 Welcome, everyone, to the award six NPA October meeting. My name is Michelle Maraz. I'm on the steering committee for the NPA. I'm joined by fellow steering committee members Nelson Martel and Matt Grady. To start our meeting, we will hold a public forum. This is an opportunity for folks who would like to bring up any topic that's important to them on their minds at this point. So if you have a public comment topic, feel free to chime in now. Okay, I don't see any any hands. Okay, so what we're going to do is just dive into our first agenda item. And that is our panel discussion about the size and the role of the Burlington Police Department. And our panelists for this conversation are Ward Six counselor Karen Paul, South District City counselor Joan Shannon, Officer Oren Byrne, who is Vice President of the Burlington Police Officers Association, Lieutenant Mai Nguyen, and Police Commissioner Milo Grant. And just to frame this conversation for everyone, what we're going to do is we earned ourselves a little extra time because of the public comment period not consuming any time. So what we're going to do is give each panelist four minutes at the top of this discussion to discuss or to explain specifically do they see a change in crime rates in Burlington based on their sources and do they connect that change to the reduced policing levels that we currently have? The second part of their comments will address what they see as the optimum or ideal makeup of the police force in terms of the numbers of police officers and their roles. So essentially what is your ideal police force? So I'm just going to start at the top of my list and go down. And so Karen Paul, if you could talk to us about how you see crime rates, policing levels, and your vision for the police force going forward. Yeah, Michelle I'm sort of chasing a dog around. I did not hear what you had started with. Maybe you could just, you know, I think most people are probably interested in hearing what the police officers have to say and thought maybe it would be okay if we could start with them. I apologize. I didn't hear the beginning of that. So we will, I'm actually just going to go down my list. So Joan if you're prepared to talk on those points that would be great. We want to hear from our counselors as well as the police officers. Thank you for holding this forum. I think it's it's great to have the opportunity to have this discussion. I wish I had some magic answers to to offer but in terms of increased crime I would say yes I am you know just gauging by constituent reports from Porch Forum and my own experience I would say that crime is up. The police force when they're showing their you know tests is improving as opposed to reducing the police force and then hoping for the best so that's my idea of vision for the police force kind of reduce when we know it's safe and and we have that ability. That's great. So just one technical issue. I don't know where your microphone is but before my speaks I'm wondering if you folks can get closely to your mic just because it's a bit garbled. Yeah. So a closer mic will I think help our situation. Yes he's both. He represents a union and he's a good office lawyer. She'll be she'll be kind of with a microphone as well. Also the problem the system is why I can't hear you and you're also contending about a couple of questions here too. So in terms of our next panelist I would like to turn to Milo are you ready Milo to go ahead. Yes I am thank you. I'm taking the question about increase in crime. I guess it really depends on people's personal experience life experiences and also where they live in the city because we're police differently in the city of some people live in areas where they have quite frankly learned to put up with certain stuff so they have a higher tolerance or they take extra steps that some people might not take in another part of the city because they never felt the need to. Going back to the example of bikes bikes have rampant bike theft has been an issue in the city of Burlington for decades and there's nothing really preventative that the department can do other than encourage people to register bikes so they can be returned if they're found. What is new is that due to the increasing popularity of e-bikes and you also need charters for e-bikes those are now getting stolen but bike theft overall has always been an issue so there's certain things that have quite frankly always been an issue. Increase vandalism with cars even before the cap was changed this was already increasing these crimes of opportunity and I think these crimes of opportunity are related to something that I do feel is been an increasing problem is that we have a severe drug problem in this city. There are more quote-unquote trap houses and I'm trying to work with some people in my community about what can we do where the community is actively assisting the department in terms of building a case but I think there is definitely increased drug activity and the the appetite for drugs in our community is bringing people in our community to sell. I think people not reporting gunshots is not that they don't care I think the issue with fireworks going off so frequently people just don't know if it's a firework or a gunshot I don't think I think if people could say for sure it was a gunshot as opposed to the fireworks that go off in a lot of areas of the city that they would that they would report it so I definitely have heard people mention things like that oh that was a shooting oh I thought it could have been fireworks because we've been having fireworks issues for a while now and that's actually a national issue I don't know it's related to the pandemic but it's part of these behaviors increase in violent crime nationally increase in murder rates nationally you know we are seeing some of those trends as well so I I think regarding some things people are overreacting and need to take steps more preventative steps but with some cases related to drug activity use in homes use near schools issues around the parks that's always been there I I so Milo you have about 45 seconds health and it's all if you could all yeah you have about 40 well 40 seconds left I'd love to hear what your vision is oh okay I'm sorry I didn't really sign with flying that pass um I would say I would the conversation around the number police officers I would leave to other people I am more concerned about having an integrated public safety that incorporates a cahoots model that incorporates the CSL's that incorporates the CSO's I think the uh changing cap was kind of a shock to the system for sure but I think it's may it's dragged some people into conversations that they did not want to participate in I have heard a lot where people said this wasn't discussed that's actually not true there was a lot of discussion but people didn't want to participate thank you okay thanks so much uh Karen I'd like to bounce to you if you'd like to share your thoughts on the three points we discussed um okay uh yeah so um as far as um what was the first what is the first question is what have I heard or what right your perception of crime rates have they changed and based on the sources you refer to has have crime rates changed do you link that to policing levels and then thirdly what is your vision for the police force um okay well you know obviously anything that I've heard as far as crime levels is anecdotal on in terms of the number of people that have reached out to me or things that I have seen on front porch forum um I think the the reduction in the number of officers is certainly heightened people's awareness of you know what the police do what they can respond to what they um how they prioritize things um and so you know yes there have been a number of posts on front porch forum about you know bicycles and you know different kinds of vandalism or you know people who have gone through you know rifling through cars on you know whether or not the cars doors are unlocked or not unlocked um and you know that is concerning to people I mean anything that is a violation of your personal space is of course concerning to people um uh so you know and as far as the data is concerned I mean I think that's sort of a bit of a mixed bag is you know as Orrin has said you know they not all of the things that we are looking for in terms of how crimes or incidents are how incidents and how they are responded to are categorized are not necessarily as helpful as perhaps they could be um for example I mean we know that mental health calls are um are dramatically up it's also how are they how are they categorized when um you know when they're reported and then when the officer fills out the paperwork that they need to fill out um as far as the as far as the other answer because I know I'm only limited to four minutes um I I think that just as many my experience has been in war and six that just as many people as there are who have reached out to me with concerns about the reduction in officers um uh there are also a number that have reached out to me very hopeful that this can be a time of transformation in our way that we police um the as Milo had meant has mentioned and the police commission has done a tremendous amount of work on to uh you know in with with NACOL to uh encourage CSL CSOs and what is