 Whether or not there are any items in 4.01 to 4.10 that could be combined for expediency or brevity purposes. And I don't know if that was already mentioned. We did not discuss that maybe. I don't want to take up a lot of time with it. If there isn't then that's fine. Right. We have not had a discussion on that yet. It may be that there are opportunities as we go through them. Okay. Sure enough. So with that we will move to the public forum. Is there any member of the public that would like to speak to the Board of Finance? If you are in the attendee list and you raise your hand, I will try to recognize you. We also have the email system in place. Is there anyone who has emailed in at this point, President Tracy? So I'm not seeing anyone on the sheet for this though. I do see that former Councilor Busher's phone number is on and she had said that there was a budget related item. So I would just maybe check in. That was, I believe, for a comment for the main Council. So I just wanted to note that. Okay. Are you saying the 658-3604 numbers? Yes. Okay. Yeah. So we could check in with So, Councilor Busher, if you're listening, can you enable, are you able to enable that? President Tracy, sorry to have to ask you that. Okay. So, Councilor Busher, your line is enabled if you would like to make a comment at this point. You'll have to unmute yourself on your end. Can you hear me? We can. Go ahead. Okay. So President Tracy was correct. I signed up, I thought for the right meeting, which was the City Council meeting, but it is your main because it had to do with the budget. It had to do with a comment that I made a few weeks ago regarding the Housing Trust Fund. And I wasn't really able to determine whether or not you had considered fully funding that using ARPA funds. And so I was going to make my comment tonight at the full Council because I didn't think you had done that. If I'm wrong, I would love to know that I'm wrong. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Councilor Busher. So, yes, I mean, this isn't typically a place for back and forth, but I'm sure it's a question on a number of people's minds. So just very quickly, I will say, there, because of ARPA, as well as the other emergency relief funds, there are vast housing, affordable housing dollars in available for affordable housing emergency measures and for permanent projects. I mean, there's expected to be even more potentially when the federal bills that are working their way through the system are passed. So we have housing is not an allowable use for precisely for the city's limited ARPA dollars. But we have been in conversations with, in particular, Champlain Housing Trust and believe that there's agreement that there's no reason for the city to take further measures beyond what is already being done by the state at this point for housing purposes. That said, we may continue to have, if that changes, if there is a new need that emerges, we have, this budget keeps more than, I believe, correct me, Catherine, if I'm wrong, I believe about 15 million of the ARPA funds continue to be uncommitted after passage of this budget. So if there is a desire in a way consistent with the ARPA legislation to designate more of those dollars towards housing, that is certainly something that will be considered and may be done in that subsequent allocation. So with that, I'm not seeing any, well, I do see, I believe Cara has raised her hand. Cara, you wanting to get in on the public forum? Or you want to? No, no, sorry. Okay. Are there any, I'm not seeing any other hands. So I'm going to close the public forum and I'm going to move to the consent agenda 3.01, 3.01 and a welcome motion regarding the consent agenda. Councillor Paul. I'll make a motion. I'll make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Great. Thank you. Is there a second? Second by Councillor Hightower. Discussion of the consent agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favour of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? And the motion carries unanimously. I will note this is the first of our new hybrid meetings and that is Catherine and the CAO is coming to us from the future site of our in-person board of finance meetings. Is that right? Yes. Good. And that is the way we are meeting the hybrid requirements. And I guess I should have asked Catherine, I assume there's no one that has come to the public meeting there that was wishing to speak in the public forum. Is that correct? That is correct. Unfortunately, it's just me and Rich here in the lovely Sharon Busher Conference Room, but we look forward to welcoming you all on July 12th. Excellent. We will now move to the deliberative agenda and we will start with what appears on board docs as 4.23, which is the annual appropriation budget for fiscal year beginning July 1st, 2021 and ending July 30th, 2021. And the action that we're looking for here as well as the 4.24, which is essentially the revenue side of the budget, is hopefully a recommendation from this board to the full council after the discussions that we've had going back in earnest since late April on this budget. With that, the floor is open for a motion or discussion. Councillor Paul. Thanks. Mayor, I'm happy to make a motion. I don't know if there are others who would like to, you know, offer any discussion or if you would just simply like a motion and we can continue with discussion after. Well, thank you, Councillor Paul. I guess let me, I probably maybe should have just made sure that the board has seen that the administration has continued to work with councillors over the last couple of weeks since formally submitting the budget on June 12th. There were a number of, you know, a handful of issues that were raised, additional issues that were raised by councillors that we have in the resubmission for tonight's meeting made some changes in the budget as a result of. And those are captured in the document that's called changes to FY22 budget to board of finance. And I will not restate that whole document. I do think I will just, you know, I think the most significant of the items is the suggestion that came from Councillor Hightower for the creation of a new, an additional position, a regular full-time associate data analyst that would be within the data team and the planning department and that would have some additional capacity for staffing the police commission. If this is authorized tonight, we will be, you know, returning with that job function flushed out more fully. But this would allow, this would be responsive to planning commission efforts in recent months to make that body more independent from the police department and would add to the city's overall data capacity, which is extremely limited. The whole city has just two data positions currently, a third position in REIB. So I thought it was an helpful suggestion and we have included that. That's probably the biggest change. There are, the other changes are articulated in that document. There were a couple of suggestions that came from Councillors that we think can best be addressed that require sort of more work than is possible at this point in the budget process. I think easily to address, but that we have signaled our willingness to work with those Councillors and to bring back budget measurements when we have more detail. And this is specifically around potentially additional funding, likely additional funding for the Chattel Slavery Reparations Task Force, as well as this is a clarification that the other item is I have been in conversations with Councillor Jack Hanson about the city's employee transportation demand management program and clarified for him just today. He was our final communication. We've been in some communications over the last couple of weeks that there is $10,000 in the budget for employee bus passes since those will not be needed for bus passes this year because transit is currently free. This transit is free. That money is available to reallocate it to other perhaps even more impactful TDM employee measures. And I'm committed. I think Councillor Hanson is right that we should improve that system for employees that would want to consider not coming to work with an automobile. And so I would expect there to be a budget amendment in a few months when we have greater clarity about how to best address that TDM employee TDM need. So that's the work that's happened in the last couple of weeks and hopefully that additional clarification is helpful. And beyond that, you know, happy to answer any additional questions that there are at this point about the materials that we've previously submitted. Councillor Hightower, go ahead. Yeah, just a comment, which is to say having only gone through one other budget process, which was last year, which was of course a difficult budget process, just appreciate the amount of collaboration and the work that went into this again by Ceo Shad and the mayor and others. And yeah, appreciate the responsiveness, even in terms of last minute asks, such as the data analyst. Great. Thank you for saying that. Appreciate that, Councillor Hightower. And it's, yeah, we appreciate the administration appreciates the collaborative efforts on the part of councillors this year and the iterative process that we've had and certainly happy that the federal government has made it easier to start new initiatives and the situation we were a year ago. President Tracy. I just wanted to echo those words from Councillor Hightower. I agree that I really appreciated just the willingness to take councillor feedback and the record. And also, before you put out your recommended budget mayor, but then even after you put it out, continuing to do that and then even still beyond potential budget approval this evening, being willing, as you just said, to revisit some of the items that we weren't able to fully address in the budget itself. I just really appreciate that. I also wanted to call out the use of the survey. I think that that was a positive step that you and the city team took this year in order to solicit additional resident feedback. I think that that's, that that was a positive element of the budget and a positive change this year. I think that, you know, the more we can involve folks in the budget process, the better. And so certainly would look, look toward hopefully continue that in the, in future years and think about the ways that we may be able to potentially engage folks, whether that's through additional in-person events that, you know, I think we had some, it was challenging to know about what we might be able to do on that front this year, but thinking about that. And then also maybe potentially thinking about some sort of more actual participatory budgeting kind of element going forward. Because I think that the strong response to that survey, I think, indicates a desire among people to have say over the ways that city government spends taxpayer money. And so just wanted to put that out there. But thank you so much to you and CEO Shad and the other members of the board of finance as well for this collaborative effort. It's been really a two month effort on our side. I was saying earlier to see, because it's really more like a six month process, if not longer for you all. And then obviously certainly lots of follow up. So thanks for all the hard work on this. And we'll be excited to be supporting the budget this evening. And I take your comments on the, well, first of all, I think it's, you know, continuing to improve and innovate the process. Certainly we feel very positive about the survey as well and want to continue to use that tool. And I have heard you and others with strong desire for more, you know, somehow expanding the participatory budgeting process. I think, you know, I see Catherine nodding there. I think we should have a kind of a further discussion on that early in the early in the new year to, you know, make sure we are all on the same page about the ways in which I think we do have some forms of participatory budgeting and where, if we were going to look to expand that, where that might make more sense. So let's, let's plan on doing that in the first quarter of the new year so it can, we have plenty of time to think about further adjustments for next year's budget. So with that, Councillor Paul, I'll recognize you for it for the motion. So I would make a motion to recommend that the city council approve the attached resolution. And that would be the final document as posted on board docs. Thank you, Councillor Paul. Second from Councillor Hightower. And the floor is open for any further discussion on 4.2. My agenda closed on me here again. So 4.23, I believe. Any further discussion? Councillor Paul. Thank you. Just wanted to echo the word, the comments from Councillor Hightower and President Tracy. I will, I will have a few other things to say later at the council meeting. So I won't repeat them here, but just wanted to thank everyone for a very successful budget process this year. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Paul. All right. Seeing no more comments, we'll go to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. And that brings us to 4.24, which is again the revenue side of this. This is the annual tax assessments on the property grand list of the city for the fiscal year beginning of July 1, 2021, June 30, 2022. The only, I guess I would like to just speak briefly to the one change really to the tax rate, which is called out in that document, but I will, since we're on the revenue side of it, I will just bring some additional explanation here. The, because this is, and I want to flag this because I do think this is an issue that we are likely to return to at some point, probably the first half of the year. The tertiary marketplace voted with, after some public input in April and then again in May to reduce, essentially to reduce from four and a half cents of an assessment on this special downtown improvement district, this, which is just a subset of the downtown properties. It's not a broad tax. It's a business downtown improvement district tax. They voted to reduce that down to just one cent and to essentially dramatically limit the two hour free parking program that is in place in the cherry street and the lakeside garages. That, you know, there has been a lot of reconsideration of the two hour free parking program and questioning whether the public and private dollars that have been going into that program is a good policy for us to continue. And so I am open to that further limitation of the program. But for that to take place, the Public Works Commission needs to weigh in on that and there's essentially steps that additional work that needs to take place that they're just simply didn't happen before the end of the budget year. So the, despite that recommendation from the tertiary marketplace, as my memo two weeks ago said, I don't think we're in a position where we can make that reduction in the tax rate and be consistent with the charter language essentially and with the responsibilities, you know, I don't think we've done the work necessary to change that to our free program and thus to change the taxation associated with it in short. So what we have, we have made the rate three and a half cents, which keeps it revenue neutral with last year. And I do think that there are going to be further discussions about this tax rate and about that program that may well be coming back to the Board of Finance at some point over the course of the year. Hope that makes sense. And with that, happy to answer further questions about that or any of the other tax rates that being those or, you know, what motion on the on the on the taxes. Councilor Paul. Well, it's much more fun making the motion on spending the money than it is on the taxes. However, we have to do both. So I will recommend I'll make a motion to recommend that the city council approve the attached resolution. Thank you, Councilor Powell, seconded by Councilor Hightower. Any further discussions? Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. And we appreciate the recommendations from from the board, speaking on behalf of the whole city team involved in the budget effort this year. And thank you for all of you. I know we're personally very committed to the process and have been to a huge number of meetings over the last few months, much discussion that made that was a key part of getting to that outcome. So thank you for those recommendations. And we look forward to working with you now to implement that that budget hopefully after passage by the full council later tonight. With that, I'm going to go back to the top of the fourth section four. And we are now at 4.01. First up a number of airport items. And I would, I guess, just open, you know, invite either counselors or Gene or Nick. If you see opportunities, if there are any very really related issues that make sense to approve together, feel free to suggest that. I'm not sure that's the case. So certainly what the first one I think stands on. So in 4.01 is approving the issuance of a grant anticipation note. This is something that we have done for many years now. And that really makes a lot of financial sense given the length of time that there is between when we get approval of grants or when the money gets to us. This allows the city team, the airport team to move with speed. And it's been a good tool for a number of years now. Do you want to add anything to that, Nick or Gene or Shelby? Yeah, the one good thing about it is it puts us in a really good place as far as not using our everyday cash and keeps our cash available. Also the interest is covered by the FAA as well. So it's a really good program for us to participate in and it takes the risk off the airport and the city. Sorry, I should open the floor for Murray too. Who deals with a lot of the numbers issues. So with that the floor is open for a motion for the questions. Presentation. We'll move approval of the tax resolution. Thank you. Is there a second for that? Seconded by Councillor Paul. Any discussion of you will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Motion carries unanimously. That brings us to 4.02, a request to accept FAA grant execute contracts for the construction and inspection service and amend existing engineering and bid services contract for hotspot remediation projects. Could you give us a summary of the airport team to discuss the question? Yeah, absolutely. Mr. Mayor, if you wish I can do that, Gene, if you're good with that. So I can actually combine 4.02, 4.03 and 4.04 if that makes sense. They're all somewhat related in the construction and the phasing. The first one, 4.02, which is to accept the grant on what we're calling a hotspot. We've presented this in the past before. Hotspots are essentially an area on the airfield that we need to pay attention to. We identify those in partnership with our air traffic control partners and other users at the airport. Essentially identifying either additional markings, additional lighting, all sorts of different things. In this particular case, it's mostly associated with new paint, new markings and what we call runway guard lights, which does exactly that. Installs essentially a stoplight at the intersection of a runway, identifying that you're approaching or crossing that runway. This particular item not only authorized the approval of the grant associated with this, which is a grant from the Federal Aviation Administration, but also the contract, which was apparent low bidder of SD Ireland, as well as a contract with our consulting firm, CHA, not only amending an old contract, but also signing a brand new contract. Associated with the hotspot because things are relocating, new lights are being installed, the PAPIs or the Precision Approach Path Indicator is a tool for pilots to use to get the correct angle to land on a runway. Those have to be relocated. So item 4.03 is doing exactly that. Accepting another grant, we separate these grants because they're two different departments of the FAA, but accepting that grant to initiate that particular type of work. Again, associated with the hotspot project. And then the final piece, which won't be under construction this year, but it will start next year, is the Kilo or K and the Charlie or C mill and overlay. This is redoing or rehabilitating an existing taxiway, but also connecting a very small portion to the end of one of our runways so that there will no longer need to be any runway crossings. All three of those are associated with making sure the geometry of the airfield, the lighting and the markings are all appropriately marked and safer every year as we identify these issues. There's quite a few motions in there, but all three of them are pretty much the same project. All right. Thank you for that, Nick. The floor is open for questions or motion. Castle J. Castle J, you are on you. Okay. So if it's okay, I would like to make the motion to approve and recommend to the City Council agenda items 4.02, 4.03, and 4.04, since they all grant request for acceptance of grants from the FAA government. That's the motion. Great. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Is there a second for that motion? Seconded by President Trason. Discussion of anything contained within those three four-dock items. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote on the motion. