 Welcome to the NPA. Take two. I'm Chris. I'm going to be facilitating the meeting tonight. Siri community members. Jessica Hyman. Tony and Ginoni. Welcome to the NPA. Take two. I'm Chris. I'm going to be. Siri. Are we, are we picking it up there? Hello. Are we picking it up there? I can hear and see. I don't know about anybody else. There. Start as soon as we can try that again. What's that for? It's red sox games. Testing one, two, testing one, two. testing 12 testing 12 testing 12 testing 12. We're good now. I think we've got our technical difficulties ironed out now. So for the third time, I'm Chris, I'm facilitating the meeting. I'm going to introduce the steering committee. We have Charlie G behind the camera here. Jessica Hyman to my right. We have some other folks that we're not able to attend tonight. Molly Flan again. Tony. Hi, everybody. I'm Tony Reddington, Barbara McGrew, Andrew Champagne, and Mayumi Cornell. I'd also like to bring a shout out to Roxanne Muse, who we expect will be joining us shortly on the steering committee. Roxanne, if you want to say a few words here. Yeah. Come on out. Come on down. Hi. Does this work? Doesn't matter. Cool. Yeah. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. Hi. I've lived in Burlington and in Ward three. And actually in the same apartment for the past seven years. So I'm pretty rooted here. For those that are at this meeting that haven't been to an eight and NPA meeting before. I just thought it'd be helpful to give context that these are meant to improve communication between the city and residents, and the city. So I'm really excited to be joining the steering committee and joining the steering committee to help facilitate that. However, I can. So for all the logistics that the steering committee does. Agenda setting and stuff. I am very organized and methodical person. And as for the steering committee also figures out ways to work together. So I'm really excited to be working with the steering committee. And I'm really excited to be working with the steering committee and our goals. And this is something I'm excited to get creative with and problem solved with. I have communication, engineering and customer service in my professional background. And I currently work as a technical writer and editor. So all that to say. I love when things are well organized and well communicated. Thoughtful and. So I'm excited to be working with the steering committee. And I'm excited to be sitting on one steering committee meeting so far to just make sure it's what I thought it was. And. So I feel like that confirmed that this is something that I would really enjoy. And I feel like I could really contribute to. So thank you. Thank you. Reminder that the next NPA meeting will be. We'll be back on Thursday, July 14th. So we will be returning to our regular. Location at the old North end community center at 20 Allen street. With the community dinner. Very important. So yes. So without further ado, we'll transition into the public forum portion of our meeting right on time. So if anyone has any thoughts or opinions, I'd like to share, feel free to come up to the mic and speak your mind. We have a request to you keep it to two minutes though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I have my hand raised. I don't know if anyone can see it. Yeah. Brian, you're coming up. Hi, everyone. My name is Sam. I am the CEDO stuff that helps with the NPAs. And I just have a really quick announcement for CEDO. There's going to be a virtual community meeting on the Trinity campus rezoning on June 23rd from six to seven 30 PM. We're looking for a lot of purchase public participation in this. We want to hear your thoughts. And I know you via most of your thoughts as well. So put that on your calendars. And if you are interested in what's going on with that, please show up. There'll be a lot of information there. I'll make sure that the link to that meeting is in the minutes of this of for this meeting as well. So you can get it from there. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks, Sam. Anybody else have anything that they'd like to chat about for public forum? Right here, sir. Yeah. Yeah. Come on up. Hi, everyone. My name is Ryan Adario. And I live just across the street in the Vermont house. And I got a lot of information there. I'll make sure that the link to that meeting is in the minutes of this of for this meeting as well. And then I got a call a couple of weeks ago from Joe. Krawinski asking if I'd like to join her. In the race for state rep for Chittenden 16. And a few hours later, I said, yes. And I'm really excited. I lived here for about six years now. And I have a background in affordable housing and advocating for survivors of domestic violence, but I'm really excited to get to know more neighbors and hear what's important to you. So that hopefully I could help be a voice to bring those concerns to Montpelier and get some results for us here in Burlington. So I just look forward to meeting everyone. And that's about it. Thank you. Thank you, Ryan. Hi, everybody. This is a little awkward with my back to all folks that are here in the room, but my name is there. I just wanted to introduce myself briefly. I live over in Ward one. I used to live in the old north end. I have lived in Burlington since actually since the 1970s. I am running for the state Senate and would appreciate hearing from folks about your concerns. Like I said, I've lived in Burlington since the 1970s. I first got inspired to get involved in local. Activism through Bernie Sanders when Bernie was mayor served on the city council for several years was a city council president back in those days and have worked for many, many years as an affordable housing. Advocate I have over 20 years worth of experience as a, as an advocate working at the state house on a host of issues that largely center around affordable housing, but also land use planning. I used to represent the city of Burlington as its legislative liaison. So worked on many municipally related issues, including property tax reform. Universal pre K. The saving the renter rebate for low income residents and really helping also to create the. Large network of nonprofit affordable housing organizations that we have around the state that provide affordable housing. So really looking forward to hearing from folks about what your concerns are. I am hoping to make it through the, I'm running in the Democratic primary, which is on August, August 9th. So would appreciate folks support. And also just a suggestion to steering committee members and made the suggestion at our ward one and eight NPA last night. We really nice if the, if the, if the, if the, if the, if the first ever. Um, Gronk heated up the, uh, Ward one and eight NPA last night, we really nice if the NPA's maybe had an all NPA, uh, kind of, um, candidates for them so that we don't have to. So all candidates could appear together for, for folks in the city. So thank you. Anybody else in the room have anything before we move on? I'm helping coordinate the ramble, and we are not really, sorry, thanks, I just want to remind folks that we're working out some bumps and getting over some hurdles and hopefully are moving forward with the ramble to happen last Saturday in July, as always. If anyone is interested in volunteering, we are very much looking for somebody who likes to manage social media. Look at everybody jumping off. No, thank you. I'm going to give you my email address and it's going to go in the notes. Anybody else want to speak here? Call the forum in the room. Okay. Seeing no one. We're going to pivot to Brian. She online. Brian. Brian. Thank you for giving me a minute. This is, I'll be back later as a state rep I'm here right now as your neighbor from Isham Street, because there wasn't time for a 10 minute presentation but it's a time sensitive issue is good or the organization that I'm part of called Isham Street Gardening and other optimistic doings who you heard from last year about public safety. We're making a call to action to the entire city of Burlington to engage in mass gardening. We're asking people to take garden gardening to a whole new level across the city. And what you can do do between now and the next time we come, if you want to get started is clean up the areas around your house and in your neighborhood, try to expand your gardens, look around and look where new gardens could be planted to link existing gardens and try to imagine how we could connect different areas and parks in the city and using existing greenbelt gardens to create garden walkways. So that's the sort of teaser and I'll be back hopefully in July with some other members of Isgood to give you our full presentation about the history of Isgood, the benefits of gardening and how gardening can not only improve mental and physical health but actually change human behavior and reduce crime and violence. And some more steps about how you can get involved. Thank you. Thank you, Brian. All right. And now we have Charlie up. Charlie. Hi. Hi, everybody. This is really abstract. It's nice to see everybody. And I hope I think you can see me on some kind of screen. I wanted to mention the police presence downtown. There's a good letter in seven days this week saying that police presence only works if they're actually looking at what's happening around them. Two bikes sped by two policemen on Church Street. And they didn't mention to the bikers that there's a $50 fine and they certainly didn't give them a $50 fine. They continued talking. I saw skateboarders in City Hall Park and they were happy and everything was fine except there's no skateboarding in the park and there was nobody there like a police presence. For instance, I've seen, I've heard people complain about folks in the park gathering, yelling, perhaps, fighting, perhaps. I haven't heard anybody complaining about all the police. I haven't seen any either. Haven't seen any police. I think there should be a downtown ward. Ward 3 goes all through the old North End and all the way over to King Street. And I think maybe Main Street to Pearl Union to Battery, that could be considered downtown. And it's certainly not, well, it's not, North Street is not the center. It's not a major artery for us. It's hard for me to get over there. I'm older than I look and more people. But I think a downtown ward would be a very good idea because we don't really get to say much. We can't speak for the old North End. We don't even see the old North End. They're putting up a nice big building right on the other side of the building in front of me. And it's nice and tall and it'll probably block whatever they put on the site of the pit. If they do fix the Great Streets project, they start that, they fix the sewer ravine perhaps first. I believe they should start at the top and make sure that the ravine is okay because they have to at some point. And I think we don't want them to run out of money while they're working on the sewer ravine. They were working on the part on in Paul's Pearl Street. Charlie. Yes. We're hitting the two minute mark here. Sorry. This is set up so that I can't see that. But yeah, I think we should start at the top and then just go downhill from there. Thank you, Charlie. Anybody else online has anything to speak at public forum? Okay. Seeing none, we're pretty. Wait. Did I hear something? Somebody? Yes, you did. Thank you. Hi. My name is Mila Grant. I've lived in Ward 3 on and off for almost 28 years now. I've owned a home here consistently for the last 20 years. I also currently serve on the police commission. And I just wanted to mention a couple of quick things to my neighbors. As we know, the, everyone's well aware of the staffing issues at the police, our local police station, although many people have tried to make this a political issue, the fact of the matter is that this is a national and a Vermont issue and of course hitting us home here. And as we struggle to find local solutions, there are some things that we're going to need to do as a community to be the eyes and ears for our officers. So if you have something that's been stolen, because there are certain things that are not preventative. I've said it multiple times. You can put 100 officers on the street tomorrow. They cannot be next to every unlocked door, every unlocked car, every bicycle that is improperly secured, tools that you may leave on your porch, et cetera. So we're all going to need to be mindful as we've hit in the season of more crimes of opportunity. I, from what I have seen and heard from my neighbors, it is really increased this year. We are all very much aware of the increase in drug use in our community. And that certainly plays a big part in it. So do the basics. Make sure your doors are locked. Too many cars are being rifled through, stolen, because people aren't doing the basic security for their cars. Even when it gets hot, if no one's going to be in the home, make sure your doors are closed, make sure, and locked, and make sure your windows are closed. Make sure they're locked. If you can get motion lighting, that will be super helpful. If you rent, try to see if you can get your landlord to add motion lighting. If your building doesn't have it. And if you report something stolen, use some of the social media. Some people have had success if they post on front porch form or if they post on Milo, we're reaching our two minute mark here. Sure thing. If they post on Reddit, describe what was taken and someone sees it. They can call the the department and report it. So we just have to more than we usually do work on mutual aid and have each other's back during these times. Thank you so much. Thank you, Milo. Anybody else either in person or online have anything for public forum? Sean and Rachel, we're going to take the gentleman from the room first. My name is Sean Connors. We're speaking as an employee of Burton. And we pretty much see everything. We come into work every day and there are people underneath the building. There are people in the park. It's it's not as much of a disturbance as it is something that we see as something that needs to be changed. Somebody needs to put something in order to fix the problem instead of just putting a bandaid over it, which is kind of what happens when, you know, you call the cops, they come, somebody goes away, they leave. All of a sudden, they're on private property. The cops can't do anything. And then you have to call the landlord and it's a big process. I haven't heard anything about in this conversation about the Howard Center. I've