really exciting is the Kahootz model that you know is now going to be out to an RFP on and will really I believe you know change how we respond to mental health calls um Karen I'm going to interrupt you for a second you know as far as the the number of officers the only thing I can say about that is that I have always always advocated and wrote the resolution to create an airport police division the airport police should not count as patrol officers because that is not what they do they rotate in and out but it's still the same number and I think those are the kinds of conversations that we will begin to have so that um we right size our police force but are also cognizant of the fact that not all officers are out on Burlington streets on patrolling or supervising on so I hope that's probably my that's probably my four minutes so I'll it is your four minutes I'll let it go with that that was perfect timing Karen can you hear me can you hear me yes okay that actually that timing was perfect I would like someone to just anyone can chime in what is a CFL or a CSO we are lay people most of us and it would be helpful to know what those acronyms represent so um I'm gonna probably get it wrong but I'll give it a try one of them is community um let's see community uh service officers um and the other is on community support liaisons and I don't think one of the C's is community and we tend to get them confused because they are so close um but I'm sure Milo I'm sure would know okay well I'm you can correct me because I don't think I have one of them right okay well we can come back to that but it sounds like a type of officer maybe in a special role that's not well they're non they're non-sworn they're non-sworn officers Michelle okay all right that's helpful to know so are I'm sorry if I may um one is more um geared toward mental health issues and working directly uh taking calls um assisting police if necessary the other is more for things like if there's a traffic accident and it's just a quote unquote fender bender do you need a sworn officer you know putting that report together that insurance companies require that's great another type of personnel that's being looked at are park rangers which I think are going to be really helpful and we have a lot of issues with the beaches with people doing fires late at night a lot of that's been going on also so Milo I actually have to stop you to make sure that we have time for our next speaker parks around town having park rangers so looking at different personnel types of personnel that are not actually sworn officers that will compliment uh police for an overall public safety system thank you okay thanks Milo I appreciate that I just want to make sure that we have time for my win lieutenant my win is our last panelist to take this individual time and um my why don't you go ahead and respond to those issues about crime rates connection to policing levels and your vision for the police force um are you able to share my uh yes we have a yep we have a spreadsheet that we're going to put up for everyone to view and Kirsten Wilson is working on that right now okay Mai take it away um Michelle contacted me on October 4th wondering if I can you know speak on this uh so I created this uh spreadsheet by Duke and I put the search how I did the search in there um Berlton call tap start day and end date so we started from January 1st 2017 all the way to 2020 21 and we end each of the search day on October 4th because that's the day that uh Michelle contacted me it wouldn't be fair to search it by the whole and entire year because this year has yet but this is the data that we gather if you look on top those are the total calls so as you can see uh 2021 we're only at 16,636 2020 we were at 18,923 2019 we're you know about 22,000, 2018 23,000, 2017, 26,000 so over the years the number of calls went down however if you look at the data that I present right there the crime rate the homicide or assault is up simple assault is somewhat down but not quite robberies down reckless endangerment which is shootings pretty much that what that is is way up now some some incident I categorize that because you know if you shoot somebody and you have a victim it's an aggravated aggravated assault so reckless endangerment it's up a 10 disturbance way up it's 722 so far this year the most important rise is the uh property crimes burglary is way up we're at 143 last year we're at 82 stolen vehicle is that we're at 94 last year we're at 50 people breaking into into cards 407 last year we're at 250 people stealing from houses 151 so we're up largely for person like you know somebody snatched your purse stuff like that is up last year we're at five this year at 16 stolen bikes stuff like that 253 and you know people breaking windows flashing tire keen card we're at 264 compared to 189 of last year drugs we're at 445 last year at 51 and I'll explain why overdoses are way up we're 104 last year at 72 and as you see 2019 2018 and 2017 they're quite lower like 38 43 and 54 um if you look down to car stop or stuff like that as much I have enough uh you know people to walk on foot so we're down at 218 community outreach is down 247 suspicious event is down is 1504 now those are in general the incidents where the officer are proactive they go out they do stuff they find stuff to do when you stop the car you can find drugs in the car you can find guns in the car people want to end in the car people are drunk you know that's where you have DUI so when people say crime is down because the incident number is down that's not true it just we don't have the resources to deal with them and um as you can see probably crime the way up part of that is the reason being is that back in 2017 we created a street crime unit to deal with like you know burglary car breaks you know people flashing your tires stuff like that uh due to our staffing changes we have to expand that you know before it was a four officer and one sergeant and eventually we break it down to one officer and one sergeant and now we have zero eventually we're gonna have to probably get rid of the domestic violent unit as well which right now we don't we don't have one but as our number continue to drop we just don't have the resources to you know staff these uh position because you know not one call keep still comes in and any given time an officer is on a call there's three four more calls are stacked waiting for them so that's the issue that we have we just go call to call to call we're just kind of reducing being call takers right now which we don't even have time to you know sit down write our reports and stuff like that which you know it's uh you know last tour i woke night shift and it was normal for me to work 15 to 18 hours every day that was normal um we have an officer working a long shift drove home and fell asleep behind the wheel and crashed his car i mean i i can tell you last tour when i woke night shift i was driving home at you know sometimes eam in the morning my shift ends at two sometimes i don't go home to like eight nine ten um in the morning and as i'm driving home i'm literally having windows down the ac is up and i'm slapping my my myself as i'm driving so i don't crash um that's the issue that we have is that we just don't have enough staffing right now and the number is going to continue to go down um you know people that are looking to leave right now and unfortunately we can't stop them so um the number just going to go away now and i just don't know how we so my thank you that was something so my thank you for giving us that information what's the unit of measure are we talking incidents just one sec so we're going to now take comments and questions from participants so um i trust one of our people is looking for raised i'm not actually sure how this works on this webinar but we do have someone in person who has a question and we'll go to that and then if other folks want to chime in please do okay peter what's the unit of measure are we talking police interactions are we talking interventions arrests prosecutions i don't know the unit of measure are you referring to the data yeah so my can you respond to that so these are just calls that we know you you know like if somebody committed a robbery do we lock them on as a robbery um so these are just called us a lock into our system when someone called the police and we go to it so they're individual calls okay yeah amanda is with us in person and has a comment or question yeah i i think i'm concerned in reading the cna report that we're realizing now that we we need more specialization uh in mental health in in response to to substance use disorder but we're we're taking away that specialization within the police department um particularly in the domestic violence unit um or the domestic violence prevention or officer and in qc um we're talking about reducing the number of officers that we send there those are those are crimes that are particularly sensitive um for domestic violence they're often repeat events uh it's it's nice to have actual community policing which at least the the investigating officer is going to be the same person so i know i'm going to go to the map for those positions i want to know with the cna report anyone that can answer the top tier of of the range uh in the cna