 Good evening and welcome to town meeting televisions continuing coverage of town meeting 2022. And today we're going to do a deep dive into one of the ballot questions facing the Burlington city of voters city voters today I think is the 11th of February, sometimes it's hard to keep track. And many people in Burlington may have received their ballots and are wondering how to vote on the ballot questions of which there are five. And we're going to look at number four, which is the pledging the credit of the city to secure the indebtedness for public improvements within the downtown Tiff district. And this will focus on the main street area and today we have with us Brian pine who is the director of CEDA community and economic development office, who'll be telling us about the financing aspect of this project. And Laura we lock was a senior engineer at the Department of Public Works will be talking about the project that is being contemplated to be funded with the Tiff Tiff funds. So welcome both of you thanks for joining us. I'll just remind folks that they can call us if you have questions at 862-3966. We'd love to hear from you we have time for a few. Once we go through the presentation. So Brian why don't you help us unpack that ballot question number four that the Burlington voters will be voting on. Thanks for the opportunity really appreciate it. Tax increment financing is a rather arcane municipal finance topic that it may put folks to sleep but we'll try and get through this and give folks at least an idea of what it is we're asking on the ballot. The, the question is essentially asking if the voters will pledge the city's full faith and credit toward the repayment of a bond, which will be issued in other words, sent sold to investors, investors who invest in the bond provide the city with the cash the city uses those funds to pay for the cost of the rebuilding of Main Street all the way from Union Street down to Battery Street. So that's like in a nutshell what this is however, what is unique about tax increment financing is, rather than raising taxes to pay the to pay the bond back, which is done annually or over over a period of years. The tax increment financing is a state state program that allows the municipality to define a district an area of the city, in which the revenue comes from the growth in property values. Not by raising taxes but by seeing values grow, and that growth is captured to pay back the bond. So, however, in it in the state policy says, in the event that that growth never occurs, and there's not sufficient growth we call that increment. So you have nothing to capture, you need to go to the voters and explain to them that this has happened, and then they will have to you'll have to dip into your municipal tax revenue. So this is sort of a failsafe or a backstop, or like a guardrail to keep us from defaulting on the bond. That's essentially what this is. I would say that Tiff in Burlington has been operational since 1996. All the work on the waterfront was financed with Tiff tax increment financing, and a number of projects in our downtown which we'll talk about in a few minutes. And we've never missed a payment and a single payment in the eight districts in Vermont has ever been missed and so that that authorization that's on the ballot is required and is critical. So we needed to go back to the taxpayer to cover that debt service that payment so mortgage payment think of it like as on a monthly basis. And what would be the basis for increasing the value, the differential incremental value that the city can recover to pay back the tip what's an example. Yeah, example is that in 1920, I'm sorry, 2011 when this district was created, the taxable value of all the properties in the district was 170 million. So that's the baseline. Nothing changes with that revenue so that that property value generates revenue that covers the schools at about 6568 cents every dollar, and the balance goes to fund police and fire and streets and all the, you know library and parks and rec and all the other city services. Those, those funds continue to flow to the taxing authorities of the schools and the city, and it's the difference the growth in value so as property values go up within that district. That's what's recaptured for the purpose of paying back the bond. So I'm going to get a little detailed here because I think it's important not to gloss over this 75% of the incremental growth is that is intended for the schools is captured for TIF repayment. The other 25% goes to the state of Vermont to the Education Fund 100% of the portion of taxes that goes to the city flows to repay the TIF debt. And then after the original taxable value is, is, is covered so I think it's, it's important folks to know that we're all the original taxes that flow from the properties in the district, continue to flow to the taxing authorities of the schools and the city, and it's the increment the growth in value so growth and value would be a great example would be when you take a property that is a surface parking lot and instead you put a building on that parking on that parking lot. It has a very low value because that's a that's what's called a not the highest and best use so in urban terms you want to build up your downtown to support your tax base so you don't have to continually go back to the, to the homeowners and raise their taxes but instead, you're driving values in the downtown to cover the cost of municipal services so the goal here is to is to use this financing. And I'll say as an aside or perhaps I think it's an important point. If we had sufficient revenue to pay for these costs these infrastructure costs, we wouldn't be going through the complicated system or generations of having to use tax increment financing, we'd be using these resources, but really as a city we have very few options for how to fund big infrastructure projects like this and so that's why Burlington and and seven other municipalities for Ron have decided that in their downtown to promote a healthy vibrant economically thriving downtown. So that's what we want to do. We want to make sure that all of these costs are needed, but rather than ask today's taxpayer to pay for it through their taxes, we want to capture this growth and value in the district. So example would also be for instance the Cathedral Church, which is no longer functioning as a church, when that goes on the tax rolls, that generates new value that wasn't there before that is all increment that's 100% increment because that's a tax exempt property. It's a taxable values in the district. So of that 150 million that was evaluated. 