 I'm going to call this meeting to order. Just want to note in the agenda this week we have some new. Information in it that I'm really glad is there it is just some points about the logistics of how the meeting runs. So. I may say a little bit of a bit of a little bit of a chance to read. The agenda but it's I'm glad it's there because it at least allows people to. They've never been they have a heads up as to. How our meetings work. So again if you're joining remotely please change your name to first your first and last name. If you have any comments please start by saying your name and where you live. If you. Are going to make a comment if you can make a comment. I'm going to make a comment because I anticipate that tonight's agenda is going to be very full. I am going to ask everybody to keep their comments to two minutes. And we'll be timing down is going to help us with timing and she's going to hold up some signs that will show when people are at one minute and. And then if you're at two minutes then you'll get the stop sign so. If you're at two minutes or online. I'll just will I'll look to what was still okay so we'll still have you hold that up. Okay okay. All right and again if you wish to say anything. You can. Speak to a particular agenda item when that comment or when that topic comes up please keep your comments germane to the topic. And if you wish to speak you need to be called on by me. And so if you have multiple questions please ask them all together so that we don't get into a back and forth. And if you go on too long or you're not making germane comments or whatnot then I may interrupt you and ask you to stop or modify your behavior. All right so. Next thing is to review and review the agenda. The only. Item that I think that we are changing really is we're not going to do the VRC Confluence Park item the Vermont River Conservancy so that is not going to happen tonight. Any other changes to the agenda that folks. Know about or would like to suggest. Okay so with that will consider the agenda approved. And I think that's a great opportunity for any anyone who. Anyone really to address the council on a topic that is otherwise not on our agenda. If the topic is on the agenda then there's usually a time when that item comes up for you to comment. Okay so. For now. If it is not on the agenda then you can. If it is not on the agenda then there's usually a time when it is not on the agenda. If it is not on the agenda then there's usually a person so if you would like to make a comment come on up to the Mike and Donna if you would. Move. I feel like we got to move that Mike. Yeah you're good. Yeah. Right. I just had a question. Yes. When there's like. 16 to 25 items on the agenda. How they will. Make allotments for people to speak. Wondering. Is there ever a time when the council has meetings every week or every. You know how does that work when there's so many. If a lot of people want to weigh in but. I don't know if that can be answered. I don't know if that's appropriate right now is there anything else that you wanted to say about that okay. You know that's a great question. Actually the city manager and I have talked about that possibility but it's. It's a lot to meet every week and so we try to address things that are. Timely or urgent. But that's also one of the reasons why having. Two minute. Limit is really key. To keeping the meeting. Moving so. But you know to be fair if we ever were to actually. Really run out of time. I would imagine but I don't know that that is. Really. Sometimes we'll just go very late with a particular item. That would mean if we weren't able to reach a decision and more people wanted to weigh in that we would probably. Included on another agenda. And take it up again so thank you very much. If you would say your name and where you live. Thank you. All right. I was just wondering is there's something that we could do. Maybe on a little bit more. About the bike safety. Really really. You know I. I had almost had an incident. Just starting this year out. I was going down. Main Street. And as I'm approaching. Which was it. School Street. Down here yes school street. Bicycle is just. Straight through the intersection. I would really hate to hit somebody. I understand. People like riding bicycles and want to be bicycles. But it's been very dangerous on our streets here. And when in an automobile in an automobile. It's it's hard. We've got pedestrians everywhere. We've got people coming in and out of parking spaces doors opening. We've got a lot. I would just like. To look at. A little bit of order. On the streets. I mean when it says stop you stop. When you have lanes to turn. You know like going on to. State Street. Or going straight. You don't go over into the other lane. Go through the red light and go over. I mean you can just sit right here. On the steps and see a whole bunch of it. You know all the time. I really don't want to hit anybody. I don't want to lie in bed. You know a few years from now saying boy. That person I wonder what he's doing and you know what I mean how you think there's got to be some accountability for bicycles on the street. I want people to enjoy their bikes. But man nobody wants to get hurt. I know I don't want to be involved with it. And it's been going on for too long. You know I mean even one time last year. Right here. Memorial. Northfield and Maine. I'm over at the mobile gas station. And there was even a police officer in a car on memorial to turn on to Maine. And a bicyclist coming right down Main Street. Goes right through the red light right in front of the cop. And goes right onto Berlin Street. And I'm like what the hell is this. Please. Obey the laws of them. I'm sure Mr. Gowans doesn't want to pick up bicyclists either for recklessness. Just more safety can we have it. And of course the rules on the road. Thank you. I don't care. So Donna if we get to much past two minutes let me know. Two and a half. Yeah. We get to like three. Okay. All right. Anyone else in person. I mean public park. Yeah. Has been a little bit of a nuisance lately. What we're trying to clean it up. Can I interrupt you here real quick. We're actually going to talk about that really soon. If you are you going to be here. My two minutes. No that's fine. Okay. I'm sorry. Can I finish. Sure. I'll let you man. Yeah. We do. Great. Thank you. I did hear Lucian asked for clarification when that instruction was being given. And there was no system to ask for clarification. So. But for those of folks that need to be included. I appreciate you cutting them some slack until they get familiar with the system. I've got pending public records requests. For some for summer on unexplicable reason the city manager refuses to obey the law and certify that requested records do not exist. It's an attempt to cover for the eventuality that they turn up and him be caught in another lie. So the law says that if you're not don't produce the records and or don't claim the exempt you have to certify that they don't exist by that name or any other name. Now I've been asking for any forecast of the. Projected sewer rate increases for the 716 million dollar bond. And I find it very hard to believe that no one did the due diligence to warn the voters of how much their sewer rates might go up with a 16 million dollar bond. But despite repeated requests and gentle reminders that you know I have to teach our city manager how to obey the law I still get no legally qualified response. There's still inches of mud silt and sand all over the town no improvement at all since two weeks ago when I brought it up on dry days it blows in everybody's face and everybody's food on wet days it's mud in the middle of a crosswalk sometimes inches deep there's no excuse for that and no street sweeper is going to fix it it's going to take a shovel in a man with a wheelbarrow or a truck or a woman to shovel that stuff up and it's on damn near every street from 1 to 3 inches of thickness and I brought it up a few weeks ago and as usual we get no response the sidewalk there's apparently no plan to remedy the sidewalk damage that is a serious health hazard and trip hazard I bring it up recurringly and there's apparently no plan in place anywhere of how we're going to fix those and when potholes likely are shifting the cost to the poorest people who are damaging their vehicles that's going to cost us a lot of maintenance so while our city manager gets rich taking millions of dollars out of this town and putting us further in the hole for deferred maintenance it's going to cost us much more to fix it later I would just point out Stephen that all of the accusations that you make of the city are addressed in the weekly memo so if you would like answers I would recommend to because I was not here at the last meeting to say that insulting members of our staff by calling them names is always inappropriate and well I cannot accept that behavior which is not tonight necessarily but was at a previous meeting alright okay so we'll go to people who are with us digitally oh yes sorry go ahead so just to catch you up if you would say your name and try to keep your comments in two minutes okay yeah this is for new ideas new on the agenda right if it's not on the agenda I haven't looked thoroughly so I'll just try to keep it short and then I'll go to Helen my idea was to kind of inquire about new building projects I know you guys are working on a re-zoning and that's exciting and people are talking about housing right and so I sport building housing and we talked about it needs to be a bigger for the infrastructure to be worth the cost you know you need to have sort of a big plan in mind and so I thought it might be a humanitarian or it might be a nice or necessary thing to ask whatever companies building on land to also donate or put together plans for green spaces at least in the community to also make a commitment to that I think that's a big deal we need a dog park to you know just basic things like that so that really sums it up just incentivizing these companies or requiring them by some sort of provision and negotiations that you should and have to contribute to the building of recreational spaces or maintenance thereof so that's just a little idea I do yeah right nearby alright okay anybody else in person for a comment that is on a topic not on our agenda okay alright so we'll go to folks who are with us virtually and I'm going to go in the order that you're appearing on my screen anyway so we'll start with Peter Kelman go ahead I'm Peter Kelman I live in Montpelier on Mountain View St. Mary Messier's question about loaded agendas and giving people a chance to be heard are you hearing me Donna sees to be gesturing yeah we're working on turning you up right now okay how's that that's better thank you Peter Kelman, Mountain View St I just wanted to respond a little bit to Mary Messier's question about giving people more of an opportunity to speak without adding too much time to the agenda I know that the city is currently working with can capital area neighborhoods to get a chance for the coordinators and I'm a coordinator in our neighborhood to meet with our our district members of the city council and to back and forth that would be a great opportunity for people who can't show up at city council meeting or can't wait until 11 o'clock p.m and without and really give people a chance to talk more about their smaller concerns like some of the things we've already heard this morning this evening which we hear during the first two minutes of the meeting so I would encourage the city councilors to all take advantage of that can initiative and to have those kind of meetings thank you thank you Vicki Ann Lane, go ahead okay I would like to address I guess address I guess you addressed it too but when making public comments it seems as though a public comment may be completely completely lost in the accusations and innuendos and everything else if there's an important point to be made it's gone I think if somebody has something they really feel is important to say then saying it without the accompanying attack on a person would be very helpful I tend to turn off the minute I hear turn off my brain to even listening to the person whenever I hear the first conversation out of their mouths thank you thank you Zac Hughes, go ahead Zac Hughes prospect Montpelier three different things one I would like to congratulate Dan Richardson on his appointment to superior court judge and I would just like to offer congratulations no we lost you there thank you yeah hang on one second I will be turned off by nasty emails or communications so I urge my sensory felt sensory to communicate in a good way so that we can get things accomplished being nasty about things I just don't understand why when we can communicate we're going to be frustrated last night I got into a debate with somebody on Facebook with people we were frustrated but we weren't nasty about it the other couple things is I appreciate the guidance on the agendas we call that our discomfort agreement where I work in our meetings we call it discomfort agreement and finally I want to commend staff and whoever it was the lighting in the hallways lighting up automatically that's cool thank you Zach I want to let you know that you cut out there for a minute between congratulating Dan Richardson and asking folks to be civil if there was anything different in there I just wanted to really quickly say to staff whoever it was whose idea that was the lighting in the hallways the city hall lighting up automatically that's cool thank you okay thank you alright anybody else in person or virtual excuse me okay not seeing anybody so we are going to move on to the consent agenda is there a motion Jack go ahead is there a second okay there's a second any further discussion about the consent agenda okay all in favor please say aye aye and opposed okay so the consent agenda passes so we have a no-mo-may resolution and for that I think it's Jack do you want to talk about that yeah I'll talk about that we all know that there's been a tremendous problem of pollinators across the state and across the country suffering population loss and so what I've I just started reading recently that a number of cities in Wisconsin have taken up the the cause to encourage and foster pollinator growth by encouraging the citizens to refrain from mowing their lawns through the month of May because late spring early summer the month of May is the time when pollinator populations are building up and becoming more active and so the proposal is and the resolution is in the packet I'm not going to read it to people that we encourage people in Montpelier to mow their lawns in the month of May give the pollinators a chance to to grow start pollinating gardens and wildflowers and that's about it great thank you is there a motion regarding this resolution I move that we adopt the resolution motion in a second any further discussion okay all in favor please say aye aye and opposed thank you and thank you for bringing this up this is great to encourage folks to not mow for the month of May I know I'm not usually the environmental guy here so I thought well I'd do that we all are right a little bit yes Donna just along those lines when the cemetery stopped mowing because of not having the staff they've continued that so the spring is wonderful for wildflowers in the Green Mountain Cemetery people should check it out good to know alright so we are skipping the Vermont River Conservancy items so now we're going to talk about the Gerton Park structure on the site that's 12 to 16 May the way we're going to structure this time Bill if you have anything I'll let you have dibs and then we'll go to the chiefs because I know they have some comments that they want to make then if there are questions that we have for any of those folks will have questions just from council then you want to hear from the public that'll be the public's opportunity to give us your thoughts and then we'll have a discussion as a council about what we want to do so we'll start from there and then we'll get started okay if there's anything you want to say well I would say I guess that I started this conversation this spring a couple meetings ago by noting that we had a huge amount of calls taking a lot of public resources responding to this location both police fire and others and my recommendation was that we remove it and the council will have a meeting this week and there was also a special meeting that was held and a lot of conversation being held and that has continued on to this week I attended the homelessness task force meeting today and there was a good deal of conversation there about it as well I do know that both chiefs have more specific information other than just sort of me saying it and I know I would like to address that and I think it remains where we are but we certainly respect the public process and understand that it's the council that makes these decisions thank you so at this point I'm going to invite the chiefs up to the table either way whatever you would like to do good evening Robert Gallin's on the fire chief I wonder can you talk into the mic got it that's why I should have stood over there so again Robert Gallin's fire chief wanted to talk a little bit about our responses to there and my feelings on whether that park should remain in place so since the park has been there we've responded there we've responded to fires three times with an actual fire truck we've gone three times to put out a fire in addition to that our duty officers on two separate occasions have walked over we didn't take a fire truck over but the duty officer would walk over and address people burning they were having fires that was on two separate occasions and then it was it was either three or four weeks ago on a Saturday I myself went there three times I was going by there was a fire I stopped asked them to put it out they said they would and it took two more additional times of me going over there to ask them to put the fire out in addition to that we've had since it's been there we've had 13 ambulance calls they range from medical emergencies to drug overdoses to intoxication highly intoxicated and then finally fights and assaults that's a lot if we had that many calls at one of our bars or restaurants if we responded that many times we'd be asking questions we'd be trying to figure out what's going on so I think that's a lot so I agree with the city manager I believe it's time to remove the Gerton Park and what I think we should do is put it somewhere where it's safe I don't know if that would be the public works garage so some dump put it somewhere where it's safe and continue this public discussion until we can figure out what to do with it and the best place for I'm afraid somebody's going to get seriously hurt there if we continue to do what we're doing either leave it there or move it to another spot on that somebody's going to get seriously hurt so I think we should remove it continue the public discussion figure out the best solution for the best place for it and then relocate it not yet thank you not yet you know what go ahead Lucian he's right it has been a nuisance but removing it just shows our students and our kids that any hard work that they ever did is worthless yeah you got a bunch of bad apples in the seed it doesn't mean telling our new youth that anything they do in hard work there was nothing it was built in 2017 so you're telling that whole generation that their hard work was meaningless the guy who helped built it with them showed up because we cleaned up after the people who make a nuisance of it after them it's not all of us I mean as a homeless person right now I get what he's saying I do I mean I find it appalling but we still do it we still clean up that's one another and we still try to show that our future generations work is not worthless you keep wanting them to stay here if you tear down the stuff they built that ain't saying stay that's serious thank you thank you I will go now to Chief Pete good evening Madam Mayor members of the City Council members of the public Brian Pete with the Montpelio Police Department just in regards and other follow ups some of the just in bullet point format that again from what we've been seeing there lately that we're not seeing that the Montpelio Police Department is more of a congregational place it's not an issue of folks