report is that assuming that we keep those positions or is the top tier assuming that we are not including those positions per their recommendation i believe that the top the the top tier number 88 included the domestic violence officer and full staffing for kuzi and the lower number 85 reduced the staffing for kuzi eliminated the domestic violence officer but my read of it was that those numbers also were with an assumption of 12 hour shifts which we don't have and they put a lot of emphasis on getting efficiencies through 12 hour shifts which is a that would have to be negotiated with with the union and i think really discussed by the public and multiple bodies to determine um because while they push for that they also said there is no best practice whether it's eight 10 or 12 hour shifts. Thanks Joan um Meg McGovern has her hand up and then Wedge has their hand up so we'll go in that order and then Milo you can comment after that so Meg if you want to thank you go ahead oh sorry it's okay thank you all great to see everyone i was just curious if there was a way to split off um what how many events happened in ward six or the south end specifically 27 Sears Lane or a new place on Shelburne Road if that's something that we are able to focus on since we all live in those neighborhoods yeah we can pull the valve for data that shows how many incidents have occurred at Sears Lane and how many incidents have occurred at a new place very easily um just just for the record new place is not in ward six a new place is in ward five and Sears Lane is also in ward five no i understand what Joan is speaking so she i think she represents that area so i was just curious about information but so thank you for the answer i appreciate that yeah and i would say that we certainly hear from people who live across Shelburne Road um from ward six about particularly about a new place but also um a lot of business owners in the Sears Lane vicinity live in ward six as well great so well the only the only reason i mentioned that is just simply that if we're looking for data just for ward six we'd have to include if you want that information we'd have to include that but that would not be that would be separate from just isolating ward six that's all thanks Karen thanks Joan wedge yeah thank you can you hear me yes okay uh the wedge stands for walter judge so i'm at 99 cliff street thanks for for recognizing me um i was dumbstruck by the uh amazing jump in the property crimes category um in all or most of those instances it looked like almost a doubling um over the prior year um and of course i'm attuned to that because um uh a week and a half ago i was a victim of a property crime myself my car on cliff street was broken into um and uh having lived in burlington for four years and worked in burlington for 30 um that was the first time i've ever had a property crime perpetrated on me um so i i questioned and i have not reported it to the police yet um uh in part because um i'm just a little bit despondent about whether or not it makes any difference other than changing the statistics a tiny bit um i know that nothing's going to happen about the fact that my car was broken into uh and i wonder if the the statistics on property crime that you know are amazingly as doubled as they were are still under reported because people like me believe that um it makes no difference whether i reported or not nothing's going to happen um and uh just to respond to the uh to a to a previous speaker i have to say that hearing that well we've always had car break-ins and things like that is not really much solace to me when i'm thinking about whether or not we have enough police officers in the city of burlington um when my car when i'm a victim of a property crime for the first time um and hopefully not again anytime soon uh and and the perception is out there that well there aren't enough officers then the answer is we need more police officers and not um being told that oh well we've always had property crimes so don't worry about it that's my comment thank you okay thank you so um milo i know you had your hand up but i want to hear from some folks who haven't spoken yet so uh tiff bloomy had her hand up and then jevin and then kory tiff do you want to share your comments yeah hi tiff bloomy um uh from chitin six five and house of refs i'm i'm concerned about and you said um uh actually milo you had said that there was an rfp that was going out for the cahoots model um a a cahoots type program here and given what i know about the mental health capacity in the state and and in burlington i'm just wondering if there's any concern that the police commission has about the ability to um satisfy um you know the the that program whether whether there is any organization that has the ability um to run it what is cahoots uh it is a program that actually started out in um uh organ and it it has a 30-year history and it is a means of um using mental health professionals to address a lot of um incidents that police would normally um attend to and there's a whole kind of separate what's the word uh you know it they're called first to um a scene and they they are asked to address it anyway it's a it's been very well um documented and reviewed and i know it's something that's of great interest to um a lot of people in the city it's been they've there've been a couple of meetings about it okay so i think there was a question there was it just do we have the capacity here okay and milo if you can respond as quickly as possible to that and then we have devin and quarry with hands up we want to hear from sure i want to clarify something that i said earlier i i i didn't say that you know people shouldn't worry about it i said that perception is different based on people's personal experiences and where they live in the city um and that is an issue with certain crime like bike theft that has been with us for a very long time and increasing the number of police officers may not directly affect a crime like that and drugs are a huge issue and drugs i believe are the source of why we see all these crimes of opportunity people breaking in and trying to break into homes we will try to break into cars looking for things of values so they can get a fix etc hoots i think is a fantastic idea this is a model that is being looked at across the country it has been hugely successful after you have it an initial investment it saves a lot of money when it becomes become part of an overall public safety system now do we have the resources that's a very good question we know for a fact that our society cut back on mental health funding and we are really paying for it now we are really paying for it now the people that are in the mental health field do amazing work but they are underpaid they are underpaid so sometimes there's a lot of turnover so that that will be part of it the Howard center will certainly be involved in some way there would be coordination with the CSL's you know but that is part of the the the process to to put this all together once funding goes through for anyone who would like information please feel free to email me i can send you a couple of articles on cahoots so they have an idea of how it's worked out in Oregon and also sends you links to the presentation there was a presentation at a commission meeting and also there's a document that summarizes that presentation and i'm happy to send that to anyone who would like and my email address is on the city's website great thank you milo so folks we have decided there is interest in this topic from our participants we're going to continue for another little bit here to make sure we can hear from those who want to speak it's going to delay our other agenda items my apologies to the presenters on those items Karen i can see you're interested in jumping in but i do want to just hear from Devon first and then come back to you thank you first of all i applaud the city and the police commission and the city council for looking at this issue because it certainly is complicated reimagining public safety i think is a very noble goal so my my guess my struggle is a year and a half ago a decision was made to drop the police force by 30 percent the process there at that time it did not appear that there were the right rfps and steps in place to ensure a sort of continued baseline of public safety i think the you know comments from some of the panelists crime rates you know drop the numbers in the police force kind of support that conclusion the the the statement was made that no changes can be made until we have this you know cna report that was just released now that we have that that report and those findings are there and that report does support that the you know number of officers on the police department should be raised what is the plan from the city and the police commission to address that and you know build bridges towards the burlington police department and start to raise that officer level again thanks devin karen do you want to respond to that um yeah i would but first i just want to explain that the cahoots program stands for crisis assistance helping out on the streets it's a mobile crisis intervention program that started in 1989 in eugene oregon as a collaboration between the white bird clinic and the city of eugene there are