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously, approving 4.02, 4.03, and 4.04. Excuse me. That brings us to 4.05, a request to accept the FAA grant and execute a contract for planning design, outreach, and construction oversight for the 10-house sound insulation and 50-house outreach project. This is a significant item. This is, and I'm happy to have Nick Eugene speak to it further in a moment. This is, as I understand it, after many years of work to reorient the City's, City for many years for decades had a sound program that purchased homes and tore them down and approximately 200 houses in the vicinity of the airport went through that program. We've been working for years to end that program and replace it with a program that instead allows us to improve noise-impacted homes in the vicinity of the airport homes that can benefit from sound mitigation. It's been a laborious process. It's been a hard process for a number of reasons. One, I would say most of that delay was related to the, or not even delay, but most of the time that it took to complete that transformation is related to the fact that we had made multi-year commitments to purchase homes, to property owners in the vicinity of the airport, and it took years to make good on those commitments and finish them. And then it took, it also took a significant amount of time. And Nick did a lot of the heavy lifting for this, is my understanding, to have the airport, the FAA sign off on this new sound program. This is a pilot program that we have received grant funding for. The expectation is that if this works, we will move from the pilot stage, a lot of optimism and confidence that it will work, that this would then become, like the prior program, something that we would receive annual seven-figure commitments from hopefully significant seven-year commitments so that we could, over time, we really improve hundreds, potentially even thousands of homes in the Burlington, South Burlington and Winooski municipalities that are impacted by airport noise currently. The maximum number of homes that could eventually benefit from this program would be 2,600. We believe that once the acoustic inspections are done, that significantly less than that will actually qualify because the indoor, because basically conditions in modern homes, newer homes already will not qualify. They already essentially have the sound improvements that we would look at putting in place and thus they won't qualify. So I think it's believed that perhaps as many as half of those homes will not qualify, which is good news in the sense that it will allow us to help all the homes that in households that need to be helped in a shorter period of time and be more focused on where the need is with these efforts. And final thing I'll say on this and then turn it over to two last points. The same improvements that help with sound insulation, there's a little big overlap between sound insulation and weatherization. And so not only will this grant program make it be good for indoor acoustics, they will also have a positive impact on emissions and on comfort in those homes because these homes will become tighter. There'll be insulation, air sealing that makes them tighter homes. Final point is for at least this pilot period, we have a commitment from VGS folks may remember to cover the local match. So whereas there could be substantial need, potentially we've been talking about maybe $500,000 a million a year need for a 10% local match. Once this program really gets going, VGS is stepping up to provide that local match out of their efficiency programs and that's good news and something that we will work to continue. With that, Gene, Nick, anything I got wrong or you want to add to? I went on for a while there so don't feel like going on for that. I'm just going to say one thing, Monroe. This was one of the very first things that you asked me to take care of. And as you said, Nick Longo, he worked endless hours and I didn't just do this program for you. He did it in a very creative way with many, many obstacles including the FAA and today it's a program that we will use for years and years. It's not guaranteed as far as the funding year to year, but we will be diligent about going after those fundings to make sure that we adhere to your goals and the city council's direction as well. Nick, do you want to add anything to that? No, I think that was a great summary. I think just a final point on this particular item, this is to accept this very first grant, so this would be our first grant to actually proceed with what the mayor and what Gene just spoke about. And this also is to sign a contract to continue signing a contract with the Jones Payne Group, our very qualified consultant firm to carry this program forward for us. And this would start the whole process for these first 10 houses but also set us up for the next 50 houses with outreach and communication with the homeowners and really moving us to the next step so that next year we can apply for a full grant of all 50 houses being constructed as well as apply for a grant for the next 50 houses. So every year we're constantly revolving with constructing 50 houses and designing 50 houses moving forward. Thanks, Nick. Thanks for clarifying that, Nick. Okay, the floor is open for a motion or questions. Councillor Jang. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Nick and Richard for being here. My only question is I could not find any more, any information related to the Jones Payne Group as part of the memo. And when I looked them up, you know, I could not, it could not indicate whether or not they are local and was just wondering during the bidding process if we have received local organizations or groups that apply to this as well. That's a great question. So the Jones Payne Group is a consultant for us. They're not going to be the ones that actually perform the construction. That will go through another bidding cycle, preferably like you mentioned or hinted at to receive local bids on the actual construction, especially as part of this 10 house program. The FAA actually requires a qualified firm for this particular project. The Jones Payne Group bid about two or three years ago on our noise compatibility and noise programs all together. And they were highly recommended and highly qualified to perform not only noise exposure map work, noise compatibility program work, but also the public, that public outreach and communication and implementation planning efforts for the overall noise programs at the airport. So it wasn't a, the FAA doesn't require a competitive bid like a contractor, like a construction contractor, but a qualified bid in this particular case. Thank you. Because it seems that the FAA, they have their own standards. And it seems that they recommended or to work with that organization. But thank you. I think the needy greedy would be to basically try to find local organization that can do the, you know, the details to get it. We have had that conversation. And we're working that into the program. You know, there are national firms that do this, and I've put up a real big wall to make sure that not only are they local doing the work, but they're local backing it up. Because the worst thing we could do is have someone nationally come in and then walk away and then warranty work and other things like that. So we're being a real stickler to your point. Thank you. Councillor Paul, did you have, sorry, Councillor Chang, did you still have more? Yeah, I mean, basically, just to make the motion to approve and recommend that the city authorize the director of aviation to accept and execute the grant with a federal aviation administration in an amount of 1.329.539 with a 15% contingency at about 199,430.85, totally 1,528, 969.85. So I'll leave it to that for the design outreach construction and oversight. Thank you. It's a long motion. Great, excellent. Thank you, Councillor Chang. Was there a second that from President Tracy? And question. Go ahead, President Tracy. So I just wanted to understand like the process for the 50 homes that you're going to be reaching out to. Are these, are you targeting homes that are sort of in the worst positions or the worst that have the highest rate of exposure first? Is that kind of the strategy here? Yeah, absolutely. So we went through a couple of strategies on how to select or at least initially select the, not only these first 50 houses, but every year after this. And what we decided on was exactly that the highest average noise levels are the ones closest to the airport. But what we also pinpointed was we wanted to make sure it was fair across all communities or all towns and cities that were inside of this Norse contour. So dependent on the ratio of dwelling units within each community, that, that's kind of the, the, the split or the ratio of the funding that will occur, the quantity of houses that will occur. So for example, Winooski has a significant number of dwelling units compared to the overall program or the 2600 dwelling units that the mayor mentioned. Therefore, most of or many of that funding and quantity of houses will go into Winooski, not only at the higher contour levels for that particular town, but also for the low income or or most disadvantaged in that particular community. And each community will look at that same point of view. There's a there's a whole separate document called our implementation plan, which dives into the details specifically or the procedures associated with so that it's a well methodical documented format to move forward with. Great. Thank you for that explanation. Are there any further further questions? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go to vote. As we go to the vote, I just want to just be explicit that this is a vote on the language as per 4.05. I think the I just just because I think I think we've had legal recommendation not to kind of abbreviate either the motions either need to state the whole motion exactly as on board docs or just say it's what's on board docs and I understood councillor Chen to be saying referring to the board docs motion. So and I see nodding in agreement. So that's what we're voting on in case there was any ambiguity just for the record. So with with that, all those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? And the motion carries unanimously and that brings us to 4.06. We have a few more airport items here 4.06 request to accept and another transaction agreement with the Transportation Security Administration and Execute Engineering Contract for the review evaluation and design of the inline baggage screaming project. Can we have a quick try to keep it to a couple sentences if you could, Gene or Nick, summary of this item. Go ahead, Nick. Absolutely. So this is associated in some ways to our terminal integration project or the the new portion of the terminal building which processes and screens passengers going out of the airport or outbound. This is for the baggage. So as more passengers come through as we looked at our master planning efforts and work with the Transportation Security Administration, we also have some aging equipment, not not in the sense of the technology but in the sense of the the quantity of bags that they're allowed to process. So as they are allowed to process more people in the new portion of the building that's being constructed, we need to make sure that we're associating that with the bags that are going outbound as well. And what this is essentially is a grant with the Transportation Security Administration allowing us just to design and look at efforts to do exactly that. This isn't to construct it, this is just to look at the efforts behind the planning process. Thank you, Nick. Floor is open for questions or a motion? Councilor Paul. To make a motion that we take the action indicated as in board docs. Great. Is there a second? Second by Councilor Jang. Discussion. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion regarding 4.06, please say aye. Aye. And are you opposed? The motion carries unanimously and this brings us to 4.07. This is another sound mitigation effort that is positive to see every team to stage. Nick or team, can you give us again a very short summary on this? That's a Nick thing. Go ahead, Nick. So absolutely. So we brought forward to you in prior meetings the noise monitoring system portal that will eventually be accessible in late summer this year to look at the sound monitoring equipment. These are required easements by the FAA so we can't place federally funded equipment without first placing an easement in that particular area. They're very basic easements. We work with each town or municipality like the school district to make sure that it fits within their criteria. We added some features in there like fencing and things like that and we'll continue to work with them. They seem very pleased, very happy and they have at least Winooski and the school board in South Burlington has approved the two easements. We're working with Williston on the actual physical location of the third noise monitoring station and that will also come with an approval from their select board as well. Okay. Thank you, Nick. The floor is open for questions or a motion? Councilor Paul. Thanks. I'm happy to make the motion take the recommended action as detailed in items one, two and three in board docs and just simply want to add that I imagine this was a I think Nick that you oftentimes make these things in two or three sentences sound a lot easier than they are and kudos to all of you for doing what I'm sure was a very difficult job in getting all of these easements together at one time. So I'm sure you and your team all did this but congratulations to all of you for doing this and for making it look easy. Thank you. Larry was a big part of that and of course the city attorney's office made it was a huge effort in that. Thank you, Karen. Okay. So thank you, Councilor Paul. I believe that you made a motion in that. Yes. Right. And so is there a second from President Tracy? And very good and any further discussion? Go ahead, President Tracy. Just wanted to echo that and just thank you for this was something that counselors had raised as an issue in the beginning to ask you to look into this and to apply for these FAA sound monitoring grants. So I really just want to echo the comments from Councilor Paul to thank you for taking that feedback and really running with it and now implementing it now that we have this grant and let's hope that we're able to get some really valuable and useful information from the implementation of this sound monitoring that we're then able to use to hopefully really reduce the impacts that's having on not only our community but other communities throughout this area. Thank you. Thank you, President Tracy. So we have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? We'll go to a vote on item 4.07. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and yes, let me say thank you as well to the team. This is progress. 4.08. Authorization to renew cooperative service agreement with the United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant and Special Services and Wildlife Services at the airport. How would the board want to summary on this or can we just go to a motion? I'm happy to make the motion if others want a summary. I'm certainly willing to wait. Why don't we, there'll still be a chance for discussion after the motion. So if you would go ahead and make that motion, that'd be great. Great. So I would make a motion to approve and recommend the renewal of the cooperative service agreement between the Burlington International Airport and the United States Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services and Service and Wildlife Services and to authorize the Director of Aviation to execute the agreement subject to final review and approval by the city attorney's office. Thank you, Councillor Paula. Is there a second? Second by Councillor Hightower. Discussion. Seeing no hands, we're going to go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion on 4.08, please say aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. All right. We are a third of the way through the agenda. 4.09, or maybe a couple more. 4.09. Authorization to execute a contract for airfield, mill and overlay. Asphalt repairs to the Burlington International Airport with Pike Industries, Inc. $261,000 contract basically for the airfield. Are we ready for a motion on this, Councillor Paula? Thank you. I'm happy to make that, but I do have a question as well. I just want mostly so that just for the record, this, is that okay? Yes, sure. Go ahead. Go ahead with the question and come back to the motion. Okay. So the contract with Pike Industries for $261,000, although that is a lot of money, it's not an enormous amount of money for, you know, this type of work. We've made, you know, we've had larger ones. Can you explain just simply why this work is being done? Absolutely. Okay. Absolutely. So in various locations, we, of course, have aged asphalt or different age is of asphalt. Different classifications, different qualifications of the asphalt itself and different standards, of course, then let's say a standard road or even a highway. So this is a relatively simple project. It does mill out a couple of inches of asphalt and then repores new asphalt in various locations at some of the older sections. I wouldn't call this a temporary fix, but this is a much needed fix in those various locations because of either cracking or spalling or other types of scenarios. And for reference, we're not allowed by federal standard to have anything associated with a hole or a crack larger than pretty much three inches anywhere on the airport. No lips, no nothing like that. So it's a highly standardized, highly qualified procedure on pouring this asphalt. And eventually on some of these locations, some are located on the runway, some are located on taxiways. This isn't one particular area. This is small areas all around the airfield. Eventually those will qualify again for federal grants years down the line. This is purely maintenance of those areas. So in other words, not only is this really required, but it's a safety issue. Absolutely, 100%. Great, thank you. Okay, Councillor Hightower. Yeah, I just had one question, which is it sounded like from the memo that we only got one one response to the request for proposals to do this work. And just curious about even if it's speculation as to why that is and if that is generally the case or we usually have more. No, that's a really good question. That's a really good question. Usually we do have a couple of respondents like S.D. Ireland, Pike, and in this particular case, some of the areas that we need, Milden and New Asphalt Port are very sensitive, like the center of our runway, for example, and can only be done at very specific times of the day or in our case, times of the night. So it's a very difficult process and that's probably what contributes to the price of the bid. And I think historically we've used other companies like S.D. Ireland, and it is a very challenging and complicated procedure, even for them and for Pike. So it just depends really on where the location is and of course the quantity of asphalt being poured at that particular location. Thank you. Okay, are we ready for a motion on that item 4.09? Go ahead, Councillor Paul. Okay, great. So I'm happy to make the motion to approve and recommend to the City Council to authorize the Director of Aviation to execute a contract with Pike Industries in the amount of $261,360.65 for airfield mill and overlay asphalt repairs at Burlington International Airport, subject to the final review and approval by the Office of the City Attorney. Okay. Great. Thank you, Councillor Paul and President Tracey. Any further discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Are there any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. It brings us to 4.10. Authorization to execute a lease amendment to the airline lease agreement for a one-year extension. This, I think, is worth your spending a minute on just because this airport lease document is an important document and one that has a lot of financial protections in it for the airport. And this extends those protections for a year. Could you just quickly expand on that, Jean or Nick, and maybe get a little preview of what we expect? This is a one-year extension. What do you expect in the year to replace it? So the extension will shadow exactly what we've had the last five years. We reached out to the industry this past spring, right, prior to our financial reviews. And they were actually delighted to extend it and to start the process again. So what it does is it guarantees us those same relationships and partnerships that we've benefited from from the last five years. And really what it is is security. And that they will be here, that they will share the financial risk with us. And that's really a big deal to us. And it says a lot. And during COVID, a lot of them were shut down. But even at home, we maintained really good relationships. And so what that is, is that's one more year, I would say, of good partnership and good financial security, that they will continue to send aircraft to Burlington. And if we run into troubles, work with us on it. Jean, would you expect our negotiations for a longer extension in the upcoming year? Yeah, we will start in July, those negotiations and probably have them to use sometime before the holidays. And just for, especially our newer members of the Board of Finance, this lease evolved on the heels of a period in which the city, the airport, failed in a couple of years to meet debt coverage requirements. And that would create a kind of a major downgrade of the airport's credit rating. It also created concern about it's just it's a it's a significant threshold that that it's critical the airport be vigilant about meeting. This essentially guarantees that the airport will have revenues that are in excess of its debt service requirements. Kind of acknowledgement of the shared interest that the airlines have in the airport being a strong financial footing. And the airport team has worked well with the airlines, such that when we are above the thresholds that we need to hit, we've been able to make significant reinvestments in capital and do that in partnership with the airlines as well. So from my perspective, it's been an important and helpful agreement that has really led to some stability in the airport's finances. And I'm glad to see it being extended for another year. With that, the floor is open for a question for the questions or a motion. Councillor Jay. Happy to make the motion. But before I would like to ask a quick question. And the question is specific to all the airplanes that land or take off from Burlington Airport, such as the Phoenix or the delivery delivery companies. Do you have a separate agreement with them? Or are they under an umbrella of these as these airlines companies? Great. We have a separate agreement with them. And is it only how many of them are there from your perspective? There's FedEx and there's UPS. Those are the only two that we deal with right now. And those are the major companies and UPS uses a different company to fly for them out of Manchester, New Hampshire. Right. Thank you. Then I think I can make the motion to approve and recommend that the City Council authorize the Mayor of Burlington, Meadow-Wineburger, to execute amendments to airline lease agreements with American Airlines, Delta Airlines, JetBlue Airways, United Airlines and Frontier Airlines, extending the lease one year subject to the final review and approval by the Office of the City. Great. Thank you, Councilor Jang. Is there a second? Councilor Hightower seconds the motion. Any discussion? We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. All right. I think we can say goodbye to the airport team. Thank you all very much. Great. Thank you. Have a good night. Thanks for all the hard work. We will now welcome Team CEDO, at least Director Pine. And then we do have our Assistant Director, Head of the CJC, Richard Jolley and more. Welcome, Karen. Welcome, Katie. Okay. This is the authorization to apply to downtown sales tax reallocation program regarding the Nettie Real Estate Development Project 79 Pine Street. Councillor Pine, we haven't done that many of these. Could you just refresh the board on what this is, Councillor Pine? I guess not Director Pine. Sure. The the state of Vermont has, for designated downtowns of which Burlington's downtown is one of the designated downtowns, offers a number of incentives to really encourage the full development, you know, reaching your full development potential for downtowns as a way to kind of combat sprawl and, you know, in many cases, downtowns are the place where, you know, seniors can easily live because of the proximity to services and a real mix of incomes and types of housing. So this sales tax reallocation is essentially a state program, competitive program available to municipalities, only those that have it designated downtown. And what you need to do as a city is go in as a joint applicant with a private developer where the public improvements that are associated with and adjacent to that development are going to benefit from what the state takes in as sales tax dollars get essentially sent back to the municipality to cover the cost, a portion of the cost of public improvements. So in this instance, it's a 47,000 square foot building with 49 housing units. And it's estimated at about a $15 million total construction cost. So the detailed estimates for how much sales tax will be reallocated have yet to be determined. The final scope of what public improvements would be included will be determined in a couple of days because this application is due on July 1st. For a second, yeah. All right. