 It's called The Ninety-Nine March. It was written by Randall Bay Hart's Retreat, and Finishing with the Wind that Shakes the Barley. Thank you, wonderful. Thank you very much. If anything, you're better than ever. What a gift for my soul and everybody's soul. Thank you so much. Thank you, Barbara. Have a great meeting. Okay. Jess, Tony, okay to start? I'm good. Go ahead, Barbara. Whenever you're ready. I'm just one of the crowd. Oh, no, you're absolutely special. Okay, so welcome everybody to War II and III Neighborhood Planning Assembly. So glad you could all make it, and they can't hear me, but I want to thank Anna Rusink and Laura Markowitz again for bringing back some of our old grace and charm to start. Lovely to hear them. The next thing on the agenda is to introduce your steering committee members. And I see Tony Reddington. It says War II, but now you're in War III, right, Tony? And Jess Hyman. And Kevin, I can only see nine people here. Kevin's here, Kevin Duterman. And is Andrew Champagne here? Is everybody muted? Okay. And Charlie Giannoni, say hello if you're here. Charlie's muted, but I see him on the screen. Right, okay. And Jessica, we just said me from War III. Oh, and Patrick Johnson is Patrick here. No, okay. So that's it. And later tonight, we may be welcoming a new member. We'll see. Did you introduce Jess? Yes, thank you. Next thing is next meeting notification. So we don't have to do this at the end when everybody's leaving. I believe that's Thursday, December 10th. Is that correct, everybody? Yes, so we'll meet again Thursday, December 10th. And I remind you that recordings of the meeting can be found on YouTube or CCTV's website. Great. Okay, the public forum is open. And I know that I have a few people already. Is Nicole Losh here? If so, unmute yourself. Thank you. Well, thanks so much. I'm Nicole Losh from Public Works. And I wanted to let everyone know tonight that we just announced the applications for membership on our city council stakeholder committee to support the North Winooski Avenue parking management plan. That was one of the recommendations in the immediate next step before we do any improvements on the North Winooski section of the corridor. We just wrapped up the overall corridor study back in March and took a bit of a hiatus while we waited to see how the pandemic was really going to impact our whole project. But we're getting ready to convene the actual committee now and get that process started. So the committee itself, we have four spots open for any community stakeholder to have a direct relationship to North Avenue. And we encourage everyone to apply. Applications are due on November 27th and the application form itself. I did share with the steering committee here and maybe that can be included in the meeting materials for anybody who wants to view online, but it's also available on the city's website. You can find it either on the city council vacancies page for their boards and commissions or on the Winooski Avenue project site itself. We have a link there as well. The applications will go into the clerk treasurer's office and the appointments will be made by Mayor Weinberger and President Tracy. And they'll make those announcements on December 4th. So again, just wanted to let everybody know about this opportunity. And if the steering committee is able to share the application and the website link in these meeting materials, I'm sure we'll do that. Otherwise, feel free to reach out to me directly or try to find it on the city's website. So thanks so much for letting me share that news tonight. Nicole, you said if you had a relationship to North Avenue, you meant North Winooski, right? Yes, North Winooski. Thank you. Thank you very much. And is Megan Moore here? Megan is not here, but I'm speaking for her. I'm Jessica LaVallette. Okay, great. Thank you. Hi, I'm Jessica. As I said, I'm the customer care and finance manager at Water Resources. And I'm speaking tonight to let you know that the state of Vermont has just expanded the Vermont COVID-19 a rearage assistance program known as VCAP. It was expanded earlier today to include municipal water and sewer utilities. You may already be familiar with VCAP as it launched in August. However, assistance was initially available only to customers of utilities regulated by the Public Utilities Commission like electricity or natural gas. So VCAP provides residential and business account holders with utility bill assistance if they have suffered an economic hardship due to the pandemic and they have account balances that are at least 60 days in arrears for usage after March 1st. The program is administered by the Public Service Department and folks can register and apply for assistance by visiting publicservice.vvermont.gov residents who do not have access to the internet can still apply by contacting the Champlain Valley Office for Economic Opportunity. They are partnered with the state to assist residents who cannot apply online. The deadline to apply is December 15th. So it just opened today and we have about four weeks to have people ask for assistance. We've already identified all of the Water Resources customers who are eligible for assistance based on the parameters given to us and we will be contacting them directly tomorrow to encourage them to apply. And that's what I wanted to share. Thank you very much. Thank you, have a good night. Take care. Take care. Anybody else with a public announcement or a public forum issue that you'd like to raise? I see Megan Humphrey. Yes, thank you. Hi everyone, nice to see you all remotely. I have a couple of things. One is that some of you may have heard of the shift meals and or everyone eats and they are supplying meals until December 9th and I'll put the link in the chat for people. And it's just free community meals. Anyone can show up and get them. And there are a number of different locations in Burlington and in Winooski until mid, about mid December. They're also partnering with Sweetwaters for a Thanksgiving dinner there at Sweetwaters and a coat drive and free meals. So they're not doing sit-down obviously this year but they're doing meals that can be picked up and that's first come, first serve. And the meals are from 10 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. on Thanksgiving day. And they're also accepting coat donations prior to that. And so that information is also at the shift meals as well. And I also wanted to let folks know that we are in the process of organizing the holiday dinner again for the 17th year and we get meals to seniors, anyone 50 and over all over the county on Christmas day. And I'll also put that link that's through HANNs which is the organization I run and actually Jess is hugely helpful as well and lots of other businesses and organizations and people. And we deliver a hot meal and gift bags all over the county on Christmas day. So, and we're gonna start accepting reservations for that beginning November 30th but that all can be found on our website. So thank you very much and I'm happy to answer questions but otherwise folks can just go to those links. Okay, thank you very much and thanks for posting the link Jess. Other, I'm trying to scroll through my little iPad to see if anybody else has their hand up. Tony has his hand up. Tony. Yeah, hi. Tony Reddington, I live in Ward 3 now on St. Paul Street opposite the brand new City Hall Park and first I wanna say that this is a difficult day I think for a lot of folks even more difficult than it's been because we had a record number as you know of COVID cases yesterday in Vermont. And all of us, I'm sure in one way or another they've been discussing with relatives, friends, neighbors and family how to handle our situation with the holidays coming up and at least in my family we are not going to take the risk of getting together. For sure at Thanksgiving and increasingly it looks like the other holidays will go too. So this is difficult time and consider I hope that the bureaucracy and those trying to force things through because they're frustrated because we've all been closed down realize that we may be, we're not gonna be opening up we're actually gonna be cutting back if anything. I'm trying to figure out how I can reduce my personal risk. I'm one of the vulnerable. I have one son who has type one diabetes. So this is not a restricted situation to those who are older like myself. The other thing I want to mention very quickly is that since the last meeting the Champlain Parkway update by the city the state and the federal highway was delivered to US District Court. It is clear now that they've asked for another delay a day that being city officials on up and it looks like they don't even want to talk to or contact the US District Court on anything until next May seven or eight or nine month period. It looks like at least two years additional before the parkway could even conceivably begin. That's assuming the US courthouse door which has been closed to the Pine Street Coalition and other opponents of the project does not open. We're hopeful now. I say hopeful. We're very, we're almost convinced that we really need to sit down and make a compromise and make a deal. Not a Trumpian deal but a deal that will get a project going forward that meets the needs of the South end and then can allow the second phase which will be the connection of Pine Street over to Battery Street which is everybody agrees that the railroad enterprise project the connection of a roadway and bikeway between Pine and at Curtis Lumber and Kilburn over to Battery Street needs to be done. There's no one who disagrees with that now. So our only problem is to reduce the scale of the project below on Pine Street and down to the I-189 so that we can all live with it and not put undue pressure on the King Maple neighborhood. Thank you, Jenny. Thank you. I have two more speakers lined up one L's and then after that, Jenny. Yes, this is L Curtis over in Ward three and seems truly trivial after that but is it true there's not gonna be a Christmas tree on Church Street this year? I mean, we should at least have the lights even if they don't have the big lighting party. So I just wanna go on record as wanting a holiday tree and what can I say? We need to lift our spirits as Tony says. So that's it. Thank you. Thanks L's. Jenny, hi. Hi neighbors, I'm new in town but I've lived in Winnowski and Montpelier and so on in the past. Just got here from Brooklyn a few weeks ago and I'm in Ward two and happy to be here. I just what Tony said made me wanna jump in quickly. I work as a medical journalist and I just want people to know I don't see enough emphasis on ventilation in safety precautions. People talk about washing their hands. The library is sanitizing for an hour or two every day. Folks, it's all about ventilation. This disease is airborne. We need fans, we need windows, we need HVAC. That's what's gonna keep us much safer. And I just worry that people are so focused on surface contamination that they get a false sense of security and wander around indoors for half an hour. That's dangerous. So just remember this is airborne and whatever we do, like let's try and keep the air moving. Thanks. Thanks Jenny. Jenny, I just wanted to quickly follow up on that. I was at the town hall meeting with the mayor and Dr. Levine and Dr. Lefler from the medical center and they showed a model that was shocking to me because it was exactly that. It was showing six people in a room and one person had COVID. And even if everyone was masked, some of those people were gonna get sick. And that was the first time that I just, I really realized it was so visual. So yeah, we have to be very, very careful of that as we go into this really tough time here. So thank you for pointing