170 yeah 170 and 2011. What's that number now today it's to 285 is the value of that district so the values have gone up quite a bit. Yeah, okay, so we can capture that increment that growth to fund and payback the bond. Thank you so much. So why don't we go to Laura and have her tell us a little bit about what the voters would be in what we would be investing in, and what the voters are being asked to secure in effect. Yep, thank you. The next project that we put in front of the state of Vermont is Main Street, as Brian described from Battery Street to South Union. It is a complete streetscape reconstruction as well as revitalization of our underground utilities, which would include the 130 year old water main and the sewer that's in there, as well as the services that go to different properties. There are opportunities for public amenities, public seating, pause places, street lighting, and really importantly, management of stormwater and being able to kind of regrow our street ecology with the street trees, and providing them infrastructure to to grow and thrive in a hard scaped downtown. So are you I'm not able to see the slides. Are you showing slides. I haven't started that yet. So, right, it'd be great to see some pictures. And I imagine, I mean one of the things we're talking about before is that people are concerned that the construction will be hard for businesses to handle. And I just wonder how disruptive is this kind of construction, especially, you know, underground utilities, water mains and things like that. As we skip through a whole bunch of things we do have images to talk about the TIF districts that Brian mentioned, and some of the facts that we can go back to and a little bit of a graphic to help describe TIF if questions go in that direction. And of course, and just to say people can go to the city's website and see this presentation also. Absolutely. Yep, it's available in a few locations in different forms. But the fundamentals of a great street is working to rebalance our right of ways for the uses of today and tomorrow. Main Street hasn't had a significant construction project in decades to the point that there's not really a living memory inside the city the last time it's the main street has been reconstructed. So the purposes that we were or the rebalancing that we will use on Main Street. Sorry, my husband's trying to feed my dogs. We'd rebalance it for dedicated clear pedestrian spaces, provide better opportunities for transit, still keeping the existing vehicle uses and available parking on sides of every block, but also providing a dedicated separated space for there would be opportunities for new public amenities within these spaces, creating new spaces for for public gatherings for other activations of side businesses, really based on what the community needs are and we have started our outreach process for Great Streets and it's and the work that was done to date which we're seeing on the screen was back in 2016 and and the city did pause to construct our other Great Street St. Paul Street we worked on City Hall Park which is also a lot coordinated with this effort. And I'm now restarting Main Street. The fact that you haven't heard about it for a few years is okay. We are working to gather people build up momentum, you know we had 20 people in our first public meeting and since then I've already met with three times that and there's still a lot more outreach to go and as we go we're going to collect people so that we can keep people informed, grab their voices, understand what these other spaces can be. So when you say people, who are those people. Yep. So we started with a community level neighborhood meeting reaching out to with mailers or a six by four block of the downtown circled around Main Street we've reached out to businesses both along the Main Street in the downtown corridor we've met with waterfront business owners. We have met starting going through some of the NPAs so far and this recently this week we met with a youth group through the Burlington downtown high school and by far those those youth leaders have provided more new ideas to this opportunity on Main Street than I've heard in the entire time. We have other outreach plans looking for BIPOC groups, seniors differently abled as well as an organization that helps with refugee and immigrants and that outreach. Can't happen until April based on their availability but it's still within the window of time that we're looking to collect feedback. So you're talking to people who would be users of the street and businesses who people own businesses on the street. We are we are looking for for that. We're looking for any Burlingtonian. This is Main Street. This is your community street. Whether you live on the super far end of North Ave or, you know, the extreme end of Queen City Park Road. This is Main Street. This is Burlingtonians Street. So we want the ideas we want to understand what brings people to this street and what will continue to bring people. And how long would this project take? Nope, you're hitting on all of our slides but we can we can stay here so people can see the image. We're looking