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Director Pine. The floor is open for recommend for motion or questions. Councillor Gai. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. So the first question that I have, maybe it's a let's say a comment. And I do believe that we had a similar item that came also with all the details. We exactly knew how much taxes we were talking about, but we're just wondering if those details are found. Director Pine, would you come back to the City Council for a new request of approval or this will be it? So the timing is rather constrained here. This application is due to the state of Vermont in four days. And so I do recognize that the information that was provided last, I think it was December that Council heard of a proposal from Redstone over on South Witness Giavana. And there was more detail provided at that point. All the detail needs to be submitted with the application. So it will be part of what goes in on Friday. And I think, you know, we'd be happy to share that maybe an executive summary of that proposal when it goes in with the Council if that would be helpful. Wonderful. Thank you, Director Pine. And I am happy to make the motion to approve and accept the resolution on ProDoc. Great. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Is there a second for that motion? A second. Okay. Second by President Tracey. Further discussion or questions? We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Very opposed. The motion carries unanimously. This brings us to 4.12, Department of Corrections grant amendment for safer communities, also a CEDO, CJC item. And Rachel, would you like to just give a very quick summary of this? Well, I have been prepared myself to answer any questions, but since Rachel's the pro, I'd rather have her take this one. I have studied and I have my notes, but I'm going to rely on her instead if I could. Thank you, Director Pine. Both this one and the following item are both grant amendments, contracted grant amendments to existing grants that we've had for several, well several years in the case of Department of Corrections since the late 90s and since 2019 with the AGO court diversion grant. So really this is essentially just a renewal of these grant amendment or grant contracts to further funding for one more year. They likely will come out with new grants in the following year, but both of them are grant amendments continuing the work we've been doing for many years. Great. Thank you. Summary, Councilor Powell. Could I just simply ask Rachel, is it possible that we're on 4.12? 4.12, 4.13 are amendments. 4.14 is a new grant. Is that something that we should not be doing at the same time or could I move and make a motion to take the recommended action in Board Docks for 4.12, 4.13 and with your okay, 4.14 or is that not appropriate? I can just add one more sentence of explanation to describe that last one, 4.14 around the Justice Assistant Grant just so that people know if it makes sense to combine or not. So this one is new and so this is the Justice Assistant Grants or something that the City of Burlington has been getting for many years, BPD most recently. The Justice Department has set aside specific allocations of funding for different municipalities. So Burlington has the set amount that's mentioned in the JAG grant. Since they include preventative programming as an option, we propose Burlington Police Department wasn't interested in this particular JAG grant, the Fiscal Year 21. So we propose establishing a new program, community mediation and resolution program to work to move our work farther upstream and to do more in the preventative realm, to work with BPD a little bit internally. And Smith, a number of you know as the community liaison, she gets a lot of calls once they're pretty far escalated and we'd be looking to with the amount given to establish a part-time temporary position to establish a train-the-trainer model and train folks in different neighborhoods, specifically from marginalized communities who are often disproportionately targeted by crime and conflict and trains conflict mediation skills so that they can, we can spread the good word of how to deal with conflict without involving law enforcement. Thank you very, very much for that summary. I'm happy to make the motion to take the recommended action as detailed in board docs for 4.12, 4.13 and 4.14 unless, you know, unless there are any of board of finance colleagues who would prefer to break these apart. If not, I'll make that motion. Thank you, Councillor Compae. Seconded by President Tracy. Discussion? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you, Rachel and Director Pine. I was just wondering, knowing that this new grant by the training requirements, we're just wondering if you can also extend it to members of the City Council who are interested, because I do believe that we do this type of work every single day with us. Yeah. Thank you for that question Councillor Jing. We would absolutely be interested in reaching out to any kind of interested party who works around conflict. So property managers at residential complexes, city councillors such as yourselves, teachers, there's a number of different professions and positions voluntary or not that would be poised to be influential as community trainers around conflict resolution skills. Thank you. Okay, seeing no further hands, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. And there are any opposed. The motion carries unanimously and thank you for all those explanations, Rachel. This brings us to 4.15 retitling and reclassification of three CEDO positions. Councillor Pine, would you like to Director Pine, Brian, would you like to kick us off? I will take this one, sure. As the memo explains that over the last year and a few months CEDO has really increased its workload, its diversity of tasks and duties and responsibilities has expanded with new grants that have added financial and personnel oversight responsibilities, the complexity of the work has increased and to responding to both COVID during the pandemic but also to address both recovery and our emerging needs around homelessness. We're really asking more of several staff people and so the reclassifications that are proposed tonight are a reflection of these increased responsibilities for these positions and we hope the council or the Board of Finance will concur with us on this so that we can ensure that staff are properly classified in their positions. Thank you. The floor is open for questions or a motion? Councillor Jay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you, Director Pine. I am happy to make the motion to recommend to the City Council to approve the retitling and reclassification of the senior lead program, especially a regular full-time no-exempt union grade 18 position to lead program manager a regular full-time exam non-union grade 19 position and retitling of reclassification of the senior community development specialist homeless and equity a regular full-time exempt non-union grade 18 position to homelessness and equity manager a regular full-time exempt non-union grade 19 position then lastly retitling and reclassification of senior community development specialist public engagement with regular full-time exempt non-union grade 18 position to public engagement manager a regular full-time exempt non-union grade 19 position. Thank you, Councillor Chang. Is there a second? Second by Councillor Paul. Just further discussion we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. And there ain't post. The motion carries unanimously and this brings us to 4.16 which is the creation of four limited service racial equity trainer positions for the employee training push that we've talked about some before and welcome Blaine and Karen for a discussion of this item. Blaine would you like to do a short summary and kick this off? Yeah hi everyone I'm Blaine from the REIB. I'm just a short summary of this as one of the original calls to action for the racial equity director was to do this kind of anti-racism training for all CD employees so this training that's laid out would require four limited service racial equity trainers to conduct the training over a 35-week period they'd be full-time staff grade 17 non-exempt employees and they'd help the REIB implement the initial push for all 970-ish staff city councillors board and commissions and any other leadership in the city to be trained in a series of workshops. So that's the basic summary happy to answer any more questions if anyone has. Great thank you Blaine. Floor is open for questions or a motion? Thank you Mr. Mayor and thank you Blaine for this. I do believe this is first of all a comment that this memo was when I first read it it was long and I realized that actually it has two components one of them is what it is you're requesting you're requesting for racial equity trainer position and also you provided all the details about how those four people working with your department currently will do the work and I like definitely all the details that you have put here forward today and I'm very happy to make the motion to recommend that the city council approve the creation of four racial equity trainer position limited service full-time non-exempt non-union grade 17 position for the office of racial equity inclusion and belonging. Thank you Councillor Jang is there a second second by President Tracy and did you want the floor as well President Tracy? Okay any further discussion? Let me I want to thank everyone who worked on this to get this this point I believe I spoke to this in the state of the city as an initiative that would be going forward over the over the year ahead and that's exciting for it to reach this stage I know it took a lot of work. So with that we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye. Aye. Very opposed the motion carries unanimously thank you both this we now have we are entering the DPW section of the meeting the first item is an authorization to enter into agreements with convey real property and sorry convey real property and grant easements with two Burlington Square condominium assertion should ink in the netty bank LLC and netty pine LLC items we have Jeff Glasberg we have a big team here to speak to this I think the short summary here is that you know this is a impactful board of finance meeting a lot of important stuff going forward this with the council's approval tonight at this item we would would add to the right away and property rights that the city has to build the two new streets connecting St. Paul and Pine Street it would mean that the only missing real estate property still left would be the 100 the property the rights still needed that are related to 100 Bank Street this joins the MBT my lot parcel as properties that we've assembled for pretty modest financial commitments so that we can reconnect those those streets with that with that I did I anyone on the team here did want to clean up what I said or add to it or did I basically get it the silence I'll take is I got it close enough so with that floor is open for questions or a motion for related to 4.17 in case just anyone watching is a little bit confused this is you know because the names there has been transactions recently this is property here that we used to think of as being owned by People's Bank and then was owned by People's Bank until the recent transfer of that property to this the partnership that is now developing that site which that's why it's referred to that way President Tracy I'll move to recommend to the city council to approve the attach resolution thank you President Tracy is there a second second by Councilor Hightower sorry Councilor Hightower for the reason you're showing up on my screen like a different place than all the other other council so I'm not seeing yours quickly sometimes any further discussion seeing none we will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye hi the opposed motion carries unanimously let me just take this opportunity before moving on to the next item I just sadly I believe this will be one of the last times may perhaps the last time that Jeff Glassberg is briefing this board or the council on an item related to the redevelopment of city place he has provided years now of really admirable service for us in addition we're going to miss him a lot and we're we're we're hard of work figuring out how how we're going to replace him he is agreed to continue on helping us with the upcoming mediation that is taking that is that I'm happy to say we'll be put out a statement you may have seen on Friday we will be having a mediation with redstone and the city place developers to try to resolve the disputes related between those parties and that the city has been drawn into so Jeff's going to help us with that generously but beyond that his time with us is limited so I do just want to take take this occasion to publicly thank Jeff for his really outstanding service to the city on a challenging project for a long time now so it's been a pleasure Jeff so with that we will move to 4.18 which is the long line painting contract award dpw item can you give us a real quick summary of this uh japan or jeff this basically paints all the lines in the city all the bike paths all the yellow lines all the white lines you know pretty much all the lines you take for granted they get repainted every year all of them that's what this is I know some of that work has been taking place already this year so um how just for next year's contract or how does this work yes the so we've changed this actually the way it used to work is we bid it in the spring and then we fought to get the bids in then it became chasing our tail to get the work done now we're bidding it in the spring for a new contract starting in the new fiscal year so that basically it's a front load it's a it's a back loaded contract so they get the contract in june in june and then they can finish up whatever they didn't get done in the spring and then that we already have the contract and we're good to go as soon as the weather changes come march april may june whenever rain stops and and the pavement warms up enough to get the paint so we can get on that we can get on the ground as fast as possible very good um the floor is open for our motion counselor hi tar or question um i actually have a question first if that's okay which is um just noting you only received two bids and one of them was i don't know roughly half the price of the other one um i noticed that you said that you didn't take the contract the lower price contract because of um i assume what was a line item and that that seemed unreasonably low so i'm just i guess curious about dpw's general practice in terms of going back to folks with like questions and requests to like amend proposals as opposed to yeah this is more of a general question but curious as to yeah i had i had a discussion with our with the legal on this actual specifically on this and our obligation to go back and get bids adjusted if there's something grossly wrong and the position of the attorney's office city attorney's office is that it's the bidder's responsibility to bid responsibly they basically bid two thousand dollars on an arguably fifty or sixty thousand dollar item so that there's a there's a major they made a major error in that in that bid so is that we don't have any obligation to go to them and and try to navigate getting them to bid responsibly that was the council i was good great and i think that answered my second question which is not just about our responsibility but also like what makes financial sense for us and if that is a you know like you said sixty thousand dollar i had mine item for lnd then yeah that would change the cost competitiveness equation a lot so and to be clear also lnd has bid as won this award for multiple years of running now in many years they get no competition they're often the only bidder and this and the price that they gave us is similar to the price as we've had over the past few years which is notable in this construction year i'm sure we've all been talking about the explosion and construction costs so to have a bid come in that's reasonably costable we've had in the past it is is encouraging thank you oh and with that i'm happy to make a motion to take the recommended actions as listed out of our docks thank you councillor hightower is there a second second by president tracy any further discussion of four point one eight seeing none we'll go to a vote all those of fair and motion please say aye all right i am very opposed motion carries unanimously and okay we have four thank you we have four items to go here and i do just want to i just um president tracy i had discussed at the beginning that given the council agenda i think you is comfortable with me going till four fifth that's our seven fifteen so we are going to keep going until a quarter of the hour we're hoping to get the rest of these items in um four point one nine is authorization for up to five hundred and sixty five thousand dollars of step two loans from the montain water skate revolving loan fund a revolving fund and a contract with bhb for up to five hundred and sixty five thousand dollars for planning and design of a storm storm water upgrades uh see the water team has arrived welcome megan and james and the most important thing you need to know about this particular item is it is a new program via the state in which all of this low money that we do have to execute the loans everything is entirely forgiven so it does not contribute to the debt that indebtedness of the city um it's sort of like a grant except we have to go through these other steps to get the loan and then to get it forgiven once the project is done very cool good um any uh questions or are we ready for a motion president tracy i move uh to recommend that the city council approve the attach resolution thank you president tracy um i'm sure if anyone noted monti's first public appearance there briefly on uh council paul's zoom um do we have a second uh for the thank you uh council paul discussion of item four point one nine seeing none we will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion uh please say aye hi i may post the motion carries unanimously thanks thank you all for for your work on this sounds like a great new program glad we're able to jump right on it and uh take advantage of it um this moves us to four point two oh authorization to execute three-year contract for print to mail services with harris computers this is another dpw um water water resource scheme item would you like to say a little bit about this uh megan or jessica i can just um we've a lot we've looked at a consultant several years ago sort of pointed out a potential increase in operational efficiency and encouraged us to look at print to mail services a lot of utilities do that do this including um bed and it's the actual outsourcing of the printing and the mailing of the bills which currently staff do in-house um and when we looked at the the quote um from our existing software provider and we looked at the increase in cost which is really i i am not um uh it's forty two hundred dollars a year which is not much more money to be able to get that much more time back for our staff and have them be able to really focus on customer service outreach all of these other things that are so important to us um so uh with that you know we did get other quotes we did look at using bed's um print to mail provider because we thought maybe that would be a good exploration of some of the synergies that we've all talked about but unfortunately the cost that came back from them was was a