who are actually living at the park right now it's more of a congregational area that there have been several open fires that have been seen reported in and around the shelter that the Montpelio Police Department has observed a majority of those who respectfully who have fallen asleep at the structure have done so because of intoxication with most all leaving during the night time in areas rather than staying there rather than using that actual shelter each time the Montpelio Police Department and the Fire Department have been called to disturbances or incidents at the shelter social services and assistance for placement for housing just for social support have been offered all time at every time and most if not all always has been refused so we are approaching this with a trauma informed approach but the focus is on the behavior of what's going on at the structure brief and formal discussions with pedestrians business owners revealed that there are unreported complaints that we don't know about or have not formally been told about and concerns of fights that have not been reported to the Montpelio Police Department potential drug sales and use it is NPD's observation that the behavior and the activity cause other members of the public to avoid use of the space including those who do who are experiencing homelessness for concerns of their own safety the Montpelio Police Department has observed members of the public enabling substance abuse disorders to those who are at the parklet by providing alcoholic beverages to those who are congregating in the area and that the Montpelio Police Department is concerned that any relocation of the structure along the bypass will result in the same issues and complaints that the council is attempting to address and resolve right now I'm not targeting folks who are going through a hard time right now it's a very difficult conversation and how do we deal with how do we help those who are there who are struggling with substance abuse, mental health issues or anything else that's going on and how do we reach that but the other issue is just to us it's safety it's behavior and it's what it might escalate to in other places Thank you Any questions Yes Donna, go ahead I think we have The individuals who are having the issues of behavior problems that are acting out in any way harassing others or hurting themselves they're still going to be in our community where are they going to go and why does that make it less of a problem I think that's a very good valid point and respectfully I don't think that it's necessarily the council's task if you will it's a very impossible task to try to identify a location where folks may be able to congregate but then also keeping in mind what type of behavior happens in those congregational spaces so I think that there have been some folks who have been in that location but because of past behavioral issues the other locations they can go to whether they can stay there whether they can congregate or anything else of that effect they're no longer welcome in those locations because of past behavior so it's a difficult situation but again it's just more or less along the lines of behaviorism because we can come there every day we can say I have a social worker I have somebody from Good Sam I have the Community Justice Center it takes two to reciprocate it takes us to outreach but if folks aren't willing to take the services or the help that we're offering as a collective community I have no other answers other than what their behavior is doing through the rest of the community and how do we weigh that so if they were like they used to be several people over near the bridge were hoping to have a confluence park I mean there were incidents there I would see the ambulance or I see the police it's the same sort of thing just in a different location so when you look at the whole city has that behavior increased or is it because they're so collective we're so aware of it I think that what happened with the behavior is that now it's out in the open and even when we respond to these incidents keeping in mind that every time not only is when we're offering social services but when we're trying to resolve the situation by taking the bad apples who are being disorderly the other parties whom they've assaulted are refusing to cooperate as well so that there's nothing at that particular point in time there's nothing that we can do but offer services but the reports that we have gotten when it has been along the park line that behavior is still not acceptable when you're having sex on the park benches when you're urinating and defecating in drug use or sales or even offering asking kids to buy alcohol or offering to sell or when kids are coming thinking that hey they might have drugs I can buy from them and then the other complaints about safety relating to kids who don't want to use the bike path or other folks who don't want to use the bike path not just the upper crust of society if you will but just normal everyday people keeping in mind that there are some folks who are experiencing the same problems and difficulties but they don't want to go to those same areas because they're concerned of their safety as well thank you yes Matt Jack some of the things that you've described are ordinance violations or actual criminal acts have there been arrests or citations no we have not so there are two issues or there are two things that we've been looking at regarding how our involvement would be as the first is that when we do respond to the scenes again if there's like an actual criminality that the law recognizes that substance abuse disorders are a health issue not something not a criminal type of an issue so it's not the fact that anyone may be intoxicated or may be using intoxicants it's the issue of the behavior that may result in that unfortunately offer that often does result so when a crime has occurred when there's a fight there for example we're not when we ask the victim of the incident they would like to for us to do anything about it they often always refuse and then whatever street justice is going to happen is going to happen so today's victim is going to be tomorrow's offender so that's what so we need that reciprocity from the person who's been victimized and then on the other end of it we in light of the police review committee's recommendations we're still trying to keep ourselves in a holding pattern to determine what that response from the police department should look like so when we're seeing things like folks who are doing the littering when we're seeing those more than municipal ordinance violations we're not doing anything about those because we're still waiting to see how we what direction we should go for thanks yes Carrie and then Connor just to follow up on what you just said that you're waiting for direction and I apologize if I missed something from an earlier meeting or is there some specific guidance from the police review committee or from elsewhere that's telling you to stop and wait and not do anything that you're waiting for well no ma'am so the the specific instance that's going on there is this pretty much consuming intoxicants in the public area and that is the primary issue that we be dealing with so to my understanding is before COVID that we've had a rash of community complaints regarding some of the behaviors along the bike path and that the Montpelier police department had went in and tried to address this with folks tried to work with the folks who were involved in it and it just got to the point that we were issuing municipal ordinance citations and then as it as the citations went up through the courts through the ordinance process they were actually all dismissed not for that the Montpelier police department were harassing people or we weren't doing our jobs correctly it was just that the courts themselves decided we're not going to handle an ordinance violation so that kind of leaves us with no T at this particular point in time to deal with behavioral issues so one of the specific recommendations that came out of the police review committee was was the recommendation to to repeal the ordinance regarding folks who are drinking in public and that's why we're in a holding pattern that when I'm seeing somebody who's walking down the street with two cases of 24 cans of beer drinking I'm not doing anything about that and so you talked about people setting fires for instance or building fires and is that what are you doing in response to that for instance right now well I can let the chief respond to that but from our standpoint we're putting the fires out and it's one of those things that if it's more or less of a minor unwitness misdemeanor type of an issue if it's not an arson of a building fire or something per se it's the courts are going to look at it pretty much in the same way so Vermont law is a little quirky okay and in accountability in my are you looking for guidance from us about what to do in situations like that leaving aside the public drinking question which I know we're getting to later well I think that more or less along the lines that we want to make sure that we emphasize the approach that the Montpelier police department uses as we're responding to these types of calls for service to quality of life life issues as you will and we want to make sure that we reinforce what our strategy is and how we go about doing policing and to make sure that it's conducive to what the council wants us to continue doing again we don't just arbitrarily go out looking for somebody and then you know issuing a citation or arrest there's an entire process that gets up to a point that we want to handle at the lowest level possible and without involvement in the criminal justice system thank you Connor thanks so much chief I want to say I appreciated the way you framed it a couple of weeks ago that like is we may fancy ourselves geniuses around here but we're not fixing homelessness right no matter what we do we don't have the resources we're kind of lay people in this area so you know we're learning like everybody else and they said today in homelessness task force I'm pretty convinced whatever decision we make tonight is going to be a bad decision right because there's going to be unintended consequences you know people are not going to be happy no matter what we do I think what I'm trying to and I'm taking this approach like just want to do the least harm possible right that's best we can do like the least harm and to me it's I think the question is like by the virtue of existing is this structure inviting bad behavior and dangerous situations that would not exist otherwise or if we remove it is it just going to push it into the shadows and it's still going to happen but we'll be getting less complaints and is there any benefit I think would be the question in having it in a public place where your officers could develop a familiarity with the population in a centralized location and sort of suss out okay you know sometimes been drinking but like he's not dangerous right and could that result in less bad outcomes in a situation in the future there I don't know if I'm articulating that well but having a centralized place I know the service providers are saying that's a real benefit I can just go sit on the you know and I can direct them to the services but I just want to go in like eyes wide open and okay if it's less complaints if it leaves that's a discussion we're having there but you know we should be honest with ourselves yes sir and again this is no very easy decision for you all to have to make and so I'm definitely not envious of you but I know that I know that everyone's heart is in the right place that there's nothing malicious or vindictive in the conversations that folks are trying to have here and that it's a very complicated situation I think as far as like a centralized congregational spot whether the shelters there or whether there will always be a spot that we will become aware of because there are numerous calls of service so whether the shelter goes away and that folks decide that they want to congregate in another area then then we will know where that area will be soon based on the volume of calls of services that we're going to get the officers do have very good relationships with folks we know folks who are who are at the parklets who are experiencing homelessness who are congregating those areas they know who we are so that relationship is there so when we're reaching out hey have you talked to Susan LaMaria have you talked to Good Sam so those conversations happen on a very very frequent basis my whether I think that no one can control the behaviors or anything that's going to happen in that specific area that no matter what the council decides to do you're not going to be able to control it so whether the state is there or move someplace else you're not going to be able to control that issue but my other concern regarding that is necessarily the safety of the individuals who are at the parklets who are being attacked by other folks who are congregated there so those are the safety issues that I'm thinking about so I don't think it's going to be one of those things that when the parklet goes away everybody anticipates or expects the behavior to stop from some individuals because it won't relocate to another area but you may not have as many thefts from some of the merchants in the area you may not have as many quality of life complaints related to urination, defecation or people witnessing fights that are triggering and in some cases extraordinarily violent so it's one of those things it's like yes it's going to happen I don't think it's an issue of anyone who might try to shame folks and saying you just don't want to see what's going on in society you didn't create that issue you're doing your best to try to remedy as best as possible but whether the council can truly control the behaviors that are going on there is beyond your grasp respectfully Any other questions for the chief sorfer okay all right thank you and so at this point we are going to move to public comment so if you are here in person we will start with you and again Donna is going to keep time for us and hold up signs to try to keep folks to two minutes and make sure that everybody is aware of is that I am not going to allow folks to go multiple times so whatever you've got to say yeah get it said and you've got one opportunity there so I think that's all that I wanted to say about that all right go ahead now is a good opportunity to say your name and where you live Hi my name is Chris I recently relocated down here and I've heard great many points about the parks that you all are talking about when I first came down here I I went to the shack and I got help there I've been going through a rough time I'm staying at the hotel so I needed help and guidance and I went there and it was given to me you know the counter culture that we're all talking about I guess I think the main points are safety health fire issues and respectfully I agree completely as far as the safety with the fire thing goes I mean we got to look at the stats we got to look at Burlington quality and head over 38 overdoses last winter the fire thing is legit the park is pretty wide open and everything and I agree that is a safety thing but I think and also the officers talking about the behavior of people of that culture and out on in the park is a concern also the violence and the health thing the safety thing with the fire are very good points but what I think about the solution to everything is I think that like a mediator between the police between the fire chief between the city council the people that really generate and are at this place are very they're very they're good people so the communication I think needs to be gapped some sort of mediator between the police and people who are going there I think that it should stay I think maybe there should be a port-a-potty and I think also maybe some shower places for people who are homeless I recently am homeless as of Monday I have to be out by Friday because of certain rule-breaking at the hotel so I'm now homeless I just believe that there should be some sort of solution to mediation and you know as far as the stigma within the community with our young people I have seen many times young people bring up pizzas they bring up boxes of food to us and we have people who take them from them and we have great conversations with them we kid with them we teach them you know we're not all there just getting wasted and fighting and starting fires Chris I'm going to interrupt you just wrap your thoughts up basically I think my thoughts are I think the solution can be within a communication between the police or communicative with the people that are there at the shack and maybe a bathroom and a place to shower for homeless people so I have a thank you anyone else in person no you may not I've been speed up for touching the microphone so the quality of life I hear about this quality of life and I ask whose life and I hear about all these crimes how about the crimes of reckless indifference and negligence by the council you've had two and a half years of the homelessness task force you still don't have available bathrooms you still don't have available you know phone charging etc so you really need to own this your own delays and procrastination how long has the toilet committee met yet so there's another example it was six months ago and the toilet committee hasn't met it was following on the homelessness task force that was supposed to deal with toilets so we hear that there's a huge amount of calls I can tell Frazier coached his two witnesses to try to get this thing yanked out from under the homeless but the huge amount of calls there's no paper trail I've got a public records request there's no evidence of any huge amount of calls it's very irresponsible to claim huge amount of calls and not have a paper trail of who's calling about what no arrests and no citations even for the vandalism the donated chairs you know maybe that's still under investigation and that whoever smashed the chairs who I know who smashed the chairs that that one is prosecutable and restitution etc but you said an example that anything was with no consequences but also I wouldn't bother calling the cops because they still haven't owned up to acknowledge stealing Billy's beers when you steal unopened beers from a homeless person and you can't have the integrity to own up to it and replace them you've lost the credibility of those who were assigned to enforce it so your fires are harmless on an unburnable hill it's cold outside people need to have some sense of warmth this is a manifestation and enlargement of your own creation and I resent that you narrowed to two minutes you let some people pontificate on and on and then you narrow the people who've done the heavy lifting on this issue for a long time to two minutes it's very hypocritical anyone else in person yep yep sure I wasn't going to speak tonight but I guess I will here I did write a post on front porch forum about it I think what Steve just said about fires I don't think that's a nothing thing just because it's an open lot it's something that's important the wind comes up you know it's dangerous I would really like to see the drinking I would like to see public drinking stop I mean I'd like to see people are always going to hide their drinks and stuff but I would like to see it enforced enforced you know I just don't think it's right and it leads to problems and the place itself a small closed in area that's inviting trouble you put that anywhere lots of kids or other people and you know you're going to get some bad behavior I'd really like to see that be a park if possible I don't know how much it costs to have it investigated for a pollution that might be underneath I think it could be a great park and I'd like to see that so I'm on the fence about tearing it down we like opened up more windows and I know that the feeling about people needing privacy but it does create a situation where bad behavior can happen and sometimes not be seen until it escalates so you know I'm really torn about it but in the future I would really like to see that made into a park and I'm looking forward to hearing from other people what they have to say because I think people can have some great ideas I'd really like to hear those