for a pretty aggressive face on our design schedule so we would work through the concept phase from now and through about May. Transition into more of a hard functional design engineering side and then look to start construction in the fall of 2023. So a year and a half or so from now to start work on the six blocks. Construction work is going to take a minimum of two years. And then another component of the project. I just want to skip ahead two slides. That is the ravine sewer that's an approved project. This one's a little bit more of an unknown and really could could change the schedule of the South Union when you ski end of the project potentially. Can you go back a slide so we can see some of the changes that you're thinking about. Yep. So this highlights Main Street's existing conditions. You know, as we mentioned that it really hasn't been touched in a really long time. There's a lot of deficiencies you know Main Street has some of our widest tree belts and the trees are not thriving in this existing condition. There are different looks and feels of each block but some of them are really unactivated and only dedicated to two uses. There are some significantly deteriorating surfaces. There are a lot of accessibility challenges interfacing between the public way and the private storefronts and and doorways that exist on Main Street. And there are challenges with our underground utilities that are are coming to fruition whether we do this project or not. And there's 130 year old 16 inch water main that goes up Main Street. That's a really old water main. There's no living person alive that would have ever seen that construct. And that's scary. It transmits water up to the reservoir. And we know, you know we've seen that fail actually in our lifetime on Main Street, big emergency dealing with the water main breaking. The water main not not as much actually that's the sewer. That's one of those really large excavations up near the Gateway Block Memorial that's been the sewer. That's okay ground. Okay, also still scary and on the agenda. Okay, so what kind of, what kind of opposition have you been getting to to this like what I guess the better question is what concerns, do people have about the project, and why would the people not want to support this. We present it to every NPA. And there's been a few people asking questions about the impact on on taxpayers. And I think the important piece to you know we, we are, we are a city officials here to provide information and not advocate a vote one way or the other. But a real important fact is that TIFF is the only tool, the only financing tool to pay for this, this type of infrastructure without raising taxes that we know of there's no grant funding. People think oh just go get some federal grants, there's no grants for this type of project this is a, this is a local locally funded project and so the only tool that we have available in our toolbox to really do this type of substantial complete rebuild of our main street six blocks of that street is this funding source so this is why TIFF is so so timely right now it's also that our deadline to do this incur this debt is next year by the end of March. So we're looking at a pretty short timeline to kind of before our before our TIFF district closes in terms of taking on new borrowing for new projects so that's an important piece. I think is, if I can add on is it's also helpful to separate voters are being asked to vote on the funding source and not the concept. The concept is just starting to take input to to reshape the vision that's being shared on the screen right here this was the 2016 proposal that we did take feedback on and we're we're collecting that now. And it's really the voices that we hear from now until May that will reshape this image into what the community wants, but we need to have funding to continue forward and that's, that's all that that request is allow us to continue to develop the vision of the community to what Main Street can be. I think that you make a very important point and people also vote on financial questions based on their broader concerns. So for example I can imagine somebody thinking what happens to, you know what impact is this massive construction have on the businesses. You know, over a two year period. And what could the city do to mitigate those effects, right. Absolutely. Laura Laura has some stuff. We can't say we're going to do it all but why don't you list some examples of ways that we're going to try to mitigate the impacts at least what we're looking at. Yeah, so, so we've, we've already taken a lead from you know some of the recent large streetscape reconstructions that have happened in like Waterbury and Barry and and they are challenging to get through and the biggest things the businesses have been asking us is just to ensure that there's really significant communication that they have a good understanding about how pedestrians are going to get to their store where clientele that needs kind of a quick pickup and drop off or a shorter distance to get to their storefront depending on the service that's being provided. So the outreach is a really huge component. And it's, it's one of the lessons learned from St. Paul Street. And that is another really large component so that people can find where they're going. The other opportunities, you know, we've heard some other communities like Middlebury who who were successful in being awarded a grant to help with business advertisement marketing, still encouraging people to come to their downtown. And so that's one of the strategies as well as you know some other more creative ones that we need to vet that we're working on so that, you know, this can be the easiest, you know, reconstruction of this street, but like the other images showed something's going to have to happen whether we pick out pick away at it over 20 years or you know, we do it