lot more than what our existing software uh billing service provider could could offer great thank you again um floor is open for questions or motion so i i have a question i was i was actually a little surprised also Megan that you know given the um uh you know given the BED uses another vendor that perhaps there would be some economies of scale for them uh it does sort of make me wonder maybe BED should be looking um uh potentially the next go around um but uh glad to glad to see a little bit less a less time less time on your staff um being committed to this i'm happy to um i'm happy to make the motion to uh recommend that the city council authorize the director of the department of public works to execute a three-year agreement with Harris computers in an amount up to uh 229,650 dollars for printing for print to mail services subject to the final review and approval of the city attorney's office thank you councillor paul is there a second second by councillor gang uh any discussion we will go go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye hi right pay a post motion carries unanimously and that brings us to thanks final through irons yes thank you team dpw um okay 4.21 penny for parks and bike path projects year-end budget amendments welcome sophie and Cindy um could one of you give us a quick summary of what's going on here i asked for a new computer sorry that was nothing we needed a little comic relief that was a great setting you can choose that was amazing now um so with the changing of the accounting system last year um we just um are kind of catching up on our closing out um projects that have been completed throughout the year and closing out um purchase orders and um with that comes the need to move money out of the specific projects that can be released to go into um projects that are forthcoming in fiscal year 2022 so that's for mainly for penny for parks and then with the bike path budget it's money um that is already allocated within the larger bike path budget so that we broke down into specific projects and not having a full uh hold on what our true cost would be in terms of the projects that we have ongoing i had a project created for contingency which now looking back um i should just buffer those projects more with a bigger contingency so i'm just asking to pull money from that contingency to put into the other um to the specific projects um that's a summary okay thank you epi the part of the board like to proceed are you ready for a motion Councillor paul i'll make a motion uh to take the recommended action as listed in board docs great thank you is there a second second by council high tower and any discussion seeing none we will go to a vote on 4.21 all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the final 24 items uh 4.22 sub lease of space at core 20 island street um neil north then community center cindy was at uh say a little bit about what's going on here so i can just give a quick update there so this is for the family room and they've been existing um sub leaser or lesser i guess that would be the word um of our space at the second floor of the old north end community center so this is just um another a term of their lease and they've been a great tenant and i think it's on um no question that it's a value resource in the old north end having them on the second floor renting space we ready for our motion um high tower go ahead i'll move to um approve and recommend and take the recommended action on board docs as well as on board docs thank you is there a second second by councilor paul discussion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye all right any opposed motion carries unanimously and if there is no objection i will adjourn the board of finance at 7 12 with a couple minutes to spare here thank you president tracy for uh give us some extra time to get that all done thank you for a perfect meeting yeah thank you as well mayor and thanks to the other members of board of finance i'm glad we were able to get through those um additional items um recognizing that we're starting to get into a little bit more of our summer schedule so um really appreciate that um just everybody bearing with us and being a little flexible on our start time for full council but i'll go ahead and call to order the full council meeting for monday june 28th at 7 13 p.m the before we get to our agenda we'll go ahead and do the pledge so let's get to that okay and then the first item on the agenda is the agenda so councilor strongberg may please have a motion on the agenda absolutely i move to amend adopt the agenda as follows no written materials for consent agenda item 4.03 apps may city mo u regarding cito persistent city attorney st james no correct version of agenda item 5.02 resolution annual appropriation and and budget for fiscal year beginning july 1st 2021 and ending june 30th 2022 per ceo shad um no correct uh sorry no correct version of the agenda item 5.03 resolution annual tax assessments on the property grand list of the city for the fiscal year beginning july 1st 2021 and ending june 30th 2022 mayor weinberger board of finance per ceo shad note added written material for this agenda item per ceo shad add to the consent agenda item 4.28 communication katharine shad ceo and amy bovey assistant city clerk regarding charter change deadlines for november 2nd 2021 special election per assistant city clerk bovey thank you councilor strongberg is for that motion is there a second to the motion on the agenda seconded by councilor high tower any discussion okay hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting our agenda please say aye i am aye any opposed that carries unanimously we have our agenda and that brings us into our agenda itself um however um item number two which is public forum it's a little bit early for our public forum given that it's only 7 15 and we have that advertised as a 7 30 start time so we'll get to that in just a moment um prior to that point we will get to um non-deliberative or items for which there is not a council vote taking place really more informational items um this evening um if you are a member of the public who is interested in speaking at the public forum this evening um it's a little bit of a different public forum um meeting um than we had in other uh in our for the last uh what 15 months or something like that um we do still have the online option um so that format is the same and you can um access that um sign up by going to burlington vt.gov slash city city council slash public forum and then that's burlington bt.gov slash city council slash public forum and that'll take you to a forum that you fill out which then feeds into a sheet that i um then used to um go to the the list of people who have signed up that's um available on the city website again the reason that i say that it's different however is that um given the changes that have taken place in open meeting law um specifically with the um shift from the governor's order um we are now actually having to offer an in-person option even though we're uh we as counselors are still meeting remotely and um given that the budget is before us this evening didn't want to make that um transition um yet we're in the process of transitioning back into city hall and where we'll have um where we're going to be having technology that will enable us to do hybrid meetings um that transition is going to take place over the summer so um we're going to be making that transition in the uh coming meetings but there is this option where if folks are um you know close to city hall or downtown or wanting to get to city hall i mean still got some time yet you could go to city hall itself and on the first floor so you go in those doors um on the on the church street level and then um the uh busher conference room in there um ceo shad has is staffing that room right now and so you can go there in person and just let ceo shad know that you'd like to to comment as well um we didn't have any takers there for for board of finance so um we'll we'll be going um we'll be enabling folks to to comment either through um the remote option um or through that in person option for this meeting um and then we'll be as i said before transitioning back to a more fully in in person model with counselors and staff and others in person but we will be um also bringing in technology that will allow us to have remote um public commenters as well so just wanted to offer that clarification for folks um just so that we you all know that that there is this other option it was on the um it is on the the um the website and so um you are able to um do that um this evening so um before we get um into that public comment though i'm gonna go to the next item pass that on the agenda which is the climate emergency reports um did any counselors have any climate emergency reports that they'd like to offer this evening counselor hanson yeah i was just gonna alert people if you haven't already seen in the news um the pacific northwest and british columbia and canada is experiencing um an extremely intense heat wave right now they're calling it a one in a thousand year event um which probably isn't sure anymore with the climate crisis but um temperatures well well over a hundred um so um just a yeah yet another reminder of um things are getting more intense as the climate crisis continues and we need to continue to to double down in response thanks thank you counselor hanson did any others have a climate emergency reports off of this evening mayor go ahead um just briefly uh because i think we'll talk about it some later in the agenda but i'm pleased to see the um amendment to the ordinance for the building construction that will put a new regulation in place that will ensure that basically the primary heating system for new construction in burlington does not rely on fossil fuels going forward from here this is uh i think it's very significant um new ordinance achieving our net zero uh energy city goals and it's been uh it's something a lot of people have worked on i want to know counselor hanson's leadership on on this issue as well as um a big chunk of the city team we could say talk more later about it is under 5.08 of the agenda i think it's important to know here in the climate emergency section that the city's work continues and we continue to make advances and having an impact on the cities and the whole community's emissions thank you mayor any further climate emergency reports from folks okay seeing none we'll go ahead and move on in our agenda as i said before we'll be circling back to the items that require a vote just want to make sure that we hear um all the public comment before we get into those deliberative items so we're going to continue through um to committee reports are there any committee chairs who would like to offer a report this evening counselor paul uh thank you uh the public safety committee will be meeting uh this thursday july 1 um and we are meeting uh at 5 30 in the busher conference room downstairs there is also the zoom feature that will be available um although we certainly are happy to have you there in person the members of the committee will be there in person we're talking about um police oversight and uh i believe we will be getting back to just a final okay on the csl job description thanks thank you council paul councillor jane i don't know if i raise my hand but i i have a report yeah oh okay sorry i thought you'd raise your hand no problem so the racial equity inclusion and belonging committee we could not meet um um on the 22nd uh due to some you know logistical issues about these new guidelines that we need to follow having people in person but we moved our meeting to the third Tuesday of the month of july which i believe is the july 20th right and same agenda item the update from the city attorney about the creation of uh racial equity inclusion and belonging commission different from the committee and also we will talk about um since the declaration of racism as a public health emergency what has been done where we're going and how we collaborate to move forward thank you visit in place thank you councillor jane councillor hightower was that a yes uh just a quick update to say that um the joint committee met last week and got um a report out on the survey from talitha consults um our next meeting which is not set yet but i just want to flag it for folks will um have a quick presentation on the final report that talitha consults will be delivering by the end of this week um and also a quick update on cna um and that consulting work and that'll be sometime in the middle of july excellent thank you councillor hightower councillor shannon thank you president tracy the parks arts and culture committee will be meeting at five o'clock on july seventh at the um dpw conference room um on pine street and among other things we will be discussing the dog task force resolution that was um referred to the committee by the council and i apologize we're going to be a little bit late returning that to the council um but hope to be able to do that after this meeting thank you councillor shannon any other committee chairs wishing to offer a report okay seeing none we'll go ahead and close that item and move into um city council general city affairs are there any councillors wishing to offer any comments on this item okay not seeing anyone so i will move down to um the city council president updates um so i would um first just like to um thank everyone on the among the counts on the council for your continued flexibility and just your collaboration in our transition back to in person i really appreciated the conversations and just your willingness to be flexible as we make the transition back to an in-person meeting model as i let you all know um earlier last week we would be we were going to be having the meeting in this format which would be having councillors meeting um sort of remotely and then have this option of having public forum a public forum in person comment location as well we will be moving towards the we will be having our july 12th meeting in person so the council will be going back to um contoys itself and we'll be um transitioning um back trying to have um a hybrid model or at the beginnings of a hybrid comment commenting model at that meeting with the full implementation of that meaning the full technical outlay that we've that um our our colleagues at town meeting tv have um have set up and have planned out in collaboration with um without the folks at bca so we'll be seeing that transition take place over the course of the summer but councillors we will be in we will be um back in contoys for that next meeting which is incredibly exciting um if you have any ideas i would certainly welcome any ideas that folks have if you'd like to um do something a little bit more celebratory as we kind of head back into contoys i think it it's certainly merited um and you know i know that at least i'm very excited and i'm i'm sure many of you are really excited to get back together um and just have that um shared space um together that shared community space and where we're actually together ourselves and in and also um there with members of the public city staff there's just such great energy there so um that's going to be um our next that'll be at our next meeting um i did um hear um some feedback around the council schedule itself um historically the council has had uh just one meeting in july and august we a couple years ago had added in a second august meeting um and that never got dropped so there's been a request to reconsider that second meeting in august um and and continuing that practice of having a second meeting in august um with the idea of potentially um canceling that so if you do have feedback on that please let me know um i do want to hear hear from folks about that before making that call um because i know we did approve that that that meeting schedule at our last meeting but i just wanted to um flag that for folks and then the last piece that i just wanted to raise um is also um is one of recognition for um city attorney uh blackwood um this is attorney blackwood's final meeting with us as as as a council and so i just wanted to um offer my personal thanks um to attorney blackwood for your um years of service um to the city of berlington leading um the city attorney's office and that team through um many many tumultuous um meetings and negotiations and offering um legal advice to its accountless counselors and certainly um the administration and city staff and i really just want to extend my sincere thanks um and personal thanks to you for the collaboration you've offered over the last year which has been exceedingly challenging and just having you um in your your collaboration um in in seeing our way through that year was incredibly helpful um it'll certainly miss um having you um in this role as city attorney um i certainly wish you the best in your retirement and hope you're able to have um lots of uh more relaxing monday nights um going forward but thank you so much attorney blackwood just for all your years of service to the city um and just really appreciate it um i believe that there's going to be for counselors i believe that um the uh the mayor's office um is has been in touch with you about this as well so um please um just take note of that and again thank you um attorney blackwood for um all you've done for our city very much appreciated thank you appreciated it's been a wonderful experience all of you are great thank you thank you so much awesome so with that i will um turn it over to the mayor for your comments mayor um so that we can um just do your comments before the public forum and then we'll jump right to public forum um i've got a couple folks signed up for that so i'll get to to that just after this but i don't want to um make you wait till the end mayor so go ahead i'm very good presentation thank you um let me start by just uh thank you for a presentation for recognizing the really distinguished exceptional service uh of uh the city attorney eileen blackwood i have um i tried to express my appreciation previously it was honored to have uh eileen swear me in for this uh term as a symbol of uh my appreciation and the partnership we've had um over over the last nine years i can't imagine having gotten through the last nine years without her the and looking looking ahead the future without her is is uh daunting um just to note a couple um of her more notable accomplishments the ones that really are high in my mind tonight are um uh navigation through the extremely sensitive burlington telecom situation which took years of hard work both in first reaching a settlement agreement with city bank um and then ultimately uh completing that uh the multi-year process of implementing that settlement agreement um it was uh uh an incredibly important um undertaking for for the city and it wouldn't happen without eileen uh similarly very appreciative of her leadership with our collective bargaining efforts we've had two two rounds of collective bargaining where all four of the contracts have reached um uh an agreement without resorting to arbitration my understanding is that was uh quite rare in the years before um the time when which eileen was our lead negotiator i think she really did a lot to build trust and set the tone for those successful negotiations and worked extremely uh hard on them and and and we got to those agreements while simultaneously addressing important um long-term issues for both city taxpayers and and employees and her her performance there there was exceptional um i i could i could go on um eileen has touched virtually every accomplishment of the last nine years um and uh i uh again i do just want to express my my great personal uh thanks uh for for your service eileen thank you um the two other items i wanted to touch on one um you know fittingly enough is a important piece of uh work that is um on your consent agenda tonight in which eileen um another complicated transaction that eileen has played a significant role in uh getting us through many challenges although we're not through all of them yet which is the uh city place um uh two points about city place tonight one on your consent agenda is and we just approved it unanimously at the board of finance are um approval so that the city can so that i can approve the agreements with the abutting landowners um for the what we think of as the people's bank parcel though technically it's not owned by people's bank anymore um with the council action on that tonight um the city will have assembled all of the land rights necessary to build the new streets reconnecting pine street and st paul street with one exception um uh there there the there is still a need to secure the property rights through the 100 bank street um property and uh that of course is the property where there the city has recently been brought into legal action uh by the owners of 100 bank street the redstone company and um as i've expressed publicly uh i'm surprised and disappointed by that action but nonetheless have um worked to try to bring redstone and the owners of city place btc mall associates uh to the mediation table with the city and we have scheduled that mediation for the first half of july and it is my hope this is largely the dispute is the city has become a party to this feud although a lot of the issues really at stake are private issues between the two i am hoping the city can play some productive role in helping resolve those disputes so that this important project for the future of downtown housing jobs and public revenues in the downtown can move forward i hope to have an update for you um further update on that for you soon and you know if there is a need to brief the council on those mediations before there will be an opportunity to do that if if there if those appear to be headed anywhere at the uh july um 12th meeting um finally i just want to say again that um the fireworks independence day celebration is back this year taking place on saturday july third is as is the burlington tradition and um this event should have everything that i think the public has come to know and expect and really love about this event i think it's going to be particularly meaningful and exciting this year after a year in which we could not gather for