that out. Thank you. Hello, Barbara, this is Charlie G. Can you see me? No, but that's okay. Okay, so I just wanted to say to give you a very quick report about the polling. So ward three just conducted the polls for the presidential election and ward three went over 3,000 votes for the first time. The previous record was 2,450 or 48 and we went over 3,000 for the first time and everything went as smooth as silk because so many of those ballots, about 2,200 were processed ahead of time. So that made everything so much easier. It was an easy day. We had 38 people that worked at the polls that day and three different shifts. Everything went wonderfully smoothly. And I'm so happy to turn it out that way and hopefully the same thing will happen in a month of March. Thank you. Thank you, Charlie. Anybody else for a public forum? Alyssa would like to say something and I have a quick announcement at the end as well. Okay, Alyssa. Thank you. Hi, I have an announcement on the, I guess like the spirit side that some people are speaking to. I work at Integrated Arts Academy and students, the whole school, every student in school are making creatures if you can see them and they're hung up all over the Old North End and you can look for the IA Creature Crawl logo to find them. So maybe there's not gonna be a Christmas tree but every week we're installing new creatures as each grade finishes their monsters and they're just to spread joy and silliness and a lot of people are out walking around and hopefully we'll see them. Hey, you should make up a page like Vermont Rocks so that you can, seriously, they have people painting rocks and then hiding them. You should make up a page so that the kids can see that people are actually finding their posters and make comments on them. We'll do that. And you can also add your own monster if you want to our creation. Hey, fabulous, Alyssa, thank you. Anybody else for public forum? Seeing, oh, you wanted to say something, Jess, right? Oh, yes, I just wanted to quickly point out that on the agenda document, we included some resources for Vermont programs to help us all stay housed during the pandemic and several of these programs have a December deadline. So I just wanted to point them out to folks and this includes help with paying past due rent, help moving to a new place if you're in an unsustainable apartment, also help paying utility bills and then also a mediation service for landlords and tenants. So all the information which was provided by Legal Aid is on the second or third page of our the agenda. So I just wanted to point that out and I also just wanted to say, this is so great. How many people are participating tonight and speaking? So this is in the public forum, whoops, the public forum is also the time when you can tell us what you'd like to see at some of the next meetings. So if there's things that you'd like to see on the agenda for later NPA meetings, please feel free to speak up during public forum, which is actually just about done or better yet, put it right in the chat and we'll record that. So thank you. Thank you. And if anybody feels like enabling their camera, even if they're in your jammies, we'd really like to see you. Yes, I would. Okay. Next is, we have a steering committee member nomination. Is Molly Clayback Plannick in here? I see you, Molly. Hi. Hi, welcome. So Molly has volunteered to be on the steering committee. I believe from Ward 3, is that correct? Yeah, I live in Ward 3. I've been here for about five years. Would you like to say a few words before we vote on it? Sure. Yeah, hi everyone. I live in Ward 3 before that. I lived in Ward 2 for about six years, really loved the neighborhood. I've been coming to the NPA meetings regularly for the last few years and often on for that, I really loved how the NPA is a space for engagement and education in the community and I'd be happy to help out in making it possible. Thank you very much. I would entertain a motion to accept Molly on the steering committee. I so move as a member of, as I resident of Ward 3, I so move. Hey, do we have a second from Ward 3? I second that. Okay, thank you. Do we all vote or just the steering committee? I'm new. No, no. I think just in this case, just members of Ward, residents of Ward 3. Oh, okay. Okay, and I'm not taking notes, so I hope somebody is noting great. Okay, there's screen sharing going on, which I'm not quite sure what that is, but anyway, any discussion? Seeing none, all in favor of accepting Molly as a Ward 3 representative on the steering committee, say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. All opposed? Hearing none, you are unanimously accepted on as a Ward 3 rep on the steering committee, Mazeltaf. Thank you. Congratulations. All right, thank you for volunteering. We need you. And Barbara, I'm sorry to interrupt. I just wanted to pipe in and apologize for whatever that was on the screen. I think we were just zoom bombed. Very exciting. I think I removed the person who was doing the screen sharing. So apologies to everyone. Great. And in another large meeting like this, our policy is we are zoom bombed and it really disrupts the meeting that we will shut down for five minutes and you will get us another link. Is that possible? Okay, so let that be our default. Next thing is we're doing well time ways. Pathways Vermont, Casey Carpenter, I know you're here. Hi everyone, thanks Barbara. My name is Casey Carpenter. I'm the outreach associate for the Pathways Vermont support line. And we also have with us Abby Levinson from Pathways and she's the employment and outreach team lead. So I'm just gonna share my screen, have a little presentation. Can you all see that? Yes. Yes, great. Awesome. So yeah, we're just here tonight to spread the word to you all about the support line as a resource. It's available for anyone 18 and up statewide in Vermont. And our goal is for every Vermont are to know that the support line exists, especially in this time of hardship and isolation, which is why we're here. So the support line offers free and confidential support and connection via phone and text. And we operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And we're what's called a warm line as opposed to a hotline. So the operators are local peers who've been through challenging situations themselves. And they're primarily available to listen and to offer non-judgmental support. So we focus on supporting callers who reach out for a whole host of reasons from anger over a frustrating day, to feeling alone, wanting support for substance use, or just wanting to connect with someone. So I'm just gonna briefly run through a little more info about the support line and how it differs from other services like crisis hotlines. And then we'll have a chance for any questions if you have any. So the philosophy of the support line is based in the intentional peer support or IPS model. And that's rooted in connecting from a place of shared experience and without judgment or advice giving. So as I mentioned, many of our operators have gone through challenging experiences themselves. So they're really able to meet callers from a place of shared understanding. And one of the guiding principles of the support line is a belief in the healing power of connection, of simply having someone to listen to and validate your experience. Our philosophy is also based in the belief that individuals have the capacity to grow and change and that they are the experts on themselves. So people often wonder how the support line is different from a crisis hotline. And some of you may already be pretty familiar with this. Vermont has 10 designated mental health agencies each with their own crisis hotline. So ours here in Chittenden is the Howard Center, which operates first call, that's their crisis hotline. And the pathway support line aims to serve a complimentary role to these crisis lines. So whereas the support line is staffed by peers with lived experience, crisis hotlines tend to be staffed by operators with formal educational experience or licensed counselors who provide more clinical mental health support. And a primary service that crisis hotlines offer is to screen callers for the need for higher level services. Whereas this is not a primary service that our support line offers. That said, support line operators are trained to refer callers to crisis or emergency services if necessary. And lastly, crisis hotlines do offer counseling when possible to callers, but may not always have the capacity to, for example, talk with a caller about their favorite TV show for half hour every day. They have to be available for crisis calls that can come up. Whereas for the support line, that's our primary purpose is to be a listening ear for any identified need, whether that's a crisis or not. So in this way, we hope to both reduce the strain on crisis services as well as offer an option to callers who might not feel that they need crisis level services. So while we're not a crisis hotline, many callers do report being in crisis when they call. And as I mentioned, we do have protocols in place for callers who are at imminent risk to themselves or others. And our operators are also well-versed in all the different resources available to callers. But our operators are also trained and comfortable speaking with callers about suicidality, about substance use and any other urgent needs if a caller identifies this as helpful. And we really feel that when someone's in a dark place, simply forming that non-judgmental connection can really be a lifeline. And in the best cases, these calls can prevent a crisis from escalating to an emergency. So this is our number. It's 833-BT-TALKs. It's pretty easy to remember. And that's a toll-free number. And it's the same number for calling and texting. So it's 833-888-2557. And yep, please feel free to write this number down for yourself or to share with friends and family if you think that they could use it. And if you work or live somewhere where you can hang up a flyer or display pamphlets or if you wanna share about the support line on social media, we have lots of materials and we'd love to send them to you. So you can just shoot me an email at kc at pathwaysvermont.org. And you can also find more info and some testimonials on our website, which is pathwaysvermont.org. So with that, I wanna thank you all so much for your time and I'll open it up to any questions that you might have. Thank you very much, Jaycee. Questions, Jessica, let me know if you see people's hands raised. Tony? Oh, I think Tony's muted. unmute yourself. Got it. I am familiar with Pathways' program on the talk line. It's an excellent program. Could you just give us the numbers of callers that you folks have, Casey, on a daily monthly or whatever basis? I'll let Abby take that one. Yeah, I think on a daily basis, maybe like 20 to 30, I feel a lot of callers are regulars. So some people call multiple times. But yeah, different hours of the day are more popular for callers. So when I worked on the line, it was the first shift, which was six a.m. to three p.m. And that, because it's a newer shift, had less callers because we just became 24-7 with everything that happened with COVID because it was part of a COVID relief grant. But the second and third shifts oftentimes gets more callers because it also is sometimes when people can't sleep at night or late in the evening, people are more apt to call. Thank you. Other questions? See anybody, Jessica? Megan has a question. Okay, good. Megan? Yes, thank you. I just have a quick question. Do you think that have you seen a marked increase since COVID? Yeah, so we actually, one of the questions on a survey that we asked every caller is what was the reason for calling? And we found that