in a shorter window of time and come out with a greater street in the end. Laura, you said you heard some really innovative ideas from young, young people that you work with is any, any of those ideas stand out for you. I loved that one of the youth members asked about you know, can we put a basketball court or or some sort of other you know, more recreational oriented infrastructure in our nearby with this project. You know, and it caught me a little off guard thinking that there are some parks that are pretty nearby but there's none that really had strong recreational facilities. They also talked a lot about wanting pause places, both for themselves but they thought even bigger outside the box into the entire community. I think that families would need a place to pause that other differently able to people would really enjoy a place to pause. We talked about the ecology on the street recognizing that the trees aren't there just for our stormwater which you know from BPW I think about that but the shade shade to allow people to pause. And then lastly they hit on really finding a way for for younger, even younger than them community to interact with the street and find it fun. And then a statement came out that families will really make the street feel inviting and there needs to be a way for families to exist on the street. It looks like you're planning potentially less street and more sidewalk area, which does provide for a safer interaction. I'm thinking whizzing bicycles but I can mention it. It's the idea is to make it a safer thoroughfare for pedestrians and humans. And, and also easier for cars to navigate by changing the parking and some of the transitions that that are evident in this image. Yeah, we should also probably just mentioned that in 2016 the voters approved or was it 2015 Laura 2015 2015 voters approved a $10 million TIF bond for a variety of downtown projects I just want to go over what we have spent the money on today I think it's a slide perhaps before this. It is the other direction maybe. Yeah. What we've done with that money already just to say here's where your money has gone. It's, we spent just over 5 million on these projects here. So the complete rebuild of St. Paul from Maine to maple. Along the great streets design major repairs to the marketplace garage to save sort of that piece of downtown infrastructure. The rebuild is the term for contaminated sites and the bar the city owned parking lot that is now student housing for Champlain students was remediated so it was cleaned up using TIF funds in order for that development to go forward and the stormwater upgrades that were associated with city hall park was redone have all been done with existing downtown TIF there's also Laura there's a slide that shows sort of the six blocks and that we already have voter approval for for two of the six blocks. I think it's going that way yeah there it is right there. So if you look at that line that big thick that's main street that is sort of pink or orange coral colored there in the middle of it is the darkened area that's the part that voters have already approved. The, the approval that we have from the state of Vermont runs the entire six blocks. And that's the Vermont Economic Progress Council which reviews municipalities and they oversee our TIF program if you will and they've said yes to that but you need to get your voter approval, and that's what we're facing that's we're bringing to the voters in this ballot. That's a recap I think it's important we've been talking about ballot question number four before the Burlington city voters, which isn't really a question to approve TIF financing for a project that contemplates the upgrade of main street from the battery street to Union. So, just to clarify, as Laura Wheelock senior engineer at Department of Public Works has said, the vote is on the financing question, and the design work and the community input and feedback is happening now and the design will happen following the approval of this, of this ballot question. So I want to thank you both Brian Pine director of CETO and Laura Wheelock senior engineer at Department of Public Works. Thank you for bringing up that slide if you have more questions on this ballot item or any of the town meeting 2022 ballot questions, please go to Burlington VT.gov. And of course stay tuned here to town meeting television self named to celebrate democracy and local democracy and all of its forms so thank you for watching and thank you for joining us. Have a great weekend. Thank you, thanks for having us. Bye bye. Welcome back to town meeting televisions continuing coverage of town meeting 2022. Today we are with two citizen advocates walk safety advocate Tony Reddington and advocate Michael Long, who are interested in talking about ballot question number four before the Burlington city voters and the ballot question number four pledges the credit of the city to secure indebtedness for public improvements within the downtown tiff district. And that would be this question has to do with financing improvements on Main Street, which is part of the tiff district in Burlington, between Union and battery street. We've heard from city officials about what that proposal is. Tony and Michael have some comments and questions that they are raising concerning that we wanted to hear from them. So why don't we start with you Tony, and you can tell us your view of ballot question number four before the Burlington voters. You're muted. So let's get you actually I was going to go first Lauren. Okay, great. Thanks, Tony. I'm Michael Long, and I'm here to talk about a tiff. I have a little bit of a different perspective than, than Brian does. I've in fact I've had kind of a revelation about tiff over the years as as Brian noted, the first tiff district was established on the back in 96. And I was supportive of tiff in those days, because tiff seemed