productive ideas but I'm really sensitive to how things are going and even you know many people are triggered by things that go on there fighting I don't like the litter so I guess that's how I'll sum it up thank you anyone else in person I'll have a comment about your park here we go I want to look back my name is Susan Merchant thank you but I want to look back on minutes from the special meeting on April 7 and Peter Kelman stated something and he seconded and Morgan said that homelessness and the gazebo are not the same problem okay homelessness has nothing to do with that structure I said this today and you were on the zoom I think you could put that structure on the moon and you're gonna have the same people come okay we're still gonna have Diane and Mike out there trying to break up the fights okay I came in like last summer and it was like brought it up again at homeless you're gonna have an encampment issue here in a couple weeks these hotels are gonna kick out there's gotta have you gotta have somewhere for people to go okay yeah there's a professional homeless and this time you could give them a mansion on the beach with a service and everything and they're still gonna go camp out okay you're gonna have to have don't you give me that one minute sign woman please I just I just don't do that no don't laugh cars stop you're gonna have to do something about I know about the floodplain and all that crap I get that but honestly somebody's gotta be somewhere you're gonna have to beg for the body somewhere I will put concrete blocks around it myself I don't care seriously you're gonna face the same issues over and over and over again it's not gonna stop like I said you put that sucker on the moon and they're still gonna come and you block spaceship there okay go ahead but seriously guys like get it together and I'm willing to help like we had issues today like on task force like let's go look at what other cities are doing in Burlington with the pods like talk to their law enforcement there's you're the part of the solution or part of the problem one or the other that's it thank you so I'm caught on my left hand yes I know there were a couple hands back there oh yeah go ahead Thomas Fallon again how do I follow everyone's you know my talent is to hear accusations hear fierce words and hear also the goodwill behind them and thinking I have these same thoughts and I love that there's so many people in this room that remind me of the genius and how do I how do I sum that up it's about morale increasing morale we sort of I mean hearing about the history of these issues especially something like a bathroom public restroom I mean if you don't want to deal with urine and things like that please provide these resources my question do you genuinely is what do you need do you need a drawing do you need a plan I will work with the architect I have been trying to field opinions we just need to know what is actually necessary purely budgetary is that the issue we will do a go fund me we will figure it out we just want support and to be heard Susan's been an amazing arbitrator but she's just one person she's drawing attention to the issue that these service providers are digital we're all sort of hiding at home a lot of times behind our computers and so do they but what if you don't have a home and the shelters closed and you don't want to go up to your tent and just hang out by yourself or drink alone these issues I think they bring us together as a community to expose the weaknesses so it's way too much to talk about this all at once you guys need to parse these issues out it can't just be all about the park you have to really incentivize the discussion on tackling homelessness so my idea with with any new money coming into town any new building projects I'm not standing in the way I would love for that to happen and I mentioned before please incentivize them give them stipulations that they must give back to local humanitarian organizations invest in parks creation of park spaces in Montpelier myself I like to go to pocket park but sometimes I feel there's a violent atmosphere so I walk away and there's not much else to do in town besides you know walk so we want more green spaces give people give people that that opportunity to enjoy a bike path but have somewhere to go that they can enjoy I'm sorry I'm repeating myself yes the alcohol the public drinking we I mean I myself have experienced an immense sense of gratitude towards the police force for their humanitarian approach to this issue I feel we're making progress last meeting about people actually wanting to to renovate the space because it's at the front of our city Thomas I'm going to interrupt you if you wind up your comments again it's hard to wrap it up but I'll end somewhere okay yeah so you know the be all end all is if this discussion is about that specific space please beautify it please give us a way to collaborate with you I again I say I am willing to help work with architect to draw plans whatever work we need it we just need to know what are the obstacles and how can we tackle them we want bathrooms okay in two years thank you announce or you can the chat for public comment one time but thank you okay thank you so much thank you anyone else in person which to make a comment that Okay. All right, so we're gonna go to folks who are with us digitally. Zach Hughes, you are up, go ahead. So I'm gonna try this at my cut off, but I will be responding and writing because I don't know if I have enough time to put everything in there. I will just state that, I guess in response to the fire chief and police chief around responsive calls, you know what, we do have to ask questions. And I would like the city in the community to take a big step in the next year and do something big. Look at Burlington and Barrie. Let's do something and I, but I wanna just restress that the city council here has been very supportive on the homelessness task force, but we now have to move forward and do something a little bit bigger. And I'm hoping our funds help us with this. And I have concerns. So again, my big thing though, when you say there's a lot of ambulance calls, I guess I'd rather have the ambulance calls than have someone out in the woods. And this is as real as it gets. So this isn't gonna go away and I'm gonna be very nice about this and not nasty. Thank you very much. Thank you. All right, Peter Kilman, go ahead. Peter Kilman, Montpelier. I sent a proposal to the city council, which is entitled Holistic Framework to Address Needs of All Who Live, Work and Recreate in Montpelier. And I wrote just half of it and I called it, It Takes a Village, addressing the immediate, urgent and tractable elements of this challenge. Obviously too long, I'm not gonna read it tonight, but I just wanna make the first couple of points that I start with, which is that the controversy surrounding the downtown location of Gorton Park structure, as well as a longstanding and worsening situation for unhoused people in downtown, cannot be addressed without recognizing that they are just two important parts of a much larger picture, which is the quality of life of all who live, work and recreate in Montpelier. I have had, I've sent it not only to the city council and the city manager's office, but also to some of our state representatives and a bunch of individuals. I've had some very positive feedback from a lot of those individuals and one person at the state who forwarded it on to other people of the state. I would love to hear back from some of our city counselors about it. I'd love to hear back from the city manager's office as well, because like Zach, I feel that something big needs to happen. Not only that, but I think that something big can happen. And it happened, something big I'm talking about is about 10 different smaller things. Thank you. Thank you. Don Little, go ahead. Thank you. I'm Don Little. I'm a Montpelier resident. I am on the task force, although I'm not speaking officially for them and I do outreach work with people outside. To respond to some of the things Donna said earlier, Gritton Park did not cause the behaviors. If we move the park, the behaviors will not stop. We are just pushing them out of the way to a place which may not be as safe for the people involved. However, I will say that having it right on the street where it is now increases the friction, increases the annoyance level for others in the community and the discomfort, understandably. The other thing it does having it right on the street like that, I know that it's increased a number of erroneous calls that tie up police time. I think that if we did have it back, I think it's good to have it in a central location because there are some safety factors and efficiency factors involved there, but having it right on the street, again, I think that's not a good idea. I don't think it works for anyone involved. Not the people who go there, not the people who have to walk right by them. We essentially moved it from a place where there was friction due to the location and moved it into a busier, more central spot. Also, I would say that having only the one spot there, the weather's bad, causes everyone to gather in one spot if it was dispersed a little bit, as Mary had said at a previous meeting, if there were more than one place to go and sit, people could separate themselves out and that would reduce tension. It may be that not, I don't know when all of the fires occurred, but I do know that some of them occurred during extreme cold, whether when there is no place for people to go to get warm. So having a place where people could get warm on the weekends, for instance, would reduce some of those calls. I've also, the other thing I've noticed is that very often when there is the potential for a serious confrontation that other people there will step in, that they have called the ambulance when it was necessary. However, a lot of people out there don't have phones. This has been a problem, so having it in a relatively central place does allow people to get help. So I guess I'm saying that there is a balance between having it right on the sidewalk where everyone has to walk right by it and having it off where it's not, where it's out of our sight, but it's more of a safety issue for the people involved. All right, thank you. Thank you. Okay, anyone else who is either with us in person or online, Rebecca Kopans, go ahead. Hello. So I've been attending a lot of these meetings and this is the first time I've spoken and I want to tell you about three things that have happened in the last month. I live on Cliff Street. I'm a parent of three children. So I called into the alley going to the hardware store in my car, two people were fighting in the alley, so I stopped on the other side of the sidewalk to let them clear. And then as I was waiting, someone walked over, hit the roof of my car and started screaming at me and swearing at me with my child sitting in the back seat. So I was one. My kids had a bake sale for Ukraine to raise money for Ukraine a couple of weeks ago. And this person was riding his bike from the shelter, dropped a wine bottle in the middle of the street, shattered everywhere, and then he looped around and came and stopped and talked to the kids for quite a while. And he was completely drunk. And it's just, it begs the question, is drunkenness appropriate in town with children? A third one just happened the other day. My son and my husband went to the bookstore. They leaned a bike up against the bookstore. They came out just a few minutes later. The bike had been thrown to the ground and a helmet was the bike helmet thrown in the street. I know, I hear what people are saying that homelessness did not show up with Burton Park, but these issues that I'm noticing in town certainly did. And I, of course, I'm not gonna call the police when a bike gets tipped over or when someone yells at me or when my kids are downtown and a bottle's broken, but it makes me frustrated living in this town. And I have attended all these meetings and this is the first time I've heard, I keep hearing people say, let's just move the structure a little bit to the one side or a little bit to the other side. That is not a solution. And I think we need to think more broadly about, we bought the M&M beverage and tore it down. If we can do something like that, we can buy something like the Econolodge and build transitional housing or something that is more permanent and more that will have a bigger impact that will move people out of homelessness and address the downtown problem. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Any other comments from anybody in person or online? Okay. All right. So this is, oh, Nancy. Oh, I'm sorry. Nancy, I don't know what your last name is. Could you tell us your last name if you- Nancy Bruce, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Go ahead. Thank you so much. So all of these testimonies are so powerful and I got confused about the original item to be discussed. So if you don't mind reviewing that again for me. This is just a discussion about what to do about the Girton Park structure. Yeah. Okay. Is that it? You don't have anything else you wanna say? No, I do, I do. I really appreciate what Chief Pete has to deal with and all of our officers and I really appreciate what's going on from porch forum with people walking up and saying, do you wanna have a place to live? No, we just wanna find a place to rest at night safely. So I really appreciate the complexity of the city council and what you're dealing with and I really appreciate the passions of the people here and I hope that we can find a resolution of people who need a place to sleep safely and in the needs of our police department. So thank you. Thank you. Okay, anyone else who has not yet spoken? Okay. All right, so I'm gonna turn back to the council here, thoughts on what direction you'd like to go. And I guess I'll also preface it by saying this, I appreciate what folks were saying about like this is a really complicated topic and issue and it really, it does feel like there's no winning in a certain sense. So we just have to make the best decision we can. I know there were some comments about public restrooms and so I just wanna address that really briefly. So we do have a committee dedicated to that but actually maybe I can pick on you Connor. We were going to be seeing if there was money from the state to help pay for restrooms because it's in their interest as well. Do you wanna comment on that at all? Yeah, go ahead. We've spoken about this in our legislative committee a bit and we did have Leonine in to talk about that a few weeks ago but I mean, I'll speak for myself. I really think the state does have some responsibility as the capital, as a place where thousands of visitors come for every year to provide public restrooms. To me, it's not much different than our rest area off the highway, which the state does provide right now. And to be honest, like a lot of these problems, again, it's not all the feds, it's not all the state but a lot of this is a result of lack of planning from the state that has result in this situation where a lot of people feel like they don't have the dignity, I think, of places to wash their clothes, take a shower, have lockers. It's a Montpelier issue, but it's really a regional issue. It's folks don't necessarily have a base. So I think it's worth shooting our shot at the legislature a bit. And if there is no capacity, maybe we do have to look at a solution but we're looking at like Burlington as a comparison with things. Burlington's got an $85 million budget. Montpelier's got, what, we're 15, 16? Yeah, it's a horse of a different color, yeah, that's right. All right, thank you. Excuse me, Susan, please don't interrupt, okay? Yeah, well, so, all right. So other thoughts, what is your inclination team? Jack, go ahead. I think that there are a couple of issues that we need to look at pretty clearly. One of them is the structure and the location of the structure. The other is issues of behavior. You know, we've been told on a number of occasions like Susan tonight, Susan Merchant, tonight said, well, the location is not essential that it be where it is, that people will do what they do and hang out whether we have that structure where it is or not. And, but we've also been told on a number of occasions that it's good to have this park in some kind of central location because that's where it's become identified as a place for social service providers to meet up with people. But again, I don't think there's anything magical about where it is now for that either for a couple of reasons. One is that the people who provide social services are pretty good at finding people where they are and they will find people where they are even if they're not hanging out next to the drawing board and next to Shaw's. So I don't think it has to be there. The other thing about social services is that we've been told that when they've been offered they've been routinely rejected by people there at the park and so it makes me question whether that's as important a factor as we think, as we have been thinking that it might be. I think that this is a terrible location for the park and it's also a terrible location for the behavior that we've been hearing about and I don't minimize that behavior at all. I think it is dangerous to people and I think that it is not only to people who are choosing to spend their time there but also to other members of the community as we've heard tonight and concentrating on that. This behavior in these people in one place I don't think is a good thing. Having it be sort of at the gateway to the city is a terrible thing for our city. I really don't see how we can support continuing to have the park on that lot where it is. I don't mean just on that particular space on the lot but anywhere on that lot. I don't see how we can keep it there and I think it should be removed and possibly not move to any place where it's a gathering point at this point until we've got some other planning done about how to address people's needs and then the last thing I wanna say right now is that I hope we haven't given the police department the message that the city council does not want them to intervene in the case of violent and criminal and dangerous behavior. You're speaking for myself, I think we do. I think that that is a primary function of the police and I think the police should know that they will have our support if they do intervene. So that's what I have to say right now. Thank you. I wanna jump in here a little bit as well. I wanna make sure that we are clear on our role at least particularly concerning the police because while we may have some authority to set some policies, we as a council really should not be telling the police how to do their job outside of that. Is that a fair thing to say? That's fair but I think yes and I appreciate you acknowledging that difference but I also think the policy and the type of policing, the level of service that you want in the community is you're elected to represent the community and provide that feedback and it's our goal, our job is to try to make sure we provide the department that matches the community's wishes. So hearing that is still welcome. Right, you wouldn't say I don't want so-and-so to go out on the shift at this time but to say in general this is the type of thing we'd like to see that we can give you feedback whether it works or not. Great, thank you. I wanted to make sure we weren't overstepping. Great, thank you. The other thing I wanted to add here is that just to clarify the choices that we have and what I think might be useful to hear, it seems like we really have three choices that we could make. One is we leave it where it is. Second choice is we move it somewhere where that other place is I don't know or move it to not anywhere in particular as an amenity it goes away at least for a while. So it would be useful to know which of those options is most interesting to you. I also want to bring up some of the conversation that we've had around services that have been provided in this space or at least offered anyway. It's also reminding me not just of the conversation we've had about public restrooms but also about the possibility of some kind of what did we call it? A service provides a warming shelter, right? So that conversation is already moving which I'm