disaster increased a lot as a topic of why people were calling. And there's actually a little graph that we have that shows like connection as well as, Casey was it, what was the third? The third, Megan? I'm just looking for that graph right now if I can find it, I'll share it. Yeah, but I think, you know, definitely there has been a pretty significant need during the first shift, which is a completely new shift since COVID. So, so I think that, yeah, that's the slide to support connection and disaster. And as you can see 2020 had a pretty significant increase in calls in general. Thank you. Christy, I saw your hand. Yes, my question is, have you heard from any tenants calling in with any kind of housing concerns on your phone calls? Yeah, I think there are a lot of stressors that people call about. I think, you know, with COVID and everything that a lot of the conversation is oriented around challenges that present themselves with the current situation of the world and, you know, of economic challenges. So I think, you know, in calls that I've had, I think there might have been a couple of those calls, but I think overall people are getting more calls about, you know, food insecurity and housing insecurity. Yeah, so I would imagine that those calls are more frequent. I can't speak to everyone on the support line, but. Thank you. I have a couple of questions. One, I wanna know, what is the level of anonymity or confidentiality that callers are offered? And also, do you need volunteers to be listeners and do special training for them? Yeah, so we see the number coming in, but other than that, we don't keep track of any demographic information or we don't talk about callers with other staff, just like talking to your supervisor about challenges that might come up, but that way we are confidential. We're not anonymous because we're getting the phone numbers as they come in, but we don't do anything with those numbers unless there was an imminent risk of danger to themselves or others. And we don't actually currently have volunteers. Everyone is paid that works for pathways. I think just the onboarding process is a little intense with or not intense, but you know, I think it might be hard to just onboard a lot of people as volunteers, but yeah, currently we don't really offer that, but maybe that's something that we could talk about in the future if we get a huge increase in calls and be a really big uptick in calls. Thank you. Other questions? You see anybody, Jessica? Okay. Thank you all so much. Yes, thank you very much indeed. Okay, Tony, you're on with your resolution. And you need to unmute. I'll unmute myself. If you want, I can share screen. I just got that section with the resolution so that those who have not seen it or don't have it, I'll try sharing that now. Oh, I got to do the share screen first. Push all the buttons. Okay, and we go over to, that's four seasons. That's for Kurt McCormick. Aha, okay. This resolution, which apparently has become quite topical in the last week or so, just basically suggests this that as a neighborhood planning assembly, we can advise and we're asked to by the original resolution of the council back in 1982 to express our concerns, our advice and our council in regard to issues related to our community and our city. And that's what this arises from. We've done resolutions several in the past. We have received this last month and a presentation on the city place, which is the hole in the ground. I'll use a better, more accurate term at the moment. And we know there's a new proposal from Don Sinex and Demondwood. And I think we learned in the last three years a lot about the problems of housing and specifically about the down to this particular project. I think what we learned most importantly was that in the projects that we've approved here in ward three, and most of them are in ward three for some reason. We've had three housing projects by Redstone. We have the both project, which has a few units on Pearl Street. And of course we have the big one, the big enchilada is the city place. You might add under that, because it's on the periphery, but Cambrian Rides, which is seven or 800 units of housing that has right now under construction are finished a family project and a senior older Vermonis project that is part of their commitment to under the ordinances to provide upwards of 25% of all housing units to be quote unquote affordable. The problem is all these units have been built under the zoning ordinance that are so-called affordables are started about $1,100 a month, including all utilities for one bedroom unit. They just aren't affordable to somebody who's poor or somebody who's lost their job has no access. On the other hand, and this is the good news, let's not look at this as all bad news. In the city of Burlington and nearby about one out of four, about one out of four people who rent in Burlington's a rental city of 16,000 households rent, about 4,000 of those households today have federal housing assistance, which means they pay only 30% of their income for rent. They do have shelter security because if their income goes down for some reason, then their rent goes down proportionally. So there's both the knowledge that you have a roof over your head and that if something happens to your income, you're still going to be able to afford that housing. There's problems with the section eight or some of the housing voucher programs. Those are administrative and they should be dealt with. We certainly are concerned about that. But as a practical matter, the big elephant in the room is the federal government. They're the only ones that provide these 4,000 units right now that are truly affordable housing. Now, the so-called affordables that the city provides and the mayor has talked about in regard to Redstone and city place and so forth, those are not affordables. They're the $1,000 and on up $1,000 apartments for one bedroom. And so what we're asking here is very simple. We're asking that in part, thankfully, because of a change of federal administration, there's a good chance that we should be able to get 80 units, about a quarter of the housing units will be in that city place. That could be section eight, that would be a 27 year guarantee of rent assistance at 30% of income max rents for those who apply. And whether you're homeless or you're a low income family and thanks for Christy Delphia, who I see is attending the meeting who's emphasized on behalf of the Burlington tenants union that we really need to include some two and three bedroom units in those 82 units to allow families to also live in the downtown environment. If we do not have section eight or federal units in this downtown project, and it's just more gentrification, it'll be basically a gated tower with no access for those who have a housing need. Now, the question you might ask, is are there households that need housing assistance today? Well, if you check with the housing authority, Burlington Housing Authority, which has an ongoing open ability to take applications for anybody in need, they have a thousand on their wait list. Ditto for the cathedral that has age restricted housing, most of you are familiar with, they have a thousand on their wait list. There is a, we are only meeting about half the housing assistance need in the city. Okay, so basically all this says is, gee, city council, will you please include in your development agreement the requirement that this developer gets some section eight and when you then help him get those units, that will actually perhaps help him finance the project. Now, this week, the mayor said, he really doesn't want to have even the so-called thousand dollar affordable housing units. Well, that may be the case, but if we were able to get section eight, it really would provide help to that developer financially and because those apartments would be paid for and they also develop the, they would not have to basically handle the administrative costs. Those would be handled by the housing authority or by a nonprofit. I'll stop there, you may have questions, but I think that this is important for ward three, where we have the overburden of low income folks and we really need to provide some affordable housing for and allow people to live downtown, just like others would like to do, who have the means to do so. Tony, will you read the full resolution? Oh, sure. I'm sorry, not everybody has a screen. And I put it in the chat as well. Right, the 1982 city council resolution, creating the ward two and ward three, neighborhood planning assembly states in part, quote, the neighborhood planning assemblies shall provide advice to this council, city council, with respect to community development, housing programs, among other issues. And then I state the resolution states, in accordance with the 1982 charge, ward two, ward three, because we're separate wards and we would vote separately, ward two, ward three, neighborhood planning assembly, hereby advises the city council to require in the city place developer agreement, 82 units of housing for low income families and the homeless attached to the project in the form of section eight federal, 30% of income max rents and assist in seeking those, that federal allocation. Thank you, so you're moving this, I would like to see a second from ward two and a second from ward three. And then we can all discuss it together. So the- A second from ward two. Okay, and do I see a second from ward three? I will, else. Okay, thank you. So the motion is now open for discussion. Does anybody have any questions for Tony or anything they wanna say about this motion? Anything, anybody raising? Brian. I see you, Brian, yeah, Brian. Unmute yourself, please. Oh yeah, the old unmute button, thank you. Yeah. I have to remind people to do it and then I don't even remember myself. I wanna thank Tony for bringing this issue up and he has been raising this issue for quite a while and I think that he's correct, that the real deeply affordable housing in any community across this country is largely delivered through what they call deep subsidy. Basically subsidy that stays with the unit and then the tenant can actually transport that subsidy somewhere else when they leave, but it ultimately stays with the unit to ensure that low income people, as their income fluctuates, honestly their rent will fluctuate. So there is some fluctuation there, but it's really the only way to ensure that people aren't priced out. And I think we need significant new federal resources, of course, to meet the need because the number of people across the country waiting, there's only a couple million who receive project-based section eight assistance in the whole country. And the number of people waiting is something considerably more than that number. So there's a major backlog. That's also true in Burlington and also the notion that a tenant with a voucher, this is now tenant-based voucher, means that they can take it to any unit that meets certain standards, both housing quality standards and rent standards, still is unable in many cases to find an apartment that will be suitable to meet the housing authority standards and be affordable to the tenant living there. It's usually about the price. They see Christie saying it's money and it's often about the price. And so there's a payment standard number that it needs to meet. And my only question, and I'm not saying this is a reason not to support this because I think this does deserve support. The language around require this condition. And if the city has to get into an issue with the fact that the payment standard is, I'm gonna say for a sake of argument, is 950 for a two-bedroom, even though it's slightly higher than that, it's more like 1200 and something. And