kind of like a magical financing tool that we could borrow a lot of money and make a lot of great improvements on the waterfront which we all enjoy have enjoyed for many years and it wouldn't raise our taxes. It was kind of a win win, borrow money, don't have any more taxes to pay, and everything is great, kind of like free money. So over the years, I started to wonder about that. And I discovered that there's a lot more to it than than free money and that that claim that your taxes don't go up is not really accurate. So from my perspective now, tiff is a public financing tool, but not a really good or an honest one. When somebody's when we when we see something that seems too good to be true. Often we find out later that it is too good to be true and that's been my experience with with tiff tiff does damage, even when it funds worthy projects. We can fund great things but it's not the right way to fund them and there are there are other ways Brian suggested it's kind of our only alternative. But I think just a straightforward. If you want something you bond for it, and then you and then you pay for it. That's the right way to do it because tiff hijacks attacks revenue stream and tended to support schools and city services, and uses those dedicated dollars for other purposes, and whether they're worthy or not that's not the point the point is schools and city services are suffering. We should support and fund worthy projects but not use tiff, because it strips revenue away from those other things that we need and continue to need. So, the basic that there are two false claims that tiff rests on the first one is that your taxes won't go up. And the second one is that tiff debt is paid back by tax increments that is new taxes that didn't exist before and so we didn't have them before. We're not really losing anything when we take that stuff we didn't have before and use it to fund tiff projects well taxes must go up because tiff debt is paid back with tax dollars. If more tax dollars are needed. If we have tiff debt, then if we don't have tiff debt, that's a tax increase. In fact, it's it's somewhat ironic that on the ballot for town meeting day this year, we have a tax increase of five and a half percent that we're being asked to fund and also if we weren't all already paying back tiff debt, we'd have more money to fund city services and we wouldn't need as much of a tax increase, or maybe any any any at all. The, the so called increment is also it's it's it's it's a it's a deeper issue than to say oh, it's an increment and now we're going to use that increment because the increment goes far beyond new taxes from new development. The way that it works is it every year after you establish the baseline year, the original taxable value than Brian alluded to that earlier. I want you establish the base tax value every year after that, any increase goes becomes part of the increment. And for instance, I have a house that I've lived in since 1983 and back in 2011, my taxes were about $6,000. Now in 2022, there are about $12,000. If my house were in a tiff district. Half of those tax dollars $6,000 would be going to the increment. It's not because I developed it or put an addition on or anything like that, just taxes go up. Every property in the tiff district and the downtown area and the waterfront area are places where there's a lot of valuable real estate. Every dollar that goes up on any property there becomes part of tiff and that rob schools and city services of revenue that they would have otherwise they're they're having to exist on revenue from 2011, but it's in 2022, and lots of things have gone up. The YMCA is another example and Brian alluded to the cathedral, which is a property that may be coming into private ownership so the YMCA was a tax exempt property in 2011. The YMCA has zero value on the tax rolls. Now, it's worth more than $3 million, and it pays over $80,000 in taxes, but all of those $80,000 go to tiff. You want to fund tiff projects and it seems like something you want to celebrate, but those are dollars that could be going into schools and municipal services, and it would make it easier to fund those things and, and, and those tax rates would go down as a result, if we had the windfall of the 80,000 from a exit exempt property, going into the tax rolls suddenly. So, the, the, the result is that tiff bleeds more and more dedicated tax dollars from schools and essential city services with each passing year as expenses increase over time. And new development makes greater demands on schools more, more students to educate in new housing that's built, and so forth. Ever larger and larger sums and a greater proportion of those sums from the tax base gets diverted to tip so from my perspective, it's a horrible public policy creates a huge revenue stream for the politicians like to have, but the detriment of schools and city services, and it's, this is a view that we see in from the joint, joint office of the fiscal office it studies for the legislature legislature and I do a screen to share. Oh, I just want to say one thing, we have about 10 minutes left so I just wanted to make sure Tony had some time. Okay, let me, let me move, move on to Tony then and I won't go on to that screen thank you. Okay, great. Thank you so much, Michael. You're welcome. Tony Reddington. Thank you so much and I'm going to put on my little slide show here. My name again is Tony Reddington I live on in Ward three very near on St. Paul Street very near the high crash location at main and St. Paul, where we've had a fatal crash in the past. I responded very immediately when, when this ballot item came up, and a short presentation was given at our neighborhood planning assembly to three last month. I'm on the steering committee there and have been for for a better for about a decade. And I basically feel we should vote no on item four. It amounts to