this came to burlington as a result of citizens this did not come from city hall this came from citizens who are very very interested in bringing this forward and they had um they have done a tremendous amount of work on this it's a group of parents who have been impacted by mental crisis mostly from their children and um uh there is an rfp on bob bick has been involved in that rfp we've had a number of meetings about this and the rfp is going uh is going out very very shortly um with and there and there is the capacity i think it was tiff who asked there is the capacity for that there is a significant amount of interest it may not come from all from one organization but i think that uh you know as far as funding the city has allotted 400 000 dollars for it um there is the hope of getting more from the hospital as well as from the state the state got a lot of money for mental health and we're hoping to tap into that as well there will be a resolution on creating a mental health summit on that will happen probably uh either at the very end of this year or in january of 2022 um as far as the answer to the question the city council just recently passed unanimously a recruitment and retention plan on ten thousand dollars to each officer who stays for one year as well as a recruitment effort to um you know to recruit officers um so i think there's a lot of things that are going on that you know what devin had asked um what the plan is for that um you know it's a multifaceted approach to building the um the number of police officers but you know this is this is not something that's going to happen overnight it is going to take time and as we do that we are hoping to be able to um uh attract as we talked about the csls and cso's to respond to many of the incidents that that's foreign officers are responding to now um and quite honestly you know there are probably you know better uses of their time um to respond to incidents that we really need them to respond to so sorry i'll be quiet now okay karen thanks for for going so kori and hans i've been told that we have time for one more question but i'm wondering if you two could say them your questions quickly so we could get two for one well i mean this is kori i can i can do kori and then hans essentially um just so you guys know i live in uh word six and i own my own business in word five um and my question is sort of dovetails on what devin was saying um he kind of took the words out of my mouth so i'll be i'll be fairly quick i've seen you know crime anecdotally as well as karen said across the board going up 100 um i won't get into the details uh for the sake of time but you know as the as as we all know the the force was cut that's cool whatever that's that's a decision that was made at the time i'll support all the decisions that were made um but what we need to try to figure out is like what are we doing now there's been a lot of rfp talk there's been a lot of symposiums and organizations and we're going to overthink it and it seems like a bit of paralysis by analysis so like what can we do now because as a business owner that's being impacted both financially um and just mostly financially having my business across the street from what is now the encampment on in the south end what are we doing now and i know that like you sort of answered that but i guess it's it's maybe less of a question and it's more like we need to like do something because we've we've had the time to think about this we're being a little wishy washy i mean we've needed to give money to this i mean the kahootz organization it's a it's a lot bigger of an organization but it has a 1.8 million dollar budget and 176 employees 176 thousand excuse me well korey thank you for the population the city of of Eugene sorry okay that's okay we need to do it and we need to do something because there's definitely paralysis by analysis and it's just it's not working out because life is continuing to go on and life is continuing continuing to be impacted in a really okay thanks korey i'm going to steer now to hans if you could make your comment as concisely as possible yeah thank you but my name is hans fenwies i live in ward six and i feel we're still not addressing the issue um and first of all i i i am very appreciative of the officers that are here tonight and that put themselves in in in the age for protecting us um the uh with the reduction in police force let me first make clear i fully understand kahootz and the other programs i think it's indeed the direction to go but what we did do is we quickly defunded the police department and i'll give you just one example i know it was brought up earlier that some of these crimes have shifted the neighborhoods and are interpreted in different ways i live in a neighborhood where we were dealing with a drug dealing on the corner of the street where there are six families living with about 15 children that play on the street between finding needles and uh but seeing active drug action taking place and many of us actively reporting to the police and then finding out being told like i'm sorry to our 10 coals that are more important than the moment we cannot act to this and you're standing there and you see the you see the transaction taking place it's happening in front of you and your children and there is no the police cannot respond that isn't furiating that's that that is that is like a century ago so i i i have completely support these programs but i am asking the city council to take action follow the recommendations now that they're out and increase the police force and give the citizens and the residents of burlington a sense that some action is being taken and and again i fully support the other programs but they're not off the ground there's two mental health workers that were hired you know where they came from the Howard Center i work for a business downtown that relies significantly on the Howard Center outreach program that program is overburdened these people do tremendous jobs i have the greatest respect for them they cannot handle them i know shopkeepers that are dealing with people shooting out the front of the street in their in their shop urinating in their building on and on open container loss it's it feels like a lawless society and when you live in a neighborhood here and you have direct dealing taking place and you call the police repeatedly and they can't come and i say there was a problem we we reduced this force too much we still need a baseline and all the others devon quarry wherever it was the owners called mentioned that and so thank you for your time but i i i feel like we've gone too far and we need to take action and i look at this city council to pass a resolution to first of all bring that police come back to a base because it's going to take a year to get there and it's going to get a year two years three years to fill the groups programs and the other program and the other programs because we're in a very labor short market right now if we think we can just have i'm going to have to i'm going to have to ask you to wipe to wrap it up thank you i appreciate you're sharing that one of the things that we have and one of the things i have in front of me right now is tiff and gabrielle our representatives from our one of our ward five ward six districts have donated their 15 minutes to this issue if folks would like to continue now i don't want to make a unilateral decision from the steering committee for the steering committee but if our other presenters could just sit tight and what i would like to do is take tiff and gabrielle's time and allow the folks with raised hands to speak again i'm going to limit you to four minutes jone melo and karen thank you tiff and gabrielle and michelle i wanted to just speak briefly to the cahoots program which i think is awesome and i fully support bringing that to burlington but i want to note that when the cahoots model was implemented in Eugene the police were not defunded the police recognized the defunding of mental health which we have we've been suffering from for decades and it really got a lot worse after the waterbury facility was flooded in the 2011 floods and it was it was really bad before that but it's worse now and so we've had actually the same number of police when i came on the council in 2003 we were i believe the cap them was 105 and so that number has remained steady as the police have been the ones left to handle the mental health care crisis and they shouldn't be and that's where something like cahoots can really really come in and deal with it so much better so i support that i also am trying to bring forward a resolution that i hope will be acted on october 18th to raise the police cap to the 88 which includes the domestic violence officer and the koozie officers it doesn't take into account the 12 hour shifts but honestly we're able to hire police right now and really what this would do would be send a message to those we're trying to hire that we are going to be funding our police in a way that there will be people who have their back they're not going to be enforced over time you know indefinitely as um is the case now uh people are really overworked and we need to do all we can to attract people and i think raising the cap is um essential to that thank you joan i appreciate