the inclusionary rent, if there's a difference there, that's gonna be an area of dispute that will be, I'm sure, an item that we'll have to deal with. It's just a little bit of caution on that. But also that if those subsidies that we're seeking are not actually available, we are setting ourselves up, I think, for a situation where this condition, the city can't subsidize, we don't have the resources, these are federal subsidies. So I wanna make sure that we have enough awareness and just full disclosure that we may not have this windfall from the new Biden-Harris administration because they're facing lots of other challenges. And it doesn't mean we won't see it, but I just wanna be aware of that. Hopefully we'll see it and hopefully we'll be able to do this. But I just wanted full disclosure for people not to think that by us saying we want the council to require it, that it's necessarily gonna be something we can deliver. That's all. Thank you, Brian. Other comments or questions? Yes. This is Elle in Ward 3. And I love this proposal. This is why I signed on tonight. And at the same time, I think that supporters of this proposal, which as I say, includes me, need to be ready for the Church Street Marketplace having lifestyle issues. I mean, they're gonna be concerned about what they call the loiterers. They're gonna be concerned about children playing on Church Street, which looks, if I were a kid, it looked like a place to run up and down. And if you're bringing your kids downtown for the day, that's one thing. But if your kid actually lives there and that's their play yard, the merchants are gonna be unhappy. So I'm just, I mean, given the size of the hole in the ground, I don't see why this can't be addressed. But in terms of the architecture, and caveat my brother is an architect, I really think that to speak of making this as I strongly support a more housing oriented development would include adequate leisure and recreational space, maybe a courtyard or something so that the families and the individuals are not funneled onto the marketplace, which is not a recreational area. They would not love it either. So I'm just saying this is something to be aware of and it would affect the shape as well as just the numbers and whatnot. And that's all. Thank you for listening. Thank you for bringing this forward. Thank you, Will's. Chrissy, I see your hand. Yes, and coolest and believable city's meetings. We have kind of been kicking some of the stuff around as far as where the children of these people, if they do put in two and three bedroom apartments in the city place have been discussing a specific park be made up out of the church property that is right now completely fenced off. That would greatly enhance that area so that those concerns that everybody has been raising would be covered and keep people or attempt to keep people from allowing their children to play on church street that live in that building. So I think if the city can come up with some kind of a proposal to turn that church, that vacant church property into something like that, we would have that would be an excellent way to cover those issues. Thank you, Chrissy. Are there other hands, Jess? I only see the nine people. Okay, Tony? Just a couple of comments. I agree with that need for play space and keep in mind, we have the new city hall park which is basically a block from city place. I've been going through it regularly now. There's actually quite a child oriented or a young person oriented play area there now. And by the way, the skateboarders are thrilled. We've got about eight or 10 there every afternoon. And secondly, and I didn't say this earlier and Brian, Councilor Fine is correct. I have felt from the beginning that Senator Leahy who sits on the Senate Appropriations has been getting Vermont 100 to 200 to 300 units a year of additional section eight units. So part of this, and it's in my explanation I've sent to people is that we really do need a cooperative effort here of city leadership, the developer who should be able to use these units to help finance the project. And third, the congressional delegation to get the 80 or so units that we're looking for. There is a way, and I don't like it, but there is a way of transferring vouchers to attach them to projects. But that's cannibalization. We should be seeking additional units for Vermont and for Burlington, not to take away from the units that are available otherwise. But otherwise, I'm in agreement. I believe that the, I certainly agree that the marketplace should be concerned about young people, but at the same time those families also shot. So I mean, there's two aspects to getting more people in a denser location downtown that benefits the marketplace itself too. Okay, thank you, Tony. I would just say not apropos of the motion, but the mayor and it's coming back again forever has been against the concept of an inclusionary zoning itself. So that's something that activists are gonna have to keep their eye on because I think he's starting to move on that. Any other, do you see any other people with hands up, Jessica? Okay, seeing nobody, are we ready to vote on the motion? Barbara, I'm sorry. I didn't get my hand up in time. It's Ls. What is this inclusionary thing that's really fast? Developers who put a certain percentage make a certain percentage of the development affordable. So the very thing we're talking about, that's the name of it. Right, well, it doesn't specify section eight, but it does have a standard for affordability that's a lot higher than section eight. Thank you. Okay, do we need to take votes separately from more two and three or not? Tony, what do you think? It depends on how people feel. If it's sort of... Okay, I'm gonna try for the general group and if we have any dissenters, then we're going to separate the question. Okay, all those, oh, do we have a second? We do have a second for this motion, right? We had seconds from each ward. Okay, those in favor of Tony's motion signify by saying aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Wow. All those opposed, nay. Hearing no nays, going once, going twice. The motion passes. Thank you, Tony. Wait. Yeah, good. Thank you all. Okay, next on the agenda is Tom Peterson of PCI about the Burlington High School construction update. Is Tom here? I am here. Wonderful, thank you. Good evening, everybody. Welcome. Thanks for having me. I was listening in early before the meeting started and it was great to have our version, this version of live music. It was really nice to hear. I wanna come to all your NPA meetings if you're gonna do that every time. Come back when we have a community dinner too. Okay. Well, my name's Tom Peterson. I'm the owner's project manager for the Burlington High School project. I'm the principal of Peterson Consulting Incorporated and we were hired in April of 2019 to fill the role of owner's project manager. So one reason that we're doing this to be honest with you is that presenting a project to NPAs is part of a zoning requirement as you probably already know with all the housing projects that have gone through and are being built in wards two and three. Technically the presentation is only required to be made to the ward in which the project is located. But since this is a city project, the district's philosophy is that this project should be presented to all the wards because it really is a citywide project even though it happens to be located firmly in Ward 4, it's really a citywide project. So that's part of the preamble. The presentation I'm gonna give tonight is, it's 21 slides, so I'm gonna buzz through them quickly. I'm not gonna read them all. I don't think people like it when people read the slides that are right in front of your face. And I can send these to, I can send this as a PDF to Kevin or somebody and it can be distributed to folks in your ward if you wanna take more time with the presentation. It's just a PDF document. So this is the same presentation that we made to the board of finance at one of the project milestones. It was at the conclusion of our schematic design estimate and the conclusion of a long process of value management, we'll call it. And it's a nice word for cost cutting. So this presentation is really a snapshot of the project in time and it's frozen in time from the spring of 2020. And as you all know, the project is facing some really tough challenges with PCBs and other toxic substances at the site which are threatening the prospects of that project. We're working through that. I don't have a lot of updates on PCBs. I'm gonna try to leave time for questions and I don't think I'll be able to answer a lot of questions about PCBs. So this is really intended to be a snapshot of what the project is conceived to be at this time. So I'm gonna go ahead and share my screen. Is that visible? Yes, sir. Okay. So this is where we are in the process. We've been through conceptual design which is part of the pre-bond schematic design and that was completed and approved in April of this year. We're currently in design development and that should be completed before Christmas. We'll have design development documents. Once we complete with design design development then the architects and engineers will be working on the construction documents themselves. So this is a rendering of the school as it's currently conceived for the additions and the renovations. These are two versions. One is shown with the existing auditorium exposed here. The bottom image is with an auxiliary gym built next to the auditorium. So the auxiliary gym is going to be built or going to be designed and specified and bid out as an alternate. We don't know that we'll be able to afford it but we want it to be bid so that we can understand what that price is and hopefully build it in the future if we can't afford it now. So while we have this screen up the new construction includes a stair tower over here on the south end and a passageway along the south side of the building that will help give better handicapped access to the chorus rooms. There's the new entrance of the school extends out a little further than it does now. It will extend to the east almost out to where the bell tower is now. This structure here is a new three-story addition that connects A building to B building. The bottom floor will be administrative guidance and library and the upper two floors are all classrooms. This is a different view of the new layout. Anything in this darker shaded gray is new construction. So you can see that down here at the bottom of the screen is a extended entryway. This is that new connector classroom and administrative connector. A new connector here connecting A building with B building and B building with D building. This connector will replace what we fondly call hamster tubes at the school. Those will all be gone. These new connectors are gonna actually function also as classroom space. So there'll be a central hallway and classrooms on either side. These are the same project highlights that have been driving the project from the start. Better accessibility, consolidation of classrooms and instruction, better maker spaces, and so forth, better HVAC and improved air quality and improved energy efficiency. In terms of the site plan itself, this is the current concept for the site. Everything in this amber or golden rod color is the proposed new construction. So again, here is that AB connector with classrooms, the three story. This is that new construction on the south side of A building that provides better access to the lower levels of A building. You can see that the parking lot looks like it's in the same position that it is now but it's actually been shifted to the east. The existing parking lot is being traced