done a little bit of research myself, but I know that these people I've, you know, been I've lived in a bunch of different places, met a lot of different people and nobody wants to be in a position that they're in. So I bet if you asked them, they would give you kind of an idea of what, you know, they would need the tools they would need to succeed and get out of the current position that they're in, whether it be addiction, whether it be mental health issues. And I think expanding or doing some kind of change with the Howard Center would be very, very helpful because like I said, these people, they don't. I hate to say these people, but that, you know, they don't want to be in this position and they want help for the most part. And if we can give that to them, then we don't need the cops in the fire department to come down every day because there's an overdose in the public bathroom, because that's extremely sad. And I think if we can lessen that, then we won't have that same experience on basically a daily basis. And that's all I have to say. Thank you, Sean. Anybody else here? Rachel, you're up. Hi, I'm not sure if you can see me, but hopefully you can hear me OK. We can hear you. Nice. Hi, everybody. My name is Rachel. I am the manager also of Burton, so funny I'm going after Sean. I've been an employee there since twenty sixteen and the manager there now for the last three years. And I've definitely seen an increase of activity of folks in the park. And I totally agree with Sean's point. I agree a bit with Charlie's point as well about, you know, if there are if there is police presence downtown. You know, we like Sean said, we see a lot and I don't see. I've seen a lot of activity that I know is illegal and I know should be addressed. I've seen countless open containers. We've seen open drug use, illegal drug use of all kinds. And it's the fact that that goes unaddressed at all. I think also perpetuates the idea that those types of behaviors can happen here. And I think that's what brings a lot of new population to Burlington in the summertime when the weather is warm. I see a lot of people that I never see the rest of the year. And I agree, I think having more public resources in place, more public bathrooms, more safe injection sites, more public health sites and employees of those organizations to be able to actually staff and do the work that's necessary. I think the conversation when we had about defining the police got a little steered in the wrong, steered in the direction that we a lot of us wanted to be in, which was, yes, we need police. I'm not sure that we need them to be funded as heavily as they are. If we are taking that funding and putting it towards other public resources and ways to help people that are suffering, like Sean said, from addiction, from mental health, from injuries, from things that the cops shouldn't have to be dealing with, you know, like they should be, I think, required to deal with serious crimes and stuff that are stuff that serious issues, not just your every day, you know, run of the mill petty crimes. But I think those could be avoided if people had more resources and we are better able to take care of the community because it is a vibrant place, Burlington is a wonderful cultural place to share. And I think that's what draws a lot of people here as well. But they're, in my opinion, there are still rules and they're put in place to keep the community feeling comfortable and safe where they live and where they work. I now live outside of Burlington and I'm coming from Zoom because, frankly, I make I make it a point to get out of town as quickly as I can. I don't like the energy downtown anymore. It's not the same that it used to be. I was a student here, graduated in 2013 and I've lived in Burlington up until 2019. So again, I also put in my roots and I really am invested in this community and want to see it better for everyone. You know, I want to see less of the familiar faces that I see in the part because they're getting help. Hey, I think we're at the end of the two minutes there. But we'll be able to talk a little bit more if you have other concerns about downtown when we pivot to the form here in a little bit. Anybody else? We do have someone here in the room. OK, come on down. Not quite as good as the late Bob Barker, unfortunately. Hello. Hi, my name is Meg and I manage a property in downtown on Church Street and I just would like to suggest City Hall Park is a park. And I'm wondering if we can have closing hours just like we do at the other parks so that the activity might stop. People in the building that I work are very unsafe. They feel really bad. And I've lived here and went to UVM, graduated in 1989, and I've lived here ever since. And again, it's nothing. This is nothing like it's ever been. Thank you. Thank you, Meg. Not seeing anyone else. We're going to trends. Well, we do have someone here. Is it OK? It is OK. I just want to remind folks that there will be an opportunity to talk about downtown specific issues as part of the agenda item after City Place. So just so you know that. OK. Yeah, I just wanted to live on my name is Tim. I've lived on Spring Street for about 10 years. And it's really concerning what's going on in the city. I feel like it's feeling more and more lawless. And it's not like a friend of mine just got hit with a stray bullet the other night sitting in his backyard with his wife and friends. And I wonder if the police have enough resources to investigate this crime. Also, I mean, just little things like the police, you know, I'm a bike commuter and I've almost been killed on my bike a couple of times by people who disregard the law. I mean, it just seems like it's becoming lawless. I mean, nobody, nobody stops at a stop sign anymore. Stop lights are like maybe, you know, I mean, it's I never see a police person. And I don't even see police in my neighborhood anymore. So last this morning at 6 a.m. I woke up to somebody on my porch stealing stuff from there. I chased him down the street. He got in his truck. He said, if anybody's interested, it was a black truck piled with stuff in the back. And he yelled at me and drove away. So, yeah, it's a little more than a little concerning. I know the police have way too much on their plates. And I feel like, you know, they should be they should be policed as well. You know, I'm not. I'm not like going to wave a blue lives matter flag around or anything like that because I know people who've been negatively impacted by police. So at any rate, thank you. Thank you. Hey, would you try this one last time? Last call for comments going once going twice. All right. All right. Moving on to the city place update from our friends at Freeman French Freeman. You guys are up. Thank you. Thank you. First introductions. My name is Jesse Beck, architect with Freeman French Freeman. And with me is Catherine Lang, who is project manager presenting this project tonight from Freeman French Freeman. We have William Fellows, who's with Devin Wood. And Dave Farrington, who is with city place partners. So one thing I want to clear up is tonight's presentation and the focus for Freeman French Freeman is to present city place phase two. So that is the block starting from Church Street through the old mall to the LL bean building in the new St. Paul. So we'll be showing you the physical characteristics and program to develop what we call city place phase two. Now city place phase one has gotten a lot of press. And so Dave is here if after there are questions about phase one, we can certainly take those if we'd like to spend the time. But we're really here to start the whole process to introduce phase two. And we are looking forward to getting into the permit process, the official permit process. Once we do the NPA, the Tech Review and start our application for phase two. So with that, Catherine. Thanks. So on the screen, you'll see the existing site plan. So as Jesse said, this is the property that on the west is bounded by the future St. Paul Street extension to the north, Cherry Street and outdoor gear exchange. On the east we have Church Street and on the south Bank Street. So this is the proposed site plan. So it's really redeveloping that property that was LL bean and the remaining portion of that Burlington town center mall. So again, this is the proposed site plan. We have the future St. Paul Street on the west phase one, a Butts It, even west of that Cherry Street, Church Street. And we're really today focusing on this portion of the property here. So we have NBT Bank and the farmhouse grill immediately south of us. And so I'm going to run through the floor plans one by one, starting at the basement and running all the way up to the roof. But I'm including this section here to just give a brief overview of the program of the building. So on the left portion here, this is the west. This is St. Paul Street. And on the east here is represents Church Street. So we do have one level of underground parking. And then we have a at the ground level is primarily retail. And there's a pedestrian arcade that connects Church Street to St. Paul Street. On the west portion of the building, you'll see primarily a hotel function. And that goes up to the 12th story, which has a restaurant and bar. And then on the east portion of the building, overlooking Church Street, there are four stories of residential apartments proposed. So I'll run through the floor plans now just starting at the bottom and kind of working our way up. So on the basement level, this is at the same elevation as the existing downstairs of the Burlington Town Center. So we're proposing to redevelop that into a parking level. It is accessed by a garage ramp on the south end of that St. Paul Street portion of the site. It does have some elevators and pedestrian stairs, but primarily a parking level to house 103 cars on the ground level. So again, St. Paul Street on the west. We have this pink portion that really connects St. Paul Street to Church Street and provides access to the hotel lobby on the west portion of the site, the residential entry for the apartments on the east portion of the site, and also allows a connection between the two. On Church Street, there are two retailers. So similar to what we're all familiar as recently five guys in Starbucks. So those two retailers are shown on Church Street. And then the entrance to our pedestrian arcade is set back slightly from Church Street and sort of pulls Church Street into the building. On St. Paul Street, we have a large retailer on the south portion of the site. We have a hotel lobby. We have a restaurant and kitchen at the corner of St. Paul and Cherry. We have some long-term bike storage and bike parking off of Cherry Street and a loading dock on Cherry Street as well. Going up to level two. So on the west portion of the site is primarily a conference center for the hotel, Hotel Amenities. And there's a large ballroom on the west overlooking St. Paul Street and an outdoor deck that is under a roof undercover. Boardroom, there's a kitchen to sort of service those functions on this level and other Hotel Amenities. And then on the east portion of the site, we start our residential floor plans. So we have four units on this level and residential amenities as well. Going up one more. So level three, that's where we start our sort of traditional hotel block. So it steps back just over 40 feet from St. Paul Street to where we hit that hotel tower. So we're utilizing that large roof space as a green roof. It'll have public access or hotel guest access points to enjoy that green roof. And then some of the hotel rooms have terraces as well. And then on the east portion of the site, again, it's very similar to the level below there are four apartments proposed. As we go up levels three through eight of the hotel are very similar. It's really just that typical hotel block that we're seeing. And then on the east portion of the site, we have an additional two levels of apartments that are stepped back 20 feet from Church Street. So the apartments on level four have a terrace overlooking Church Street, but otherwise similar to the levels below. So this site actually straddles two of the form districts in downtown Burlington. So in form District 6A, the language states that a building can be up to 160 feet tall. So the portion of our building that is within that form district goes up higher. So this is level nine and we switched to a bar, just a simple bar hotel design to adhere to that form district requirement. This sort of L portion of the hotel stops at level eight due to the height restriction. On level 10, we have hotel suites. So some of those hotel suites have terraces that are inset into the building. Level 11, we go back to a hotel block with additional suites and some outdoor deck space. And then level 12, we have our restaurant and bar and our rooftop deck in addition to some mechanical space that will service that hotel function. So this is the overall roof plan. You can see just the levels of the different roof areas on the west portion of the site, that level two green roof down below. And then the hotel tower is set back from that St. Paul Street area here. We have the hotel coming up to level eight in the portion of the building that is in form District 6. And then on the east portion of the building, that residential portion of the building comes up to level four. So these are elevations. So materials wise, very similar to phase one. So a lot of brick, a lot of limestone, some granite at the base and some metal panel accents. So this is Church Street. So outdoor gear exchanges here. This is our building. So a limestone podium on level one. We have on Cherry Street, the restaurant and the bike parking in this location. And then up on level two would be the hotel ballroom and amenities. That building taking the place of what was most recently occupied by LL Bean. Correct. So this portion right here that I'm sort of bonding with my cursor is currently LL Bean. So that structure as it currently says will be going away. Okay. Yeah. So then on top of the podium is the hotel tower. And that is primarily planned to be a red brick structure with limestone accents and metal panel as well. And then when we get to the top level, that's that rooftop restaurant bar. And in this case, the mechanical space on Church Street. Again, similar materials. So limestone and brick as well as glass, wood and metal panel accents. So the Church Street, what is currently the entrance to the Burlington Town Centre Mall would be replaced with