really grateful for. And if we had a real warming shelter then this would not be the same conversation. So I want to acknowledge that and that we are moving in that direction and so in light of that, that at least colors how I'm thinking about this and I just want to also offer that I share your opinion, Jack and I also don't see how it can stay where it is at the current time just in terms of the safety concerns that have been raised there both by both police chiefs as well as Don Little I appreciate that her comments about the increased amount of friction that is caused by it being where it is now. Moving it toward is now was an experiment and we have some data now and so we know whether or not this is worked as an experiment. Yes, Don, go ahead. Following up on you and Jack, I think that's really helpful when people have said to separate the two issues because we've always been, I feel like a lot of guilt thinking I want to remove this structure because it's not working the way we envisioned it but separating it makes me say, yes, let's move the shelter where it is now but commit to actually having some clear action of instituting some gathering places more than one that allow people a place to be. So I think we have, I like to do both somehow. Yeah, fair enough. Other thoughts? Jennifer, go ahead. This is a really hard topic and it's very close to my heart because I have been working with homeless populations on both the West and East Coast for 20 years and I've seen a lot of things work and a lot of things not work. And as a former social worker, I feel like we're not helping if we're allowing people in two different groups cohabitate in the same space and by that I mean people that have bad behaviors and folks that just need a place to be. And so I really feel like in this situation because we are, for all intents and purposes, a pretty small, rural place. I'm from Los Angeles, so Montpelier is very tiny to me. Moving it to a place where there are services so moving it to another way I feel like or close to another way would be helpful because the people that want to get services can get those services. And then the folks that don't want services still have a place to hang out. I don't think that it's in everybody's best interest as an outreach worker to just be going to one place because there's people everywhere. There's homeless people all over Montpelier, not just in that spot. And I think there's been so much focus on that spot. I worry that the people that are in the woods already setting up camps aren't gonna be getting the services that they need. And it's a crappy situation all the way around and the city of Montpelier and city council is not gonna fix homelessness. It's a nationwide issue and it has been around as long as I can remember there's always been homelessness issues because of a myriad of reasons and we're not gonna solve it in one night, in one month, in one year, on one little lot in little tiny Montpelier. We need to move it in small. We need to do this in small pieces. And I think figuring out what to do with Gertin Park is the first step. The next step is finding a place for people to go that is a safe space for everybody, like a day shelter, like a drop-in center where there's showers and laundry and places to eat and social workers. If you want them and if you don't want them, you can still hang out there. That is possible. And I would love to see something like that here in Montpelier. We are the state capital. We should be setting some sort of tone. Like this is what we want for all of our community members. Gertin Park is, I feel like it's an insult for folks to go be in mud and I don't know. I just, I would feel much better about people's future and people's safety if it was in a place where amenities and services are a little bit closer. Not that I don't love an Adore-Uzak and Don and all the hard work you do, but you're only two people and it's a lot of work and it's hard work. So that's all. Thank you. Carrie, go ahead and then Connor. Yeah, I first want to thank all the people who spoke tonight and other nights, but particularly tonight, we really heard from people who had direct experience of what's going on there and the impact it has on their lives. And so I really want to thank everybody who shared that. We can't make good decisions without that kind of information. And I also want to echo what several folks have said about the conflation of the problem of what's happening in this structure and the problem of people who are experiencing homelessness and that we can't solve all of this at once. And I am reassured to know that there are conversations happening, that there is movement happening on lots of different fronts, whether it's lockers, whether it's day shelter, whether it's trying to make more affordable housing long-term in Montpelier. And right now we have before us this question of what do we do about this particular structure today right there on the street. And so of the three choices that the mayor outlined, I think leaving it the way it is does not feel like an option to me. And moving it someplace else seems like it could be a possibility but I feel like all the conversations we've had about this so far have been about trying to find a place where it can move to that will be really beneficial to the people who want to be there. And we may or may not be able to find a place like that. And if we can't, then I think we should remove it and continue to work on that question of the place that's beneficial for the people who want to be there but not leave things the way they are while we figure that out. Yeah, thank you. Connor, go ahead. Okay, I've spoken a lot about this over the last few weeks so I'll try to be short. And did you say right off the bat, I think everybody's coming at this with really good intentions. And I was able to run into a bunch of officers the other day and just the humanity they approached this with really says something. And I've seen some interactions there where we have MPD go up and they're always de-escalating the situation. They're such professionals. I think I'm gonna probably stray from the majority on this one, I'm just not there. Again, if I voted to like move this and I think having to write on the streets I tend to follow Don Little on a lot of this stuff may provoke some interactions that just aren't favorable and maybe moving it back with the proposed location that's in the packet there by the river. I think that's a better solution. Again, it's not a good solution. None of these are good solutions. It's gonna be a rough summer, right? It's gonna be a rough summer. We've got some like medium term plans in the works here with the RFP going on and everything but that's not gonna come to fruition anytime soon. So what you're left with is a game of like whack-a-mole, right? And I sort of think like knowing the location where the congregation is is preferable to saying, let's see what that next congregation spot is. Cause I think it's gonna be where I think it's gonna be is Confluence Park where the tables are now you're already seeing those shifted around right on the bike path which provokes even more of an interaction with joggers everything we heard about the previous location or it's gonna be what we heard three years ago when we formed the homelessness task force with the vendors complaining about urination, defecation and folks sleeping and hanging out in entryways of the stores. So I not know Sir Domus, but I think that's what's gonna happen if we just get rid of it. I think it's gonna go bike path and downtown there. Again, eyes wide open. The bad behaviors are a result of I think nine times out of 10 drinking, drug use and these aren't teenagers who are popping a can or two. These are folks with an alcohol dependency who need this to survive to get through the next day, right? For better or for worse, we don't have the treatment for them. We can't get the city, but somebody said at the task force today and I think it's true. They're gonna go where they can walk to buy alcohol which right now Darden Park there's about five places you can do that. Where's the next place? I don't know, but I don't feel comfortable voting it away completely without an idea of that because I just don't think that's responsible. But again, I don't have any great solutions. I would favor moving it by the river for now. That's Lauren, do you wanna weigh in? Go ahead Lauren. Yeah, I like everyone. It's a complex issue and really grateful for the public input and the thoughtful wrestling everyone's doing about this. I mean, I definitely think moving from the current location makes sense. I see Connor's point, is there a benefit to knowing a congregation spot as opposed to just taking it away and then there's less control over it or less opportunity you're creating for a spot that might invite less conflict than some of the alternatives that might just naturally occur. I mean, I do still wonder if another way is an option. I don't know if we got any input. It's not an option. Okay. Did you talk to, yeah, go ahead. Yeah. Conversation with Ken, he had a emergency and said he wouldn't gonna be here tonight. I'm sorry I didn't pass that on. But that they're open to having something in this space. They can't afford anything. So it'd be half, the city would need to take a lead in finding partners to make something happen there. But they're open to it. It again is near the bike, shared use path. So, yeah. And I think if you put something there, you need to have another place. That's the other thing I think we've heard. We need to have multi places. When we put something there, I would wanna see something really defined to meet the need and not a shelter rebuilt for something else that's been adapted because you need more seating, you need more coverage from rain. I mean, there's just a whole lot of things the current structure doesn't do, I think for this population. Yeah. I mean, I think part of the frustration that all of us are feeling is there's been a lot of good and really thoughtful conversations over the years, but it still feels like we don't have a plan with timelines and clear goals of, and I think we need to set more strict deadlines for ourselves, like we need a public restroom and like let's just, it has to get done by, let's pick a timeline to make it happen. I think thinking about interim steps, working towards the warming shelter and a bigger amenity, but then is there a interim shelter that we could build this summer that we could make it a community event to come build something that is more for this purpose as opposed to Gertin Park that's being repurposed and doesn't quite meet the needs. So to me, I'd like to see a longer term goal, more clearly on paper than we have right now. And I know that there's tons of work, the homelessness task force, and I'm not at all belittling that. I think part of it has been like, we need to give more clarity on deadlines, a commitment. We put a commitment of funding in the budget, which the community passed. So I think we actually do have funding finally to implement some of this in a way that we haven't in previous years. And so like, let's map it out. What can we do this summer? And what can we do over the next year to just make this stuff happen instead of continuing to talk about it, which I understand the frustration of everyone. Why don't we have bathrooms? Yeah, why don't we have showers? So that's where I'm at. Great, thank you. Well, it is good to know that another way is open to it. I'm not necessarily psyched about moving it closer to the river and that space behind the parking lot. At this point, I would make a suggestion that we, in general, it sounds like, I mean, we should probably have a vote, but it sounds like, yeah. Do you want to make a motion? Yeah, go ahead. We, for the time being, we remove it from where it is and put it into storage. Okay, is there a second? Okay, there's a motion and a second discussion about that. I would just say if we do that, I really do like Lauren's idea of saying, all right, well, so, but what are we doing? And let's come up with some deadlines and plans. And I kind of wonder, Connor, you're on the homelessness task force, yeah. So do, would it be reasonable to ask the homelessness task force to come up with like, yeah, we think we can have a plan for a warming shelter by some time. We're a plan for restaurant. I mean, we're kind of waiting for, to see if there's going to be state funding, but we should know that soon. And then once we know that, then we can probably move forward with or without, you know, with that knowledge, right? What do you think about any of that? I mean, I think it's reasonable to ask. It's, you know, again, like any of our committees, a group of volunteers or people who are very busy with their day jobs providing these services, it's extremely limited capacity every two weeks to tackle an issue like this. So to the extent that maybe it's more, a more robust conversation with like first responders at the table with us, you know, I think it needs to be a fuller conversation than just a homelessness task force. Okay. Do you have any thoughts on this bill? If not, that's okay, but. I agree and I, you know, attended the first meeting today that I've been to and I think it would be a lot to ask the committee, other than maybe to have them identify some key locations and then, you know, report them to the council and get your sign on to move forward, but and we can also take it to our staff and see what we think, you know, much like we did with the locker proposal and just said, hey, we need to come up with lockers. Let's figure out a place. So, you know, this is clearly a serious issue and all these things need to be moved. So we can do it. Okay. I mean, I also appreciate what, I think it was Donna, I think it was, or maybe it was Carrie, I forget, I'm sorry. Someone over there was saying that we, it would be good to have a plan that identifies what's really needed and then we can build to that plan rather than saying, here's a structure, let's make it fit somehow. So, yeah. Anyway, any further discussion on this motion? Okay. All right. All in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. That's all right. Okay. Yes, Donna. Well, I mean, yes. Bill, do you have some ideas of how we could dedicate staff to help this move along so that in two weeks we can have a conversation that shows some progress? We'll talk about it with staff at the morning. It may also involve a conversation of what doesn't move along. You know, there may be some trade-offs of things that are on our... Oh, yeah, right. Well, and I'm still disappointed. I know because the very wrecked building isn't accessible. We can't advertise it. But I wanna advertise it, that there are showers that people can call and get access to. And with that, our bathrooms. So I just want us to try to adapt and stay within the law that we do have resources we're trying to make available, but it does take initiative from people needing it because it's not accessible and we can't advertise. So I just want people to keep reminding them. That showers are available. Yes. There's a bathroom in the police station. Yeah, right. Okay. All right. Thank you, everybody. And thank you, everyone who offered comment on this. This is really helpful and it's a difficult topic. All right, it's 8.13 right now. We could take a break or we could keep going until 8.30 and take our break then. What's your preference, council? Would you rather break now or would you rather break later? Interrupt. If the next item is lockers. Yeah. And perhaps we could do that fairly quickly given the, no, I'm missing something. Okay. All right, nevermind. I suspect it will not be quick. Okay. So, it's okay. So I'm getting the sense we should go now. Okay. So we're gonna take a 10 minute break. It is 8.14. We'll be back at 8.24. And we'll pick up lockers then. Right, thanks. Okay. It is 8.25 team. So we are gonna bring it back together. Okay. So the next item on the agenda is a discussion of placement of lockers. And so for this, I think I'm turning it over to our assistant city manager. Go ahead. Bear with me for a second while I pull up and share my presentation. I'm gonna move. All right. Council, hi. Thank you for letting me present to you today. I'm Cameron Meadermeyer. I'm the assistant city manager. And I already noticed that I have forgotten to update the date on this presentation. So I apologize for that. But what I'd like to do is sort of walk us through the history of the locker proposal and why it's coming back to council today. So since 2019, this has been a topic of conversation in our community. The homelessness task force and other members of our community, those who have been experiencing homelessness have been advocating for publicly accessible lockers in our community. In general, the idea would be that lockers would allow those who have been living without shelter or a place to store their belongings, a secure place to store their valuables so they wouldn't have to risk them being stolen when they are out in public. So this has been proposed to council before, which I think was some of the joke earlier, council member Brown. So it did come and I think it was 2020 when it came to the council beforehand, we were asked to take a more holistic look at the issue. So what we've done since then is city staff, based on the priorities that y'all have set out in your strategic plan, wanted to focus on some short-term projects that could assist those experiencing homelessness. And we wanted to readdress the locker issue to see if we could help solve some of the issues that were brought up in the first round when this came to council. So we discussed many location options. We worked through policies altogether that could assist in keeping the locker safe and secure for all. So we took a couple of different locations under consideration. The one that had the most support internally was behind the rec center for a few reasons. It's out of the floodplain. It's visible from multiple angles. However, it is private enough for dignity concerns from those who are experiencing homelessness. It is well lit. There is quite a few street lights around that area and I'll get to it for a second, but the DRC did review this and they asked for additional motion sensor lighting to be installed if this does go here, which we would do. It is close to downtown and is accessible and no other construction would be needed to support this location. We discussed some other options and so I wanted to sort of run through our thought process about each of them because I've heard these locations brought up as possible alternative locations for the lockers. We discussed putting them behind city hall. However, most of the city hall is in the floodplain which makes placing the lockers difficult. The back of the building is inaccessible for the lockers because due to fire codes, they can't go underneath the steps that we have in the back of our building here. And the other side of the building has an ADA ramp and we can't block access to that. So the sides of the buildings were also taken under consideration. There are some ADA concerns there. It's in the floodplain and the other side of the building that we could put this on that has ADA accessibility has the teen center there. We also talked about putting it in the blanchard lot. There was a few things that made this unappealing to staff, including that it would remove parking spaces. It is out of the floodplain. However, it is where we store snow for the downtown to locate lockers in this location would also require built infrastructure to support them. And that is not something we have budgeted for. So I'm gonna move away from talking about locations now and talk about the policy. I am gonna just immediately contradict myself and say I did bring the location to the DRC and received approval from them for the location behind the rec center so that if you are interested in moving that forward it could be done pretty much immediately after this meeting because the permits have been approved. So when it comes to policy this is also something that council asked more thorough review be done on. So we've really revamped how the policy would go. In general, all of the lockers would be locked at all times with numbered city provided locks. Residents or community members who would like to use a locker would need to sign