that before we go to milo i am going to be the acronym police and ask joan to just spell out speak out koozie i think it has something to do with special crimes yeah that's me that uh chinden unit for special investigations or something that's coming out of my brain and i'm not even in this business but okay okay i hope folks heard that it's like a special unit okay and karen's saying yes okay i think milo was up next is that correct or was it karen milo are you there uh yes i'm here thank you um so i heard loud and clear the discussion about the open dealing going on in residential areas i've been working with some individuals in ward three who have had a problem actually that's been going on for three years and is now escalated to the point where we're pretty sure some serious trafficking is going on there given what they're reporting with regards to out-of-state cars showing up in certain numbers during certain times of the day and just trying to say to the police department what can the community do to help you make a case or help make it federal so the feds come in and do an investigation and the police commission at our last meeting we made a request of the police department that they do a presentation to address those questions because it is something that we are hearing about and as opposed to being told like we don't have the time to respond we can't help you uh well what did you think based on where you live without whoops i think we lost audio for you milo all right so um did i or and did you want to say something so you might not be able to see me but can you hear me better karen i'm going to put you on pause just for a sec because it sounds like joe is coming in to say something is that right you better yeah um so i'm actually an narcotics detective currently um and i think it doesn't really get talked about a lot for what the narcotics unit looks like currently but due to the defunding there's two narcotics detectives and one sergeant in that unit right now for the entire city to handle all narcotics investigations i'm one of those detectives i have a full caseload so does my partner and our sergeant assists us in every way that he can i feel a lot of your complaints when it comes to the tip line i'm actually the one that runs the tip line and we get all your complaints and your tips the problem is is that i can only take on so many cases and soak in my partner due to the defunding and not having we used to have a four officers in the drug unit as well as a sergeant and we had a full street crime unit which was also another three to four officers and a sergeant we were able to handle narcotics investigations much more much more narcotics investigations in general um so that's the issue right now that we're running into we don't have the resources to keep up with the drug information as well as the drugs uh the drug issues in the in the city um so that's that's the biggest issue we're running into so raising the cap yeah that would that would mean a lot to us and it would also help us be able to fill the specialized units to actually handle these calls the reason a lot of times when you call you get a police officer you get dispensable to the police officers can't come is because they're tied up on other things yes but also some of those things require length investigations that may last a month two months three months until we can actually act to have a big enough case to move forward with that stuff so unfortunately some of that does come down to the fact that it takes time to get through these investigations to build a big enough case to actually criminally prosecute the people that need to be prosecuted but also it comes out of the fact that we don't have the manpower right now due to the due to the defunding to fill our specialized units the specialized units were bigger but then once we lost officers they became smaller smaller and smaller and unfortunately there is talk of the drug unit disappearing by next year if we don't start filling our numbers back up thank you joe i appreciate your chiming in there um it's good to have that perspective karen we just have like three minutes left if you could respond with your comments that part i i'm happy to michelle but the thing is if there are other questions i'd rather give residents the opportunity to speak okay thank you karen so susanne would you hop in please and you have just two and a half minutes sorry we've pushed our other presenters about as far as we can thank you so much i just want to say i appreciate that there's a lot of common thinking happening here i think the area six or ward six residents want to fund the police they want us to have you know community protection and we want to protect citizens who have mental health issues as well i'm hearing a lot of um agreement and i'm not hearing a lot of solutions and i want to know from our representatives how can residents who believe we should be funding the police more uh we should be funding all these programs more speak up in other forums besides their local neighborhood where they're in agreement with their neighbors and how do we um you know collaborate with people in other parts of burlington who may have a different perspective so that we're not um dividing our city but we're working together okay karen one minute and i'm sorry to be so time sensitive but we have we didn't anticipate quite this much activity so go for it no problem so the question that you just asked susanne is the same question that two other people have asked me today um and one of them is actually on this on this uh as well on there is um as jones mentioned they're what they're there may will be a resolution to talk about we're increasing the um the authorized uh head count at the next our next council meeting which is october 18th um you know please keep in mind that we are two of 12 um and my suggestion um and joe may have a different perspective but my suggestion is that um uh city council at burlington vt.gov is the way to reach all city counselors at the same time you send us an email it goes to each of us um we read our emails you can send them separately by going on the city website um at the next meeting we will have the hybrid model so that you can um participate in public forum via zoom that is in the final stages of being um implemented and it's hope that we'll have it for the next meeting and conversations phone calls to other city counselors outside of ward six on is always very helpful on you know we are uh you know there are 12 different perspectives on this issue and in order for us to be able to increase the officer head count um we need to develop broad consensus among our colleagues and i think that is incredibly important not only because yes we need that in order to enact a resolution but i think we also need that so that we can begin building trust um and building collaboration um so that there is we are sending a clear message such as the one that we did with the unanimous support for the recruitment and retention plan that's great Karen thank you so much uh Joan i'm going to actually Joan i'm going to ask you to put you on pause you have a slot coming up it's your city council update i'm going to let you speak to whatever it is you've got on your mind at that point but what we have done is very uncharacteristic for our npa which is just kind of like let time unspool in a way it never has before and i'd want to just thank everyone who showed up to discuss this issue for their participation especially our panelists but everyone else who has shown up to listen and to ask questions thank you very much so we have to just go right into our voter redistricting topic and our panelists for that are not panelists our participants for that um consist of Rama coacher Lakota he is our ward six representative to the ad hoc committee on redistricting and then Karen Paul you're not going to we're not going to let you go anywhere you're going to stay right there so folks if you want to just make that transition from policing to redistricting please sit tight and listen to our presenters thank you um i as Michelle said i'm the representative from ward six to the ad hoc committee on redistricting as you probably know every 10 years there's a census in the united states and after the census um there's re-evaluation of how all the electoral districts are set and the committee that i'm on is helping to gather input so the city council can make recommendations for the redistricting of the city council wards in districts in Burlington so i have a a short presentation that i put together um oh i cannot screen i cannot share my screen okay you should be able to know i will tell you about it i'm sorry i would try again now perfect okay thank you now my computer won't let me do it there we go soon excuse me i'm sorry this is taking longer than it should um if you want to just talk your way through your presentation to start please feel free to do that i may have to talk about my computer's misbehaving so let me just tell you what's going on uh so so the the committee is going to be holding um some public meetings where input is taken we don't make any decisions about the redistricting we provide a report to city council about the input so the committee will help get the council gather input on general perspectives on the number