this building, which has the retail frontages on the ground level, the recess to enter that pedestrian arcade in the center there. And that is clad with wood accents. And then above that two levels of apartments that are designed with a limestone facade. And those windows have some metal panel accents. And then stepping back the 20 feet, once we get up to level four, it would be a brick building on Church Street behind. And then you can see the hotel tower beyond South Elevation. So in this view, it's almost like we're standing on Bank Street and looking through the NBT Bank and the Farmhouse Grill. So those buildings would be in front here. So this building is beyond those. But we have the two stories of limestone podium. Again, the hotel tower and the steps where we go from Form District 6A to Form District 6. This portion of the building. So there's sort of an air gap here separating the hotel and the residential portions of the building. We have metal panel in sort of that recessed area. And then the brick and limestone at the residential portion on Church Street. And then St. Paul Street. So this is the West Elevation. This is the new St. Paul Street. This is what you'll see of this building from there. Again, so the restaurant is sort of occupying this lower left portion of the building. There's a hotel lobby with a large hotel canopy that is projecting over the sidewalk and sort of welcoming folks to the hotel. We have the pedestrian arcade entrance, which is recessed and offers access for hotel and apartments as well. And then there's the retailer on the south portion of that facade. Level two, again, hotel programming. And then stepped back, the 40 feet is the hotel use itself. And then this top floor, again, is the restaurant and bar on level 12. So again, this is the section just kind of pulling it all together. This is the hotel use on the West, the residential use on the right, and the retail and arcade on the ground level. And so here we have just some pretty pictures to finish our presentation. So this is Church Street. So this is representing. This is a rendering of what that might look like. So this is the limestone facade of that residential building, the four levels of apartments on top of retail on the ground level of Church Street. Again, a canopy sort of projecting and welcoming people to the building. And you can see the hotel tower beyond. And then this is a rendering of the St. Paul Street entrance. So again, that arc, the pedestrian arcade recessed the hotel entrance recessed both with a canopy welcoming folks to the building. And then the limestone podium and the brick and limestone hotel above. So that pretty much finishes my portion. I would love to answer any questions if there are any. Can you point out this walkway between St. Paul and Church? I didn't quite catch that. Yep. Let me go back. Is that public property? I mean, no, it's not public property. No. Again, you said the public is. Well, we're actually in the process of trying to understand what that space could be. And we would like to give it as much opportunity as possible. Primarily right now, it serves as a connector between the hotel and Church Street, as well as egress, fire egress for both the hotel and the residential portion. We would like to introduce a retail activity into it as much as we can to embellish the retail stores or more traditional stores that are on either side of it. But right now it is a connector for use right now. And we are talking with several hotel entities as to how they would like to see that developed. And as you can imagine, we're placing a banquet facility right downtown for right now, it serves like five, I'm sorry, 900 seats. We're looking to try to push it to 1,000. So to have a banquet right now at 900, that people could come down from the banquet or come up from the banquet onto Church Street, that creating that kind of access and that kind of activity between the hotel and the residential function. So we have the residential function is rather a small portion. It's only 15 units at the present time. So it's really this is really a hotel project hotel is about 242 units. There's a nice connection between phase one, which is whatever he calls the pit, which is going to be a residential primary residential development to get people up to Church Street. It's going to it's going to be that promenade that goes connects from the New St. Paul, which abuts the phase one project and lets people walk under cover to Church Street and get out there and make that connection. So there's there's probably six or 700 people that will be living in phase one that can get directly to Church Street to the shops and restaurants and everything through what we know now is like the main street level of the existing mall. Ryan, you had a question. I was actually going to ask about the the comparison between number of housing units versus hotels. Okay, if I could interject something. If you stop sharing your student, then the since everybody else can be on camera with your student. Got it. Is that them? What's the total number of residential units in the settlement? In phase two, they're 15. I think at phase one, they were 420 or so. 426. Five per minute. So that's that's a lot of downtown units. Yeah, it's going to be a nice connection from the lot two, which is where the old mall used to sit, the two-story mall, straight to Church Street, that promenade that connects the New St. Paul to Church Street in between what was, like Kevin said, the five guys and Starbucks. It's going to be wide open right to. So with the conclusion of the project, how many total units will there be for housing? Well, there are two separate projects right now. So 450, right? Yeah, there's 15 residential units in phase two that we're presenting tonight that are primarily accessed off Church Street and this arcade and then a hotel. I understand you're presenting on phase two tonight, but the project has evolved quite a bit over the last few years. And I think trying to understand how it has evolved. I think what most folks are really interested in is not really phase one or phase two. They want to know when the whole project's done, how many units of housing are going to be on that site? 450 rental units. Okay. Phase one and phase two, because then there's the third block, which is currently the high school. Macy's is probably not on anyone's radar. Okay. I'm going to take the question from the lady over there. Well, the parking is in the basement. It's not on the ground floor. It's in the basement and it's primarily for the hotel use. That, to be honest, that hasn't really been totally flushed out. There is, right now as far as city ordinance is concerned, there's no parking requirements for residential use in the downtown at all. And in terms of phase two, we're only adding 15 units to the project. So, but that's the way it stands right now. So, I heard sort of two things about the arcades, right? So, is it clear that it's going to connect phase one or phase two? Or that's the term in the actual plan? The New St. Paul Street is open air between the two parcels and a real street. So, the arcade goes from, is only on the, Church Street to the New St. Paul Street. Right. I understand that. And I was asking about whether or not that's going to be open to, like, there was some mention of that possibly being a way to connect phase one new residents to the Church Street. But I also heard that there's a little bit of ambiguity that, like, the hotel might determine how that arcade is used. Is that correct that we don't point out? Both of those things are corrected. Yes, okay. So, there's a little bit of concern about whether or not people are getting through. I think there's no visible connection between phase two building and phase one. Well, but there is, I think that we like the overlay of all those things together. The question is, and the reason I mentioned the hotel, the hotel has to have a say in how it's used, since they're the major user of the property. I think the connector naturally, there's a crosswalk that goes across St. Paul and it's directly opposite of public access to the parking that's in phase one. And naturally, people can come out of phase one residential and either walk down Cherry or walk through the phase one project to Church Street. As well as at the banquet facility and the actual hotel users within the phase two project have the opportunity to come out of the property and directly onto the street through the arcade. So, and right now, we're, you know, there are issues, how it's controlled, how the security is managed, how to best operate the retail component within the arcade, how the fire egress is going to be handled, and how the hotel wants to see egress that we put a concierge directly at Church Street and St. Paul, or there's some kind of key card access. There are a lot of things up in the air right now. But the idea is to try and make all these things happen within this connector that is internal between Church Street and St. Paul. The total number, I think, is 88 affordable. Phase one. We are out of time on this subject. We'll let you finish the question. I'll take one more question after that. You can answer. So, in phase one, we're building the 88 affordable units, which was based on the 20% that was negotiated to the city and the developer back in the development agreement. This is the 88 units. Our final count in phase one is a little bit in flux right now, but we feel that it's the 88 units that will be built, and we're talking, we're working with Chambley Housing Trust right now will be enough to cover the 20% requirement for whatever market rate is built in phase one and phase two. How many hotel rooms? Approximately 250. Okay. We will now be moving on to the town meeting on downtown portion of the meeting. We're going to get started here with Chief Morad. We'll make some brief remarks about the safety action plan that was just rolled out, and then he will be followed by Rob Goulding from the Department of Public Works. Chief Morad, come on down. All right, I guess we can get going if you're ready there, Chief. Sure, I'm absolutely ready. All righty, we're going to get rolling then. Okay, thank you very much for having me. Thank you, everybody, for letting me come. It's wonderful to see everybody again. I can't wait to get back to 20 Allen Street and to actually have regular live NPAs. I attended almost every single NPA when I was a deputy chief in all the wards. I really, really enjoyed them. I missed them tremendously during the pandemic. I'm glad that they're starting up again. I was at one at the library just last night, and I think it's a great opportunity for people to come together and actually be with each other in person. So it's great to see that all of you are here and committed to being here in person. That's wonderful. Obviously, there have already been some comments about what we're feeling and experiencing downtown with regard to public safety and the sense of safety. I don't like hearing that perhaps somebody sped by on a bicycle past two police officers. I hate hearing that we are not able to respond the way people want us to respond. I wish that things were different. But where we are right now is that in June of 2020, we had 61 total police officers available for patrol response. That was three lieutenants, six sergeants, 46 officers, an emergency response officer, two school resource officers, and three officers on field training. As of today, right now, I have 29. That is one lieutenant, six sergeants, and 22 officers. And that is for all three shifts. That is for all seven days a week. I have four officers on any given shift and two officers on the midnight. And oftentimes I don't have all four. Our contract works in such a way as most contracts do, that we have what's called an availability factor. In other words, people are entitled to leave. They are entitled to, well, not leave, leave, although they are leaving, but not entitled to leave. They're entitled to vacation and time off. And that time in effect means that I have an officer 86.3% of the time, not 100% of the time. So on any given shift, rather than having four, I may only have three. In fact, sometimes it's less. Now, we are doing things to try to address this. We are authorized to hire again. The city council partially reversed itself from its June of 2020 decision and up the head count. But by then, we were already far below the head count that had been established in June of 2020. We went from having 105 authorized count, which we never really hit for the most part. Every now and then we touch it. But for the most part, hiring works is an up and down and is largely done twice a year for the Vermont Police Academy. We would hover in the high 90s. Again, as I mentioned, we were in the... I didn't mention it, actually. I said how many were available for patrol in June of 2020, which was 61. The total number of officers was 91 at that time. And that's because we have officers who are in our detective bureau. There were 15 officers in the detective bureau at that time. We have officers who are assigned to our airport, eight. And we have a handful of administrative officers, including myself. And the two at the time deputy chiefs. We currently only have one deputy chief. So when we look at what we had, what we normally had historically, we were... The decision was made to reduce head count to 74. We went far below that. We are currently at about 64. The decision was made to reauthorize to 87. We have not yet been able to hire to that. I have brought aboard some new officers. And I have also lost officers. In compensation, what we have done is implement a plan that I called the public safety continuity plan. And with the mayor's great support, the mayor has been incredibly supportive about this movement. This was not something that he thought was a good way for us to have public safety in the city. But with his great support... That is the reduction in head count was not something with which he agreed. With his great support, we put forward a public safety continuity plan in December of 2020 in 2020. And it went forward again in January of 2021. It was authorized for the coming fiscal year. So it really got rolling in July of 2021. And it authorized me to hire new positions that I invented that are called community support liaisons. Those are mental health workers, social workers, who have experience with substance use disorder, with houselessness, with attendant issues around those kinds of social crises, who work inside the police department