communities like so just wanted to drop that thank you I'm complete thank you Councillor Hightower I have Councillor Hanson to be followed by Mayor Weinberger great thanks thanks for this and for in case folks don't know I mean this report comes because of the resolution that we passed at our last city council meeting which was indirect response to series lane and the administration's decision to to disband or evict it and there was originally language in the resolution to ask the administration to not disband the encampment that was amended out but what was still in there was this resolve class so it was which was for the administration to collaborate with the residents of series lane as well as other unhoused people to develop a plan for the use of ARPA funds to meet the basic physiological needs of food water warmth and rest and the plan was to be presented here and I still I mean I appreciate this process and this this broad outreach and work to get at the city's response to houselessness and I support that but I think in addition to that I do feel that what this resolve clause was really about and what we're responding to is this very immediate and acute need particularly one that the city is actively sort of creating by displacing people from the only housing that they have at series lane and there's still folks living down there who don't know what they're going to do and then even the people who were relocated from series lanes series lane to motels don't know what they're going to do when the 28 days are up as councillor McGee had said and I think the idea with this in terms of collaborating with the residents to provide this I I'm still concerned that we're not there yet and I haven't heard how the administration is collaborating with series lane residents and other folks to meet that very immediate need I can appreciate that the state has some safety net for extreme weather conditions but you know as director Pine said that's not always a guarantee but also any night that doesn't meet that criteria these people still don't really have a place to go so what what is the administration doing to collaborate with series lane residents to ensure that they have a place to stay when at the end of these 28 days our efforts have been this is a booby trap here I'm calling for it twice our efforts have really been to work with the agency of human services department for children and families along with to provide funding to the cvoio Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity to fund outreach workers who are engaged in a direct way with every every resident of series lane unless they are unwilling and they're unwilling to to work with them so that you have to be at least willing and in that case everyone has been accommodated in one way or another and what I I'm not going to say that the that the outcome for every single resident is going to be figured out and that their plan could be developed for every resident over the last two weeks to use ARPA funds to accommodate every resident I don't I'm not sure that that is actually achievable and I hate to say it but I I don't want your expectations to be that we can actually do it when in fact we can do what we can do as you know the city doesn't actually provide housing and doesn't provide direct services so we're working with our partners the best we can and I think the process going forward will be to make sure that the state can honor their commitment to those who are houseless and experiencing houselessness during the winter and gets a this point that's really the that's what that's the tool we have in our toolbox we don't have you know beyond that we have providing you all prove funding for a daytime warming center which is a really important facility because during the day all of our shelters are closed people who actually live in the shelter at night have to be somewhere during the day and so that's a it's a recent decision you all made to continue the daytime warming center from last year so there's a I think it's a recognition that as a small city with limited capacity and limited resources we are trying our best to deal with an incredibly difficult situation and the partners at the state are certainly helping where they can but I'm not going to pretend that this is completely worked out Thanks for that I think we because the city is taking this active action around Sierra's Lane I do think we need to step up more on this and I I think we're I think I have the right to finish my thoughts on this. The city is taking active action that is displacing people. I think the city needs to step up more to provide for those individuals. And CVOEO and mutual aid organizations, other volunteers are trying to step in and do that work. And CVOEO and others have made clear that they don't support the removal and they would welcome an opportunity to help with self-management. So I want to see us leaning into that. I want to see us using the ARPA resources that we have to try to address this harm.