of councilors wards in districts and options about current and most recent ward plans the redistricting process so we're going to be gathering this input and then we're going to be passing that information to uh city council um hopefully by november 8th um council will then use the ad hoc committee report to provide specific guidance to a mapping specialist who will provide a map to the council by december 13th and the goal is to have a map consideration by voters on the march 2022 ballot um after that it burlington unlike most cities or towns of Vermont the map is part of the charter so it actually has to be there has to be a change to the charter which it has to go to Montpelier to be approved so it takes a while um so redistricting um each district has the most important factor here is each district should have um approximately the same number of people in it as other districts not voters people um in so it has to be within 10 percent according to the guidelines we were given uh the territory should be contiguous you can't just you know plot to uh sections of the city that are remote from each other and say that's one um one ward that's not okay cannot separate on the basic race that's your religion um the less what they're describing as they should have maintain existing political subdivision lines uh honor natural and historic boundary lines uh respect for communities of interest um provides uh small districts meaningful representation and the use of census blocks for groups of houses and apartment buildings uh in 2010 i'm not going to go through all this uh they're just throw a lot of things that they looked at in 2010 again the main thing was the overall deviation in population of the wards of the um of the words to be less than 10 percent um additional considerations for 2021 people are curious what do we want to keep the same number of wards we want to also have districts like we do now should areas of large student population be kept together broken up into multiple wards um if we want to keep neighborhoods intact um do we want to have that large city counselors multiple representatives per ward so these are questions that are that city council is interested in having input on so if people have input they should get it to me um i have some graphs here that i can't show but basically the population this gets increased slightly over since over since 2010 in the last census was held uh population of ward six has increased more than the other wards except for maybe ward one which means that ward six will probably get shrunk um we need um so the the wards that are large now are going to have to be reduced in size that's ward one ward six and ward eight and some of the other wards will be picking up a lot more population um another graph the same message okay so the ad hoc committee will be holding open meetings for public input we were hoping to have three meetings one in each of the south north and central parts of the city but this is somewhat left in the air because of scheduling constraints um if you have any input for me please email me as your ward six representative um i know i have a really complicated name to to um spell and pronounce but um my email address is just my first name followed by my last name no punctuation rama coacher Lakota at gmail.com um and i i did have a posting on front porch forum uh uh i don't know maybe yet oh we can go something like that uh matt grady um posted it more widely um so a soliciting feedback uh on redistricting and um so you if you scroll back in the old front porch forums you should see a posting from matt titled soliciting input on redistricting and my email address is in there and just to make it quite clear i'm not an elect official um my role in this is just an impartial conduit for your input so um if you have any feedback if you have any information on how this process should be run if you have any feedback on what uh how the redistricting should what we should end up with um in the end with redistricting please email me let me know what you have in mind and then do people have any questions well thank you rama for that explanation of your work on the ad hoc committee karen i don't know if you are nodding in response to rama or if you want to say something or you're listening to some music that we can't hear no i'm i'm i'm actually just uh like in awe of the fact that um everything that rama said is exactly what we had hoped on when the resolution was written was defined just simply citizens who are interested in serving on the ad hoc committee on by resolution no formerly elected or currently elected officials are on the ad hoc committee the idea is for them to just simply be soliciting input and the only thing i'll just say is that this is really important on you know if you have an opinion about on you know how we are divide how we are divided do you like the ward district system on you know five years ago we only had districts and we only had wards do you prefer that do you prefer on you know uh you know some cities have at large as opposed to by ward on or by district those are important questions and we only get to do this once every 10 years so you know this is this is a pretty big deal and you know now is the time if you do have suggestions or input on your input absolutely is valued on whatever we get from the ad hoc committee in in terms of a report that is going to guide the city council and then we are going to be giving that information to the city's marketing specialist to come up with a map for for redistricting which will then of course go be approved by the council and then will become a charter would be on the ballot as a charter change so that's all i i thank you rama thank you so so much for doing this work on and uh i hope that we will i hope you will hear from any people extreme thank you rama thank you karen that's wonderful so darin springer has been waiting in the green room for his presentation and he is going to talk to us about the net zero energy revenue bond proposal that i believe is an upcoming ballot item and darin why don't you jump in and talk away about that and just yeah thanks again rama and karen for that piece well hello good evening everybody i'm darin springer general manager with burlington electric department i am joined by a colleague who's on as well emily sevens wheelock our manager of strategy and innovation and i respect that uh you all are are running a little behind so i will try to move through our presentation expeditiously but we're glad to answer questions about the net zero energy revenue bond um i'm going to share my screen here um just a moment see if that works just another minute here um okay i think the screen share is working let me know if anybody can't see um just a brief reminder for folks who may be less familiar uh burlington electric public power utility for the city of burlington providing electric service uh we are a hundred percent renewable since 2014 and as folks know we had a 12-year run without a rate increase after the pandemic impacts we did have our first rate increase with a surcharge that took effect on bills in august of 7.5 percent the revenue bond that's being proposed has been approved to be on a special election ballot by the electric commission and city council it is a bond that requires approval of majority of voters and it is payable solely from burlington electrics rates and revenues this is not payable from the city general fund it does not impact on property taxes this is something that is repaid through burlington electrics revenues and is solely an obligation of burlington electric it doesn't affect the city's debt ratio or debt policy we've had revenue bonds a number of times over the years for some of our generation facilities like the mcneil wood chip plant and the wanouski hydropower dam we also have uh i'll just jump to the next slide we also have a historical analog in our energy efficiency bond from 1990 when we as a community put forward an 11.3 million dollar bond that really jumps started our energy efficiency investments in burlington and that's yielded some significant results even before covid we're using more than 8 percent about 8.6 less electricity we're using today than we were in 1989 prior to that revenue bond and that's partly the result of our energy efficiency investments what the net zero energy revenue bond is intended to do is invest in accelerating our progress on climate on our net zero 2030 goal in burlington and also fund reliability projects and maintenance and infrastructure projects that are needed for our system in particular here are the different categories of investment we roughly would have about 12.3 million going into the electric grid itself both for reliability and then also for upgrades as we move towards more heat pumps and electric vehicles and electric lawn mowers and other technologies we're expecting that there will be a need for some grid upgrades and this proposal accommodates that we have about 1400 incentives that have been provided from burlington electric to our customers over just the last few years to help with that transition and if folks are interested please check out our website burlingtonelectric.com you can see all of our different incentive programs for EVs and heat pumps and other technologies about 3.9 million