and take jobs that are basically forwarded to them by police officers or by the other position, which had existed previously but had not had large numbers, are community service officers or CSOs. Our community service officers, we've always had these positions. They are people who normally deal with animal control and they would do things like license plate checks or if you needed fingerprints at the station, they would come. But we only had one per day shift. Now I have two per evening shift and two per day shift. And I am hopeful to hire some more. We have expanded the kinds of calls to which they respond, including certain kinds of quality of life complaints around noise, certain kinds of issues around, for example, non-injury crash. If a crash doesn't need to be investigated, we can send a CSO. By law in the state of Vermont, if a crash has to be investigated, it has to be addressed by a police officer. That is true of a number of other kinds of crimes and incidents as well. And that is even before we get into the question of whether or not it is safe to send an unarmed officer who cannot use force to protect him or herself or to protect the public to certain kinds of calls for service. Because really, we can't. And the fact of the matter is that certain social work positions won't go to those kinds of calls without police officers either. So right now we are in a posture where we cannot respond in the way that I want us to, in the way that men and women inside the police department want us to. And I know that there are questions about why do we not see are these resources in the park or on the marketplace? Why do we not get a response when we call? Why is it that we are feeling in a way that the presence has been reduced and that crime and attendant disorder has increased? The fact of the matter is that study after study has shown that police presence does reduce crime. People don't do things in front of police officers and they won't do things if they think that it's likely a police officer may pass by or respond. They know that that is not the case right now. Everybody knows that that is not the case right now. And I have put online at the city web page on the top of the Burlington Police Department sub web page of the city of Burlington web page a new priority response plan. The Burlington Police Department priority response plan is something I was forced to create last May by circumstance as we really started to fall with regard to resources as crime and certain kinds of calls for service picked up as the pandemic began to ebb. We realized that we could not send officers to everything which had always been the model. The model for dispatch is somebody calls an officer goes and we could not do that. And the interesting thing is that calls for service are not up. Overall calls for service are in fact down. A good half of that reduction is driven by a reduction in officer proactivity. We don't do car stops anymore. And some people are saying that they're noticing that with regard to the impact of that with regard to traffic behavior. We don't do car stops anymore. We don't we were for a long time not able to do as many foot patrols as I would like. And those two proactive activities alone accounted for about a 50% reduction in our about 50% of the overall reduction in total calls for service decline. But priority one calls for service which are defined in this document that again you can find online have gone up. They went up in 2020 and they went up in 2020 excuse me they went up from 2020 to 2021 and they're up already in this year higher than they have been at any point since 2016. Those calls for service are the ones that A need police most because they're the ones that we will always to which we will always respond. And their calls oftentimes inordinately involve our detectives for follow up. So overall our resources are stretched and they're stretched in ways that make us unable to perform the function to which each of us in this police department dedicated his or her life. I took an oath that I take very seriously. We call we differentiate between sworn officers and unsworn employees because although everybody in the city takes an oath of office of some sort or swears only police officers swear that under pains and penalties of perjury that they will uphold the rules that are given to them. And if they don't they're actually committing a criminal act. It is a important distinction and it's one that I certainly take seriously and I don't like not being able to fulfill the obligation that I've set for myself with regard to our mission as police officers and our mission as police officers is we keep people safe by preventing and responding to crime and disorder with and for our neighbors. And the response part right now is more difficult and we have to narrow what we respond to and that makes the prevention part almost impossible. And I don't like that. The mayor has articulated a plan by which we can begin to dig our way out of this and essentially maybe get to those authorized those new authorized headcount strengths in the high 80s within three to four years three years I am hopeful. If we can increase our overall recruitment by 50% if I can increase our lateral recruitment those are officers from other cities or other states who are already police officers but can be brought into the department a little quicker than somebody who has to go through the entirety of the Vermont police academy and it's never been a police officer. If I can increase laterals by 100% recruits by 50% and retention by 50% then we can achieve those numbers over the next three years. That is a high goal but it's an achievable goal. We need to be resourced to do it and the mayor has articulated a plan to that effect. That is not to say that we are not continuing to double down on and build these other kinds of resources. Again, I'm hopeful that I can move from having I currently have eight I actually have seven CSOs because one just resigned and went to Connecticut for a different kind of job but I had eight CSOs I'm hopeful to get myself to 10 and possibly 12. I have three CSLs I'm hopeful to get authorization to move to five or possibly six. Those CSLs are amazing and the work that they do is amazing and it is really a necessary bridge of a service gap that previously existed. At the same time Howard Street has gotten itself larger and the street outreach function for a while had dwindled really precipitously. I will admit that I stole two of their street outreach workers one as a police officer and one to be one of my CSLs which is great for me because it speaks to the ethos that those employees have and a police officer who's already been a street outreach worker terrific combination but Howard has had to restaff and they're working on that they're working on staffing up their first call resource as well which deals with people who are in crisis and the city has a plan called the Kahootz it's a modeled after a program from Oregon called the Kahootz plan ours is a crisis team and that crisis team we've produced an RFP I wrote that RFP with Lacey Smith who is the community support supervisor in the department we wrote it together we've promulgated it we've had respondents we're trying to figure out whether or not those respondents can the prices are a little different the what's expected by those respondents versus what we think we are able to pay is a little bit off and we're working with the state to see whether or not the state can bridge some of that discrepancy but we are in we are trying to make efforts on this and again this I encourage you all to go to this piece on online because it's got a lot more than I can say and it includes something that's very important for this ward and for where we sit right now our creation of something called the CCA or the city center area for decades for about two and a half decades this police department worked in a really wonderful program of community policing that involved area patrol we would assign officers for four months at a time to specific areas of the city on specific shifts they would get to know the people and the problems and the potential of those parts of the city and we had one officer in the what amounted to the new north end two officers in the old north end two officers in the hill section two officers in the downtown and one officer in the south end we don't have that anymore that's eight officers on a shift and we never have that as I said we're lucky when we have four so what we have done instead is create the CCA or city center area and on days when I have a full shift I will put two police officers in the city center area with two community service officers the CSOs I will put one officer in the new north end as the rover north and one officer in the south as rover south and we are able to to cover the city to the best that we can in that way I will be frank one officer for the south end all the way essentially to Riverside Drive and the hill section above or excuse me east of Union that is not sufficient one officer for the for the new north end is barely sufficient and two officers for a downtown area that is no longer just the tight core of D but now encompasses what used to be B area and parts of C area as well is not sufficient even when we have two CSOs with them we are doing what we can to put those folks on foot to encourage foot patrol but if the radio is cracking and they are being tasked with calls for service then they may not have the opportunity to do those foot patrols and have the presence that we want to have here I've hired five beach and parkers this summer it's the first time in since the pandemic those are generally younger but uh employees oftentimes they're college students who are in between who are on summer and it's a it's a wonderful job you certainly get your steps in they wear bright yellow shirts they're on bikes they work in the beaches and the waterfront and the bike path and the marketplace I've got five of those that are in training right now I'm hopeful that we'll be seeing them on the marketplace more as a as just a projection of presence they have no law enforcement powers I have they can be eyes and ears and carry a radio the CSOs again have no law enforcement powers they can write municipal tickets for noise complaints for animal complaints for public intoxication but they cannot arrest people and they cannot use force to intervene in a situation or even the threat of force to intervene in a situation and sometimes it is the mere presence of a police officer and that implied ability for force to be applied that is what interrupts and intervenes and causes the situation to stabilize and stop that said obviously we take those uses the times where we do have to use it very seriously I do a lot with regard to transparency in addition to this report that's the head of the page on the city part website there is another entire page called transparency and data which has a plethora of different reports I make monthly reports to the Burlington Police Commission there is data there with regard to calls for service with regard to volume of calls with regard to staffing and every single use of force that my officers engage in is accounted for as a narrative with data about who with the subject was about who the officers involved were and about the situation that led to the use of force and the description of it every single one and I'm hopeful I've been trying to do this for quite a while now and it's starting to sound a little old but I have been trying to hire a redaction specialist so that I could have somebody who can actually allow me to put out body camera of certain uses of force as well as a regular occurrence so that's a lot and I can open it up for questions I have something to hear from Rob from DPW turn the microphone over Rob and then we will move on to the Q&A portion here thank you everybody so it was hard to follow the police department thank you to work team three for having DPW back we were here last month talking about construction and building infrastructure I think maybe a key thing to talk about today is how we maintain infrastructure and DPW's connection in the downtown to your quality of life I had a presentation prepared I'm happy to just kind of walk through what I was going to talk about if it's not already up Chris not a big deal I might pull my phone out not to be rude just to make sure I hit some of the key points that I think are on your mind oh great so I'm going to run through this there's a lot of slides but I'm going to talk super quick DPW in the downtown we have an active everyday presence in the downtown start to finish of your day we are trying to make your day better we are trying to build up the quality of life in Burlington as I said last month we talked about a whole bunch of construction projects right now I want to talk a little bit about what we do on the day to day so if we just slide down a little bit there to you know a couple of things I think are on top of mind Chris gave me some background about what folks have been asking about though I think a lot of that should be obvious to us anyway about what you care about in your community so we manage quite a bit of infrastructure in the city and we'll slide down here just to quickly show you that we've got 95 miles of roads 130 miles of sidewalks 75 signalized intersections which are growing by the year you know thousands of parking spaces three garages multiple parking lots many many parking signs crosswalks cabinet boxes that control those traffic signals we manage a lot of things in the public right of way it is our job to make sure that they stay in good shape and that they meet your priorities for your community so we'll slide down a little bit on this presentation just to let you know because I think it's often not as transparent as it could be about how we do what we do at public works so what informs our work certainly I want to make it clear that residents inform our work whether it's through C-click fix whether it's your votes for city counselors and their votes at city council for the projects for the funding that we get available to us that dictates the projects we do and that dictates the maintenance we get to do in the right of way much like you've heard previously tonight resources are always an issue so we do want to do as much as we can but it is always a resource struggle with the number of employees we have the number of employees who may be injured during some strenuous work the kinds of snowstorms we get the volume of snow we get a lot