up through the city manager's office and then would receive a key to unlock one of those already locked lockers. So there's a use policy that I included in the packet that would include sort of the use policy. Basically it would outline that lockers are a limited use asset. They would be used up for three months before requiring renewal. We've covered sort of how we would handle abandoned items. We would not throw them away unless they were perishable. If a locker was considered abandoned we would hold on to those items to try to connect them to their owner for a certain amount of time before we would either donate or dispose of those. We would ask folks to not store perishables, food, food waste, alcohol, drugs or any illegal items in those lockers and understand and have those who are using lockers understand that they could be subject to being searched if there is cause. We asked the homelessness task force to give feedback on this policy and plan. And they noted that the policy as outlined was straightforward and reasonable. And did mention that there could be issues of people losing keys and we wanted to make sure that we had have extras and extra copies on our end, which would not be a problem. So that's really the long and the short of it. So I'll exit sort of the screen so that we can have a conversation. Okay, we will start this with, if the council has questions for Cameron this is the time for questions. Then we'll go to the public, see if public has comments on this and then we'll go back to the council again for more discussion. Any questions? Yes, go ahead, Jennifer. How big are the lockers or could they be and are they? The ones that we have looked at are dimensions for each are 36 inches wide and 18 inches deep and 72 inches high. And there would be 12 of them total. Okay, because generally people have. We tried to source larger ones, like the large half lockers, so that like sleeping bags and things could fit in them because that would be the purpose of them. Okay, cool, I'm like tense. Jack and then Lauren. Thanks, Cameron. Are you thinking the lockers would be cited pretty much? They are in the picture, so there would be a concrete slab put down and then they would be placed there or how physically is it gonna happen? So the DRC gave a lot of very specific recommendations around that. They asked that there would be no feet on them so that we would account for ice heaves by connecting them to the wall, basically by putting a piece of two by four or something in between them and the wall and then connecting them into the wall, but not the brick, the mortar in between. So we're not damaging any brick, but we are connecting them to the wall very sturdily so that they wouldn't be affected by ice heaves or snow. Okay, great, another question I have is that I've been contacted by some constituents who are concerned about the location because there are lots of kids who use the rec center and they're concerned about, as Dawn said, the friction, the possible adverse interactions between children using the recreation center and people congregating at the lockers. And I wonder if you had any consideration or discussion of that. Thank you for asking that. I do have some thoughts and I've talked it through with the recreation director. Our thoughts are that it is the back of the building and people only come in and out of the front door. So there is a good amount of distance there. Most folks do drive their children to use the rec center. I'm not saying that people don't walk. I'm not trying to say that they don't, but this is not only, if you look at the rec center, the main path that connects the bike path to Berry Street goes along the other side of the building. There's a divide there. So I think we also have to try to think in mind that it's a pilot and that if it doesn't work, we could take it down, right? That's my thought process on it, especially since if they're all locked, there wouldn't be any reason to hang out there. If you don't have access to it was our thoughts. Right now it is a pilot. There'd be 12 people who have access to the lockers in any real way with a lock to unlock and we know their names and who they are. So to me, I think it's providing an amenity that we've been told is needed in a way that hopefully is as safe as possible. Thanks. Sorry, I have a follow up question to that. So I guess I didn't realize that the side of the rec building that you're proposing is not the same side as the bike path side. Correct. So I still the back, but it's... So when you're looking at the building from the back, and you see the mural, we're suggesting the left side of the building and the bike path goes in the right side of the building where there's a fire escape in the back of the building. Thank you. Lauren and then Carrie. Yeah, just kind of on a similar vein, just thinking of some of the same constituent input I'd gotten. So are these movable? Like how difficult would it be to move them if we try it and some of this friction does come up? And I guess just building on that, it sounds like the city's intention is to not make this like a welcoming gathering space that this becomes a new place, a hangout. It's more just to come put your stuff and that it's not gonna be set up that way, which sounded like some of the concerns where that this would just kind of become a de facto place for people to gather. I cannot predict everything, but we would not be setting it up with any other amenities other than the lockers. The lockers themselves are, they come in a unit. I was very prepared to pitch paying for them to be shipped set up, so we didn't have to do that. So I think it would be very easy if it didn't work in this location to remove them and try again somewhere else. Carrie, go ahead. So I appreciate the idea of it being a pilot and trying it out and seeing how it goes. And I'm reassured to hear that it should be straightforward to move them if necessary. So I have a couple of questions. If you have more than 12 people who show up on day one and want them, do you have some kind of thoughts about how to allocate them? I do not. I think it would be first come, first serve. And also I would ask that folks would not have a place that they routinely live, so that they are people who really need a place to store their belongings. Great, and then my second question is about when someone's period, when they're three months are up and they don't show up for renewal and you don't know how to contact them and they're gone, but they still have a key. Is there a way to rekey the locks so that it's not a security concern for the next person who has the locker? Yes, the lockers are the kinds that just have a padlock. So we've just changed the padlock, all right. Okay. Other questions? No other questions. Okay, we'll go to comments from the public. So if, well, again, we'll start with folks in person. So if you have any thoughts you'd like to share now is the time. Oh, yeah, well, I've been looking over the job with the camera and was gradually turning off for me a couple of weeks ago. Susan, can you pull that microphone down to you? I can't do that. Thank you. Is that better? Can you hear me? Don't do that. The Thanksgiving program in San Diego, California, and I resourced that a little bit. And it really is like a conducive plan to give people that might necessarily just be coming through town and get stranded here for weeks, somewhere for them to put their belongings. I do not think that where you're proposing for it to go is going to be any way to perform going to be a congregational spot. I really don't because most of the people that you wouldn't be worried about are already camped out and don't care. They're not going to be the ones that are locking up their stuff. Just saying. So I think it's a great thing to do. I don't tell personally, just being in town and coming to work, we're going to another, we have lockers in another way and we have them over all the time. There's people that don't use it and they're readily available. So I think it's a good thing. But if anybody has, look into that thing in the program where this is coming out of, which Cameron, I printed up for me. Look at it, because it's a good program. And just anyways, do something. Thank you. Yes, Donna. And you, others can tell me, is it big enough for people who really want to keep things? Is it just going to serve for a few people? You can't store an apartment in there, but you can store like, deodorant and toothbrushes and a sleeping bag. So, yeah, so it's big enough. Is that? Yes. I mean, there's six feet tall, three feet wide enough to have people. That's pretty big. Yeah. That's big. It's a lot of space. It's not a high school locker. It's like a gym locker and if you were in a sport gym. I do have another follow-up question about that. So another way also has lockers? Yes, ma'am. Okay. They're not publicly, readily available. You have to go through another way and go speak with Ken and get it approved. Thank you. Okay. Other comments? Steve Whitaker. Again, three years, too little, too late. There's still a need for lockers, but putting them, making people feel like you're hidden behind the building. I think there's a residence on that side of the rec center. But who's going to shovel the snow in the winter? To keep them accessible. The idea of privacy that you're asking people to feel that they can leave their most valuable treasures, the few that they still have there and somebody's got a key, the city can search it whenever they want is really not dignity. It's not privacy. Lost keys, I guess, lost keys are lost locks because you can't risk having keys found and somebody's stuff disappearing, the liability. I just see it, I think it's a half-baked proposal. Bad location. I'm sure people are going to drag the chairs from the pocket park over there and make that their next hangout that you just yanked the pocket park out from under them. So you can smark and pretend like you've done something. Anyone else in person? Go ahead. Well, Mary from Montpelier. I do feel this is a good step. I think six feet by 36 inches by 18 deep is huge. It's very big. Six feet tall, three feet wide. That's great, that's big. You could camp in there. You really could camp in there. But anyways, yeah, I think it's a good first step. I would question about, did you say the city will have a key to? Yes. No, I'm not sure about that either, how people will feel, but this is something. I'd love to see more lockers and I like the kind that are about two and a half by two and a half square. I'd like to see them in the transit center, like 10 of them, at least, maybe 15. I want people to travel, visit, shop. So I would go for that, but at least it's something. I do feel some people are gonna be a little worried about that the city has a key. I think people might be concerned about it, but I think it's a step. Thank you. Okay, carry on. Not anyone else. Okay, all right, and I gotta get back to my zoom here. I somehow got kicked out of the zoom. So I'm gonna rejoin that, but in the meanwhile, does anyone, oh wait, there's Don Little and Vicki Ann Lane. Okay, Don Little, go ahead. Thank you. As far as the size sounds adequate, although I'm concerned about the depth in that some people have either backpacks or knapsacks, they're acceptable, and I just, is that sufficient depth to accommodate something like that? I was a little concerned about the security at night, but I think a major purpose for this is for people to put their belongings down so that they can go to the bathroom or go to the bathroom or go to the bathroom. Or go to a store, get their lunch, whatever. So that may not be a concern. As far as liability for contents, I would think that having people sign a waiver would be adequate protection. As far as the sitting having a key, in Siri, I understand that that may be a privacy issue. Personally, I suspect that city officials have enough other things to do that they're not gonna be gratuitously rummaging through people's stuff. So I wouldn't really worry about that on a practical level. I will say that as far as I know, another way has not had any issues with having lockers there. I also don't think that people are gonna migrate to the back of the rec center to hang out next to their lockers. I think that when you take away Gertin Park, that you may have an increase of people going back to the benches on Stonecutter's way. So yes, lockers or no, there may be more people in the area near the rec center, whether that's... And again, as Cameron said, the back of the rec center, probably not as heavily trafficked by children using the facilities. That's really it. I mean, there are a couple reasons for lockers. One is to store your possessions on a semi-permanent basis. And the other one is just to be able to put them down so that you can go use the bathroom in the store without taking your backpack with you or having to carry things that are heavy when you're also trying to carry a soup, kitchen, lunch. But this seems like it would certainly be adequate for that purpose. Thank you very much. Thank you. Vicki and Lane, go ahead. Is, they sound relatively large. Is there a ability for people that may not have much stuff to share? And if they have a relationship with each other to actually share the locker and have more than one key? And yeah, okay. That's my question. Thank you, Vicki. Cameron, do you have any thoughts on that? I've thought about this and I think it's important for us as a city to have one person be a contact person for the lockers. I don't think that precludes somebody from sharing on their own terms, but I think just for at least the pilot, it's important to have a person tied to the locker so that we know what the actual outcome is. If that is a need that is identified through this pilot program, I think it would be important to bring back any policy changes that we would have. Now, I seem to remember that the rules around getting a locker had... It was really spelled out and it was like a contract or something. Yes. And so that's not in... I remember seeing that. I don't think that's in our packet this. It should have been. And if it wasn't attached, it was the last time we gave the presentation last week. So I apologize if that was overlooked. No, that's okay. I mean, I remember looking through that and thinking like this back in 2020 when it came up and I was like, what's the policy about if you leave rotting food as like these are things that happen at the high school and we have to be able to go into them and say, okay, well, we're gonna take out that rotting milk or whatever it is. So I'm really grateful that you came up with a policy but the idea is that whoever is taking one of these lockers would have to sign a waiver contract. Okay. That says they will follow the guidelines that are put forth for use. Yeah. Okay. I did not see any other hands. Anyone else who has not put in yet? Yeah, here. Ron, I see there. What's your last name, Ron? Merkin. Oh, Ron Merkin from Montpelier. How are you? Good, how are you? Go ahead. Yeah, there's been some concern that was raised about children going to the rec center and what effect it would have with people who you've already indicated have problems with alcoholism and have been fighting, et cetera. But left out of that, what no one seems to have remembered is that the senior center is right across the street and it's right across the street from the row that they would take to get behind the rec center for the lockers. Another point that I noticed is that I am a cyclist and countless times I have used that path to bicycle across so that I could get to the pedestrian and cycling path on the other side of the road to go cycling for pleasure or to go, for instance, to the hunger mountain co-op. So that I think from what I see, I'm living right across the street now and every time or very often when I look across the street across the window, as spring comes, I see lots of cyclists going that way so that children, as far as I can see, would not be the only problem that might cause at least some discomfort. I also imagine from something that somebody said, I agree that I can certainly imagine that eventually people would not be only using that as for lockers, that they would be using it for the same reason they're using the parklet that's now on Main Street. And from what I've been hearing, there have been lots of problems about that. Remember that seniors come in and out of the senior center all day long in front of it and there's a parklet there that frankly they might feel uncomfortable with if homeless people start using that. So I'm very concerned about that right now. Remember the senior center, not only children. Thank you. Yeah. Anyone else who has not spoken yet? Okay. All right, so I'm gonna turn back to the council at this point. What is your, what are your thoughts? Donna, go ahead. I'd make a motion that we support the recommendations of purchasing these lockers and locating them in the designated space by the Recreation Building. Second. There's a motion and a second. Maybe this will be faster than I thought it was gonna be. Jack, go ahead. I think this is a good idea. I think that this is overdue. We've been talking about this for a few years and I'm glad we're getting this in place. I do have neighbors and constituents who are concerned about the, what might happen, but I think that we're always balancing the issues of different groups of people in town and if there are problems, we will revisit it. Lord, go ahead. Yeah, I'm grateful to city staff and everyone who did a lot of work on this. I'm excited to see this move forward. I finally get these lockers we've been talking about for a couple years. So thanks to everyone who did that. I think the policy and everything accompanying it looks great and as a pilot, we can learn and continue to grow from there. I do think just the point of congregation, again, we need to have that other parallel conversation of what spaces are we creating for people in the community so this doesn't become a default space so that's on us to do that work. And we need that commitment but I think I heard some momentum around that tonight so I think that will be kind of to me moving forward with this. It's paired with the knowledge that that's also our intention. Connor. Yeah, I agree with everything Lauren said. Thanks for the thoughtful work on this. I would just add since we have residences on either side of the building, if we haven't done already maybe some proactive outreach there just to keep everybody in the loop. Okay, so I will say that I had some concerns about this location and I was very curious about the possibility of putting it at the top of the Blanchard lot. It's good to know that there was, that's a place where we store snow. Pardon me, does still wonder like do we have to use all of that space to store snow? Could we not do both at the top there? But I mean, to be fair, it is, I guess what I am thankful to have heard tonight too is that it's a pilot, right? Like the word, we're gonna try it out and see if it works. And I also not realize that it was on the opposite side from the bike path, which I think is helpful but I am and I'm glad that we'll be adding lights to that side, but I would also just add that the side with the bike path is very dark and as somebody who cycles a lot, especially at night even, I would love to see us put in lights on that side. That would be really helpful because that's a really scary stretch. It feels really close and you just kind of say, I'm committed to biking through here whether there's lights or not, but it is scary. So I'd like to just put that on people's radar because we're ordering lights. Let's put them all the way around. Yeah, anyway, my toe, any other thoughts? Okay, all right, so there's been a motion and a second, any further discussion? Okay, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay, thank you very much. We will very much come back to you once this is set up and with a check-in as soon as that gets going. Thank you. Okay, thank you. All right, so now we are up to the police review committees, recommendations around public drinking and officer recruitment standards, and I know we have some presentations. So I'm gonna, at first year, turn things over to the chief, go ahead. Good afternoon, I'm sorry, good evening again, Madam Mayor, members of the city council, city manager, assistant city manager, and