where my cursor is right now, right through here is where the existing parking lot is. This curb cut is currently the eastern most curb cut of the parking lot. So one of the problems with the parking lot right now is that it's severely tilted. It's working with the landscape which is a very tough site and it creates a parking lot that's not handicapped accessible. It's very difficult for somebody in a wheelchair to get out of their car into a chair and into the building because of the slope of that parking lot. This new parking lot is gonna be raised on the southwest corner and it'll help level this parking lot. It's not gonna be perfectly level but it's gonna be a lot less slope than the existing parking lot. It'll include islands for trees and lighting, handicapped and accessible parking close to the building and we'll have electric car charging stations. We have a big amount of bicycle parking right here. The existing parking for bicycles right now I'd say we have bike racks for about 30 bikes. For a school of 900 plus students, we only have a parking for 30 bikes. The new parking for bikes is, I don't know, 100 or so. I don't know the exact count but it's a lot more bike parking. These slides that you can study at your leisure kind of lay out the different levels of the school. A lot of people don't think about this because they look at the buildings individually and say, they're all two-story buildings but if you think about the lowest level of A building and the highest level of E building, Burlington High School is about a nine-story building because it climbs up that hillside there. So we're going to correct that and keep this much more accessible. The circulation vertically and horizontally is going to be much improved. Overall, we're looking at about 240,000 square feet existing and the proposed total is going to be about 270,000 square feet. So we're tearing down C building and adding new construction of about 79,000 square feet, renovating 192,000 square feet. General classrooms, it's not a huge increase of classrooms but now when we talk about general classrooms we're talking about non-lab classes. So not the science classes, the specialty classes but for general instruction. So we have existing 39 at an average size of 695 square feet and proposed 42 classrooms. There are no small group classrooms or breakout spaces and currently we have designed in about four of those scattered around the campus. There's only one conference room in that whole facility and the proposed is for six. Student support, administrative services and I think a lot of you are aware that like a lot of our public institutions, every institution and schools in particular are being asked to handle more and more and more social issues and which creates more pressure on administrative and student support services. So that's reflected in this fairly sizable increase in space for administrative and support services, support spaces. Extracurricular and lab spaces, we're seeing an increase of about 12,000 square feet. BTC spaces existing, it's about the same. The current plan was to just do some basic hand-capped accessibility improvements at F building. But that because of the PCBs, F building has got to be revisited and rebudgeted. Some of the things that we've had to do to reduce scope, we've eliminated gym floor replacement that can be done at a later date. As I mentioned, the auxiliary gym, it's gonna be designed and bid as an alternate but that'll help us see how much that'll cost, whether or not we can afford it in this round. The large parking area for the bikes was designed to have a cover, a canopy over it and we eliminated the canopy, that was about $130,000, $140,000. But the slab is being designed to accept a canopy. So if money can be raised or money can be found out of operating costs in the future, then that canopy can be ordered and installed without having to rebuild the whole thing. We don't need to go through all of these numbers, but these pages, when you have a chance to look at them on your own, we'll show you some of the line item costs that we're working with here. So our total project budget now is 73,599,414 dollars. And all but, well, let me say that this last bit here, this 3,599 is gonna be covered through other funding, not from the bond funds. The bond funds have a limit of 70 million. So that's where this additional funding comes in. So like I said, I will make this available. I will send this as a PDF to Kevin. That's my contact, thank you, Kevin. And I will leave it to him to make it available to the rest of the members and I'll be happy to take questions. Okay, thank you very much. Interesting presentation. I'm gonna try to get the screen share back. I mean, the gallery view back here. Just a minute. Okay, can you take the screen share off? Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I thought maybe people would wanna keep looking at it. Okay. Yeah. Okay, great. Oh, you've gotta be able to see the hands raised, right? Right, right, right. Thank you very much. I know you have bought, you know, to tick us off as a box, but it's vitally important, even for somebody like me and some of the rest of us who don't have kids in school, what happens in the school is very important to the community, to our future, to our value. So I think it's tremendously important. So thank you. What are the questions for Tom? Any- We have a question from Els. Els? Very simple question. I hate to be the one who asks this, but how does this affect our school levies? I mean, have we budgeted for any of this yet? Is this emergency funding that we're gonna be paying for years to come? I will vote, yes, I will say that, but just, you know, is this new money or is this money that was already anticipated? Well, if you're talking about the BHS Re-Invisioning Project money, that was money that was a part of a bond vote in November of 2018. So that's settled business, if you will. In terms of the additional costs related to PCBs, that's a big one. And I am not qualified to speak on how that's gonna be funded. I wish I had the answers for that one. I wish I had a big checkbook, but that has yet to be solved. Okay, other questions? Jess, do you see anybody else? Kevin? So, you know, I have a friend who's building a camp out in rural Vermont, and he's been talking to me about how crazy the prices have been of materials amid COVID. I'm wondering how that's factoring into this at all with your quotes that you're obtaining for like the future expansions and whatnot, and also just for like, you know, current construction. I'm curious like how that's going for you guys. That's a good question. I think some people thought that perhaps COVID would create some kind of cost savings in some way because there'd be a lot of hungry contractors out there when things start opening up again. And I don't see any reason to think that's true. There were a lot of forces driving construction costs up over the last 10 years or more, and none of those forces have gone away. It's not just material, it's labor as well. We have an aging workforce in the construction industry. We have fewer younger people that are willing to go into the industry and do that hard work. So, there are cost drivers for materials and labor that we're concerned about. We do have another round of estimating that's planned. Now, this is in-house estimating where our construction manager, their whole team is going to take the design development documents and do another round of estimating on that to see where we are before it goes out to bid. Thank you. Other questions? Brian? Yeah, Brian? It might actually be for our school board members. Steve Carey and Polly really is the question that was asked by ELS about how that PCB remediation is being envisioned to be covered. Is there any kind of insurance or other resources that are available for that? Do you wanna hold that because the school board is up next? Well, it's relevant to the projects. I thought we'd just cover it while the project is here. Okay, sure. Anybody who can answer that? There's a lot to say about that. And I'll get to that. You know, there's a lot going on regarding the high school. I just wanna, are we done with the questions for Tom? Because I'll just go on from here. Okay, I just have one more, Tom. And that is, I'm assuming that the HVAC system and the air ventilation system now that we know what's necessary to safely hold classes inside when there's a pandemic, will they be up to those standards? Yeah, when the new school is built and the renovations are complete, the HVAC systems will certainly meet or exceed those standards, even related to COVID. We've talked to our mechanical engineers about that and they're confident that those systems will perform to those new, those evolving COVID standards. Thank you. Okay, then. Let me, before I sign off and hand it over to you and the board members, I know I made it sound like I was just checking off a box by presenting to the wards two and three NPA. And technically that's true, but representing the district, we all feel very sincere when we say that we're, we want the whole city to understand this project and know this project. And so it's not just checking a box for us. We also, it's not also not lost on us that the city, the biggest city in the state currently does not have a high school. And that is, it weighs on me heavily every day as it does the rest of the team. And we're working through challenges that seasoned veterans have never seen before. So we're doing our best and it's definitely not lost on us that this is a critical, critical matter. But thank you for having me tonight. Okay, thank you, Tom. Thanks for a great presentation and for your dedication to this project. It's so important. Thank you. Okay, so Steve and Carrie and Polly, if she's here, I haven't seen one. All right. I also want to thank Tom Peterson because he's been incredibly informative and patient for a long time. And he's been to many finance committee meetings, many Burlington re-envisioning committee meetings, many board meetings. We've seen these slides over and over again and he's been incredibly patient and informative throughout the whole project. So thank you, Tom, for that. I'll tell you. But the bottom line is the project has changed, the re-envisioning project has changed dramatically since it was voted in. And you can see by the schematics presented tonight, that does not represent the plan that the city voted for. We do have the 70 million to re-envision and that potential building that was shown to us if things were to move smoothly. But in fact, they haven't at all. And you probably know a lot about the issues, but let me just review some things. Let me talk a little bit about BHS and a little bit about the plan to start to provide in-person learning for the students who have been disenfranchised by this discovery of PVs, what are they? PVs, PCBs. PCBs. PCBs, PCBs in the environment at the school and in the land itself. So just to remind everyone that Tom Flanagan and Claire Woll literally work 24 seven, trying to come up with solutions that are gonna allay some of the anxiety in the community regarding the fact that the high school doesn't exist and the kids are at home. And the parents are dealing with this, the kids are dealing with this, the faculty is dealing with new ways of delivering education. And it's been very stressful for everyone. But Burlington Technical College is up and running because some generous community members have come forth and provided space for those students. Horizons and on top programs are running for the same reason. And the school board has been involved in the last several, it seems like a year, but it's been probably just a couple of months in getting community input to