of things dictate what we get to and how often we get to it but one of my goals for today certainly any questions you have however they're whether for the chief or for myself one of my goals is to take away some information bring it back to our team to see where we might not be meeting some of the things that you expect of us to see if there is anything we can be doing differently so I'm going to slide down you can go right down to that sidewalk rebuilding side and just say we've been building a tremendous amount of sidewalk over the last five or six years I think this is a priority of the communities if you were here last month you would have heard me talk a little bit more in-depth about that I'm not going to say that much about it under the expectation a lot of you were here other than to say we have a couple dozen streets in wards two and three and I know we want to focus on the downtown today but a few dozen segments of sidewalks not entire segments of sidewalks but big segments of some problematic sidewalks that we will be addressing we have tripled the amount of sidewalk we do rebuild every year that is thanks to voter support of some critical bond votes that have come up a few times over the last five or six years one of the things we hear a lot about and I think might be top of mind is trash management we have a hundred employees at DPW we are able we have a 20 person give or take depending on the season 20 person street maintenance team that street maintenance team is responsible for everything from snow management to recycling to unclogging storm drains around the city to building sidewalks to fixing potholes to patch paving during the good months when asphalt plants are open so they're a busy crew we do have from 5 a.m. until usually about 2 p.m. I think it's 2 p.m. one of our staff members at least walking the downtown core roughly perl to main roughly battery to south union at least five days a week the goal is seven days a week snow injuries other things can prevent a full seven-day workload for us to manage trash when I say manage trash what are we doing that gentleman typically gentlemen is walking around the city with a trash picker picking up trash off the roads and then they're driving around the downtown with their truck picking up all the public receptacles in the right of way getting rid of that trash that does not include city hall park or the church street marketplace clearly we will all work together as we need to but they do have separate trash management practices so a little bit of overlap a little bit of non overlap but certainly we'll all work together I'm going to keep going I know graffiti is a major concern of the community I do want to point out that DPW has a very interesting distinct role as it relates to graffiti typically our responsibility for graffiti management lies with parking signs the garages parking infrastructure like cabinet boxes at the signalization things like that our partner department the department of permitting and inspection will typically handle the volume and the balance of all the other graffiti now they work right down the hall from us there is overlap we do not pass the buck I would bet that you may not feel and a lot of folks may not feel it is getting attended to as quickly as possible we hear that we feel that and we see the graffiti issues public works alone will respond to about 700 graffiti marks on signs every year that is a lot of person power and I think we estimated that that is about $100,000 of labor and material costs per year just to get to the signs that are being refeeded over not necessarily even the parking garages which are 24-7 facilities and are a challenge to manage speaking of the downtown garages not sure if that is a core concern of folks here it might be very much but the downtown garages we have significantly increased the budget for security and for staff to be on site through the night at downtown garages we know that is a core concern we hear it we've just heard it so we focused on that in our budget to make sure that that is responsive to community's needs we do have high acuity cameras in the garages that are on 24-7 filming what is going on in the garage we're going to put up obvious signage so folks who may have ulterior motives in the garages understand that there are cameras all throughout the garages as well as enhanced lighting which we have recently repaired quite a bit of and just a few years ago installed this enhanced LED lighting in the downtown garages at the waterfront so that's Lakeside College Street garage I know that there have been questions about parking changes why isn't there parking in some places why does the kind of parking change such as a vehicle loading zone a truck loading zone the DPW commission has ultimate authority we are the if you will technical experts where if you have a concern or if you are asking us for a change we will evaluate that from a technical perspective a safety perspective a lighting perspective a sight line perspective and ultimately a financial perspective bring our recommendation if you've asked us to look at something to the DPW commission who will ultimately vote as citizen volunteers with the best interests of the community in mind commission right in the front row here thank you for your service to the commission I'm going to keep breezing through this because I want to really hear as your questions relate to DPW where your core concerns are but I did want to hit some of the big topics that you did I think typically have when we talk about quality of life and DPW's impact we do manage all of the snow in the public right of way that includes all of the public lots and all of the top of public garages public garages will also house you if you need parking during how's your car if you need parking during a winter parking band we have 20 folks who will manage that to the extent that other departments have CDL and capable drivers they will join us in that 24-7 operation when we get snow storms I've put down some of our kind of typical response times because I know that is a challenge especially for downtown residents who rely mostly or more on walking and more on biking including in the winter and less on just having a clear road I know sidewalks are a concern you can see our response times here typically once every five to seven hours with a good storm if that storm is presenting whiteout conditions or fluffy light blowing snow that is going to considerably slow our response time we hear the concerns certainly during a storm we want to hear from you if you are finding safety challenges during a storm and especially after a storm I'm not going to go too deep into the snow operations unless you have questions about those and I think folks have heard us in months past talk about the main street revitalization project that is going to significantly transform the main street from battery to south union with a fundamental reshape of the street wider sidewalks for pedestrians bike lanes to support multimodal traffic shorter crossings for pedestrians stormwater management and hopefully a beautification of the street with an enhanced street canopy and all the I think wonderful things we think about when we think about urban life I have a resources page which if we want to leave up for a moment I'm happy to and certainly I'll leave my card if folks want to connect with any of the things we'll make available to you see click fix VT alert and the construction portal are three things I want to make clear are great resources for you to tap into if you want information regularly from us you can always call us and if you happen to know of anybody with language barriers to the work to want to know about the work we do we are now partnered with an organization called telelanguage which in real time can patch us through to an interpretation service to talk through projects drinking water issues or anything that that community members want to know about so we want to make sure we keep spreading the word on our effort to try to reach everybody in Burlington we've seen the census data and we know how our community is clearly changing I'll leave it there thank you very much for having us back this month as well All right thank you Rob so we'll be moving into the Q&A portion of the forum at this time just wanted to remind folks of the ground rules if you have a question please think about it ahead of time and be brief and succinct to the point when you speak we have limited time and want to get as many questions in as possible secondly we're going to give everybody an opportunity to ask at least one question participate before anybody else gets an opportunity to ask a second question and we will be starting with the folks in the room just as the city council does and then we will be pivoting to the questions on the zoom feed thank you have anybody in the room that wants to go first questions I want to know if we can talk about this as a PDF form of your insights yeah I should also ask for those of you in the room if you could approach the table and speak we did get some feedback that folks on the zoom we're not able to hear some of the questions so if you have a question if you could kindly come up to the to the table thank you anybody well I will just respond to that that absolutely the presentation is certainly happy to share I know Chris has a copy too so I'd love for folks to get a copy if you want it questions on from online Jess Hyman I live in ward three and this is a question for the chief so you talked a lot about the the challenges you're facing in terms of staffing and how that plays out and you've also talked about ramping up the number of officers and your hopes for more coverage what is your advice for residents now and you know I think we heard from some folks here for in public comment earlier you know similar things happen in my neighborhood on Russia plain street where we've see things going on we've called dispatch it's not something that rises to the level of meeting an officer or if we call the other line to report drug activity or or other activity we never get a call back you know there's some talk in the neighborhood from folks who want to start up neighborhood watches and things like that there was someone at the very beginning was talking about it's that our it's our role as citizens to be vigilant but that's not really satisfying for for for everyone and doesn't address the problem so what should what should people do and what's possible yeah I I can sense that that's unsatisfying and my answer is going to be unsatisfying too I need people to continue to report incidents when they occur so that we know the trends that are occurring I made this plea today in a in a press conference with the mayor the mayor held a press conference today with myself and with the state's attorney chitin county state's attorney Sarah George primarily around the issue of the spate of gun violence that we have endured and experienced over the past two and a half years but a component of it was a plea on my part for people to report the things that are happening and an acknowledgement on my part that it is incredibly frustrating to report when you are not going to get much of a response with regard to no response at all I am working on making certain that we are better with regard to at least acknowledging receipt for example of drug tips receipt of online complaints we do process those online complaints but it takes time it's largely done by the sergeant who is assigned to the airport and I am also exploring having those reports in some cases they may be answerable on phone by other positions whether it's officers if it is not in the priority response model the responses is at times unlikely the priority response plan was put into effect with the concept that we wouldn't be in it all the time and in fact we were for a long time only in it about 15% of the time we do what is called stacking a call so not all incidents are calls from the public some incidents are self-generated by officers their new incidents that occur because an officer sees something and intervenes or because a person comes for a fingerprint check and that's a that ends up being an incident that a CSO does but most incidents are calls for service from the public initially the plan was when I had fewer than two when I had two or fewer officers available because the others had been assigned to other calls I would stop going to priority three and priority two calls for service and priority twos there are some that have an asterisk next to them because a burglary for example is a is a priority two but not if it's in progress if you're if you are being burgled in that moment that is a priority one and police officers are coming but if you're reporting that you were burgled while you were away that is a priority two and we're not going to get to it immediately if other officers are otherwise engaged and why did I need to have at least two officers free at all times because the most important calls priority one calls where life safety is at stake involve two officer response we don't go to a domestic violence call with one officer we send at least two and used to be many more in in days past but we send at least two and so I need to have at least two officers available at all times for that call now if a domestic if I have three officers on shift I'm in priority response immediately because the second one of those officers goes off to do anything then I only have two left and I'm waiting for a priority one call and everything else will get stacked meaning the dispatch will say thank you for it we will respond when we can we regret that we can't but nobody's gonna come you can also report online then if a priority one occurs and those two officers available go to that priority one that's it that's all the city has and that was a factor before it is conceivable that we could have a such a busy shift that even with eight officers on a shift everybody gets absorbed it happened very rarely it happens all the time now so what can neighbors do I need neighbors to continue to report we as a city need neighbors to continue to report so that we can know what our status is we need to be able to say that this is what's actually happening in the city it justifies not only rebuilding and bringing on new kinds of resources as well not just officers but it also justifies the deployment of those resources once we have them and without that information we're not going to be as effective that said it is frustrating the other thing that I implore communities to do is to