what is typically the largest public event of the year because of covid we'll be able to do so this saturday the fireworks will start at 9 30 as normal there will be um a variety of other events earlier in the day i encourage people to check out the park's um web page that has all those details this will include a ceremony at 5 p.m um that will um uh both um recognize those that we have have lost uh over the last year and the challenge of the the covid emergency as well as um uh we hope by the way to say a special thanks to the some of the community organizations and leaders that have helped uh the city get through this community get through this period as well as any community in america that event will start in battery park at 5 p.m those are my announcements for tonight uh president tracy back to you great thanks mayor appreciate that um and let's get right to public forum so um we don't have a ton of folks signed up this evening again if you are a member of the public interested in speaking um you can go uh to uh burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum one word in both of those cases so city council's one word and then public forum's one word um and then that'll take you to a forum that you fill out um and then um you'll be able to comment um i'll call on you um and enable your microphone if you're commenting remotely the one difference is i noted earlier this evening is that we do also um per open meeting law have a location that ceo shad is um uh is staffing in the basement of city hall it's the uh newly named busher conference room it's a new space that we'll be having community meetings in um shortly but this is an in-person option so um there are there is also the option for people to offer their comments from um city hall itself so um let me just before i get into the public forum ceo shadow are there any folks there wishing to comment we have one member of the public here and uh that member does not wish to speak at public forum okay great thank you for that um we do have a couple of folks who have signed up to comment remotely um so if we could please put the um the timer for three minutes um i will um then go to that thank you so much so we got a couple speakers as i said before our first speaker will be milton rosa orteez to be followed by sharon busher and robert bristow johnson milton i've located you and have enabled your microphone can you hear me yes go ahead good evening folks my name is milton i'm a nurse of the oncology unit of the hospital i am also a visual artist i um a community garden side leader i'm a resident of the old north end but i am here tonight because i'm also a member of bcs advisory board of directors a couple of weeks ago one of our members presented a bullet presentation of bcs accomplishments over the last year and we were in awe and also made us wonder whether our community was aware of all the things that bca has been able to accomplish so i'm here to share this with you of course but also with our community at large over the last year um bca distributed 81 covet 19 relief brands of up to 500 dollars each bernie them based artists in all disciplines commissioned four murals with bipod artists in collaboration with reib co-produced june teens celebrations also in collaborations with reib bca created commission three juneteenth murals provided 250 youth with child care and in-person learnings at 405 pine street we had more than 10 000 attendees for virtual home studio programs including artist thoughts family art saturday concert viewings and virtual virtual exhibitions we're organized and then hosted an estimated 7500 virtual highlight attendees from vermont and around the world and um paid almost 300 000 musicians performing artists teaching artists and for payments to sales and staff and store next edition but i also want to make clear that i am not here to to the board of directors horn i am here because we know that none of these none of this will have happened for it not for the gargantuan effort of our staff it was them the t-shirts program directors artists text marketers designers directors tour guides curators volunteers and donors small and large whom when the pandemic hit put their mask on and gloves and hacked their way through mountains of hurdles so that our community could have if ever so small a window into a different world a world of art art making and music and so we could all get a respite from the saga that our lives have turned into and so i am here to publicly acknowledge and applaud the extraordinary accomplishments of bca's staff in a year like no other thank you very much thank you very much for that our next speaker will be sharon busher and sharon i have located your microphone um your line and have enabled your microphone good evening can you hear me yes i can go ahead okay thank you um so i i want to first of all acknowledge all the hard work that all the that the administration um put into the budget and all the input that the counselors gave to make it an even better budget um so i don't want that to go unnoticed but i do have a couple of things that um i wanted to address that are concerns but in three minutes you can't really speak to the entire positive and and concerns so i'm going to focus on the concerns earlier this evening i learned that our performance could not be at this point could not be used um to address housing needs um i had asked earlier to see if we could have restored the housing trust fund to its full one cent using our performance but having learned that's not possible i'm concerned still that we that the council and administration didn't look to the unassigned fund balance to still accomplish that um once again the housing trust fund is not a stagnant fund it's used to leverage millions of additional dollars that are needed for housing housing is a is a priority not only in burlington but in the state of ramon and in the country and this housing that is created is rental housing and also that fund is used to help people who can't normally afford home ownership get home ownership um so to have a budget that really didn't accomplish that is disappointing to me as a resident of burlington um the other thing i wanted to say is i really applied the thoughtful approach that was used for the arpa funds and how that has allowed the city to address critical needs in this budget but i am concerned about how we will sustain those needs because arpa funds are one time i'm just trying to figure out how we'll sustain those programs those policies that we put in place in next year's budget and in the years to come um the budget with all its increases in dedicated taxes and user fees is unnerving for people like me who live here and cups to the core of affordability and i just want to remind the council that it is getting more and more challenging to live in this city and many people may have to leave it's not their choice but they may not be able to they're going to be priced out some people can't move here and some people won't be able to remain here thank you very much thank you so i our next speaker is robert bristow johnson robert i'm not seeing you signed up here on the attendees list if you're signed up under someone else's name if you could use the raise hand function potentially in order to be recognized so i can come to you see your shadows robert bristow johnson in the in-person location no okay thank you for that still not seeing robert on there so and robert was our final speaker for this evening so i am going to go ahead and close the public forum for tonight and we will go right into our meetings agenda for this evening so we'll go to we'll pick up to where we left off right after climate emergency reports so that's the consent agenda councilor stromberg may please have a motion on the consent agenda i move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated okay we have a motion from councilor stromberg is there a second seconded by councilor hightower any discussion seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of adopting our consent agenda and taking the actions as indicated please say aye hi hi any opposed carries unanimously before we get down into our deliberative agenda for the the council itself i'm going to go ahead and recess this meeting because we do have some local control commission items to move into so i will recess the city council meeting at 746 p.m and convene the local control commission at 746 p.m we'll focus just a second to click over to that screen okay and commissioner mason may have please have a motion on this on this agenda thank you president tracy and make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented the motion from commissioner mason is there a second seconded by commissioner hanson any discussion hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to our next item on this uh on the local control commission which is the consent agenda commissioner mason thank you i'd make a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated the motion seconded by commissioner hanson any discussion on the consent agenda okay hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye any opposed that carries unanimously on without objection i will adjourn the local control commission at 747 p.m we'll reconvene the city council the regular city council meeting at 747 p.m returning to where we were on our deliberative agenda so i'll again give you a second to just click over to that agenda the first item on our deliberative agenda this evening is the appointment of an assistant city attorney i'm going to come to before we take a vote on that i'm just going to go to mayor weinberger to share any any anything that you'd like and then we can also go to hailey mclenahan who is the the candidate this evening and so mayor did you want to kick us off here um just really briefly i because i think you all know that you know i look to the city attorney and i think blackwood to to lead the processes for um assistants or attorneys but i do just want to mention you know this is this is a mayor appointment i was pleased really pleased to meet hailey mclenahan she's a very impressive attorney i think is going to be a great addition to to the team and brings a range of relevant experiences already in in her career to this role and i'm really pleased to be kind of filling out the assistant city attorney team as we're entering a period with uh some uh some transition period which we hope to keep short for the uh the the city attorney role with that um if you're pleased as you presently said i turn it over to eileen blackwood for further introductory remarks certainly attorney blackwood great thank you all so i'm i'd like the hailey is here and i hope you will feel free to to ask her any questions but uh hailey comes to us from vermont law school and she's currently a prosecutor in grafting county in new hampshire and she's ready to make a career change and come and do some broader municipal law and broaden out her experience but uh i think we'll bring a lot of background in litigation and in in the kind of work that she's been doing over the past few years she also spent some time in her career in in uh various legislative um activities and interests so that is always something that we need as well so i i think it will be great background for this in the attorney's office and the and the whole team is very excited to have hailey join us if uh if you all approve her nomination thank you thank you attorney blackwood and at this point i'd like to offer uh hailey welcome you hailey to what it will hopefully be the last uh remote council meeting um for a long time but um want to welcome you to that and just offer you a chance to introduce yourself to the council and the community more broadly um if you'd like to offer any words yes thank you so much and thank you for having me tonight i too hope this is the last remote session i'm looking forward to meeting all of you and seeing members of the community generally in person i just want to express my enthusiasm for the opportunity to move into this role in supporting the council the city departments and the community generally i've heard a lot tonight about um some of the vibrancy that it sounds like is coming back into the community of burlington after a really tough year and i'm looking forward to bringing my skills and experience to date um in supporting um the critical infrastructure in the city um and assisting in any way that i can to bring the community back to what it was pre-covid and also assisting in in making it that much better um for for people who live and work um in the burlington area um moving forward so i'm happy to answer any questions about my candidacy and again i'm really excited for the opportunity thank you very much so before we get into questions i'm going to go to councillor shannon for a motion thank you president tracy i moved to approve the appointment of hailey mclenahan as the city's newest assistant city attorney thank you councillor shannon um appointments i do not need a second so um i will um go back to you councillor shannon if you wanted the floor back um or um open up the floor if that's if you did not want that i do not need the floor back but i welcome welcome hailey awesome thank you very much um but did any other councillors have any comments or questions they'd like to offer before we go to a vote uh go ahead councillor shannon i just wanted to confirm we don't need a second i know we don't need a second on nominations but this isn't a nomination did we we probably should be getting a second because this is an approval of the the mayor's nomination okay all right well i saw councillor mason offer a second thank you thank you for that councillor shannon um any further questions or comments okay great let's go to a vote all those in favor of confirming hailey mclenahan as assistant city attorney um please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously congratulations and welcome thank you all great so now we move into uh the items the two resolutions i have to do with our budget um the first of which is the budget itself and um in order to before we open up the floor on those i'm going to go to councillor paul for a motion uh thanks president tracy um i would move the resolution wave the reading uh would ask for a second and then the floor back after a second please sure we have a motion from councillor paul seconded by councillor stromberg the floor is yours councillor paul thank you president tracy um so arguably uh the most or one of the most important functions that the council has all year is the annual approval of the mayor's recommended budget and the reason for that is that the budget sets the tone for the upcoming fiscal year it establishes our priorities it allocates funds for departments and the needs of the community that move our city forward a year ago as we all know under the enormous cloud of unprecedented uncertainty and disruption to every aspect of our lives the administration and the council on were really faced with a clearly unique significant revenue shortfall in the millions on but even with that we found our way to be fair to our community by offering delayed tax payments uh our valued employees saw no layoffs we were factual with reasonable projections and forward thinking not cutting programs there were many cities across the country that cut programs we did not cut programs that would be later later would be challenging to revitalize thankfully we have turned the corner on the pandemic and the prospect of brighter times ahead is exciting and one which we all are celebrating this will be our as we have said our last meeting hopefully for a very long time via zoom um from a fiscal perspective i can't leave 2020 behind without noting for the public that's watching that were it not for the careful and prudent budgeting in years past were it not for this administration and for past councils relentless insistence on building the unassigned fund balance 2020 would have been a time of severe constraints and unbelievably challenging decisions that we would have had to make as well we would not be entering 2021 um in the place that we are in today this year's budget stands in sharp contrast to last year this budget that we have we have before us builds on the foundations of fair factual and forward but adds to this strong foundation while we have always endeavored to make the budget process and opening an engaging process this year's budget is one built on the recognition of broad community values in the wake of the past year true collaboration with both counselors and authentic citizen and public engagement this year's budget as we counselors know on restores all city services to pre-pandemic levels it invests in critical infrastructure it builds on significant work already begun on racial equity and initiatives to address our climate emergency it addresses it invests in our parks it mandates that any employee not already receiving a livable wage shall be increased to meet the livable wage ordinance and it will do all of this while minimizing tax increases um through thoughtful ARPA funding usage um recognizing that last year may be over in terms of the calendar but it is not over in recognizing the burdens that have been placed on many in the past year so there are many exciting aspects to this budget I cannot list them all for the first time in city history the budget creates a significant presence in positions in public health the budget also builds on our commitment to equity racial equity initiatives it was only one brief year ago that we had a department of one and the racial equity inclusion and belonging department staff will now go from three to eight employees adding a data analyst an equal opportunity specialist an anti-racism curriculum manager and moving to public health manager positions to the RIB department on the budget also prioritizes and begins to reimagine public safety in budgeting for 10 community services service officers to respond to incidences not requiring foreign officers particularly exciting to many of us is the creation of a reserve for an exciting mental health initiative and kudos to mental health first btv a grassroots family led group for their advocacy and for ensuring that we are being reflective and responsive to all the needs and values in our community I mentioned earlier that this budget is truly collaborative and one built on engagement from the public along with several public meetings that we had on the budget there was also a public survey that was responded to by nearly 900 community members offering us feedback on their priorities and I'd also like to mention and bear with me while I list that on behalf of our constituents and our and the greater community city counselors played a direct role in the formation of the budget in some cases crafting budget initiatives and in others advocating for increased funding for community betterment I think they are all amazing additions to the budget and would just simply like to acknowledge on counselor high tower advocated for an associate data analyst and greatly needed police commission staffing and that position is in the budget counselor stronger advocate advocated for additional funding for the npa's that is also included in this budget president tracy requested and advocated for funding for community bystander program this program is in the budget I had requested funding for town meeting tv formally cctv to allow for greater coverage of npa meetings that funding is in the budget counselor freeman advocated for additional support for reparations research digitization and expert compensation in addition they advocated for a livable wage for all employees which is in the budget on the uh uh count counselor hanson and president tracy rightfully advocated for incentivizing city employees to pursue alternative transportation options other than a car as we move closer to realizing our net zero 2030 goals while there is still work to be done on reparations funding due to work um needed to be done and needed to be completed with reib and while there is still work to be done on a transportation program for employees due to union and other considerations firm commitments have been made to pursue these initiatives in the next few months while the budget is the mayor's and the council votes on the approval of this budget this budget is the result of significant partnership respectful discussion and mutual cooperation there can be no doubt that the mayor and his administration listened and the proposals that counselors advocated for on behalf of our community were included in the budget and in the amendments to come there was no request that was not honored either accommodated in this budget or committed to further study um in closing i would just like to add um kudos to cao kathryn shod for a smooth process and for her best practices methodology and for all the behind the scenes work along with the clerk treasurer's office staff all department heads and our amazing city staff for their collaboration and partnership this has been a collaborative process and budget that's reflective of our community indeed this is a budget to be celebrated hopefully with our unanimous vote this evening as we move forward as never before with a renewed sense of optimism and hope for brighter times ahead now more than ever this is the time for all of us to send a clear message to our community that together we can find commonality and a shared vision and support a budget and a job well done that is completely deserving of our vote thank you for listening thank you very much councillor paul are there additional comments on the budget councillor strongberg thanks um wow councillor paul that was that was great um yeah i just want to add that last year i obviously um wasn't too pleased with mostly the process and some some of the outcomes of the budget and this year i remember talking to the mayor on the phone and and and just having a very productive verbal agreement that we were going to be working together in this process and and that we didn't we wanted to move forward from last year and i really appreciated that and i really appreciated the fact that the administration really helped to that and um yeah i'm just i'm really happy to see where we're at tonight and um yeah anytime i kind of like looked through all of the