all the decisions that have to be made regarding where to go from here. So you've probably seen the surveys that have come out. There have been lots of surveys that have been put out and data gathered. The vast majority of people are very concerned about the lack of teaching and learning an in-person mode. So they want more than anything else right now is to get the kids in classrooms with teachers, even if it's a hybrid model, like some of the other high schools that are demonstrating around the state right now. There were some options that were presented to the community regarding getting into the building. Is it safe to get into the building? The medical advice from the state is absolutely not. And the superintendent agrees that he can't go against the advice of the state to put students back in the building when the PCB testing hasn't really even been complete. It's not just go in and test and get a number and come out and you're done in one day. The testing is lengthy, it's expensive, it's laborious, it's complicated. And we found that there are PCBs in the soil as well as it all over the building, mostly all over the building at levels that vary. So actually what's on the site right now, the gym, the auditorium, the cafeteria, and I think one other small portion of the building is below the levels that would allow us to have some activities occur there safely. But another of the options that were put out to the community war, what do we do from here? Do we, we can't put the kids back in the building. Do we try to restore it as much as we can and get them back in as quickly as possible? Or do we build a new high school completely? You know, that was one of the original proposals. So of those three, putting them back in the building is not gonna happen. So that gives us two things. What do we do? Do we try to get this re-envisioning project up as quickly as possible and get the kids back in the building as quickly as possible, which would be at the earliest in September of next year. Or do we do we do something and try? I don't know how we would go about, you know, getting the money to build a new building. We have 70 million. It would probably be another bond vote. Now, this is me talking. I'm not talking to the entire board, but I have information because I'm on the board, but my, you know, that's another possibility, a bond from my perspective. Another bond, would the city approve another several million, you know, 20 million or whatever, to actually rip down the building that exists, save what can be saved and build another building somewhere in the city. But in the meantime, kids are not being educated. I mean, to the extent that they need to be in a person to person, teaching a person relationship. And that is the major concern of the community based on all the surveys. And I'll say that the board and the superintendent have been extremely transparent in every decision they've made. They've asked for input on everything and they've got a lot of feedback from a lot of citizens. You probably answered some of the surveys yourself. I'm assuming you have. So, with all of this going on right now, Claire and the, Claire Wool and the superintendent and the staff, they're literally working every day, I want to say 24 seven. It's an expression, but it seems like that to get the kids in a reasonable place as soon as possible. So the board decided to put the high school re-envisioning project on hold for now until we can first solve this problem of where to put the kids and how to proceed throughout the rest of the school year. We're not even halfway through. We're trying to meet the immediate needs, in other words, of the community right now. So you may have heard some of this because it's out there. What we can do is Edmunds Elementary, Edmunds Elementary School and Middle School is available on Wednesdays. So the plan as it stands right now is to have the high school kids meet in class situations at Edmunds starting on November 23rd, 24th, two weeks from now, right? Two weeks. On Monday and Tuesday. So they'll at least they'll have some time together with their teachers. And then from there on after on Wednesdays. That's the holiday week, by the way. The Thanksgiving holiday week to 23rd, 24th, Monday and Tuesday. So the teachers and the high school students can meet at Edmunds, which ironically was the old high school of Burlington, right? For Monday and Tuesday of that week and then thereafter, Wednesdays only. There's also space that the city is gonna rent, we're gonna rent, the district is gonna rent on the top of the LL Bean building. And I hope I'm not telling you stuff you already know, but I'll just go over some of this anyway. So at the top of the LL Bean building, there's a space. It's gonna be called the Seahorse Engagement Center. And it's basically a space for guidance counselors, for special educators, for students access to teachers and staff, for one-to-one tutoring to go on. There's a succeed program that we have at BHS that will be housed there. There'll be some classroom space, this is above LL Bean again, for teachers and students to use in the afternoon. It'll be a club meeting venue, and it will be placed for counselors to meet with seniors regarding college applications and scheduling. So that looks like that's gonna happen very shortly, that LL Bean space. And then there's the rumor that you may have heard about UVM. So the city has, the district has asked UVM, and I thought I was gonna hear something about it today, but we haven't, is if UVM is a possibility, can we use some of the buildings at UVM, because the UVM students leave at Thanksgiving, they're not coming back till February. So there's a big piece of time where we could have in-person instruction for our high school students at UVM. And that sounds like a really good possibility. People are excited about it. It sounds like the kids would like it, the teachers would like it. It would be reasonable. Again, it would be a hybrid model. It's not a regular classroom, it's a hybrid model similar to what's going on other high schools. There are all kinds of requirements that UVM is gonna hold us to. One of them is COVID testing on a regular basis like they've done with their students. That's an expensive proposition that the district has to afford. There are legal issues now that have come up in the negotiations that are going on. I hope I'm not being too open because this happened at public session, I believe, at the board meeting, this discussion. And then there are custodial issues about using the UVM space between December 7th and I think the end of January. So it would be a holdover space where we could have high school classes, high school students, high school teachers use until something else happens. Then there's the Macy's. You may have heard about the Macy's possibility. I can't see people. I don't know. I don't know if this is all new but you've heard about it. So the Macy's is another space that we could, we would love to be able to use for two to three years while what happens at the high school happens at the high school. But the Macy's space is a two-floor building, no windows, but we've seen plans for it to be designed so it can accommodate a high school inside of it while still using the LL Bean space that I talked about earlier. But there are problems regarding using Macy's as well. It has, none of this has been finalized. None of it. But these are things that are in the works that we're hoping can fulfill the public's desire to get these classes up and running in-person instruction as soon as possible. These kids have been away from their teachers since March. It's coming on a year. And if you have kids or you know people in Burlington, it's not a good situation at all. And it needs to be solved. So the board has been trying to deal with all of this. And so I don't mean that the, and Tom Peterson, I don't really mean that we're stopping the project. We're not going to, but we decided publicly that we need to fulfill the needs of the students and the instructional model of the school as soon as possible. And then we'll decide exactly what will happen with the high school re-envisioning plan. Thank you. Polly, do you have some comments to add? We have just a little more time. So, and we want some questions too. So please go ahead, Polly. Okay, thank you. So I just want to reiterate what Commissioner Kerry said, Steven said, about how the superintendent and I think chair will have worked tirelessly and moved mountains to make it happen so that we have alternative spaces for BTC and now the Seahorse Engagement Center, where we have intensive special needs students going in and guidance counselors available and teachers available. There is a lot of work happening in the district, but I say this and I want you to see it the way I see it in my mind right now, which is all capital letters. We have no high school right now. We are caught between a rock and hard place. We have state of Vermont, Department of Health, saying here are the acceptable limits for PCBs, which are way lower than anywhere else in the world. And I want to say that is so commendable, that is so laudable. I am so proud to live in Vermont because we have a place that has these standards. But then this is shutting down our high school. We have a $70 million bond that was passed with certain ideas in mind about our renovation and much of that money is being used right now for testing and mitigation and abatement. And I just want to share with you my reflection, which I sent to chair wool and to superintendent Flanagan because I think this is really critical to who we are as a city and as a community. So I am really disappointed that I have not heard one word from state and local government people about this situation. There must be a disconnect or some fundamental head in the sand aspect of ignoring it. Because the way I see it is Burlington is a city many people live in so they can proverbially have it all. They have access to Lake Champlain, they have outdoor opportunities, they have amazing art and culture opportunities, they have high quality food opportunities and they have excellent public schools. The problem is people pay a premium in terms of housing costs and property taxes to be able to live in Burlington and have all of those things. Specific to schools they pay a premium to live here so they can have the opportunity to raise their children in a place that has a range of different racial, cultural and linguistic groups and the people here are fiercely committed to their neighborhoods and their neighborhood schools. So in the absence of high level meaningful educational opportunities for their children and due to the dysfunction of not having a high school, those who have children are going to move to another district and we have heard that at school board meetings. We have heard people say, why am I paying so much money to live in Burlington when there is no high school? Why don't I leave and move to another place? With the departure of a high number of committed families we lose valuable members of the community. We lose revenue, housing prices go down and that affects everyone whether or not they have children. With the knowledge that Burlington does not have a viable high school not only will people leave the area people will not move here. Not having a viable high school also further drives inequities. There are those who can afford to send their children to private school and there are those who cannot afford to do that. This is unacceptable. So in my mind it is of the highest urgency that we have a functioning high school as soon as possible. I think it needs to reflect all of the wonderful things about Burlington and it needs to honor the children of this community by