be out in their public spheres I do not recommend engaging with or attempting to to confront people who are committing crimes I don't really recommend neighborhood watches although they are a prerogative of a neighborhood I think there are a lot of things that can go negative with those I think they're real dangerous for them it depends on how they're structured and what they think their mandate is if it is merely eyes and ears if it is a system of neighbors looking out for one another and saying hey I noticed that your lights were on last night even though you're not here or you know there's a package on your porch and it's gone but you're not home from work yet that kind of neighborhood strength and of coordination between neighbors is a part of a strong community I absolutely hope that neighbors can do that but the idea of confronting people who appear to be doing criminal acts whether that is drug dealing whether that is in you know committing some kind of vandalism etc it has to be done on a case by case basis and I would implore people who are not comfortable doing it not to do it there's a reason why our our out of vistic part the out of vistic parts of our brain tell us not to do something and you feel it in your gut that something is either wrong or that I'm leery of this or at downright frightened of this there's a reason and those reasons are not things that are bad we've experienced it as a species to actually accept these things and understand when they happen and they keep us safe so I don't want people to try to overcome that but I do want people to be in our public spaces we are planning events this summer here in the downtown I'm hopeful to have that expanded council Bergman just wrote to members of the city council and others encouraging events to be done in other parts of the city including Roosevelt including Pomeroy the more we are out and own our public spaces the more we own them it is tautological it is a self-reinforcing circle but the fact of the matter is that that is how it works when we are in these places together we can have them that is challenging and what we are learning now is that it takes so much longer to rebuild something than it takes to break it and we have a broken police department and a broken sense of public safety we need to hold on to the parts that we have we need to dig in to hold on to that we need to then work together to rebuild it in in ways that we want and and mere officer presence is not the only answer but it is the lion's share of it and that's not a satisfying answer for you but that's what I have all right I'm not seeing any questions here in the room with this time I think there's all right I haven't forgotten about you Amanda my name is Ann Ciccarello I live on ward three and I just wanted to give some feedback to first of all I want to say that C-click fix I've always found to be very responsive and so I thank you and in terms of the police department and reporting and you know not having the resources to get back to folks in my neighborhood for about six months we had a lot of significant drug activity a lot over the winter and then spring came and everybody was kind of coming out and talking to each other and realized you know yes we're all seeing this and so some of my neighbors did directly speak to people in a calm way and say you know please don't do this on our street blah blah blah so that effective yes and no yes and no that's not good but we also started contacting officer Beal yes and he did respond initially and I'll be honest it was hard I was really happy to get a quick response initially and then it was frustrating to not get responses after but I also recognize that you folks are you know understaffed and doing the best you can so anyway so between neighbors getting together and directly confronting people which can be scary and I and I do think a number the more I kept encouraging my neighbors please report please report please report you know so the so it's not just one person reporting and people did start doing that and the drug activity has stopped at least and I I have to so and I did contact officers to be able to let him know that I've not been seeing the activity I've been seeing but I can say you didn't respond no I'll work on that but but but I did want him to know that we saw a reduction and that we haven't been seeing the activity I can say though that one day after seeing three deals within just a few hours I totally lost it and went out and confronted and I recognized that oh boy this was probably foolish of me but and fortunately the person the drug dealer just turned around and walked away but so it is so neighbors are in residents are in challenging situations and but I want to say that I do think I recognize that the police department is understaffed and understressed and I do think even though it was behind the scenes and I wasn't made aware of it I do think reporting led to and and neighbors directly confronting led you know it may have moved somewhere else but it's least not happening in our neighborhood I think that's possible I'd have to I'd have to know exactly the address and look to see whether there was a case or not there but that is what what Detective Beal does is he takes this in he's one of our two narcotics officers in the past we've had teams of three to four and on top of that we had a street crime team that dealt with open-air narcotics transactions but right now we have Officer Beal Detective Beal working on narcotics issues you know that's that's what we have for the team essentially so so I'm what I'm saying I guess I'm trying to give some positive even though times are tough I do think working together as neighbors and the police department we can make a difference I think there's a lesson in your story so I knew I wanted to share that thank you thank you thank you all right I think I'm gonna break protocol take Amanda's question because she's the only one online right now so Amanda you're up I can can you hear me we can hear you so I just I want to so I want to say that I lived on Church Street from 2005 to 2020 like mid 2020 and so I know the situation has changed a little bit since then from talking to my friends and former neighbors but I I also want to agree with Ann who just who just spoke who said that the DPD is very responsive to see click fix and that has always been my that was my experience and it seems to be a great way to to communicate so so pre what so I want to say that the the situation with police not following up was was the case pre 2019 a pre pandemic also living on Church Street there's a lot of you know there would be late night fights early morning violations and vandalism and my neighbors and I would reach out to the police and an officer would come and we would ask for follow-up and and we would usually never get any follow-up like never I don't think and so we would put them on see click fix just because we wanted to share it with neighbors um but we would call the officer we learned to ask for the officer's name and to ask for the business card and whenever we tried to reach them they were usually on nights you know because officers you know as as chiefs said they they are on you know on weird schedules and work all night so they're not working during the day but there was just never a really good way to get any follow-up so I'm wondering if they're even before the current crisis so I'm wondering is see click fiction fix an option is there another is there a better option to you know for for this for my neighbors and as Jess just pointed out you know the her situation like how how how much of it it was a problem before that wasn't working and how much of it is can be fixed and I mean it seems like this is a really good use for non-police officers you know non it's not violent it's it's it's you know is this something that the resource officers can help with to to provide feedback yes I think I mean that is that's an interesting thought if we they are currently more than busy with the the various calls for service that they themselves receive which include animal offenses and they do assists for motorists and crash non-investigated and cruelty to animals and fireworks calls and found lost property calls illegal dumping intoxication motor vehicle complaints non-moving violation noise complaints ordinance violation other property damage calls recovered property calls subpoena services and VIN verifications as well as fingerprints and certain other kinds of things so they're currently pretty engaged in those as opposed to being able to do follow-up we do when we have victims of certain kinds of crimes we have a victims advocate who does follow-up CSLs will follow-up on certain kinds of crimes that touch on their areas of expertise including mental health including substance use disorder including houselessness but for a call and I'm envisioning I mean do you mean a vandalism call or a call about a fight at night there's not a lot of there's not a lot of follow-up for that call that is a matter of an officer arriving taking that report intervening if there's a fight going on stopping it recording the vandalism if it occurs listing it so that back when we had a community community affairs officer we no longer do but when we had a community affairs officer that person ran sort of administered the city's overall response to to graffiti type vandalism that included working with code working with DPW now we don't have a central person for that at least not at the police department code has absorbed a lot of that rule excuse me role but even there there's not a lot of follow-up for that could we potentially take a new CSO if we get additional CSOs and task one for some kind of essentially a customer service touch role like that yeah I think that's these weren't one-time incidents you know these were sort of things that were repeating and so we were looking for solutions going forward so that police didn't have to get called for the same vandalism the same person it was they were repeat well absent I mean there are certainly the CSLs currently perform a function like that in some cases but a person who is a repeat source of fights on church street is you know the way to prevent that is ultimately to to take that person to put that person where they can't continue to have fights that the you know the idea that their root causes of those fights is theoretical and possible and certainly we'd want to give social service options for somebody like that but if somebody is causing repeated violent conditions in the downtown for example ultimately a lot of times that is a jail response and that too is an officer response with regard to intervening in that moment and addressing it via citation or arrest I'm not certain what follow-up would be appropriate in that but I'd love to explore the possibility of having a person dedicated to that kind of follow-up All right I think we've got some additional questions here in thank you Amanda Christopher Christopher Velker Ward 3 resident and unfortunately in the in the last few months I've noticed an uptick in the number of needles around in our neighborhood and DPW is great with C-click fix but in an effort to try and meet people where they're at and promote public safety I'm curious if we could start rolling out more sharp spins around in the parks coming going in the center around areas where people kind of congregate so that way we can take care of these things without necessarily having to reach out to DPW and keep our parks a lot cleaner I think it's a I think it's a good question if what I'm hearing is sharps infrastructure in public places department of permitting inspections formerly code does basically manage the needle program or the needle removal program but I never like to say that's not us that's someone else so if it's okay with you and if it were to be a change that you're looking for in a park that would also be something we'd want to explore with the parks department so if it's okay with you I'd like to bring this back to the department heads there in our building so we all talk very regularly let them know about the concern you raised because it's not the first time we've heard it and see if they have thoughts on what we could do in public parks and if director bill ward great responsive director of DPI formerly code see what their thoughts are you're certainly welcome if you want me to leave you in my card or hopefully you'll see it around if we can expand that infrastructure but I should do that for you sounds good thank you else in the room all right then I'll exercise my prerogative as a facilitator and she'll ask a question of Mr. Goulding notice from my approach on the fourth floor apartment overlooking church street that we have what appear to be two levels of snow removal service in the city one level of service which is for the church street marketplace and then another level of service for anything that's not part of the marketplace so what I've noticed on days of heavy snow removals there is a crew I don't know if it's part of DPW it sounds like it might be something separate but they clear the church street marketplace and they do a damn good job and they shovel that snow all the way out to the curb and right into the into the street someone comes along and picks it up now the minute you step off the bricks of the church street marketplace onto the concrete of what is the rest of the city it's a whole different ballgame we have a little truck that comes through and plows a path but if you pull up in a car to get out and do work or worse yet you pull up in a handicap van you're trying to step out into a snow bank and so I think the expectation for most folks in the downtown is if you live in downtown and there's a sidewalk I think the expectation is is the entire sidewalk all the way out to the curb gets cleared so that when people come into downtown whether it's the shop or just simply because they need the handicap space that they can either step out of their vehicle onto an actual concrete sidewalk or onto the curb and extend the handicap ramp so I'm just wondering like is that an issue with staffing or what do we need to do to get the entire sidewalk cleared yeah I think it's an important question especially bringing back to that quick slide I showed about response times you are correct in the assumption that the church street marketplace does have its own you know they assess the shops yeah a certain fee and they do contract out for the removal as does like UVM for instance and we do hear a lot about the juxtaposition between what is