the public at large, Brian Pete with the Montpelier Police Department, and I'm going to go over two of the items that were put in regarding the, from the police review committee report. Oops, no, this is the wrong one. This one here. No, no, no, trust me, I'm not that computer illiterate anymore. All right, yes, ma'am. Okay, thank you. So before I begin, so on this particular segment, it's going to be regarding public drinking, but I think that it's extraordinarily important for me to pretty much voice the honest appreciation that the Montpelier Police Department has had for those who had volunteered their time and the hard work, the true hard work that they put into a really good product that is helping us in developing our strategic goals and it's helping us to be more in tune with what it is that the community we serve wants from us. So we're looking to make sure to do our best to adhere to the spirit and doing our best to say yes to everything, but we want to make sure that we don't, that there aren't any unintended consequences that may relate to it. So with that being said, then also I want to make a clarifying statement that when I was up here talking about the issue of the parklet, I take full responsibility. The Montpelier Police Department has and always will continue to address any bad behavior or criminal behavior. It was just through my direction, I had just asked officers to, if you don't have to deal with the situation that you see someone who is drinking in public, then let's hold off before, so we can get some additional guidance. So that's on me. So I just wanted to make sure, but to be extraordinarily fair that the Montpelier Police Department has and will always make sure that we continue to respond to anything that's gonna be a behavioral incident. So the points or some of the items I'd like to talk to would be what the police review committees or the PRC's drinking recommendations were, what MPD's position is, what the current ordinance is, how MPD enforces the current ordinance, and then talk a little bit about disorderly conduct, substance use disorders, and how they're baked into the law, and then the PRC's rationals and MPD's responses to those. So foremost, if I can bring that down a little bit more. The Montpelier Police Department has long modeled the PRC's values of prioritizing involvement in responding to acts related to criminal behavior for safety related concerns. We want, I think one of the things that came out of the study was that the Montpelier Police Department is committed to 21st century policing and trauma-informed policing, and that we're not looking to utilize a hammer in situations that we don't need to utilize a hammer, that how we go about doing things is how do we go about helping people to the best of our ability, and handling it at the lowest level possible without involving someone in the criminal justice system and knowing the difference between a mistake, a bad decision at a time, and then what a malicious intent is. So we wholeheartedly agree with the spirit of what was recommended by the police review committee for drinking in public, and we want to acknowledge that we do not want to approach these things with a heavy hand. The recommendations on page six of the executive summary are listed there. I think that everyone here has read that. So I won't dive too much into it, just talks about consideration of repealing the ordinance, provide training street outreach workers to our training to street outreach workers in Montpelier Police Department, and then looking at the future committee to review our public safety ordinances, and that's something that we definitely want to make sure that we do as we bring out policies and what our strategic goals are. Well, I will say that we advocate that the ordinance to remain in place, and again that I think that we do recognize intoxication as an illness. We do understand that substance abuse is an illness, and it's not a choice. So that we want to make sure that our policies and procedures as well as state law that they ensure minimum involvement with the criminal justice system in these cases. So what is the current city ordinance? The ordinance, this is listed here, just talks about no one person should consume an open container of, carry an open container of malt beverage, wine intoxicating liquor in a public area. One of the items that was listed within the PRC recommendation talked about that the committee recognized that there might be a state law surrounding this. There is actually, I'm not aware of any state law revolving around actual consumption of alcohol in public. It's more or less the issues of disorderly conduct, what results from consumption of an intoxicating substance. So how do we enforce the ordinance? So a typical call, and I say that extraordinarily loosely, usually there'll be a call for service or there'll be an officer's observation if someone is drinking in public. What the ordinance does is it gives us the ability to lawfully interact with someone to see if there is intoxication or if there's a public safety concern, if there's a health concern, if there's anything that's going on. So without the ordinance, we don't necessarily have legal grounds to approach someone to determine if there's a behavioral issue or if there's a health issue or anything else to that effect. The individual usually abides by an officer's request to not drink in public. So most of the time, just like excuse me, sir, ma'am, I'm so-and-so with the Mobile Police Department, I just noticed that you're drinking in public. There's an ordinance, could you please not drink in public? Something to that effect. And most of the times that it just disperses on its own right there. But if the situation warrants warnings that we're having conversations, then I would argue that we're already at a point of escalation that it is something that the Mobile Police Department should be addressing before it gets to something that might be, that has the potential of spiring out of a control. So, and again, in these cases, we would issue warnings, again, ask, ask, ask, and then look at citations or if possible, if the situation escalates. Because we're gonna do our best to de-escalate the situation, but it takes two. And if the other party is escalating the situation, then there are other concerns that we have to look at. So we would, at this point, reach out to the person's support network. Family members, is there somebody that can give you a rise? Is there some way that we can get you where you need to go? And then look at service organizations, again, reaching out to good Sam. There is something with Turning Point. We do have a very good relationship right now with Turning Point, a partnership, to the point that we're all trying to figure out grant funding that Turning Point can actually have someone on call. So when we have these different types of situations, if it doesn't warrant a police involvement, how do we help these people? And then how do we do that? So currently, right now, we're doing a referral system. So if we went into someone, we'll call Turning Point and we'll just say, hey, X, Y, Z, this is going on, they'll do their reach out. But if they do have someone on call, then we can obviously reach out to them because sometimes it may not rise to the level of talking to a social worker. If there's a clear safety concerns, safety-related housing may be necessary, but I mean that, I mean that if someone's intoxicated to the point that there's a health issue, then we may have to lodge them someplace so they can, with all due respect, sober up. So those are always the last options of citation, lodging, or arrest. So the state's law, disorderly conduct is listed here. All too often, our issue is, again, it's not necessarily someone who's drinking in public, but it's the disorderly conduct that results because of consumption of alcohol or other intoxicants. So what the state law actually says about intoxication is that the state of Vermont recognizes that alcoholism and alcohol abuse are perceived as health and social problems. So ergo, this is baked into the system again, that alcoholics, the language is a little dated, and alcohol abuse should no longer be subjected to criminal prosecution solely because of their consumption of alcoholic beverages. In other words, it's not the consumption, it's the behavior that may result of it. And that's, again, that's something that's baked into the system. So with all due respect, even if an officer wanted to be malicious and try to arrest someone for drinking in public, the law will not allow that to happen. So again, this is defined as a health-related social problem, and we recognize this, and of course, this is what I believe is in the spirit of what the police review committee wants to do is to make sure, by right, because the police have a lot of powers, and it needs to be checked, and we need to make sure that we hold ourselves accountable to it, so we want to make sure that we meet the spirit and that our culture enforces the spirit of what those recommendations are. So some of the rationales that were listed in the review committee talks about, again, that the PRC had had the understanding that they cannot, looking at what the state law is, and then talking about deprioritization, that we can't really, per se, deprioritize a call, if a call for service comes in, we do have to respond to it. There may be a ranking situation that officers are dealing with a critical emergency, and then they will move to the next call as best as they can, but we will go to all the calls for service that do come in. I mean, again, arrest, citations, those things are for a flash resort, but what, again, our concern is looking at the behavior, and as I mentioned before, that we already do make references to Good Sam, and we're working with Turning Point. And looking at what the criminal conduct, we have long operated this way with what the spirit is, that, but we also want to take caution that the Community Justice Center, as well as Good Sam, it's, even though they may get involved into a certain situation, there's a process there, and it takes two, again, to reciprocate. So if the services are going out to the individuals, it's not gonna be an automatic that the situation is resolved and everything is good because the social worker or the CJC is involved or Turning Point or Good Sam. So this rationale that comes from the PRC regarding evidence with the ordinance and how to prove public safety, that I would say that all laws were designed, I think, were written in a good faith, the majority of them regarding trying to keep public safety in mind, and they have all at one point or another been broken. But it's our position regarding this is just that we need the tools to lawfully engage in someone before a behavior has the potential to escalate. And then the final one talks about that it was obtained that opined that the ordinance disproportionately affects the unhoused individuals with mental health problems. It's our position that not everyone who is homeless has a substance abuse issue, nor anyone, not everyone who is mentally, has a mental health impairment is susceptible to substance abuse issues this way. There's scores of people, different categories of folks who are, who drink alcohol and are intoxicants for all different reasons. And for us, the takeaway is that, again, it takes, there's a de-escalation process. And so as the officers or staff is working to try to de-escalate a situation that it's, at that point, if we're doing our jobs correctly, then it's incumbent upon the individual that we're interacting with to also meet us at the same level. So we'll never come in at a level 10 when we only need to be at a level one. And we want to make sure that we give the council our assurances on that and that we hold ourselves accountable to that. So the Montpellier Police Department and the PRC did not, I wanna make sure this is clear that the PRC did not imply that we do. But I'm just putting it here that to give that acknowledgement that your police department does not purposely or does not target homeless populations, we want to, again, make sure we just have the ability to proactively address any types of behavioral issues before they have the potential of spiring out of control. And we do that in a trauma-informed way and understanding what substance abuse-related illnesses are. And with that, can we, I can leave it here or then continue to move forward with the other topic? That's a good question. I feel like we should pause here and discuss this one. Yes, ma'am. All right. So questions for the chief. Lauren, go ahead. I'm just wondering, Justin Dreschler from the police review committee. Alyssa, the chair was unavailable. I believe he was hoping to speak to you just kind of explain a little more context on the PRC's kind of discussions and rationale and why we had put this in the report. Excellent. I know I saw Justin on earlier. Justin, are you... Oh, he's got his hand up. Okay. Yes, go ahead. Thank you. Sorry about that. Hey, everybody. For the record, Justin Dreschler from the police review committee. Hey, chief. Thank you for the presentation. So I talked to Alyssa about this a bit and we just have a few responses. I guess having heard the chief's full rationale, my first response is I'm not sure that you actually need the public drinking ordinance to approach individuals to begin with. I mean, any citizen, any essential citizen police encounter that's not a seizure is fine. And so the police can't walk up to someone and say, hey, you can't go anywhere, but they can walk up to someone and say, hey, they can't walk up to someone and say, hey, and then corner him or her and not let them move. And there are these, there are no bright line rules necessarily in this case. But I don't see any reason why they would necessarily need the public drinking ordinance to approach people. Also having said that, what is most troubling about this rationale is that it's essentially stating out loud that this ordinance is just a pretext to increase the number of police citizen interaction, which is by definition a bad thing. Like we don't want to give police the opportunity to engage in pretextful behavior. And I, but I'm not saying that the police, that the MPD would engage in pretextful behavior, but I think I'm saying that essentially what they're asking for, they're asking me to have this ability to go up and chat with someone who they think might commit a future crime. From our perspective, our perspective on a police review committee was always that the police have plenty of tools in their bag to deal with criminal behavior. And that the public drinking ordinance with number one, it was completely unnecessary because it wasn't even being enforced. The 2020 had 12 public drinking ordinance citations and the chief said, the courts have all dismissed them. Washington County State Attorney's office has absolutely no interest in prosecuting these things. So if we're not going to prosecute them, we're not going to cite them. And it only exists as a reason to approach people. Like that should give everybody a lot of power. It should give everyone a lot of concern, even if you have a great deal of faith as the police review committee does in our police department, because this police department is not going to be the same police department forever. It's not the way that it works. Also, I have real concerns about this just being disproportionately used against the Garten Park residents, frankly. And I know that that may no longer be an issue, that may be such residents may no longer exist, that's right. But the fact is that we didn't hear these concerns or we heard some of them at the time that we were making these decisions in the committee, but there was not a ton of pushback. And then the MPD was neutral. And now they're against it. And the only difference that I see is that people over in Garten Park are causing trouble. And the police want to be able to engage with them a little more. And I get that and I get the tension. But from our perspective, police intervention has never, and will never be a solution to public drinking and substance abuse and mental illness and what have you. And we've tried this for many, many, many, many years in many, many, many, many places. And it's always failed. And so I suppose for all of those reasons, we think that it is a quite well-reasoned recommendation to repeal this ordinance, which we're essentially being told is gonna be weaponized against homeless in this town. And by weaponized, I don't mean in necessarily a bad way. A weapon doesn't need to be used to really hurt somebody. But this is the weaponization of an ordinance. Like, there's just no other way to explain it. I'm not gonna be talked to. If I'm chugging a beer on Montpelier's sidewalks, I'm just not gonna get talked to. It's not gonna happen. And so what you're allowing is the police to make judgments about who's gonna be troubled and who's gonna commit future crimes. So, and I do think that we should hear, I do think that the city council should hear from the state attorney's office on the issue. Do you think they should hear the apparel plan to alert the CJT on this issue? It's just, the solution to these problems isn't more police. Not, we have all this good time stuff. Even if our police are the greatest, which God bless they are, but it's still not the solution. I think Michael Sherman, who is also in the PRC, has some things to say about this. Thank you, everyone. Thank you, chief, as always. And thank you. I really appreciate the mutual respect, chief. You know it's always there. Thank you, Justin. Michael Sherman, go ahead. Hi, I'm Michael Sherman. I was on the police review committee. And actually, I was the one who did all the, most of the background research on this and actually brought it to the attention of the chair and a few other people. And it was because I was doing the study on the patterns of arrest. And there was one year in the five years that we had studied where there were 12, where there were 12 arrests and it didn't appear at any other year for this. And so I asked, started the question, well, why is it there? And why, what was responsible for the spike? I was never able to get an answer for why the spike took place because I was referred to Captain Nordenson who was on vacation at the time. And so we never got that, but we did, I did have an exchange of letters with the chief. And one of the thing, and in the letter from the chief, and I have it right here, I'm sort of feeling like I'm looking like Senator McCarthy, but I'm not. He explained that if a citation is made, and I think I've got this right, then that it automatically kicked in a certain number of, a certain kind of responses by the police they had to take the person to a detox center. If the detox center was full, it had to take that person back to town. They would have to find some shelter and that basically was taking a police officer off duty or out of reach for a considerable amount of time. And that this was, and that it weakened the police force basically. And as I say, I have the full letter, it's a two-page letter in which it seemed like the chief was helping us make the case for maybe rethinking how to deal with people who were intoxicated. Now, I understand and I wanna emphasize that context is everything. I'm a historian and that's the way I have to think. And so this was before, it was just a year ago. So we were in COVID, but it was certainly before the whole problem of the Gerton Park showed up. And I think that that event has had a lot to do with the change in the police attitude. And I appreciate that. And I think that we're talking about a somewhat different situation. But I want to, mostly I want to emphasize that I don't think that our committee was being irresponsible in making this proposal. We were acting on information that we thought pointed to the need to find an alternative to intervention with arrest or even a citation. And would actually keep more police available for the on-duty work than it would do any harm to the community. So I just, and I don't wanna get into a fight with the chief about this. I don't think it's necessary and I'm not meaning to contradict him or say that he contradicted us. But I think it was either a miscommunication, a lack of communication or failed communication in some ways, which led us to