all of the spreadsheets and everything i just i didn't walk away from any of it feeling like we didn't get something that is severely needed this year that we're you know so i feel like we can always do better right but um this is this we're coming a long way and i think this should set the precedent for how we should work together in this process for next year and the years to come and hopefully not all virtual um so i will be supporting this tonight and thanks everyone for working so hard on it thank you councillor stromberg councillor jane thank you uh president tracy um i think as a member of viral finance i think it will be imperative also to talk about specifically the budget process itself and also maybe highlight some innovations that may have not been highlighted very well and i think one of the and i have four of them actually and one of them is a participatory governing budget participant participatory budgeting element that was added at this year's budget and i think through a survey to the community i do believe that this is not an end deal it was something that we started and i am confident that uh we need to do better to build on to build on it i think that's one i think also what need to be highlighted is a time in which the budget process started but it was key it gave everyone a time to dig into the details i think the ongoing calls from both the mayor and ceo for cfo chad for the city councils to participate in the budget discussion and also to reach out i think that was an element that was that need to be highlighted and lastly about the budget process is specific to the delay of the vote itself this could have happened on june 14 but i believe that the mayor and ceo for chad um you know approved the request from city council some city councils um to move it to today um i'm very happy for that you know i think also it would be important to highlight like the hard work of consular carpenter she was very proactive in reaching out and also in advocating for more funding in terms of community members who are accessing some who have some issues about access to some of our amenities such as the beach lady beach um and i think also thank you mayor and i do believe that i advocated for the request of funding for the traffic um neighborhood traffic management plan and $75,000 was added for this year and i think this year this has been a long fight for over three years we've been talking about this but thank you so much and i'm very happy and very proud to be voting this and it seems everyone is ready to approve this budget thank you president president thank you counselor jane any further comments from counselors mayor did you want to get in thank you president tracy i um you know my comments about the budget uh were extensive two weeks ago i will spare you repeating them i do just want to voice my appreciation to the fellow members of the board of finance for the hard work that the board of finance has put in over really since late late april and finalizing and refining this budget i know many other non-border finance counselors participated in that as well and i just wanted to say the administration too appreciates the collaboration and effort that uh all involved put into um shorting our way through what was an exciting but still a daunting and challenging budget task and a budget unlike any other that really the city i think has ever passed certainly very different than anything in the last 10 years certainly a much more appealing budget to pass than the one that we passed in the teeth of the crisis last year when there was great uncertainty about the financial picture but this one was was challenging in its own way and i'm really pleased that we seem to be on the cusp of succeeding with with that challenge and do you just want to note that at the board of finance discussion tonight we talked about how we certainly administrations intend to yes as councillor jang noted continue to use the budget survey tool for future budgets and in fact i think we can even improve upon the survey from this first year's effort and and we will be debriefing with the the board of finance in the first quarter of next year about ways to further improve the the budget processes you know we always try to improve upon them and in particular look at ways of expanding the limited ways in which we have participatory budgeting already in our in our mpa just and then pay for parks and with cdbg funds i know there's great interest in in further expansion of that in the future and i just wanted to say here that i'm committed i just want to share with the full council that we talked about a further discussion of that at the board of finance soon to see if that can be expanded as part of our budget process in the future thank you president tracy thank you mayor any further comments okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the budget please say hi hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously congratulations to the administration and the ceo team got one more budget related item to get to this evening that's the resolution on our that's item 5.03 which is the annual tax assessments on the property grand list um councillor paul can i please come to you for a motion on that item uh sure president tracy so i'd move the resolution waive the reading um i ask for a second and then the floor black floor back briefly after a second have a motion from councillor paul seconded by councillor stromberg go ahead councillor paul thank you as i said at the board of finance it is much more fun making the uh moving the resolution about spending money than it is about raising money so this one will be a lot shorter on the resolution that we have in front of us is the um is adopting the city's tax rate for the fy 22 year and for the benefit of the public the total municipal tax rate proposed is just a tad over 67 cents per $100 of assessed value on each property in the city the resolution lists 14 individual tax rates for all city services from streets parks the housing trust fund retirement funding funds to service our debt police and fire services um and just wanted to add that uh due to reappraisal usually it's pretty easy to compare the uh the increase or decrease from year to year but due to reappraisal the tax rate is significantly less in pennies per hundred of assessed value that's not a reflection of a declining tax rate it's a reflection of the increased values so the amount per in pennies is less on and that's done in order to remain maintain the requirement that the reappraisal is revenue neutral on so that would mean that all rates would be unchanged from last year all things being equal um of course all things are not equal and our projected municipal tax revenues have increased from last year by 1.7 million to 35.8 million and that is only the municipal tax rate the majority of the increase so we're talking about 1.7 million 1.1 million is the 2020 voter approved third ambulance and staffing in the new north end 430 is the thousand is the restored penny for parks money that was eliminated from last year's budget it's not the full penny for parks it's about 80 it's about 0.8 cents the rest of that will come from ARPA funding and then the there's about 430 000 that is also the increased requirement to the city's retirement fund in short we're funding all of our obligations all of our debt and providing for our president in our future hope that this resolution will receive the council's unanimous support thank you thank you councilor paul is there any further discussion councilor shannon to be followed by councilor hanson thank you president tracy i have a question about the the tax rates um several of the tax rates my understanding is that several of the tax rates are approved by voters for more um so there's a cap on them and they had been previously maxed out they we have not gone up to the maximum in this budget and i was hoping that somebody could call those out um where we've actually reduced the amount that's that's approved and in future years those those could increase because they're already approved sure thank you councilor shannon xio shadow are you able to clarify um i am one of the updates um or upgrades if you will um to the sheet that is linked here is i've broken out the tax rates into different sections so you'll see the second section and i can share my screen if that's helpful um is called rates capped by voters and so under that section is all of the specific taxes that are affected would it be helpful for me to share my screen so you can see those sure yeah you feel free to do that that'd be great okay can i ask a follow-up question um so i did see that and it is very helpful um is each of the numbers in the prior years is that what the cap is so that is a great um question it is we added a slight um escalation for inflation so i could certainly send to you offline um what the exact cap is it is very close to the fy 21 rates um it's uh actually less than 1 um that we've used for inflation it's 0.9 percent yeah that is close enough for me thank you okay great okay councilor hanson oh mayor did you have something you wanted to say on that yeah i i just wanted to um make the point here that um the the difference uh the variance here is is significant if we had submitted a budget that had all of the uh voter capped to use this language um taxes at their maximum the tax increase would be an additional three and a half percent um increase on the tax rate already there is on the municipal the total municipal tax rate is up a little more than four percent the as council poll noted the great majority of that is due to the um public safety tax increase approved by the voters in the in the spring of 2020 that authorized that essentially made possible a third ambulance and there was a more than million dollar a year tax increase um that is being phased in this year we held off on it for a year because of the pandemic but it is being um it is being added to this year's tax rate if we um had also increased all of these other tax rates up to the maximum we'd be looking at a municipal tax increase of about eight percent which um i in port of finance felt was was really too high particularly for a year in which we already have so many folks are dealing with the impacts of their reassessment and many folks are are still many households are still being impacted by by the pandemic um uh however i do think it is important that we ultimately um the those voter cap taxes if they are not ever if they are not uh brought up to their full amount you will see services like the housing trust fund the library um open space land conservation um uh and a couple others all of those you would essentially have their value eroded by um inflation if they are not ultimately assessed at their full amount so i think it is um important ultimately that we do report you know as the voters authorize us to do so bring those up to their full amount um so that we can continue to make the investments in those in those areas and uh you know i would think you know it's a signal now i think that is likely to be a part of our future budgets you know as soon as next year thank you for that additional clarification mayor i'm just gonna i'm gonna go to councilor hanson now great thanks president tracy i didn't comment on the budget but i did at our last meeting and i'm proud to support it as well i think there's a lot of really important initiatives i think what the mayor just laid out of striking that balance between funding the things that we need to fund and and trying to um you know not not overly burden um taxpayers is important and i think to that point i just feel like it's worth noting as we set the tax rate and as we think about the burden of that on low and moderate income burlingtonians is that i really think we need to continue or pick back up maybe a discussion of um more progressive taxation in burlington um it's it's a heavy lift it's a big structural change i know councilor freeman kind of initiated a bit of a discuss you know initiated some potential action on that about a year ago but we haven't really since picked back up on that but there is pretty serious inequality um wealth and income inequality in burlington and i think we could do better to ensure that those who have the means are taking on a greater share of the burden and alleviating some of the burden on low and moderate and income burlingtonians so it's a big policy lift but i think it's one that we need to to revisit thanks thank you councilor hanson i don't have anyone else in the queue councilor mason um thank you president tracy um and forgive me for the lateness of this question i understand i followed the entire conversation on not taxing up to the full cap but i'm not understanding how that works and as it relates to the retirement contribution so maybe catherine ceo shat could explain that because i mean we have a required contribution but i'm not understanding how that works through on the rate from 21 to 22 sure ceo shat um that is a great question so i have tried to differentiate that by this budget driven rates section um meaning the rates capped by voters um do have a cap uh a limit um expressed by the voters that we can't go over the rates for retirement and debt service um they don't have caps they are driven by actual or projected expenses um that are incurred got it all set councilor mason yes thank you okay great any further discussion from counselors okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of the resolution um on item 5.03 adopting annual tax assessments on the property grand list of the city for the fiscal year beginning uh july 1 2021 and ending june 30 of 2022 please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to our next item which is regarding a resolution regarding establishing an ad hoc committee on redistricting for 2021 council paul uh thanks for us and tracy i'd move the resolution waive the reading um and ask uh for the floor back after a second please okay we have a motion from council paul's there a second seconded by council carpenter go ahead council paul uh thanks president tracy so um uh we we've had this on our agenda and we had this on for the last meeting and uh postponed it so that we could take further input on the uh copy of the resolution that's on there is the revised version that was on the agenda for the 14th of june on the uh so the background on this is just simply that um as we all know every every 10 years we get census figures and must determine the need for redistricting and redrawing of ward and district lines um and given the development that's taken place in the city during 10 over 10 years um you know it's possible that uh you know we may need to redistrict um you know given our last attempt at this process uh 10 years ago this resolution was drafted in the hope that as a council we could design a collaborative process um that incorporated citizen involvement and participating um in this important uh task and it was something that we could all hopefully agree to um you know from the beginning uh the idea was just simply to create a process that was open and nonpartisan independent as best it can be and transparent for redistricting um so the key points of the resolution um are uh creating an ad hoc committee made up of citizens appointed by each npa um to offer the public at least two opportunities via public meetings for input that committee would gather the input um regarding the current the current plan reviewing past plan any you know any community feedback that they can get um and they would present their findings to the council um the council would then use this feedback to offer guidance by resolution to a mapping specialist that would be identified and agreed to by the city council and then you know if redistrict if if census figures necessitated that we did need to redistrict um that we would then give that guidance and other directives to that mapping specialist um and then they would um with the city attorney report back to the council uh hopefully at our last meeting in october or perhaps into november but certainly with the idea that we could hopefully get something if we needed to on the ballot for town meeting day in 2022 um so just wanted to say that uh wanted to acknowledge that this resolution is the result of a great deal of compromise and collaboration most appreciative of councilors hanssen barlow and carpet carpenter who actively engaged on this resolution and shaped a great deal of the final version that we're voting on this evening um and then just wanted to also mention in closing because i know that this has been uh um a question is um you know that you know some have asked why we're doing this now and the reason is that based on the 2011 process which took nearly three years and was riddled with a lot of challenges it seemed prudent for the council to come up with a process from the beginning that we can hopefully agree on and by agreement that we can support um and as well the other thing to keep in mind is that the last time we did this process 10 years ago um uh the process took so long that the city opened itself up to legal challenges regarding representation uh it uh took additional legal resources a situation that really doesn't need to happen if we begin the process early on so thanks again to councillors barlow and carpenter for uh cosponsoring and to councillor hanssen for his input um i hope that this resolution can get our unanimous support thank you thank you councillor paul for the discussion councillor hanssen to be followed by councillor barlow and carpenter go ahead councillor hanssen yeah i just wanted to thank councillor paul for your leadership on this and i actually regret not looping back to cosponsor because i'm excited to support this and it was appreciative of the opportunity to to help work on it um i think it goes along with some of the other efforts that we're making as a city to reform our local government and and um yeah just strengthen our local government so that it's more representative and then it's easier for um the people of burlington to engage and to have meaningful control over what happens in our community um i think this is an opportunity to do that it's not simply we're not just looking at this the shape and size of the maps in the district which in and of itself is important but we're also looking at the structure of city council um i feel pretty strongly and i'll just put this out on the record we'll be talking about this for months but i'll just throw out on the record i feel pretty strongly that the system we have now with overlapping district councillors you know that have twice as large of a constituency and twice as large of a voting population kind of overlapping with two ward councillors i don't i don't think that's a good system um i think it's confusing for voters to have that additional layer um of representation and the different types of representation and i also think it's a fairness issue for councillors as well because you have the same level of power and the same amount of pay but a larger constituency to respond to as a district councillor so i think um you know that's a reform that i'm going to be advocating for through this process but mostly i'm just glad we're getting the ball rolling on on this process trying to get ahead of it early and make these changes um you know more quickly than they were made the last time around because the last sentence uh the last census in 2010 the new districts weren't created until 2015 so hopefully we can get ahead of that and i think this is a really great first step and a great process that's laid out to to do that thank you thank you councillor hanson and councillor barlow to be followed by councillor carpenter thank you president tracy i also wanted to thank councillor fall for her leadership on this resolution and i'm glad the version that we're considering tonight involves our neighborhood planning assemblies for selecting or in some cases possibly electing members to the ad hoc committee i think it's important to have have that independent community input into the process if this resolution passes tonight i look forward to getting feedback from burlingtonians and how they feel about the current district ward model the council composition um and additionally um if if the census data indicates that we have to redistrict because of population changes um to be able to start that conversation and get ahead of it earlier but i also want to acknowledge and that depending on the community feedback we get in the final census numbers um if burlingtonians like the current model um and that we and if we don't require to have redistricting then i also want to acknowledge that one of the possible outcomes is that we won't um and so um the other thing i wanted to talk about a little bit was the timing um i've heard some folks say that they thought it was rushed or that the timeline is compressed but i feel it's manageable um and we like in wards four and seven at the npa last week we had a willingness on their part to actually have a summer meeting if necessary um specifically just to deliberate on this one topic and and select a member so i'm hoping that um there'll be some um potential opportunities to do some creative things like that over the summer if we need to to make sure that we can can be in a committee so that's all i have thank you council barlow council carpenter thanks um i repeat what council is handsome and barlow said and i really agree with it and just want to point out that i think it's really good governance to re-examine ourselves every 10 years and again um we may might not want changes i think there are changes to be made um but it's good governance to get get ahead of it um as council barlow pointed out our npa was excited about it they're willing to do a special meeting and we've actually invited them or i'm hoping we'll have community pre-discussion on it because i think the citizens are interested in talking about this so i'm really appreciative of of councillor paul and all of us is getting this following thank you council carpenter any further discussion councillor shannon go ahead thank you president tracy um i want to thank council paul for um the concessions that she was willing to incorporate in this in terms of the timeline um i didn't think the previous timeline