being clean by which I mean not polluted by toxins and it needs to be ADA accessible. These are all the things we wanted to fix about the current building but to do that and to do anything at this point we need money. We are going to need more than the $70 million for this bond that was passed. This is going to go very much right now toward mitigation and abatement and that's what worries me. It's already been spent on mitigation and abatement and testing. It's being spent on rent costs to put our students in other places around the city. It's not free to put students around the city. So we need money from the state to support a vital part of our community because the Burlington community is a vital part of the economic and cultural health of Vermont. In 2018, the taxpayers of Burlington approved a $70 million bond to improve the schools and now it is time for the state and the city to advocate on our behalf, to supporters financially and politically and I hope to hear tonight from those local leaders who are present how they plan to do this because without a high school, we are failing as a city. So that was a bit of a rant but I really needed to share my frustration with the situation and sort of express my anxiety about how dire it is that we get advocacy and support and that we find a way to make this work for everyone in Burlington. Thank you, Polly. You both have been eloquent on this issue. Steven, I'm gonna just guess the group. I'd like to extend this conversation another 15 minutes if we could because it's so important. So if I don't hear any objections, I will do that. Steven. Yeah, you know, Commissioner Walts is texting us. She couldn't be here tonight, but she wanted me to mention that, I forgot I left out the option, another option that we've met in terms of Macy's, the rental of Macy's for two to three years because we're talking about a two to three year project anyway for either remediation of the current building or building a new high school. And there's the discussion of the possibility of getting trailers. And there would be quite a few trailers that we would need. And they would probably be located on the baseball field, although Claire Wool has been driving on the city with her camera potentially scouting out alternate places for these trailers to be put. But that's the other alternative site location for the long-term classrooms. It's much more expensive. And that's what we're concerned about a little bit, but right now, but I forgot to mention that possibility as well, that high school classes being held in trailers play somewhere in the city. I'm Brian, I see your hand. Yeah, I did share that I've spoken directly with Tom Peterson about this, but several parents who are very outspoken and active around the issue of the high school closure, as well as directly with Superintendent Flanagan and Commission Chair Wool. Just to be clear with Holly and Steven, there is I think a consensus, may not everyone's not necessarily speaking up together with one voice. I think that's what we need to be doing, but we do need advocacy from City Hall really with the Agency of Education to find a path forward. And I think the health department needs to be very much engaged in that process. So I suggested there be some temporary mitigation strategies would allow for at least some portions of the building, perhaps if it passes the air testing, air quality testing to be used. And I had a specific strategy for doing that. But I think said that I just want to point out that in addition to the $70 million bond, we have a $19 million bond that was approved for pre-K. And I think there really needs to be a reckoning with the fact that together, when you put those numbers together, you have nearly $90 million to build something that could meet all the needs. So I think we need to be creative about that. I think the pre-K could be something that very much could be co-located rather than looking at that neighborhood-based approach, having a material patient. It could actually be a project that actually gets built as part of the high school. So I haven't heard anyone really say anything about that. And I'm surprised not to hear it be acknowledged if there's a $19 million project that was approved. Thank you. Jess, I can't see everybody who you probably- We have someone on the phone who'd like to speak. I think it's- Jeannie, is it Jeannie that you said wanted to say something? Okay, go ahead. And Jeannie, I'll just have to unmute yourself. I think it's star six, seven. Thanks guys for letting me in. Sorry, I'm not zooming through my laptop. Yeah, I just wanna echo everything that Polly and Steven said. And I think what I really want to weigh in on is that whatever alternative space we have might also be a flex space for other schools that might need, you know, IAA also needs to have some construction done. I think that we're as a district looking at lots of places where we're gonna have to relocate students for further construction. But as far as something that Brian mentioned and this idea of needing more money to do whatever we need to do it at the high school, there is a possibility that we should really look to our state to enter into a lawsuit against their, you know, the company that initially created these PCBs, there's a school in New Hampshire who actually successfully sued them for the money to remediate PCBs from their schools so this is such a larger issue. I know that I see teenagers not going to school every day and I also know that there are plenty other schools in our community and our state that if they were doing the extensive testing, the first thing to say is the reason that we know how bad the PCBs are in at Burlington High School is because it was a preliminary step, this testing was part of the re-envisioning project. So for all of the schools out there that aren't digging up their soil and planning a renovation, the CPA is not asking them to test for these things but I can assure you that there are plenty of schools out there that are currently dealing with the same situation, they just don't know it. This is a statewide problem. I'm sure this is a national problem. So as much as this is so unfortunate, I'm hoping that the Burlington School District has been a spearhead, some kind of effort to bring light to this obvious health concern, not just for our state but for our nation. And I'll stay on the line for questions. Thank you very much. Are there some questions? We're running a little behind but I will entertain some, okay. I'm gonna just say one thing, Steven, if you do put people in the Macy's building as a downtown residence, I think I would want the same level of testing that you would do at UVM. So you have to consider that and the cost of going to Macy's as well. And my personal opinion has been for a long time that we should tax ourselves and get a new high school. That's just the way I feel about it. I think it would be simpler and cleaner. Okay, anybody else before we leave this topic? Jess, do you see anybody? No, thank you very, very much. I don't think there's such a thing as too much information on this subject. So I appreciate the openness of all the presenters and we're going to move on. I've had a suggestion which I agree with since Mark Hughes was bumped from the agenda last time. We're going to put the Racial Justice Alliance in front of the presentations from our representatives. Are there any representatives who really object to that right now? Will you be able to stay? I hope so. Here, are you okay with it? Great, super. So Mark Hughes, you're on and welcome. Thank you, good evening. Wow, I was following that. And I had no idea. That's some tough stuff. I almost feel like we could have, I actually had a couple of questions myself but I think we'll come back to that. I don't have any kids in the Burlington High Schools but I think it's a very grave situation and I'll be following that. So good evening, I am Mark Hughes. I'm a Ward 1 resident and I'm over right over on Riverside out of everybody on the call and I know a lot of folks on the call I just want to wave at Tony Reddington because I hardly ever get a chance to see him. So I want to say hi to Tony. I'm going to take about maybe 10 minutes, 15 minutes if there's questions or something like that. I'm going to talk to you a little bit about an update on what we call at the Alliance Operation Phoenix Rise. It sounds kind of like a secret agent mission but it's not. What it is is it's really what inspired parts of the resolution of June 29th which was a racial justice resolution that was primarily sponsored by Zariah Hightower but was passed unanimously. It was actually sponsored by, I think, the entire caucus, if I'm not mistaken. So I'll take a few time, I'll take a little bit of time to go through that. There's no ask here, this is just informational and I'll come in and give you an update from time to time on some of this stuff. There's a lot of it. You hear some of it and our concern is is that there is a lot that's being said about what we are talking about so little and there's very little being said about what we have so much to say. So I think that what I'll do is I'll start at the top and just inform you that part of this effort involved a historic reparations task force, a task force which will go in and look at the implications of shadow slavery and the relationship that Burlington has with that and come back with some recommendations or possible proposed solutions and so forth and the reason I call that a historic is because well, it's never been done before. There's, that's not, that hasn't happened anyplace else in any other city in the United States. I think I have a couple of slides that I'll share with you as well, just to kind of keep me on track, keep me moving ahead, I'll see if I can get a one or two of them up while I'm talking to you. So that, the first meeting was last evening. They will be meeting I believe again on the 25th if I'm not mistaken. So just follow the calendar, you'll see that. So, and you can also catch that on, I think it's, I think 17 was there last night if I'm not mistaken. So be on the lookout for that. Tyisha Green is leading that up and we are one of the appointing authorities. I know a city council put somebody on there and there's a few other appointing authorities. The other thing I'll tell you about just for updates is just to want to make you aware that there is a declaration of racism as a public health crisis that work is still going on. You probably saw that happen probably some time around July timeframe. There are about maybe at least two or three dozen organizations ranging from the Chinden County Regional Planning, the Department of Health, the University of Vermont Medical Center, and the list goes on. Taking a close look at those determinants, those health related determinants that are being driven and or are driving racism, systemic racism, impact on folks in our communities. Looking at some priorities, I'm working with the mayor, I'm looking over at the big white board right now just to keep me honest. I know we're kicking around economic empowerment and wealth, racial disparities in land and housing access, cultural empowerment, mental wellness as well as clearly COVID relief rather. But I just want to make you aware that we are wrestling with that. It is a formidable wrestling match to say the least. Just to herd the cats and also get everybody dialed in that all of these organizations have made significant commitments for anti-racist agendas and have agreed to come in and work together in a format whereby collectively we are moving the ball and this is across the county. I'm gonna cover the rest of Operation Phoenix and then what I'll do is, as I said at the end, I'll ask you for some