the conclusion that maybe the ordinance itself was not doing what it was supposed to do. All right, thank you. And actually, so Lauren and Jack, you were both on. Oh, here. Oh, Bill, I think you gotta mute yourself or something. Oh. There you go. Yeah. I just wanted to offer a couple of comments too. I think it is correct that when the first police, wait a minute. Yeah, you're good. I'm talking through that, gotcha. Yeah, yes, yeah. During the first report from the police department, the official staff report was, this is a policy decision for the council and I think it is a policy decision for the council. So now it's before you and we're sort of offering our thoughts on this. I don't think we meant to sort of give one message to the police review committee, another message here. So, and we've had more time to think about it. I'm not sure that Gertin Park is the only issue though. And I don't think that the police department will engage in any more or less citations because of this. From my perspective, and I think this is, thinking of it more from a community, I guess I'd ask you to think about this from a community perspective more so than just the police review committee, which is one of the things our ordinances do is set the standards for our communities and what is and isn't acceptable behavior. And I think there was a lot of justifiable concern about people, needy people that may be drinking in public. And my first thought was, yeah, great. Once we take this off a bunch of college kids are gonna be sitting on the benches downtown and saying, hey, this is okay. This is legal now. This is fine in this community. This is, and one of the reasons, well, there may be many reasons why we don't do this, but part of it is we know it's not right. It's just not something that's a lot. It's not a community standard. And so I think as we seek to parse the very fine issues around marginalized people and they are real and we have to be conscious of that. We also have to think about the standards we're setting for the entire community. So I'll be honest. I urge that we take the position in opposition to this that you've done. So I don't want him to fall on that sword. So there we are. If I may. So in looking at that, it's in the context. And again, I have to have to look at it. So I apologize if I misrepresented in that email. And in the context I'm looking for, but before I move into it, I think it's great. So have a good spirited debate by no means upset or anything else like that. These are conversations that have to happen because we have to understand where each other's coming from. And this is how we're gonna build trust and legitimacy as a police department. But in looking at that, the reasons why, in looking at those numbers, again, there is a COVID consideration, but I think that part of the other reasons are that the low numbers of using that ordinance I would argue is a testament to how the officers are handling these situations in the first place and that they're not overreacting or knee-jerk reacting by sending somebody to someplace or writing citations on a consistent basis. And those citations that were dismissed by the courts were not dismissed upon the fault of the Montpelier Police Department or the officers. They were just dismissed by the court for whatever priority they set in there. And then also in looking at discussions with the state's attorney's office, this is a municipal ordinance. This is handled by an attorney hired by the city. So the Washington state's attorney would not be involved in a simple citation for drinking in public. They would only be involved in situations in which somebody was, there was a disorderly conduct charge that normally accompanies is the end result of someone who is consuming too much alcohol or any intoxicant and the others. So I would just also put that also there as well. And those are the only notes that I have at this point. Okay, great. Donna, go ahead. Well, yeah, actually, thank you. Lauren and Jack, I know you were on that committee as well. Do you wanna make any comments about this? Yeah, just, I guess one area that I think we kept coming back to and that even hearing the kind of scenarios you were describing chief, like it feels like the interactions that are problematic or the times where it becomes problematic is when it is escalating into a situation that you still would have every right to be engaging with someone. Cause it's only when there is a disorderly conduct or something, otherwise there isn't, why would the police be involved if people are just not having any kind of concern. So I guess I'm still trying to parse out when are you all interacting with people just on the public drinking ordinance in a way that's helpful to the community that's not a situation that is kind of edging into or at a disorderly conduct or some other criminal where you of course are gonna be involved and have a whole different conversation. To answer that, ma'am, I think that I'm gonna make the assumption that in my experience is that laws of these nature were not designed by the police, they were just enforced by the police with the assumption that that folks who tend to take intoxicants that will often lead to another behavior. So it's a proactive issue. And then I would also say that that in those interactions that they may not be documented because of the officer going to a meeting with an individual and saying, excuse me, sir, ma'am, you're not allowed to drink, okay, fine, it's great. There's no reason to have any other further conversations or anything else like that. We're not gonna do name checks or anything else to that effect or detain that person. So I would just say that law enforcement enforces the laws on the books and then my position there would be those laws were made with the assumption that we need to enforce them fairly and correctly in an approach, in doing it responsibly, but we also understand the outcome. I mean, because I would look at it again, like what's another, we could name any law out there. And as I mentioned before, laws are being broken every day. And that doesn't necessarily mean that we're harassing folks or having contact with folks in certain different ways. Thank you, Jack, anything you wanna add? No, at this point, thanks. Okay, thank you. Donna, go ahead. My question has to do with the difference between alcohol and other drugs. Indeed, we don't have on the books things about other drugs to be over the limit and then for our concern, we only have it about their behavior that might be caused by other drugs. Why is alcohol different? Why would we need a separate ordinance? I would think that it looks to me that when this ordinance was created, it was done in what there was no distinction between alcohol being an actual drug, which is what we know it to be now. So alcohol is considered a drug. But I can sit on the bench and smoke marijuana now. Yes, but that's, if I may intervene, I'm sorry, but I think you're there. The presumption was, I think alcohol has always been legal or at least since the 30s and the other drugs aren't. So just basic possession of them was in and of itself a crime or something. Whereas you can legally possess and consume alcohol. So the town, the city at the time said, yeah, but you can't do it in public. Like that's not a standard that we want you to have. And I believe actually, I'm not sure where the Vermont is on, you can buy and use retail, but at last, I'm not sure you can smoke in the public. You cannot. What's that? Yeah, I'm not sure. For a while you weren't able to smoke it in public. So I don't know where that has ended up, but so, you know, and if that's the case, then that will be a new state statute. I think it's really, so I just ask you to think about, if you guys are okay, if we're okay for that, that's the standard for the community that you can hang out on a public bench or wherever and drink beer or whatever, then that's great. I think it's just important to remember that these are setting a standard for everybody, not just some people. Sorry, John, was there anything further? No, no, no, thank you, Bill. Okay, Connor, go ahead. Just following up on Bill's point there. Like, I don't want to be alarmist, but I'm trying to think of like an extreme example. Like third of July, people are sitting, watching the parade for like up to five hours at a time. They bring like a bag of cans with them and it turns, state street turns in the Bourbon street all of a sudden, so that's a possibility with us. Okay. Carrie, and then Lauren. So just to follow up on that, people are definitely drinking at the third of July parade already, so. What? We should not kid ourselves about that. So I just want to address and thank you for all of the other pieces that were part of the recommendations that the Montpelier Police Department is already doing. Treating people like human beings, offering assistance when needed, trying to connect people to resources. Thank you so much for that. I'm very, very happy about that. I'm getting just a little hung up on looking at what the state law says and reconciling that with the city ordinance. I don't know if this is something that you can address or if somebody else can address it, but that this state law that says it's a policy, that alcohol is a health and social problem and that alcoholics and alcohol abusers, so people using alcohol, shall not be subjected to criminal prosecution solely because of their consumption of alcoholic beverages. That seems pretty clear to me that an ordinance that says the fact that you consumed alcoholic beverages is not allowed, that seems to me like it's incompatible with the state law and maybe this is a question that a lawyer can answer better for me, but that's the thing that I'm kind of stuck on. And so if this is, is this enforceable, is this something that we can actually have on our books given what the state law says about it and if not, then we should really think seriously about why we have it. So I would respond to that one that yes, it is something that you can have on the books and that while the state is looking at it, it's not necessarily, no one's saying that we're gonna lock up anyone because they're consuming alcohol. There's a certain standard of behavior and I think that this is one of those things that you're gonna have unintended consequences for. And again, I would also point back to the fact that the department is not taking this just like any other law. I could, you can name a law. And again, the department police officers don't create laws. We enforce the laws that legislative bodies put on and they're put there for a reason. So we don't go out and abuse any which one of them. That's not who we are and that's not what we're about and that's not what a majority of law enforcement is about. And I say that because one of the catalysts behind the creation of the PRC was because of what other law enforcement agencies are doing elsewhere. So I would just say that whatever the council decides is what we're going to do, but this is a standard I think for the community and how, with all due respect, what's to stop me if someone calls me on the phone and says there's someone who's sitting outside of my house or they're sitting outside of all Bichons or they're sitting outside here drinking alcohol which is what's going on right now. So my only option is there's nothing to do or let's wait till they get drunk and they break something. Other than that, I have no other recourse to talk to that person, to see where that person's at, to see if there's anything I can do to help that person. So, and I do understand the caution that Justin had brought up regarding police accountability but I also, on a personal note, I could look at that again and say that we need to be cautious at what powers, I guess that we're giving police because whether the department's doing something good now, that there's still like a presumption that in the future, the department can flip. And I would argue that the city body would not allow that to happen, that you're gonna look to hire the right people, the right person to sit in this chair and that I'm going to make sure that I hire the right people who are going to acknowledge and who are going to be supportive of what the decisions that the city council makes as far as what our community wants. If you don't want to police the way our community wants to police, then you don't belong with the Montpelier Police Department. And I think that's a standard that has long been set here in this department and I think that's a standard that's been set from the top. I'm kind of. Any other communities in Vermont not have this on the books, do we know? I do not know the answer to that question. Please review, maybe. Any of those guys done? Michael Sherman knows. Oh, I don't know. All right, Jack, and then I want to go to the public. You can go to the public. Oh, okay. All right, so if you are in person, you get to go first. Go ahead. Steve, wanna hear from you again. Keep in mind that we've been doing for a couple of years now these parklets. All the restaurants are serving alcohol out in public in the streets. And this is kind of like, you can drink in public as long as you're patronizing a restaurant, but if you're too poor to patronize the restaurant, then we wanna have our stick that we can bring down on you. Just think about it. It's pretty absurd. I hear this bill trust and legitimacy as a PD. You will acknowledge the mistake, the error of stealing Billy's unopened beers. And until you do, you're not gonna hear the end of it. Billy's still in town and you can replace, you can make restitution and you can return his beers because you have no credibility on this topic. As long as you steal and lie and your department does as well. We need the tools. I wanna appreciate the police review committee comments from Mr. Dreschler that we're setting up this pretext so that we can harass. I brought to your attention and you never did anything about it or even discussed it. The brother who came in back into town to grieve his dead brother who was an AP photographer and three police officers converge on them having a beer up. It wasn't even public property. It was a national life property. And that kind of harassment is routine around here. So they didn't need any pretext there. They're relying on their open beverage. But yeah, harassing people on private property with three officers stealing the open beers. Those are fatty daddies, by the way, the 16 or 20 ounce fatty daddies when you need to make good on your restitution. Trauma informed way. There's a lot of buzzwords and a lot of doublespeak. But this unequal enforcement is creating trauma in the community. It's to neglect enforcement of the littering and neglect enforcement of the speeding or the diesel trucks, whatever they're called that blasts through town at high volumes. We don't enforce any of that but we wanna be able to enforce on the poor people for having an open beer. I just think it's further hypocrisy and lack of engagement and responsibility lies with the council to clean this up. So I support the police review committees. And again, it's insist that you get a police oversight commission in place that could actually dig into these things that they've swept. They're used help sweep under the rug. Okay, any other comments? Okay, all right. And so we'll go to folks who are with us digitally. Peter Kelman, go ahead. I guess I have a question. I'm not much of a drinker and I'm not a dope smoker. But in this conversation, I do think you're gonna need to think a little bit ahead to dope smoking. But what is the difference between having a beer outside in three penny tap room, having a beer watching a ball game, having a beer sitting in Gwerton Park, having a beer sitting on your own doorsteps in a building that is more or less downtown. I don't quite understand Bill's point about community standards. If there's a community standard about drinking beer or wine, whatever, but let's just say drinking beer outside in town, where do you draw the line? Why is this ordinance? Why does this ordinance exist? Who's it gonna be enforced against and not against? There was a case in New York City a couple of years ago of a guy who was arrested for drinking beer on his own stoop. I can't remember how that was resolved, but that's sure to happen. I ask those questions honestly. I think it's something you gotta think about and think ahead a little bit because you're gonna have the same problem with smoking dope. Thank you. Oh yeah, go ahead and then we'll go to Jack. There's a major fundamental difference. At Parklitz, at the ballpark, any place like that, those are licensed establishments that are serving, licensed by the city, by the state liquor commission. They are licensed servers. They're subject to their own liability for over-serving and those sorts of things. So when you're sitting at a Parklitz, you are actually within a legally established boundary that has been set by liquor control and you're not pouring yourself unlimited beverages. You're being served by supposedly a responsible server. Now I realize that's a point of debate, but you're in what's considered a controlled environment. The difference between that and your own stoop, I see that point. I don't know, we don't really have much of that, but that's a fair point. A person sitting by themselves with whatever supply they choose to bring, whether it's beer or whiskey or anything else and just pounding it till they're silly, it's not a controlled environment. It's not liquor license controlled and there's not an assumption that there is a responsible party for what's happening. So there's a big difference in that regard. And again, I'm my own personal opinion, but I think it's just, I'm trying to make sure the council thinks about all the aspects of this and you're right, as cannabis comes into play, we're gonna have to learn the rules for that too. And if we're okay with it, we're okay with it and that's fine, but I think we've narrowed this conversation down to some people and I think all I'm saying is just remember it would apply to all people and all circumstances if we say it's okay to drink in public in unregulated places at any time, anywhere. That's what getting rid of this ordinance would be saying. Jack, if you have something you wanna follow up with that's fine and then we'll go to Justin. Thank you, yes. I was gonna say a lot of the same thing that Bill was saying, including that if you're drinking at the park that operated by a bar, one thing they're not supposed to be serving you if you're intoxicated and there is some regulation and limit to that. I have, I was on the police review commission and I supported this proposal. I have some, I'm having second thoughts, I'm not sure where I come down. I think I'm hearing some good points really on both sides, but I am hearing some good points on the idea of some keeping, leaving the police to still have some authority for oversight. And so I'm not 100% sure where I would go with this. As I understand legally where we stand, if we were to vote to support the recommendation of the commission, then our next step would be to put a repeal proposal on a future agenda with public notice because we repeal or amend ordinances the same way we enact ordinances. Fair enough, lots of thoughts. I'm still gonna go to Justin and then to the chief and then to Donna and then Vicki Lane, okay. Just very quickly and I can't, I don't know if anybody mentioned this and I'm sorry if you did, but the ordinance specifically did not apply to Hubbard Park, it's written right into it. So you can sit in Hubbard Park and get cocked all day long right now. Nothing anybody can do about it. And do we see people doing that? And I think the answer is no. And so why do we think that that's gonna happen downtown? If there are plenty of places that people can already drink in public and non-failure, at will, why do we think it's all of a sudden gonna turn it from hell to get downtown? I think it's a question that we could be asking. All I got. Okay, thank you to the chief and then Donna. So I would pose an existential question. With all due respect, with the spirit of what the council tasks the PRC to do, what in the grand scheme of things does an ordinance of public drinking have to do with policing and non-failure? And I would argue that what that boils down to, to me the spirit of it is, is their faith and