a $32 million blank check to make changes on seven blocks on main street from North South Union at the Jason to the Edmund school to battery street. And for those seven intersections are on the Vermont high crash list, but you wouldn't know it if you were involved in the public discussions over the last several years in fact, as a practical matter. There's no public discussion, a public involvement ended in 2016, seven years ago, and six years six years ago. I haven't to be at one of those meetings and I pointed out to then a planner, make and tell who's now director of planning that in the presentation, after seeing the whole slideshow there was no mention of safety, and her reaction was oh gee I guess we forgot that. Well I think they did, but they forgot a lot more than just safety. There never was an advisory committee. Our NPAs had a pointed people to like for Brian's community development program we've appointed people to the North Avenue quarter study. The rescue corridor study the rail enterprise project, participated in that the Colchester Avenue studies and so forth. But there was never any advisory committee on the on on on Main Street. And yet, it's, it's the, yet our NPA has borders. The seven, excuse me five of the seven intersections between South Union and and the Union Station. So there never was involvement really of anybody. And by the way, NPA one eight NPA six and even NPA five that's a block away, all have direct connections and concerns about the street, not just NPA two three which is down down and over then. Public Works priority. That's a real concern. We've had, we got four high crash intersections, including the one at South, at South Winooski in Maine is the number one highest crash locations in the state of Vermont, yet you didn't hear a mention of any safety issue or or crash problem on any of these intersections in the hour presentation, a couple of weeks ago from the public works and the, and the consultants climate change, a whole hour presentation of by a public works and the results, the words public the words climate change never came up, but we have a city council that said that climate change is a public public health crisis equity fairness to the King Maple neighborhood that that work that that's at the border of two of the high crash locations. We have a public works is going to have a policy of the city council that says racism is a public health emergency. Any discussion of equity by the by the proponents of this. This really well not even thought out process. No, public wants public works basically wants a blank check and without a vague without even a vague plan and a record of never addressing issue at a single one of the 20 high crash locations on the state list. I just want to mention that we have five downtown roundabouts in Vermont. The high crash, the high crash intersections all 20 in Burlington average 1.4 injuries a year real safety problem. The five downtown roundabouts in Vermont in Manchester center month the middle where they average one injury a decade. This is the one in the middle of Manchester center. How about a gold dollar right I was talking. There's been discussions of two alternatives for serving transportation up through from the waterfront to UVM. One of them is a condo right from Union Station right at the end of Main Street straight up UVM to Davis Center with a possible stop at the marketplace. Why wasn't this looked at why isn't it studied where is the leadership in our city. Nice picture, but we all be looking down at the marketplace from this vantage point. North one is keep on this one of these plans. This, this shows that in the one is key quarter study. They did look at the first, the highest crash location intersections state of Vermont. They looked at the gateway intersection to our downtown. The South one is key and Main Street, they came up with a roundabout that easily fits within there. And in fact actually I think it's a little too large is very very smaller. How about light rail. The city looked at light rail, rail study in 1990s and it chose to two basic roots as a priority. Through the from the waterfront through the through the marketplace and up to either up either Main Street or College Street to the UVM and eventually on to University mall. Now we're looking at this for the $32 million we're talking about here. If it was worthwhile, we could fund more than the city share of either one of these projects of gondola or a light rail project. There's a light rail car, which by the way you walk on to and can have a coral for bicycles. Going on to the costs. The high crash intersections, including the one right here at main and St. Paul Street. The one woman was killed in a T bone crash there, a worker at inner 30s from dealer dot com, we are talking about serious injuries and serious costs in regard to all these high crash, these high crash locations. The second line here is the number of intersections for high crash intersections on Main Street. We're talking about eight injuries per 10 years to per year per intersection and $15 million per decade in injury and suffering and economic costs. So, let's say this in terms of the highest crash intersection that averages at South, so at Main Street and in the South. That averages seven at point five injuries per year. And during it, basically economic costs come down to $40,000 a year. Compare that again to the four downtown month here, but roundabouts in Vermont, we have one injury a decade. In comparison, the public works department knows these numbers that refuses to deal with safety as a priority. Our city plan 2011 says investments in transportation. In transportation investments, safety is quote unquote critical. It's not and has not been as a matter of policy. It's got to change because we, we both in the United States with 21,000 excess deaths and Vermont, who contributed to the 15% increase in headdust