would go into technology system investments we have aging systems in some cases that need replacement we also have new capabilities with these replacement systems this is everything from how we get information from our meters to how we run our financial systems to how we have customer information systems all of those are involved in that 3.9 million dollar investment about 2.2 million would go into renewable energy plants including maintenance of existing plants and converting our peaker plant which runs on oil over to biodiesel it's the only plant that we have any association with that's not already renewable and this proposal would would make it renewable and last but not least about 1.5 million and other capital investments for more EV charging stations around the community more programs to help us save energy and reduce peak use and investments in that area so i kind of run through this slide i'll skip over it another key piece here as part of our climate progress we would be able to use some of our existing annual bond funding to essentially double the funding available for our customer incentives for the next three years if this proposal is approved by voters and that would mean having an incremental emissions reduction beyond what we would do otherwise of about 47 000 tons which is the equivalent of about 100 000 barrels of oil so a significant emissions reduction investment that we can make in providing the community all the different incentive programs to help reduce greenhouse gas emissions that's a part of this proposal as well this is just showing here that we're actually doing even better by a significant margin than what the state requires of us in that area the state renewable energy standard has some requirements for utilities to offer programs to help customers transition off of fossil fuel because of the great support from our customers in burlington we're actually as you can see from the blue line going well above and beyond the lower dotted line which is a requirement and we're actually on track to to continue that progress over the next few years that's what this proposal will support so getting to the finances as i mentioned we had a rate case this past year we've done a projection looking out and we actually had our our a3 credit rating for moody's was affirmed in august which is good news on our outstanding revenue bonds what we're seeing right now is that with this revenue bond we can reduce upward pressure on rates compared to a scenario where we don't have it and we're still trying to fund all of these key projects infrastructure investments and initiatives as you can see here this is upward pressure on rates about 4.9 percent with the revenue bond and without it a really extraordinary number that we would never propose but a 23.7 percent upward pressure that would exist without the revenue bond if we try to do all of the things that we mentioned here and maintain the financial metrics that we have for moody's how would we repay the revenue bond in this case it's really a couple of pieces one of which is we have savings on our existing revenue bond schedule that you can see here between 2025 and 2026 where an existing credit existing revenue bond line will mature and we'll have about 684,000 of annual capacity that can go towards repayment of this new net zero energy revenue bond and then in addition this this shows sort of the debt repayment schedule for the revenue bond we can structure it in a way to take advantage of that maturity that i just mentioned and have that be contributing to the principal repayment when it would begin in 2028 the other piece here is all of those different projects that we talked about heat pumps electric vehicles electric bikes electric lawnmowers all of those different projects are going to return some revenue to the utility that will also be used to help pay for the bonding in this instance and in fact we think that that may contribute up to 40 percent of the total debt service of the revenue bond and the annual bonds that i mentioned so between those two pieces we cover a significant portion of the debt service that would be required and we're reducing upward pressure on rates going forward for customers relative to a scenario where we did not have the revenue bond available i think that was everything i'm going to stop the screen share here come back to you sorry to go through that very quickly trying to keep you on schedule as much as i could but uh myself or emily would be glad to answer any questions anyone has thank you darin i appreciate that are there any questions i'm not seeing anyone thank you for oh matt has questions is there anything to estimate what somebody's available changes going to be over time like your typically under dollar one house for the next 10 years what kind of things should be listed say something about it yeah absolutely that's a great question for an average residential customer if we are pursuing the revenue bond and we're successful and we did have let's say a 4.9 percent rate increase as next year's rate increase that would be around three dollars or so a month for a residential customer roughly we obviously are going to do a lot of work to try to avoid having that rate increase be at that level if we possibly can but that's that just gives you a sense of the kind of the scale i think with the seven and a half percent increase that we saw this year that was more significant folks were seeing in some cases more like a four dollars and 90 cents impact on a residential bill and an average commercial customer we're seeing about a six dollar and 60 cent impact for their bill for about two-thirds of our commercial customers who are in the small general service category so we're seeing just to speak to that a little more we're seeing declining amounts of rate increases that will be needed over time we're not seeing another seven and a half percent that's going to be needed over the next five years we think that rate pressure will moderate and this revenue bond is a strategy to help with that thank you very much thanks for other questions so uh darin and emily we're going to shift to our next topic thank you for coming and all that information about the bond so thank you yeah that's great um jone we trust you're standing by to give us the city council update and to tie up any loose ends from the policing panel that you may want to address um from the policing panel i just wanted to respond to susanne's last question which was you know how do we um you know in this in word six and the south district affect the the vote and actions at city council and honestly i'm not sure how much um counselors who don't represent you really weigh your opinions but i think that if you can talk to your friends who live in other districts and get them to be interacting with the counselors that represent them i think that that could certainly help and i do plan to bring forward um hopefully with broad support uh resolution to increase the cap and it's my hope that we don't send that committee um as i think kori said you know uh what was it process paralysis or something i do think we need a lot of process around the cna report or at least you know with 150 recommendations there's a lot to go through not every item needs a lot of process but it does need to be reviewed um so we'll be working on moving that forward as well uh for city council i want to keep this short because i think we have just reached our time limit for this meeting i think there's probably two items of particular interest towards six residents one is that um there was a proposal that came forward at our last meeting to eliminate parking requirements um in residential districts and uh that is not something that i support but um it was favored and it's now in committee and if people have opinions about that i think it can be great if you want to do something in the thing getting in the way of what you want to do is a parking requirement but um when the landlord next door to you wants to do something and the thing saving you from you know an increase of many units next door is actually a parking requirement people see it differently so there's certainly two sides to the coin um and there's also really i think in terms of global warming um we want people to either get rid of their cars or go to um you know electric clean vehicles electric vehicles that bed is doing a great job of encouraging that um but i don't see people rapidly giving up their cars in this city at this point and i think we need to be realistic about that because we don't want people parking all over the green space um which happens a lot and then the other issue that came um that we voted on i think at our last meeting was a 40 million dollar capital bond on that one i was actually the only no vote on a 40 million dollar capital bond and i don't think i've ever voted no on a capital bond before i really support the city maintaining our infrastructure and i think that's very important and there were two reasons that i didn't support this one is that i think our top priority at this time really has to be the high school and we don't have the numbers in from the high school and i don't think it's fair to evaluate a 40 million dollar bond um ahead of the high school decision i think our taxpayers should have that information