a crystal clear campus after a snowstorm or in this case the church street marketplace and 130 miles of city sidewalks that are not perfectly clear what I will say is it is a matter of resources so when I tell you that with a good storm we'll clear every sidewalk all 130 miles and if we miss any refer to click fix is a good solution so please let us know but we'll clear every mile of those 130 miles roughly once every I think it's about I gave you a range on the slide but say once every six to eight hours if we have a storm which are frequent up until about mid-February that's very fluffy you've got to throw snow blowers on those tractors bringing them down to about one mile per hour I mean with those nine tractors out we're not getting around to every sidewalk right away now I bet that's not the main the main part of the question because I think people are pretty patient during those those big storms and your question is what happens afterward we are continuing to do snow removal operations we do target schools the downtown we do eventually get to like meter curb clearing meter clearing that does not happen right away and is often at least a 24 hour response after the main clearing of road sidewalks the other thing I will say in terms of resource I wasn't saying it happening at all not even 24 hours later well understood then if you're not seeing that we want to hear more about that and so see click fix is a great tool but you are more than welcome to reach out to us and to put us on the spot we do have two monthly meetings ones with our subcommittee of the city council the two for short and ones with the DPW commission where public comment is allowed and so we're not asking you to overburden yourself by coming to all these meetings but if you do want to have that dialogue in person let us know we do every year present our snow and ice you know update plan to the DPW often to the DPW commission sometimes to the tube that subcommittee where we'll air out you know what what our response times should be what the challenges are so if you're not seeing anything cleared 24 hours we're hoping it can be 72 hours it should be and we go on from there often if you live in the downtown unfortunately you'll hear our heavy equipment at 2 a.m clearing snow that's mostly because we're focused on operations during the day we also don't want to shut roads down necessarily during the day to clear snow and the other challenge we have and you know I know this isn't as as Chief Mayor I said it's not satisfying we have about 1920 people a lot of those folks will occasionally have to step in for recycling there are a lot of injuries related to tossing recycling those small bins over your shoulders we got to get our folks sleeping too and so that is another problem it's not the long-term problem it is that short-term problem where we have to get folks off shift and sleeping and making sure we respect them as workers and people and get that time they need if what you're seeing Chris and what other folks are seeing is a longer-term problem like weeks later we're not getting there then that is something we need to to talk more about and so I would welcome those reports in real-time and certainly check the agendas we post on front porch form regularly when we'll be bringing that snow and ice control plan back to the public works commission so thanks for the feedback thank you any more questions here either in the room or online if I once going twice all right I think we're back on track with the agenda now we will be moving into the porch from our elected officials for the council school board representatives and senators like thank the chief Murad and Rob from DPW for coming down I appreciate that being touched thank you counselor Bergman or counselor McGee which one do you want to lead go Joe thanks Gene yeah you all can sit together if you want sit together come on come on come on I'm really confused what we're going back and forth oh yeah moving moving we're doing the together and it's fine okay so Chris is stepping out for a moment so I'm jumping in here so we will start with with city counselors and then move on to state reps and then school commissioners so go ahead Joe fantastic thanks Jess sorry I couldn't be with you all in person this evening but I'm glad that we were able to have this great hybrid conversation about issues that are facing folks downtown I have a few updates from our meeting this past week and sort of what we've been talking about in terms of the city budget over the last couple of weeks we were able to pass an ordinance implementing a range choice voting in our city council elections after the legislature passed it and the governor let it become law without his signature so that is an exciting update after voters overwhelmingly approved that or supported that on a ballot so that's really exciting in terms of the city budget and in line with the public safety conversation that we've been having this evening I have been advocating for the department to use this very significant carry forward that they have from fiscal year 22 into fiscal year 23 to hire the maximum number of CSOs and CSLs that they've said that they can use that was not something that was in the department's original budget presentation they're currently staffed for 10 CSOs they could go up to as many as 12 CSOs and they're currently staffed at three CSLs and could go up to as many as six so I think that is a step that we can take to continue to move make progress on police transformation and bolster so many of the response concerns that we have you know another issue that we face there is that the emergency dispatch staff in the police department the citizen staff has been seriously understaffed for a number of months the city council recently passed hazard pay for those folks and it's a tiered plan to get that department back up to full staffing to address some of these concerns as well so I don't want to take up too much time here I'll pass it on the gene to cover any other things that I missed and I look forward to chatting with folks more in the future thank you Joe thanks Joe let me go sort of back to the budget and it relates to to the whole police issue and you know you listen tonight I listened tonight I was at a community meeting or earlier this week at Roosevelt Park Joe was there and have other contacts with folks like around Pomeroy Park drug activity is clearly on folks mind so I really appreciate what Chris Felker said about the the sharps but you know this is much more than a policing problem it becomes manifested when it's right in front of us and the issues that happen right there but you know drug addiction drug overdoses just a huge social problem that we've got and police are not the sole if really the primary resource that we're going to be able to or that we that we can use or that are to be used to solve the problem so when we look at the budget I am really looking to see what other things we need to add in terms of the economic and social inputs to to deal with problems like drug addiction like mental health so we've started to do that he was talking about the Kahootz model Joe has been very active on that the drug issue which in all the years that I've been around has never felt like a satisfactory way that we've dealt with it and I think the the addiction problem is proof of that so we're doing the budget now and it's where all of the the investments that the city makes around social programs come to play and so I'm going to be looking for how that budget relates to public safety in this bigger way because I support much more present much more presence by the department and some of the supports that the chief are is asking for but it's necessary but insufficient so I think that you'll be seeing that conversation at the city council another one that the NPA and Chris in particular has been really active on is redistricting and the rubber is meeting the road right now and at a critical juncture is the question of the relationship between the old north end and the new north end and the way that the downtown fits and a downtown district fits in that is you know it's part of the play so downtown residents have been very active in the redistricting conversation but we as a as a city need to come up with a basically a proposal that we can put before the voters I think we've given ourselves a little bit more time and we're looking at September this is not an easy problem but I totally appreciate the residents opinions about the way that we sort of divide the city and we're at a point where we're going to be having to make some tough choices I personally fear that we're it's going to be very hard to have a satisfactory solution for everybody but you know this is part of what people have to be looking at so I I ask you all to to look at the maps that have been developed and try to provide us with some guidance in terms of in particular this relationship between the old north end the new north end and the downtown sort of as it relates to going up the hill and into the you know the king street maple street area it's it's a tough issue and but you know we've got to come up with something to put before the voters and we will and the last thing to just mention is that we will be voting on a short term rental ordinance on the 20th and I know for me the relationship between short term rentals and the housing crisis is critically important I'm looking for something that is workable that will not worsen the housing crisis and I think the current situation is is not tenable and so we've got to balance that with whether we can get something that the mayor will will sign and not veto and you or whether you can get votes for so it's still a tricky interplay and I always welcome folks opinions about that for me the housing crisis is absolutely a critical problem to to solve I know that we are losing lots of people who are active in public affairs including the administration of elections because they they can't afford to live in the city anymore and that is a real tragedy so I think that is my report want to go I just negotiated so all right try not to pull that too much I swear understood actually I'm going to get home right in time for them in case they're listening they better be in bed already because I don't want to have to deal with them at nine o'clock this is too bad because my daughter actually love this is her favorite mpa don't tell the new north end mpa but this is her favorite mpa so she's she said I'm not calling in virtually tonight so hi everyone I'm a state representative Emma Mulvaney stanek I represent chin in six two which is now chin in 17 we've renumbered due to redistricting for our house and senate seats which I'm happy to answer some questions on if people are wondering the chin in 17 district it really hasn't changed that much so if you're in my district you essentially have the same lines minus a little change in the in the zigzag from north champlain it now just runs straight up park street and then we included on the north end of the district the ethan alan park or ethan alan shopping closet which has some housing on the northern portion of it so that's essentially the only change in the spiritual district I thought I would just provide a couple updates just from the legislature even though the session ended at almost about three to four weeks ago I am happy to report that four out of the five city charters did pass finally and got signed by the governor one did not of course as folks probably been following along just cause eviction was vetoed and unfortunately we're one short one vote short of overriding that veto so we were very close takes a hundred votes and we and we worked hard as a burlington delegation to make that happen and it did not it did not so we're hoping to bring that back up next session but the other four I think Joe alluded to one ranked choice voting passed and was signed the airport the airport commission reconfiguration was signed last session and then thermal heat and the outdated language in our charter around sex workers was also signed just this week by the governor so we are done and city counselors let us know if you have more charters to come because there are a lot of work to do through the statehouse I wanted to speak largely tonight and I'm happy to answer questions on other bills cause a lot of things have been getting signed by the governor or not in these last couple weeks but s11 is a massive workforce and economic development bill which included probably 40 or so different policy points it was one of the largest bills that we worked on this session and it and it went through my committee the house commerce and economic development committee and I thought it highlighted a few things that were worker centric because it might benefit some folks in our neighborhood and number one we established starting July 1st a new covid relief worker grant program for employers it's voluntary but basically the feds had a program earlier in the pandemic that said if if the employee ran out of sick leave or didn't have sick leave or and you leave they could use paid and they got covid or had to support someone who had covid or childcare closed down because of covid that they that the federal program allowed employers to receive money to then pay these employees while they're out obviously a win-win for public health as well as the employees so that program expired last year and now the state is starting its own and that will run for the fiscal year starting July 1st it will be it will be first on first serve but we're really hoping that helps as we ride the next waves of the pandemic and workers should know that exists and they should encourage much like hazard pay the employer has to initiate that program a second and very large one is there's a lot of loan forgiveness and scholarships in that bill especially for healthcare workers so nurses LPNs PCA's personal care assistants also mental health workers in there so I have a great summary on this I'm happy to share with folks but there's a sizable amount of money again rolling out July 1st if you run to VSAC or our department of health look for these programs it's probably not up yet because the governor just signed it yesterday but if you look in another couple weeks the details will be out and people should access that because the idea here is we wanted to move money to support folks staying in and getting into because there's money for students in this as well getting into these professions because they were a critical need obviously if you've been trying to find