in the last, last decade. We must change and I think that we the first place the stage to make this change is to require that there be prior planning that we, we vet all of the intersections and that we make safety the biggest key item on any rebuilding of Main Street. So, thank you. I just have to clarify one thing, which is the reason that that unfortunate woman was t boned was because of a drunk driver not because the failure of the intersection isn't that true. No, that's that's actually not true. Yeah, they've been around about that intersection, the car that hit her, but I don't know the person was was actually joined, but I do know that he was being chased by the police, which brings up a question, why was he being chased by the police. But the point is, no, the, the, you bring up a good point line plan, and that is that we must begin to recognize that speed is what kills on our town or city highways. And Chapin Spencer says all the time all we have all these 25 mile an hour streets, we're going to add more 25 mile streets, the 20 intersections that are high crash in Burlington are mostly 25 mile an hour streets, but they don't have the physical characteristics to slow traffic down to not 25 we should in most cases in our downtown areas old North and South and so we really want the speeds down to 20 miles an hour. That's the new goal and the new paradigm that was announced by US Secretary of Transportation beat Buddha judge just last month. So no, the, the, the, I'm, I right now, and able to walk just about everywhere without going through a intersection from where I'm living into the various long church street. I didn't realize until I moved here down to this particular location, what a blessing it is not to have to deal with a single pushing of a button, we're waiting for cars to clear looking for cars as I'm going across worried about being somebody blown a red light or So no, we need to start replacing the as most modern communities and even in the United States and countries that are way ahead of us and safety, start retiring our traffic signals but most importantly, in this case we haven't even we haven't even wanted to look at these intersections to look at safety. So, and also just to clarify, and then Michael if you have a closing comment but just to clarify so this battle question number four is a question about to financing. It's, it's primarily a financing question. And you Michael have talked about the fact that you think that tiff misrepresents its financial benefits in that the incremental the difference between the 170 million that this tiff district was valued at in 2011 and the 285 million that it is valued at now diverts money to these improvements that could be diverted or funneled to school and other city services. Is that correct that that is correct and I think what what is misrepresented often in promoting tiff as a viable and responsible tool is that the notion that those new that increment is all brand new money. And therefore, those other services aren't being compromised in any way, but they, they really are being seriously compromised in California they did away with tiff because of what it was doing to schools. And in lots of places, it's a very controversial and that's kind of a checkered checkered history so I just really realized recently that the way that every dollar of increment goes goes to tip so what you can see is, again, you're, you're, you're working with 2000 2011 dollars to fund those things and in the case of education, it's hurting not only local schools, but schools all over the state because that those those ed fund dollars go to Mount Piliar and then they're redistributed to schools everywhere and Burlington is better able to to provide those dollars and many other places so so everyone suffers from it in that respect. Thank you for clarifying that and then Tony just to make sure I understand this ballot item does describe how the dollars would be used in terms of streets great streetscape improvements stormwater utility. But your position is that it has not been spelled out adequately prior to people voting on the money. What I'm saying is, and the reason I object to this project isn't the streetscape, the pretty pictures are nice, everybody likes the walkway and the bicycle path and so forth that would do. No problem with that. The problem is you have not attacked the basic problem along the street which is speeds at intersections that are not protected in any way, and the speed management probably means roundabouts, as an example in the city. So my objection, you know, I can think of all my but I also look at the alternatives such as the condola left and light rail I think it'd be better investments quite frankly than fixing up Main Street. But the point is that that we we are refusing in this city, we have 150 injuries a year, one a week as a pedestrian a bicyclist to a car occupant. We've given no consideration to investing in the type of infrastructure which is available and routine and now accepted to stop injuring and killing people on our streets. It's the dead bodies. That's the issue. Wonderful. Thank you for clarifying and I really appreciate both of you taking time to lay out your, your questions and concerns about this number four ballot question before the Burlington voters. I think that is to pledge the credit of the city to secure indebtedness for public improvements within the downtown diff tiff district up to $32 million. I think that is the correct number. Somewhere in there between 25 and 30, and that that is going before the voters on March 1. And thank you so much. Be sure to vote your ballot city of Burlington people have come in the mail yesterday or today so there's made as easy as possible. And thank you so much for watching. And I hope you stay tuned to continuing coverage of town meeting 2022 here at town meeting television. Thanks for watching. Thanks.