that is going to be a lot more than 40 million dollars and i think after we after we pass a bond for the school and we see what that is and what our needs are then we should consider this bond so it's not necessarily a lack of need but in terms of even the need we don't know at this point exactly what we're going to be getting for um uh funding federal funding we know some of what we're getting we don't have it all nailed down as to what we're getting in federal funding for our capital projects and the way this um resolution is written it allows for transferring of the 40 million 10 million is reserved for memorial auditorium the 30 million is very fungible so for example there's um i think there's a total of 9.5 million planned for bike infrastructure but if the council wanted to spend more than 9.5 million on bike infrastructure and that's not just from the bond to be clear that's from other capital sources as well but if the council decided they wanted to take from streets and add to bike infrastructure or take from any of the various buckets and add to another they could do that the way this is written so i don't think that people that you know we know we don't really know exactly what this is going to um pay for there is a list of what's it what's it what it is expected to pay for but it also says that that can change um you know by by council by a council decision so i guess you get at that thank you joe that's helpful to know and folks can follow up with you if they need to know more so bringing up the rear is our very patient max metal and skeet from burlington parks and rec and max why don't you go ahead and talk to us about the shampyne pocket park and i apologize for the delay and i appreciate your standing by no no no problem i actually you made it right to my a lot of time right on time so there you go no wait on my end um hi everyone my name is max my lindsay i work with uh burlington parks and recreation i'm the planning team there as a project coordinator and uh yes i'm here today to talk to you about shampyne street park so give me a second here i've got a very brief presentation and then i'm just going to open it up for discussion all right can everybody see this so shampyne street park so this year we have some funding set aside for performing some renovations of shampyne street pocket park so just to do a quick overview since a lot of times when i talk about this people are like where is that shampyne street park uh so up here on the top it's a little bit of a map that we've got the top here is king street where my cursor is over here is battery on the bottom we've got maple street and there is south shampyne street sort of cutting in between king and maple and right in the middle tuck between a residential house here in a vacant lot on the south is shampyne street park on the bottom you can kind of see a picture of it there's not too much going on in the park right now there's a little playground in there for three kids age two to five what we would typically call a tot lot some wooden benches a few crab apple trees and a couple wooden garden beds that you can kind of see in the front here a lot of the amenities in the park are kind of coming to the end of that workable lifespan benches are needing replacement fencing needing replacement a lot of vegetation kind of needs some work so we had actually set aside some funding a year ago to tackle this actually more than a year ago now it was pre-pandemic we were really ramping up on this project we had a number of events that we held one at a king street youth center that had pretty low attendance and did not get as many the kids from there as we would like we held another event in the park which was actually pretty well attended given it was you know anywhere from like 20 to 12 degrees outside in a day in February and we had free hot chocolate you know a bunch of snow sculptures and stuff like that going on and back a little outdoor fire pit and yeah we set up a bunch of boards which you can see here for people to sort of put sticker dots on different activities and sort of talk to us about what kinds of things they might want to see in the park and then the pandemic kind of rolled around and we had to shuffle all of our budgets and this project unfortunately got tabled until we are finally through the projects that got reprioritized and making it back to this one so starting this October we are really just getting back to where we started and really trying to do more outreach trying to hear from more people about this park what kinds of things they might want to do in it any activities they're seeing in it now that they want to either discourage or increase putting us in touch with different community contacts and people who live in the neighborhood we do have an online survey that we posted and that is at this link here which I'm happy to share with you either in the chat here or I can email it to the contacts at the NPA and yeah so that's really where we're at and really today I'm here to hear your ideas I asked you to help me spread the word about this project and what we're going to be doing and to get any questions and comments or thoughts you might have above the park so thank you and here's this link again I will send that over I'm going to stop sharing my screen now so we can just open it up to talk about the park yeah thanks for your presentation max I actually learned about the Champlain Street Park for the first time last week I didn't even know it existed until I walked by it and I didn't connect it to this presentation that I knew was happening so this is I'm really happy to hear about this to me that park looked like something that time forgot it it's really easy to overlook it it looks yeah like it really needs some attention and some care and it seems to me given its urban setting that and I know that there are multifamily homes surrounding it that orienting it towards kids makes a lot of sense in my mind and also just just a facelift um and somehow bringing attention to its existence it's just so easy I don't know how many times I've been up Champlain Street and never noticed this until I actually walked by it so um I'm really glad that Parks and Rec is paying attention to it and it's certainly deserving of attention thank you so much for that feedback Michelle yeah we're really looking forward to giving this park a little bit of a facelift it's definitely overdue I know um a lot of what is in there now was part of a community effort that involved a number of the neighbors who live on that block but uh yeah I think people have moved out moved on that kind of thing so hey max this is Matt other thoughts I was gonna ask does King Street use it right now do they bring kids over there to do things because they have some kids of course and kind of surprise they're not interested they used to be one of our main contacts whenever we were thinking about this park and one of our main user groups there um since they built their new youth center and that includes its own playground so now king street youth center has a little playground right behind their building they've told us that for the past like three to five years they really have just stopped coming to the park um and they for a pretty long time I'm relatively new here at parks I've been working here they'll be five years in January but what I've heard from um our staff who have been on longer they used to be our sort of main eyes on the park yeah looking after things letting us know when things needed to be taken care of and that kind of thing so yeah now what we hear from them is their main go to is they go down to Perkins Pier when they need to I see thank you thanks Matt thanks Max is there are there any other comments about the Champlain Street Park Meg hi so our offices are nearby and we walk by it often and I know that there was some homeless encampment there so I know a lot of the people were concerned about it that's the latest um but it's great to hear that there'll be more activity and we have lots of businesses in our building so we're happy to share and be a community member to help out awesome which building are you based on 65 Main Street so Burlington housing isn't the same building as us right across from August 1st where there's a lot of activity so I think if you put up signs at August 1st half the city would see them great thank you Matt okay so if no one else has a comment on the park that winds up our agenda for those of us who are still here I want to say that to me this meeting brought out the best of NPAs and really the mission of our organizations which is to connect residents directly with our elected leaders with state or city employees with other entities and I was really grateful to hear directly from police officers from our commissioner and from our city counselors I think that was a really helpful discussion to allow our residents to have such a one-on-one with the folks who are responsible for ensuring our safety in the city so thank you everyone who's here and I didn't introduce Joel Fitzgerald our other steering committee member earlier but there he is I can see his bouncing screen and yeah thank you all for participating and please come back next month we'll continue this hybrid model and we'll have another fascinating agenda for you next month thanks