a therapist anytime soon it's impossible right Brian and health care workers we have a nurse shortage and we were very clear in this bill that none of this money will go to visiting nurses or the traveling nurses that is we're spending way too many of our healthcare dollars on the traveling nurse industry we want to make sure that we're growing our own and supporting our own here in Vermont just a couple other quick things in the S11 the unemployment issue which folks probably know I've been a watchdogging this throughout my whole two-year term here we passed a major tax relief bill for employers last year when so many Vermonters were on on the unemployment system early on in the in the pandemic and the in order to refill the unemployment trust fund it required a huge spike in the taxes and that was obviously it sort of not needed that quickly and so we did a huge amount of tax relief for employers last year with the promise of doing something for workers but then the Department of Labor got a ruling they couldn't implement the increase to the unemployment claims that we had tried to move forward as a legislator as a as a legislature as a compromise so in S11 we finally fixed that and we're increasing the weekly the maximum weekly wage if anyone's been on unemployment you probably know what that means but basically allows more money into claimants pockets while you're on unemployment and this will exist for a number of years until I still sense a I should rip my spine until the mainframe IT system of the Department of Labor is finally fixed and so don't get me started on that because I'll be here all night but our mainframe like many other states is ancient it was started before I was born probably most people in this room have been born after this thing was created and it's structurally making it impossible to create any policy to benefit workers in the unemployment system and it's bonkers to me but when that gets fixed because we also have money in that we will be able to do some actual formulaic changes to make it a more equitable system on for for claimants so I think I'm going to pause there I'm happy to talk more about gun policy in VHS because those are something forward but I just want to make sure there's time for Brian and thank you for letting me go first so I'll try to be brief so so I'm going to I'll focus on housing and then one of the I'm going to focus on the issue of housing which involved many people and then I'm one of the things I worked on which involved a smaller group of people but everyone supported so housing which is involves artificial intelligence so housing so the governor signed both of the big housing bills S 210 and S 226 I'm happy to send out the details I'll give you a quick overview of some of the things in those bills they include subsidies for people to create accessible dwelling units changes to policy around safety for housing and then I have there was actually a lot in them so I'm not going to redo everything but some some examples of some of the policy changes and investments the state is making to try to increase access to safe and affordable housing for people that is both private and publicly owned would be down payment assistance for first generation first time homebuyers that's a grant that they could use that's there's money put aside for an experimental program by the Vermont Housing Finance Authority to do that there's money for capital grants home repair grants and foundation grants for manufactured home relocation incentive program so this is for mobile home parks there's a piece of this bill that does tax credits expands existing tax credit program in town and village centers in fact there's a wide range of policy changes to make development easier in town and village centers when it meets certain smart growth criteria and we can get it that's a whole discussion so in summary because there's so much more there's two pieces of these housing oh wait this one is important I have to say the missing middle income home ownership development program so this is money that would subsidize construction so that developers could still make the same amount they would make but charge first middle and low income homebuyers less by that amount so that subsidy could be the thing that makes a difference between a family getting a home or not so there's many incentives to increase home ownership for people who traditionally haven't had a chance and there's two parts of S226 that I worked on one is this experimental pilot project to build a neighborhood of the future somewhere in Vermont that would look at new combinations of mixed use and like sort of designing the neighborhood to be accessible to everyone and there's a lot of detail in that idea but it's a pilot project and my hope is that we can try this out while we look at other places around the state where we want to do this kind of development and then we learn from that pilot and then we do it everywhere and then we learn from that and then we do it everywhere and each time we push further and further to change how we view affordability because that's really one of the things that changed like percentage units and then another piece of that bill that was a big piece that I contributed to and then I think I'll just stop there is there you may have heard about age 273 it was the BIPOC led land access and opportunity act and so there was a lot of interest over the last two years in this bill but it didn't make the crossover deadline but we worked with house leadership and with the governor's people and we were able to negotiate an amendment to s226 that created a land access and opportunity board in the spirit of that bill and what we didn't do is give them their own fund to manage instead we expanded their power so now every piece of the housing continuum is going to be consulting with them to learn more about how to increase access around racial and social equity so that's all these players in the housing system and they're going to have a say over the spending of a wider range of money even though they don't make the exact decision they're going to be able to weigh in on it and then they're also going to look at other pathways moving forward for them to actually give out money so there's so much more I could talk about but like I feel like I said enough about housing that I'll stop there thank you and there's way more that we didn't even talk about in those bills because there's just so much so my turn or are they going to take are they okay by it's good to say I have to go back to work too but I'll stay a minute there's no questions for our state okay thank you thank you okay I'm Jeannie Wilds I am serving on the school board representing the central district of the Old North End and we had a meeting last Tuesday and it's very possible that you read the news or you watched the news or however you got the news we are as in the school board in the district are in the middle of making a decision about moving forward with the design that may or may not include parts of the tech center relocating to the airport so that's I'm front loading like you know opposite punch line thing so we know that there of what is planned thus far cost estimates there's roughly about anywhere from a 15 to 35 million dollar you know I was about to say thousand that would be wrong million dollar deficit or or gap right gap and of course it is good practice to ask for a bond for as much as possible as a safety regardless of of what you know you're going to fundraise for what you know you're going to be sourcing in the many facets Fed grants different resources that are out there there's a gamut we're exploring them all and that's part of probably what Emma would have talked about future legislation about PCB remediation and how you know and I know that our friends in the house in the senate have lobbied hard for school or what do they call it school something instruction emergency construction I don't know I don't look for the exact term yeah I don't know the exact term I'll look while you talk okay sounds great but essentially it's like oh you're not allowed to use your school building it's not like a hurricane hit it and FEMA is going to show up it's not like it flooded and the insurance is going to cover it you're in this emergency situation and there's nothing so yeah unfortunately there there is no fun there is no safety net for the situation that we're in and yeah I just want to reiterate this really is serious guys the kids are at Macy's and I don't feel good about it well all right I don't want to get emotional it's also graduation weekend so we've gone through a lot of these rites of passages so I'm feeling very sensitive about students in our in our I'm always sensitive about students who's who's kidding yeah that it is not a good situation we know it's going to last for another couple of years and that's if things are going well right and it's it's very unfortunate that our city has to make this tough decision about the bond and I but I want to say this 150 million dollar number there's just talk about how I don't I don't I don't want to put I don't want to further any kind of narrative that might be incorrect that's it's not set in stone the city and the district are working together coming up with a bond ask the final language has to happen in August for it to be ready for the ballots because they're being mailed out for the vote in November everything has to be decided in August so the figure you're speaking of is just for the construction of the school the new school does not include the demolition and removal of the old old school building not necessarily no I mean if we can source that other chunk of money that would be okay so part of why it's sort of separate because that seems way more hopeful to get funding for versus a new build remediation of the old building getting rid of that stuff and getting rid of the toxins there is a probably more opportunity right to get that well that's how this started it was supposed to have been like what a re-envisioning was supposed to be like a renovation and then everything happened you're talking about something totally different the 70 million dollar bond what was the question again I didn't realize you were talking about the old one that we're looking to use to generate funds for construction of the new high school would that bond funding be also be used to that bond was never used and returned okay yeah and that didn't come at any expense to the taxpayers it was such a small amount that was used for testing was something like I can't tell you exactly but we were assured that taxpayers are not paying some sort of a there's not any payback involved not tax wise not rating wise so the problem about the number for asking for a bond in the end is that basically the city's credit score if you take too much money out if you max out your credit card your interest rates are going to go up right same thing with the city so we're trying to we are trying to stay within this window that is going to be healthy for the for going to not compromise a healthy rating that the city now has yeah try to reframe the question I guess what I'm saying is at the point when the new school building gets constructed if it is constructed on institute road as I understand it will be yes all right the students going to be looking out the windows at an old derelict school building or will the old building be removed it's totally gone okay yes it has to I heard that they were two separate projects that's why I was asking oh okay sorry you know what it is really hard to there was a point when there were five designs that were put out there and it got narrowed down to one and of those five designs there was one that proposed the building part of the building stays here while the other gets built and it was like phased in kind of like what we talked about tonight right so building A was going to hopefully be used for part of it while they built the new build and then building A came down and then they built a text on it that is a totally that is not an option anymore okay we're done I'm fine all right we did have one other item we have Kate Logan here who's running and she did not make it in time for the public forum so Kate's going to say a few words for us before she heads out regarding her candidacy you want to step to the mic thanks to yeah hey y'all nice to meet you I'm Kate Logan I'm running for state representative in the Chittenden 16 district that's the former Chittenden 63 district so running as a progressive Democrat in the Democratic primary on August 9th I have lived in Vermont since 2013 I've lived in the old North End since 2016 with my two children we live at the Champlain Housing Trust developed Great Street Housing Cooperatives I have since moving to Vermont been a leader in social movements I worked for Rights and Democracy as the director of programming and policy for four years and now I work as a program director in the social services I was the co-director along with Melissa Bata also running for state rep this year down in Washington County while she was at Vermont Interfaith Action of the campaign to raise the minimum wage in Vermont that was partially successful and one of the reasons I motivated to serve in office so that we can in Chittenden 16 the most progressive district in the state have a champion for workers rights in our district serving in the legislature and yeah I was thrilled to get the call when we found out when we found out that Kurt McCormick was stepping down it's sad to see his tenure and the legislature end he was a champion for sustainable transportation in Vermont but I was really honored to be encouraged to run I'm excited to knock every door in the district multiple times hopefully with a great team of people that were putting together right now and I've got some campaign literature here if you'd like to know more about me and find out how to connect with me online so thanks so much thank you okay all right with any any further ado I'll entertain a motion to adjourn all in favor Ward 3 residents I want to favor all right aye the rocks on your end thank you you can adjourn and then we have a door prize all right I guess how does that work for these people they have to show up right they don't give it to them sorry if you're on zoom you don't you're not as worth as our price sorry move to adjourn thank you everyone for coming tonight and participating and we will catch you again next month in July and hopefully we'll have a more formal candidate form at that time thank you okay thanks everyone two four