questions and I'll stick around. I'd like to listen to the representatives. Yeah, just talking about that mission, transforming the lives of black and brown people by investing in their lives and holding space for their culture, providing them opportunity and ensuring the equity they deserve to thrive. So there's a combined effort. You will see this come out in that resolution and there are a number of activities that are in place. I'm just gonna update you on a few of those. You've probably heard a lot about the piece on restructuring public safety except for you've probably heard it more framed in this big conversation about how everybody just wants to get rid of the police or something like that, okay? So there could be nothing further from the truth. That's not the conversation. There was an agreement, the council did come to terms with a 30% reduction in uniformed officers. That was by attrition, everybody's still safe. As we stand right now, that is in play along with a full, robust community engagement in this process as well as an assessment of the department and with a full analysis, they would kind of inform one another. So there's a couple of pieces of work that are happening kind of at the same time. Right now we're at the tail end of closing in on the community engagement facilitator which was placed out for RFP. I think that process is all but done. And right now I believe if I'm not mistaken, there is an RFP that's on its way out that's on the assessment of the department and this is to determine what services would be less appropriate to be delivered by the department and the division based upon the vision and the values of the community. What are we gonna do in terms of delivering services in our community that's services relating to health, that are health related as well as so-called public safety related. I think that everybody understands that there are services that would probably be better suited and delivered from other areas in our community. And so I think that those are the kind of questions that are coming out. That's the analysis and discussion that will happen in the community engagement. And again, that will feed into the assessment and hopefully from that analysis, there would be some output that would be actionable. I won't spend a whole lot of time on that, just go straight into the cultural empowerment piece. There was, we did agree in the work that we're doing if there would be some work that would be placed towards the implementation of a cultural empowerment center in the city. This would be really focused center in, likely hopefully the old north end or somewhere in areas that communities that would be most accessible, the black and brown folks, youths. We're talking about community centers, activity centers, centers of excellence. Talking about education and arts centers of excellence. A lot of programming we're also envisioning as well, economic development. So it's not enough just to talk about the systemic racism from a perspective of the interaction that black folks have with police, but what we're talking about is implementing programming that would seek to lift their lives up as well and enable them to focus on their own culture. So those are some of those programs. And I would say before I go on and talk more about where that is an implementation, I'm just gonna go and combine that with the secure and equal opportunity. One of the things that I'm often reminded when people talk about complaint management, I always think about that grenade with the pin on it and has the number one and it says complaint management, I've taken number. And I think that this, first of all, this is not that but one of the things we were talking about was, when people of color are working, when we're talking about folks who do work in the city, the few that we do have, when there are challenges that they're having, how do they resolve those things? And so I think that's part of the discussion. We're not that far down the road on that, but there's some work around minority owned business procurement programs as well as economic empowerment to the extent that we'd be creating pathways for capital access. Business mentorship programs where thriving businesses in the city can reach back and pull forward those struggling minority owned businesses and give them a hand up and also technical assistance. And the reason why I put those last two categories together is just because what we decided would happen first and I sit down with on the mayor and his team and Tyesha Green and also Cal Dotson and now Consular Hightower on a weekly basis. In those meetings, what we're coming to understand is is that it's important for us to have a strategic plan on all of this work on these last two items. It's a lot of stuff, a lot of moving parts. So we have brought in, we're in the process of bringing in a consultant from Boston, there's a couple of them there. It's a grayscale consultants in all ACEs. That contract is in place. We've had the kickoff meeting and I think we have a follow-up meeting tomorrow and that is to create a strategic plan for the implementation of some of this work. And that strategic plan would also inform the feasibility study that we'd need to put in place to secure the Cultural Empowerment Center that I spoke to you about on the under slide. I'll briefly go back to just talking just a little bit about the restructuring policing. Just I just want to flag the fact that we do have a joint committee of the Public Safety Committee of the City Council and the Police Commission that was formed as a result of this work and they are working diligently to drive those plans surrounding me, the work on the community, I should say the community engagement as well as the police assessment and analysis. So they're driving that and I think they're meeting every other week. That's probably gonna lighten up a little bit. So just want to make you aware of that. And then finally, I'll conclude and take your questions is just expanding racial equity and inclusion and belonging is there has been an incredible amount of work that have gone into supporting this new structure, this new apparatus within city government called racial equity inclusion and belonging and that has culminated just recently with the hiring of two additional personnel on staff with the city. We report directly to Tyesha Green and I believe those folks will be starting as a week if I'm not mistaken at the top and next week's a couple great folks starting some names that you will be familiar with. Also investing in a training platform, technology platform that's going to be able to support the delivery and management of training racial equity inclusion belonging and training across the city itself. A lot of work on the trusted voices and the rapid response teams in there, those activities are in play to address the mayor's and Tyesha Green's eight point plan for the implementation of strategies that would support the BIPOC communities specifically in this would be to support them and provide a solutions for them in response to the challenges that we're facing with COVID-19. So just a lot of work happening in the racial equity and inclusion and belonging department that was a, it's always been a part of our strategy to have that inclusive in this work. I'm gonna pause there, stop there. And I would just say, just gonna skip over some of that and just see if I can take some questions and maybe there's some, I'm just, I'll leave the slide up just for a couple seconds here and if there are any questions or comments I can just hold out here for me. I'm gonna be around because I'm gonna be sitting around listening to the rest of the session but if there's any questions for me, I'll take them now. And Mark, as long as you're sharing the screen, I can't see the participants to call on them, so. That's good because as long as I'm sharing the screen, I can't see anything either. Okay, good. So I see a question from Tony Reddington. Hey, Tony. Hi, Mark, it's good to see you and thank you. I just a comment related to minorities and programs that specifically change their lives. When Obamacare was passed, few people understood that the primary disproportionate beneficiaries were people who were low income and minorities. Very much so, we just passed a resolution saying we wanna get 80 units of section eight attached to city place. Well, that in itself, it's worth noting that Vice President-elect Harris, Senator Booker were the two primary movers behind universal section eight or universal provision of 30% income rents to all people basically in a check each month. Rent relief act that was proposed last year. So we somehow sometimes forget that by pushing for these units of housing assistance or getting healthcare on an equitable basis or also promoting the equality and equity that's needed towards minority and low income populations. Tony, I appreciate that and you know I appreciate your work. That's why I called you out when I first come on. I was, I think if it wasn't during, if we weren't in this situation with the virus and I saw you over at Barrios or something like that, I hope it doesn't seem too creepy every time I sneak up on you and say, hey, Tony. But yeah, totally what you're saying, just speaking to the heart of what we're dealing with is it's complex in a lot of ways. And we could talk about the construction of a capitalist system and its origins being in genocide and slavery. And with that looks like across 401 years and black folks being benefactors of poverty as a result of that largely. But we've got plenty for white people too. And that's part of the reason why we always say in the work we do, most black people are poor, but most poor people are white. So there's some intersection in what it is that we're working on and I appreciate that and also your work on the parkway. Thank you. Other questions, comments? We have just a little bit of time left for this, but still if there's people who wanna say something, ask Mark a question. Jessica, I can't see people. So is anybody? No, we don't seem to have anyone with their hands up. Okay, very good. Oh, yes, Paulie has an end up. Okay, Paulie. Thanks, it's not a question. I just wanna thank you for the work you're doing on behalf of the Vermont Racial Justice Alliance. And I wrote down what you just said, most black people are poor, most poor people are white because I'm gonna be chewing on that for a long time. So thank you so much for everything that you have done in the city of Burlington. Thank you. And if I could, Barbara, very quickly, I just wanna thank, I know we're running late, but I wanna thank you all for allowing us the opportunity and I will come and provide updates on other issues as they arise. We have a robust statewide initiative. That's what we're gonna be kicking off. We'll talk more about that. Maybe the next time I get a chance to see you. So thank you again and thank you for having me. Okay, well, thank you for your presentation and thank you for your patience with us. I'm sorry, last time. Okay, so to our representatives, Brian, are you still here? Yes, I'm still here. Okay, we have about 15 minutes for all the presentations. So if we could just five minutes or less, okay. Hello. Hi, Brian. This is Brian Chiena, State Representative. I, in full disclosure, I'm actually in the south end right now. Please don't hold it against me, but I'm visiting people in the south end and but still wanted to be with you tonight. And I have a very important announcement that I'd like to make tonight regarding the mayoral race. I am not running for mayor. I am not running for mayor. So have some time for us in the last coronavirus pandemic. Facebook page. And so we encourage folks to attend those. We've been taking.