was workable and i i do still think that this timeline is compressed but understand the desire to get it done on a timeline that allows it to get on that following march ballot and this is what's needed to do that i have heard both a lot of enthusiasm for this opportunity and inclusion of the npa from the npa um but i've also heard some concern about the the ability um to get the public input done in this in this time but i think by laying it out we at least uh create that possibility and that goal so i support that um i am wondering why we have a city mapping specialist who really diligently participated in that process in 2015 and i don't think anybody in that process could say that the city mapping specialist was in any way partisan um he drew up so many maps at everyone's request looking at every which way you could possibly look at a map um and i think he really deserves high commendation from everyone um and so to see in this resolution that that we are not assuming that the city's staff mapping specialists would be doing this i am wondering why why that is and if there has been some expression of dissatisfaction with the city mapping specialist to me just could not have been more more diligent and fair in his work are you addressing that to councilor paul councilor shaman um if council paul wants to answer that question i guess i'm asking through you president tracy if somebody could answer that question sure councilor paul are you able to answer that uh sure i'm happy to answer that question that's a very very good question the reason why it says mapping specialist is because um you know in an ideal world and i'm hoping that this will be an ideal world the city council needs to agree on who the mapping specialist is now i don't think that they're i agree with everything personally as one city councilor i agree with everything that you have said councilor shannon i do i do agree that uh the city's mapping specialist is um an independent nonpartisan has worked in the city for decades um i i don't think that anyone could question uh whether they are partisan on that being said i'm one person we did discuss this particularly councillor barlow and councillor hanson um and i discussed this um and you know i i think they're for those councillors that are a little bit newer um may not know the city's mapping specialist just wanted to make sure that we were all agreeing um and that's why that person is not mentioned by name thank you thank you for that and uh i also don't know if it's going to be the same person you know by the time we we get to that point um but uh i do want to commend the past work of j appleton and i and i will name him because uh i was i was very grateful to the work for the work that he did before and didn't hear a single complaint from any councillor at that time about his work um i also want to say that i agree with councillor hanson i have a strong dislike for our current system this hybrid system that uh mostly not so much because of the work or the pay or those kind of things from that council perspective um as somebody who does represent that larger constituency i i haven't found it difficult to campaign i haven't found it difficult to address the needs of my constituents but i have found that my constituents are utterly confused by who represents them and why um and so i would hope i also did not support this model i voted no when it came before the council um i hope it does get addressed i i would not be supportive of changing it if we were not in need of um redistricting and i think the time to address it is when we are required to redistrict redistrict is you know even with the best of intentions i i don't think that we can um think that it's anything but a painful process it really is and so i think we should take up addressing this at the time that we have to have to redistrict so just just sharing those those thoughts and with um i appreciate all the time that councillor paul has put into this um numerous delays to address the concerns of various councillors and including myself and um it did give me the opportunity to check in with npa's and i've heard a lot of support for it uh so i will be supporting this thank you thank you councillor shannon councillor jane thank you but me personally i wanted to um thank councillor john shannon actually about about this for the education she uh and i she provided to me about the whole thing you know historically she brought a lot of perspective a lot of history into this and i appreciated that to tell you the truth um but my only concern here so i have actually a couple and i think one of them is good governments to me is you you become proactive when you know that you need to do x y and z i think we have started a process not knowing whether or not uh redistricting will be needed right we haven't received the census data yet um i think one element is kind of a little bit concerning because to councillor shannon's point uh this summer by september and we all know that we came from covid-19 and many people want to get out and go see the world their families their loved one i am concerned about the community input that is necessary for this and i like the aspect about the um the the npa steering you know driving this work i like that aspect but i'm a little bit concerned about the necessary and ongoing conversation we need to have like i think that's that's that's one and the other element that i do believe we need to pay the particular attention is the city councils to also stay out of the process in some cases there are some you know what you want you're already trying to push it to the npa i think we need to stay to stay out of the process let's put it together let's stay out and let them bring recommendation to us and when the time comes we can definitely discuss about the best model for burglary i think those are a couple of things but i'm i'm going to support this tonight but just seeking everyone to definitely um allow the npa's to to choose even maybe the uh the mapping specialist because you know i think that's what good governance is about thank you best and please thank you councillor jane any further discussion councillor hanson yeah i just wanted to follow up on a few things um yeah one of my biggest points that i was raising when we started talking about this um councillor paul and i um was around you know who's going to draw the map and how do we ensure that it's done based on fairness based on math essentially and representation equal representation and how can we eliminate potential um bias or the appearance of bias or partisanship um so i had a strong desire to try to achieve that and i think from everything i've heard i think i would agree with councillor shannon and paul that um we could achieve that using this you know j appleton the city's mapling specialist if if we're able to do that so i'll just say that now um and then yeah i would also agree with councillor shannon i didn't mean to overemphasize the fairness the councillor fairness side i think that is important but i think my primary concern about the current system is the confusion among residents of burlington of of who their two city councillors are and what the maps for the districts and wards are and who's up at what for reelection at what time and all of that i think that's unnecessarily confusing and could be um a lot more streamlined going forward thanks thank you any further discussion councillor shannon go ahead i'm sorry be very quick it's something that um i actually have forgotten that i'm getting reminded of now which is that when we did redistricting last time j appleton created a tool for us so virtually anybody in the city could create maps and uh we could all sit down and look at the you know the population cubes provided by the sentin census and understand the criteria and try to build maps in different ways so i think that that um it's important to remember that the mapping specialist is not necessarily um the only person that can put forward maps and and the public tends the public provided a lot of engagement through that tool thank you thank you any further discussion okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting a resolution please say aye aye any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to our next item which is 5.05 a communication from the wine burger regarding the end of the coronavirus emergency and after action report um we'll come to you in just a second mayor i just want to get a motion on this uh councillor jane can you please um um move this item yeah um yes so i would like to move the item 5.05 communication with the mayor wine burger and the coronavirus emergency after action report so are you moving to just to clarify councillor jane moving to accept the communication place it on file yeah i was just wondering if the mayor has to speak about this or yeah i'll come to him after this i just wanted to get a motion on the table first so if you could just so yeah so i would like to make the motion to accept the communication in place okay great we have a motion from councillor jane is there a second seconded by councillor hightower all right let's open it up to mayor wine burger thank you president tracy um i do have a powerpoint let me see if i can successfully let's see is there a way that you can allow me to uh screen share um yeah i think you've been made a co-host now so you shouldn't have that enabled great so uh thank you for the opportunity to to present this um summary of the after action report to to the council on the public um as uh it appeared we were headed towards the end of the emergency and as uh our former cio brian lois time with us was coming to an end i i asked him to um assemble this after action report so you know for a number of reasons um one um with the thought that uh reflecting on this documenting this may have some near term impact on uh how we want to organize ourselves and and operate the city in the um as we come out of this emergency and also in the um in the in the hope that if the city does face anything like this emergency again in the future that some of the things that we learned over the course of this 457 day emergency um might be of some benefit to um to future to our successors to potentially future generations we uh in february of 2020 when the pandemic was uh building around the world and it was clear it was going to get to berlington um i had asked the cio at that time to to look um at what he could find from 1918 and if there were any lessons from that period that could um help us and there wasn't uh you know a lot that we could find a hundred years after the fact other than some newspaper accounts and data that did suggest that berlington did not do very well in the 20 um in the 2018 sorry the 1918-1919 um uh pandemic we had a death rate in berlington of i was actually higher than some than uh the city of philadelphia um which had been held up as a a city that had a particularly problematic response to that pandemic and that there was as a result of pressures from business interests they had not canceled parades and closed theaters taking other steps um and and that um that that has sort of looked back on in retrospect is being made that the death rate was almost twice as high in philadelphia than st lewis where the the mayor there had taken strong actions to try to protect the public as that pandemic unfolded the fact that berlington had done even worse by the data that we had than then philadelphia was was striking to us and really caused us to take on that that kind of somewhat became a motto of short for the city team quoted there that in a global pandemic local actions matter we thought from that point on that what the city did um would have an impact on how the pandemic unfolded here uh in this region and we tried to act accordingly here um let me see if i i'm not going to go through you know the report is fairly extensive um and uh it is posted uh board docs and and on the web and it is our hope it'll be easy to find um a lot of the organized the report is organized around principles including that first one local actions matter here are the other eight principles that um we really came to believe in uh over over the course of the pandemic and um the you know i do just want to know one that uh you know is detailed at length in the report item number three building tools to successfully navigate uncertainty um one thing that we focused on in there was a step that we took together i really do think the council's action all the way back on march 23rd immediately in the opening weeks of the pandemic to um authorize a million dollars to be put into our our pandemic response um played really had a large um role in our being able to move uh quickly and to deploy resources uh flexibly as the need evolved we hadn't we really i think we're quite can we all knew at the time that we didn't know what we would need the money for but we agreed and again appreciated the council's confidence uh in in supporting that allocation and um that million dollars um ultimately allowed us to it did allow us to act quickly and uh ultimately leverage another three and a half million dollars of emergency resources that has been deployed to a whole range of of uh strategies over over the period and one thing we created an addendum if you looked at the report when we first put it out a couple weeks ago it did not have this addendum but there's an addendum on the version on board docs tonight that um goes into some of those strategies this isn't uh this timeline um is i think an interesting document uh when you kind of it's it's a little bit hard without a document like this to remember everything that the city and its partners did over the course of these 15 months to attempt to intervene attempt to uh to to suppress the the virus or assist economically um it's laid out on this chart in in uh chronologic terms and one again i'm just kind of hitting the the highlights here but one that i think um uh i really want to say my appreciation to brian low and the whole 10 person analytics team that was helping us figure out what to do in those early days is if you look at the um on on uh march 23rd there all the way on the left side um uh of the of the timeline which was just as the council was authorizing emergency investment we were at on the same day i believe uh as it states there um it going in investing about 50 000 of that in a truck load of uh denim uh literally a truck load that allowed the city to start working with uh really ultimately ended up being hundreds of different individuals to start creating masks um that would uh be available to um just about every bruntonian who wanted one by mid may when the city was starting to reopen that that march 23rd we were we acted then which was weeks before the cdc recommended masking as a strategy and it really was months before the state put in place a mask mandate and when most public health experts began um really emphasizing masking as a strategy i think really speaks to this this 10 person team that drew from four different departments and one partner outside of the city to really try to keep the city on the front line of knowledge throughout this pandemic and that would play out again and again over the course of this and and uh that um it is certainly one of the things i um believe we will hold on to and in fact the budget you just approved creates two new data analyst positions one in reib one in the the third analyst within the broader data team as a indication of you know just an acknowledgement of how powerful data data analytics uh can be in city operations that certainly showed itself to be the case um in in the in the pandemic also the budget you just passed um continues the public health investments that we stepped up during this pandemic and that we think will have lasting benefits so that timeline is an interesting part of the report i just want to move now quickly uh to speak to the the addendum that was added to um to the report for tonight for tonight which really just tries to quantify the city's response uh in in the ways that we could measure uh to to hit a a couple more highlights here in the public health initiatives 26 000 masks were were created with the help of the Lyric Theater and 160 community soas and again those were all uh complete by by mid-May they first were deployed to essential workers and then um uh to um sensitive um buildings that that had um individuals at significant risk such as uh Decker towers and other other uh supportive housing settings um the wastewater uh efforts have been talked about a fair amount um the um the uh sorry i guess on the the next page here there i had not seen this staff before this quantification that um there was over 300 tests uh wastewater tests each one involving a city employee going out and uh pulling a sample out of the the wastewater stormwater system have been completed on this page there this the city um ventilation program in a couple of different rounds meant that uh over 100 different Burlington businesses and locations were either upgraded their ventilation systems or bought whole new air purifiers as an additional uh strategy another layer and the protection for indoor spaces in in Burlington beyond the the public health efforts there was a major effort to help Burlington businesses you know i do um believe that the the reason we have not you know the seen the level of business uh closures in Burlington that other cities have seen we've seen nowhere near like the one in six estimated businesses that closed in that has closed in uh Manhattan uh since the beginning um of the pandemic and i think there's a a variety of reasons for that certainly the efforts of the the banking community uh to get PPP loans out to um businesses uh Vermont did very well in that and the private sector deserves a lot of credit for that the just the industriousness of Burlington businesses deserve a lot of credit the city did what it could to support and and fill in the gaps in those efforts um with through programs like the hundred eighty thousand dollars um in uh to BIPOC owned business through the BIPOC owned business grant program which um provided two thousand to seven thousand dollar awards to 29 uh different BIPOC owned businesses um we also you know use the assets we had to to to help with initiatives such as the making space for businesses program featured there that um allowed over 30 businesses to use the public right away in different ways to help uh support our down you know crucial downtown businesses through this time of a really existential challenge for the downtown finally um there were other relief relief initiatives uh that which attempted to to tally the the numbers on here and and these numbers in some ways will go up i do think we have a year of additional relief efforts at least ahead of us um but uh as of the the time of the report here were some of the the major statistics over 12 000 meals um served to in partnership with various nonprofits in restaurants to help cook those meals through the city's emergency food relief program down to over 2,500 individual requests for support ranging from housing to food to unemployment many other needs being addressed by the resource and recovery center of course that is another element from the pandemic that we are seeking to make permanent in which your budget that you just uh passed um ensures that at least another year of operations for the resource and recovery center for it to remain a resource for growing through businesses and individuals president tracy i'd be happy to answer any um any additional questions that that there are about the report thanks mayor if you could just stop sharing yep one second thank you for that are there any Councillor Shannon um i appreciate this report and i think it's so important at this point in time to reflect on the last year plus um and the actions that we took and and how they affected the trajectory of how the disease um played out in in burlington but there's a couple things that i wanted to call out um a little bit more and one is the city's decision to pursue mask making um at a time when the cdc was really telling us that um masks were important for trained professionals and hospitals to have but somehow the general public didn't know how to use a mask and that it would be detrimental to our health to use a mask and the city generally operates in kind of a data-driven scientific approach um but started this project somewhat uh i i think we all had a sense that that obviously couldn't be true and uh that what the cdc really was trying to get across was we don't want to use use up the masks that are our uh emergency medical professionals absolutely didn't have enough it didn't have enough of um but we started that project at the at the mayor's direction we started that project and that was i really believe that he made a huge difference in the trajectory of the disease and the other thing that uh the mayor did in burlington unlike the rest of the state was the governor um closed the bars on march 17th at two o'clock uh and maybe most people don't know what march 17th is but uh for me it's a holiday and we do a lot of celebrating on that day and it starts really early um say patrick's day really starts at about eight o'clock in the morning the bars start to get busy and i think that it was really hard to close the bars on that day at that time with the information that we had and it took a lot of courage for the mayor to do that and i also applaud our bar owners who took a huge hit in in doing that but obviously whether you gathered with a huge group of people at eight o'clock or at two o'clock that was going to be a major disease spreader and for the largest city in the state with the most bars um of any town in the state to do that i think was one of the things that really uh helped our trajectory very early in this process um so there are so many things that we did that are that are called out in this report but i did want to give a little bit of emphasis to those um base you know really basic things that uh that the mayor had the courage to do um that doesn't seem it doesn't seem so hard from where we sit now with the hindsight that we have now but it was difficult at the time and i thank you mayor for having the courage um to do what was needed to keep our community safe and i also applaud the city staff for all of the things that they did to step up at that time it was so stressful um we were flying blind uh people did everything they were asked to do and so much more stepping up in ways that were way outside their job descriptions and figuring out how they could help so um thank you mayor and thank you to all of the city staff council shannon any further discussion okay seeing none we're not going to go ahead um so mr. mayor like i follow joint uh councilor shannon you just say it was a work well done and i think you provided leadership in so many different ways um to box in this virus and to support the people in need right um while it was a great success and um what i could particularly remember is um the ongoing communication with the public and in some and sense you will see four thousand six thousand people watching you and listening to you and um i think that was key but now if we have to do this again and i'm touching some wood we'll never have to do this again what do you think you could have done better or could have done soon that's a question and thank you please and please thank you councillor jane and thank you councillor shannon and i do just um i'm going to answer councillor jane's question one second i do just want to before i do that make sure i don't um neglect to uh again um reinforce councillor shannon's point that the the the city effort here was the definition of a team effort um every department literally was involved in in doing things that they don't normally do uh and i think that went to uh every every employee on the city team in one way or another contributed to this effort um stepped up in and and made sure the job got done and um there there are so many examples of that i was very pleased to see a great one uh featured by seven days of um uh our um water operator um matt who uh was so um critical in the wastewater testing getting the wastewater testing program which proved to be a very useful strategy off the ground and was named by seven days a pandemic all-star but it really is something that the whole city team was committed to and contributed to and and always be thankful for that um councillor jane you know where could we have uh you know done better where could we have done more well i mean certainly um what uh you know we had three terrible outbreaks and three uh burlington uh skilled nursing facilities and uh suffered some terrible losses of life in in those and um i uh do you think um that uh and two of those happened very early in in the pandemic and um uh it is um you know it is it is tragic that um that so many were lost there and that so many were lost across the country from these facilities i believe something in like 40 percent or more of the the deaths american deaths were in these very vulnerable skilled nursing uh facilities um and uh i think that is another area where this i think whole society needs to do some real reflection on how we care uh for our our elderly and um uh what kind of systemic changes um we can make in the future you know not just in pandemic times but in in general to um better serve um uh the elderly who uh at a very vulnerable time in their life and uh it certainly weighs on me Councillor Jang how many we lost any further discussion okay seeing none let's go to a vote on accepting the communication placing it on file all those in favor please say hi hi hi can you post that carries unanimously brings us to our next item on the agenda which is an appointment of three council members to the board of tax appeals um as part of the reappraisal process um for this process under city charter for the under the reappraisal process um in the city that's outlined in city charter um we are to as a body appoint three counselors to that body by a vote of the council in order to serve alongside the existing board of tax appeals to hear um the appeals that people filed related to their their individual reappraisals so i'm going to go to Councillor Stromberg for a motion on this item thanks President Tracy um i would like to appoint councillors Joan Shannon, Sarah Carpenter and Mark Barlow as a slate to the board of tax appeals following reappraise reappraisal okay so um don't believe we need a second for that um yeah just do you want to did you have anything else you'd like to say yeah real quick um so yeah i just want to thank the three of you for for stepping up into this the service of this board and i you know i think each of you obviously bring a lot of strength to it and we'll work well together digging into all the details that it will definitely entail um so i just want to say thanks and that i'm honored to appoint each of you any further discussion okay hearing none let's go to a vote um all those in favor of appointing councillors Shannon Barlow and Carpenter to the board of tax appeals for the reappraisal process please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously and i will also extend thanks to those three councillors um and i will email once we're done with this i'll email um city assessor vicarito let them know that you've been appointed so that he can loop you into future meetings um that will take place um i believe they're gonna be starting to the organization of that process in next month so um get that going that brings us to our next item which is item 5.07 in ordinance regarding building construction and i'm an additional an addition of an article relating to heating systems councillor mason thank you president tracy i'd like to make a motion to suspend the rules place the ordinance amendment to chapter 8 article 5 heating systems ordinance in all stages of passage and forgive me i'm going to add something uh to the the recommended action i tried to circulate this but lori was not available um but the requested addition would be with the requested report back from burlington electric department and the department of permitting and inspections on around june 28 2022 on the impact of the ordinance amendment and whether the waiver fee should be adjusted and i want to ask for the floor back if there's a second okay we have a motion seconded by council hanson go ahead councillor mason uh thank you president tracy i want to start for the benefit of the council and the public to sort of talk for a second about how we got here because it's a little bit of a convoluted and we don't typically place things in all stages of passage um this the council passed a resolution back in may of 2019 um requiring b ed to make policy recommendations regarding decarbonization and electrification for new buildings it also required consideration of a ban on new buildings connected to fossil fuel infrastructure b ed held a public hearing on july 7th of 2020 and the majority of attendees at that time supported the ban on fossil fuel connections for new buildings b ed then in the fall came forward with a policy proposal for new construction that proposed a carbon fee it also proposed evaluating policies that could support moving forward net zero in existing buildings once the new building policy work was completed that policy was sent to the city attorney's office and was to be taken up by ordinance after review by the city attorney in november before the ordinance committee then to our surprise the city attorney came forward with an opinion that because there was no enabling language we could not move forward as to the policy change on existing buildings to refresh everyone's recollection we then passed that through charter change and has sent that off to the legislature and asked b ed to again go back and tweak the policy and come forward with it on new buildings so that's what is before us today it came back before the ordinance committee meeting i would say two meetings ago and again to refresh everyone's recollection this is yet another brick if you will on the road to net zero 2030 and i'm confident counselor hanson will weigh in on all the you know the the good reasons in terms of what this does what this does do though is in essence required for all new buildings again does not apply to any existing buildings it in essence requires um you know that they move forward with a non-fossil fuel primary heating system the policy though however does recognize some of the concerns that were recognized initially that you know because of technology or other advances a hundred percent is not possible so the definition you know of a system as 80 is an 85 supported it also recognizes um that it is not economically feasible for some buildings to move forward so there is a waiver process built into what we're considering tonight that in essence if you meet the test of it being you know not affordable it allows in essence at a hundred dollar um hundred dollar you know per ton payment into a fund that would then be utilized by deep b ed support efficiency and strategic electrification projects advanced going on a going forward basis so with that i don't know if general manager springer is on the phone to sort of answer if there are technical questions but i do know that bill ward is here who will have um supervisory authority over the project so if there are technical questions i would defer off to staff who are here i would like to thank um general manager springer chris burns and bill ward for their efforts in bringing this forward um and speaking to questions that the ordinance committee had when it was being considered thank you thanks councillor mason is there any further discussion councillor hanson yeah i'm really excited that we're that we've got this before the full council now for adoption um i think this is critical heating systems are a long term investment and we really need to i mean we should have done this long ago but at this point there's really we can't allow long term investments in fossil fuel infrastructure at this point especially if we're looking to be off of fossil fuels by 2030 it's just um it's a bad investment and it won't enable us to meet our necessary climate goals and so um joining in with some other communities that have in the last couple of years taken this type of action to make sure that new construction is not building out um fossil fuel heating systems um that are going to be around for for quite a long time so i think this is uh this is a key component um we still need to figure out you know as the charter change um sits in the legislature i think the harder component is going to be figuring out existing buildings but to move forward now on new construction is is super critical and i think it's also good that we're revisiting this in a year because i think we need to make sure that this policy is having the effect of of preventing these new systems as i said and i believe that it will based on what we've learned and discussed in the committee um but if it's not um we could potentially make additional changes um in a year once we revisit this thanks thank you councillor hanson any further discussion okay councillor shannon go ahead um i am 100 supportive of this but i wasn't clear from councillor mason's explanation why we are um waiving the rules and putting it in all stages of passage which is a process um just for the public normally we would have i believe two public hearings on this and um by doing this we are eliminating some of our public process so i i just want a clarification on why we have to do it tonight sure councillor mason i mean we don't if the majority of the council feels going through our normal process would better serve that that is a decision the council could make the thought i think was that it had gone through multiple you know public hearings um as far back as 2019 and i'll i'll be honest that you know the two ordinance committee meetings where it was warned um there was little to no public comment um so you know that i think the inference from that was that the public has had an opportunity to weigh in on the production of the you know of the policy as well as the multiple hearings that have been held since thank you i appreciate the verification that this seems to be non-controversial and i appreciate the explanation thanks councillor shannon councillor jane yep thank you and i i think this is this is great this is amazing this is wonderful but i cannot just wrap my head around the waiver um and it also did not clearly state about if a building owner is not um respecting basically the agreement to pay $100 per ton of a life of the non-renewable what will be the consequences for that building owner um and yes that's the first question councillor mason i would defer to director ward to feel that sure okay director ward sure i think the simplest way to describe it is that since this is for applicants of a building permit to construct a new building they would not be given that building permit so they wouldn't be allowed to build um and with all processes that involved uh in that are involved in chapter eight the which is the building permit section of our ordinance those decisions are appealable to the dpw commission the public works commission so if a property owner was aggrieved by the fact that they were unable to get a permit because of uh lack of being able to meet this requirement then they would be able to appeal that to the dpw commission i'll start councillor jane no no um i'm sorry but it seems here the applicability made it very clear here that an applicant must is permitted to answer a non-primary heating system in a new on a new building right and then the waivers can come next what i what i just don't understand is one who's managing those fees um that you're collecting from the uh no from the applicant who's not who's managing those fees where exactly that money would go and if you can maybe please explain clearly if someone is not um respecting the agreement with the city that you can answer a no a fossil fuel heating system what are the consequences i don't know if it was clear in this explanation i don't know if i'm clear either director word i was actually gonna defer i know that uh council hanson was ready to speak this was part of the reason that we asked uh director springer to come with his staff to the last meeting and i also want to say just quickly that uh councilor mason may have undersold the number of meetings having attended several of them myself i think it was uh quite a few meetings not just two that we had at the ordinance committee and the last one was specifically about these questions and i was unable to attend so i feel like it might be better for councillor hanson who had those questions if he was able to so i'll defer to you president tracy on sure yeah councillor hanson are you able to speak to this yeah thanks director word and president tracy um yeah we did have meetings in the fall that had significant public input and at that time there was going to be an alternative compliance there was a different way to comply with this ordinance which was to pay a fee that was that was determined to be not allowed by the city so councillor jang at this point there is no fee that um the building owners would pay or the developers would pay um there's no fee what it is is the calculation of in order to get a waiver you have to prove as a developer that the cost of um the cheapest renewable heating system is more expensive than um a fossil fuel option even with calculating in the cost of carbon at 100 dollars a ton um and if you can prove that you would be given an out where you don't have to comply with the policy so it's no one's actually paying a fee they're just you're just incorporating the cost of carbon into a calculation in order to get a waiver or not get a waiver from the policy i hope that helps clarify that was something that was a change we made because of the need for a charter change um on the fee side does that clarify for you councillor jang um yes kind of but i think at the same time um that clarification just brought up another concern is um if we are really serious to go after the new buildings to comply i think um the sense of urgency i mean there should not be any waiver or applicability i mean this is a city policy it's a city ordinance anyone building a new building need to uh be definitely applicable and and and compliant um i mean i think the sense of urgency now is missing on this reservation based on um the response from consulate but thank you i'll support it okay thank you councillor jang further discussion okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the resolution please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously brings us to our next item which is 5.08 another ordinance um change having to do with level wage section the level wage sections 21 through 81 definitions as well as enforcement councillor mason uh thank you president tracy and make a motion to waive the second reading adopt the ordinance and ask for the floor back for a brief second after a second okay we have a motion from councillor mason is there a second seconded by councillor hanson go ahead councillor mason thank you president tracy this we talked about this last time these are what what is before us tonight is implementation of some recommendations that were advanced by the city attorney relating to the designated account ability monitor as well as enforcement based on the practical on-the-ground experience and the challenges associated with bringing on an external third party thank you thank you councillor mason any further discussion okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the resolution please say aye hi hi any opposed is that it you are being you opposed councillor carpenter councillor carpenter you were you were in favor voting in favor sorry i'm sorry i'm in favor okay so that is unanimous in favor so that the resolution carries unanimously which brings us to our final item on the deliberative agenda which is another ordinance regarding percent for public art sections 21 through 120 as well as 21 through 123 councillor mason i thought you were going to go somewhere else for that one i would make a motion to weigh bear with me wave the second reading adopt the ordinance and i don't know whether i lean or who is to present but i will turn over to staff for a presentation after a second sorry i'll say councillor paul let's count second from councillor paul in councillor paul are you okay attorney blackwood thank you um so um livable wages this is something that i brought to you um fairly recently but we had worked on a way to deal with the issue that the designated accountability monitor had had resigned and we have not been able to find a another organization interested in replacing council attorney blackwood we're on the next resolution on public art i thought i heard you say last item and then i i said whoa uh sorry public art um so this is a ordinance that is designed purely for internal processes so this is setting aside a percent for public art in all public projects that are found eligible under this it also provides that the um berlington um that the bca board of advisors will come up with a set of guidelines that will detail a lot more about public uh art we have already done a draft of it it's an incredibly detailed document that will be coming back to you all for approval that will lay out a lot more of the details about what art what it looks like how do you select artists those kinds of things the idea of this ordinance is just so that as there is planning for major capital projects that there is a basis that everyone can go to funders to grantors to um other sources and say hey the city has this ordinance that says we're supposed to set aside a percent for public art that will fund public art either as part of that project or will maintain a general fund if the project is not large enough to justify its own project or for some reason a project a public art piece isn't appropriate for that project itself so this ordinance lays out the um defines a number of terms lays out the general set aside gives some uh basis for looking at what is the fund what costs are eligible for this fund to pay for what are ineligible and important pieces that this deal is not just with so with funding the design and selection but ensuring that there also is a plan for maintenance of the city's public art and this fund will be available to help pay for maintenance repair upkeep of the city's public art collection which is a piece that that we really that we really need um and i think that's a good summary i'm happy to answer any questions that i can answer thank you attorney blackwood further discussion mayor yeah i just wanted to quickly say um to have a sense of the impact of this ordinance if it becomes part of the city ordinances i think you can look to recent recent history where on our recent major projects st paul street city hall park we various airport projects we have had this ethic of wanting of committing at least one percent of the budget um to the public art elements of those projects it's that that's what's allowed us to put the that sort of blackbird and cat tails installation at the south end of the new st paul street it would pay uh you know with that budget we were able to install in city hall park the pre-remarkable installation in the runnels along the main path that represent a drainage into the lake and and you know i see children hopscotching kind of on those uh the the the discs that make up that installation so this is uh if you want to see more of that if you want to ensure that that this isn't just something that is done by the administration what budget allows but that we that we kind of bind ourselves to the mast of that and commit ourselves uh to ensuring that all major public works projects have that kind of installation um i urge you to vote yes on this and i think over time it will have a really do a lot to um build the sense of berlington being a place that believes in the arts the supports the arts and where enjoying the art is part of everyday life thank you mayor any further discussion from counselors okay seeing none let's go to a vote all those in favor please say aye hi hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously and completes our agenda for this evening a motion to adjourn is in order moved by councillor jane seconded by councillor mason all those in favor of adjournment please say aye hi hi any opposed that carries unanimously and we are adjourned have a great week everyone everyone night