there's their trust in the department that the department is going to behave and in a professional manner and apply the laws correctly. Because I can, theoretically, I can abuse anyone with any law and beat that over their heads. So if the answer is, well, the police can go ahead and go after homeless people or other people because they're drinking or you get rid of the ordinance. Well, who's to say I won't pick a new ordinance? Litter, someone brought up litter. Oh, I can go after somebody for littering now. Oh, I can go after somebody for the next thing. What it boils down to is the professionalism and the culture that is set by and the standards and the expectations of our community, our elected body and what you all dictate to us to do. And that is how we're going to go about moving things. So I don't think that the answer is that because the police department can abuse a law on the books, you get rid of the law to minimize the opportunities that the police can abuse someone else in the future. Then if that's the case, then get rid of the police department or hire the right people to do the job that are going to enforce the cultures and the values that you set for this community. Thank you, Donna. I'm really slow understanding the ramifications here and taking what Bill said, I'm thinking about when I went to New Orleans and they have what they call open container everywhere. And likewise in Las Vegas, you walk around the street, you can have your drinks. Is that the big difference if this ordinance would then not allow people to do that and without it, we will then have people walking down the sidewalks with their drinks and open beer containers? I would also. I would. We could. I'd say we would. But literally when I think I shouldn't do this, this is the law that's there to sort of remind me I shouldn't do it. Well, yes, ma'am, and again, like are there people drinking in Hubbard Park? Absolutely, there are people slamming beers in Hubbard Park. But I would also again, to city managers proposal to the council, it depends on the standards of the expectations that we have of the community. And in the popular police department, I will salute smartly and do whatever it is that I'm told to do and I will be professional about it. I'm on neither side of the fence. My advice is there are unintended consequences that come to this, but I'd pose another existential question. When you go to Las Vegas or when you go to Beale Street in Memphis, when you, do you bring your kids? Yeah. Then that is the potential amount of behavior that you get. And I'm not trying to be an alarmist by doing by saying that, but I think that it's ultimately, can people break the laws? Yes, but there's still a standard. There's still something that the community is saying, we as a community realize that this has the potential to spiral into something else. And we don't want to do that. But then why is the parks exempt? I know people like to have alcohol with their picnics, but really talk about an area that shouldn't, and most state parks I've been in, say no alcohol. I didn't realize ours didn't. I didn't, we just enforced what you tell us to do. Yeah, it's interesting. Wow. All right, I'm gonna go to Vicki Ann Lane. Then Michael Sherman, since you're on the committee, I'll let you speak again. And then I just wanna acknowledge the time I would like to be wrapping up you know, meaty conversation at at least by 10, which I'm just gonna play out there. I think what that means is that we're not gonna get to the conversation about the recruitment or the minimum hiring requirements. And I've already been in touch with Shayna to say, I don't think we're gonna get to the social and economic justice presentation this evening. So, but just a heads up for folks, where we're going for the rest of the evening. Right, having said that, Vicki Ann Lane, go ahead. I would just prefer to keep the open container law the way it is. I cannot tolerate being around drunk people and that would be the same for people that are high on whatever. I do, I mean, I recognize that there are people in town that have alcoholism as an illness. And yes, I do come in contact with them, but I don't wanna walk down the street and see people drinking their drinks or having drank a few too many and behaving in a way that is very uncomfortable to me or uncomfortable to someone who has a child with them. I just prefer the open container law stay the way it was. I thought that was relatively workable. So, you know. Great. Thank you, Vicki. Michael Sherman and then we'll go to Don Little. Okay, I think there's a problem about what there are two things going on at the same time and we're not making a sufficient distinction between them. One is intoxication and the other is behavior which is either bad behavior or criminal behavior or destructive behavior. And the law doesn't make that, the law as is written doesn't make that distinction, but it's an important distinction. The law, and I'm gonna quote from Chief Pete's letter to me of May 24th, 2021. The state has a law that requires law enforcement to place an intoxicated person into protective custody and take them to a detox facility. Okay, and then I'm just gonna go down a couple of paragraphs. Additionally, when we encounter someone who was intoxicated, just intoxicated, the state law requires we take them into detox. For us here, Washington County Mental Health Services has a detox facility in Berlin, the lighthouse, but the facility has requirements on who can be brought in, nonviolent, et cetera. And a good amount of those we encounter may not meet those requirements. If that happens, MPD is on the hook. If we pick someone up and the lighthouse won't take them, then where do we go from there? Do we bring them back to the department? If an officer had to stay with that person or transport them to another location, it leaves one officer back in the city to respond to emergency calls and service for service. That's why the committee made its recommendation. There's a difference between being intoxicated and acting violently, maliciously, irresponsibly, dangerously. And I think if you're going to do anything you should, I think, in my opinion, you need to make that distinction in the ordinance itself. It's not just intoxication. That's not, should not be the issue because of all those consequences. If state law requires the police to act in one way just because a person's intoxicated, you'll never solve the problem of not having enough police on service because they'll be constantly bringing people to detox centers which are already full and then you have to do something else with them. That's why the committee made that recommendation. Thank you. Don Little, go ahead. I do agree with a lot of what Michael just said that I do think there are a lot of wasted time and resources potentially for picking up people who are intoxicated. And it would be ideally behaviorally based. I did miss a lot of the discussion so I'm not gonna come down really hard on either side of this, but I did want to take the opportunity to mention that not always true in the past, but over the last few years, I have been very impressed by the Montpelier police department response to people who are not intoxicated. I think that with the one exception that Steven Whitaker mentioned earlier, I think just about every interaction I've seen between the police and people who are intoxicated has been incredibly compassionate, incredibly efficient. So I don't have any, at the moment, I really feel good about the way they're responding to that, but I would hate to see a lot of time wasted on unnecessary police involvement in situations that are not either dangerous to the person medically or behaviorally dangerous to those around them. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, anyone who has not spoken yet? Okay, all right, so back to Council. What are your thoughts on this? Lauren, go ahead. I mean, a couple things I'm thinking about. I mean, I really appreciated the way the Chief walked through how you're actually dealing with these situations and part of me is wondering if we could kind of have a written policy that I don't know if it already is a written policy or this is just the culture as you talked about and how people are trained and doing it. And I'm really encouraged to hear all of the input from community members of how that's playing out in the community for people. I mean, to me, it seems like in large part, what it sounds like you're doing is what the police review committee wants the outcomes to be and there's the potential of if that's not being followed, that there's ways that just alcohol consumption in and of itself doesn't feel like the right venue to be entering the criminal justice system potentially or whereas disruptive behavior, the behavior that can result from intoxication can and in our assessment already gives you plenty of tools to engage with people. But I'm just wondering between a policy accompanying the ordinance that lays out and writing what it sounds like you're already doing and or if there is a way of tightening up the ordinance language that has to deal more with intoxication or a different kind of level than just, you know, I mean, some of these extreme examples like I don't think we're gonna turn into New Orleans or any of that because, you know, people can already drink in Howard Park, we haven't turned into New Orleans in the parks, but, you know, so I'm just, it seems like maybe there's a path here that's kind of essentially codifying in some way the practice that it sounds like you're already doing and how do we just ensure that that's what's carried forward and through leadership changes and, you know, that it's crystal clear to everyone in the community, what are the expectations from the community and from your police department of how to respond in situations and, you know, when it would and wouldn't be appropriate to kind of be using this ordinance. If I may say something just very quickly in regards to my, when I brought up the incident and yes, ma'am, definitely we can definitely enshrine that but in going back to that email, my frustration and I should have made it a little bit clearer and I apologize about that context, but my frustration with the law that requires law enforcement to do the detox facilities is frustration that there is a law that puts the liability on us on the city to take responsibility for someone who's in a state that's unfortunate, that poses a significant possibility of health risks to themselves. So that's where my frustration is, even if the law, the ordinance is gotten rid of, we're gonna have to do that anyway. So I'm still frustrated with the fact that that is there, that that on us is on us to be an adult to someone who cannot hold their alcoholic intake. Also I'll jump in here too. I mean, I think about this from the perspective of folks who are recovering alcoholics and who do not want to be around alcohol and so open containers could be a significant source of temptation or just could be really hard to be around and to maintain their own goals. If they're, as it is right now, they could say, well, I'm not going to the bar, I'm not going to places where alcohol is served and that's not necessarily the case if folks are just out in public with it. And I, so I'm, I'll just say for me, this is not a step that I'm ready to take, but I am just one person on the council, other thoughts. Yes, Carrie. Okay, so I think there, I'm feeling like there are a lot of intersecting things here and so I appreciate Bill's point about we're thinking about kind of our community standards here and do we want to be a community where people can drink a beer on the sidewalk? Where we are a community where people can drink a beer at Hubbard Park where they can drink a beer at their kid's little league game where they can, it's not school sponsored. So where, where, you know, the rec soccer games of the dog river field, people can be drinking. So, and, and we're not Bourbon Street and I do think it's alarmist to invoke images of Bourbon Street, I did go there last summer, there were a lot of kids on Bourbon Street and it's, there are a lot of reasons why it may or might not be a place I would want to take my kids, but that don't apply immobiliar. So in general, my bias, my personal bias is gonna be against criminalizing behavior that we don't have to criminalize. And so alcohol is legal, I can, I can drink in my own home and I can get completely wasted and then step outside and stagger down the street. And I'm not, and that's not, I'm not publicly drinking, I drank at home, but then my behavior becomes a public issue. And so it's, I think that's the responsibility of the community and the police to be thinking about what's the problematic behavior. And so if I'm stumbling down the street and I'm yelling obscenities at my neighbors because I'm intoxicated, that is a problem. But if I am sitting quietly on a park bench and quietly, you know, intoxicated, that's not necessarily causing a problem. It's not a public safety issue. So I would, in general, I would like us to be focusing on the problematic behavior and trying to address that. So there's the disorderly conduct, there's what people are doing when they are, when they have been drinking. And not assuming that any drinking is going to result in illegal behavior. And the chief brought up the question of, do we want to wait until somebody becomes so drunk that then they engage in problematic behavior before the police step in and do anything? And I mean, I would, yes, like you to do that. I would like us not to be engaging with people in a criminal justice kind of a way if they're not doing anything that's not a danger to public safety. And I don't think that in general, public drinking is a danger to public safety. It's the behavior that can result from that. And I think we do have tools to deal with that. And if we don't, I think we would be seeing a lot more problems in the vast areas of the city where public drinking is allowed. So I don't really have a very strong feeling about what we should do in response to the police review committee because I do feel like there are a lot of people in the community who might have different standards. And I'm very respectful of that. So this isn't gonna be my hill to die on, but I do want us to be really conscious about when we make choices to outlaw behavior that is otherwise legal, we need to be extremely, extremely thoughtful about that. Thank you. Jack, go ahead. I think that there's, as I said before, I think there are arguments on both sides that have some validity to them, but whatever those arguments are, I think that they deserve to be fully aired with the notice of the public and public hearings before this body. So I move that we place on a future agenda a proposal to repeal the public drinking ordinance. Is there a second? Second. Okay, there's a second. Further discussion? Connor. Yeah, I mean, I'll just say I've been spoken too much. I'm on the fence, I can't believe I'm on the fence on this one actually, but I kind of am. I mean, like I'm having trouble reconciling the idea that we'd consider this after a move we made a couple agenda items ago, which largely was due to public feedback on Gerdyn Park. And then I'm trying to be honest with myself at the age of like 23, 24, when I moved to town, do I trust myself with an ordinance like this? Nobody drank as much as I did in my 20s. I guarantee you that. And if I was gonna go to like McGillicuddies, you better believe I'd be pre-gaming and I'd bring a bottle of Jameson with me all the way down state street. There I'd go nothing but net, I'd drink more there, and then I'd probably buy another bottle for the walk home. This was my behavior in my 20s and I definitely would have done it if it was legal and I knew nobody could stop me for it. So yeah, again, generally good for decriminalizing like most things and I do see some logic and when you talk ordinances, we're going beyond you chief. I don't trust the police chief 10 years from now. I don't trust the council then. So there's a level of permanency and inordinance, right? So I'm all over the map. Maybe we need to talk more. So I'll vote for public turn. I am with Connor, like 150% me in my 20s. Yeah, we would have been together, so. I just don't feel comfortable with the intention to your attention of a hearing is to repeal it and I'm not ready to repeal it. I'm ready to have a lot more discussion. So to have that as a preset attitude that we're having these hearings to not just modify it but to repeal it, I'm not comfortable with it. And I wasn't bringing up Bourbon Street or New Orleans or Las Vegas as an armist. It was just my own reality. How different I felt in those communities watching people all around me, even when I walked two miles from the base chaos with beer and drinks everywhere was just very different mindset than on my own hometown. So that's why I brought it. It was a huge contrast all of a sudden of a community standard and the community standard, I think, impacts not having beer in the parks. And maybe when we review it, if it can be more positioned as a review, then maybe we'll look at the parks and look at the rec fields, et cetera. That's all. I'm definitely not gonna vote in favor of repealing it. At this point. At this point, I'm not voting in favor of repealing it, but I am voting in favor of having, putting it on the agenda so we have further discussion. So that's why I phrase the motion the way it is because I think that's how we get it on the agenda to have the discussion. But so we'll be just on clear of the action it would be to put the first reading for repeal of the ordinance on an agenda. Okay. Yes, chief. Go ahead. Should I also work on the enshrinement for the policy and interacting with, to enshrine that into a policy situation? Go ahead, Mark. So I seconded the motion. I mean, I'm kind of in Donna's camp. Like I do wonder if there's a way of wording it in a way that is, I feel like there's paths that are, my sense of the council is, I don't know that we're gonna repeal it. It feels like maybe we'll make some adjustments. And so does putting it out and getting a really, you know, gut reaction from the community about this versus what the real conversation I think is of, you know, what are we doing? Are there adjustments to be made? Is kind of how I feel like the conversation has gone more. So I, could we friendly amend the... Well, a question for Bill. If you know, would we be satisfying the provisions of state law if we just put on the agenda, consider whether to repeal the ordinance or consider taking action on the public drinking ordinance? So there's a couple things you can do. First of all, our ordinance adoption practice, our ordinance adoption requirement in the charter only calls for one public hearing in adoption. We've always traditionally done two and I think it's best practice and we should continue to do that just because. So you could have your first reading could be to consider amendments. The other thing we've done in the past is just put the topic on and talk about the alternatives and they come up with what you want. If you want to amend it, then what goes on. So it wouldn't be, then you'd still have to have the hearings, but you'd have another meeting to consider what amendments if any you're gonna make to propose and then put those on for first reading. That's probably the safest way, but whatever you want to do is. And you can always, you can have the first reading and not pass it. You can have the first reading and the first reading could be to repeal it all and then that gets amended too. We're just gonna amend it to this instead and have your second reading on that. So I'm sorry, are you suggesting that we could, we could have it on the agenda just as a topic, not necessarily as a hearing. Yes, as often as you wish. Yeah, that was my understanding as well, is that we can have, we can actually put it on the agenda just as something to discuss. Like today. Yeah, right, yes. I moved to amend, or to amend my motion to do that. Second. Okay, so we're voting on the amendment to do that, which is just have a discussion about it. If I'm not mistaken. Okay, for the discussion about that. That sounds great. Okay, yes, Lauren. Well, just one question. So back to the chief's question. I mean, do other people think that, because it obviously would take time of the chief and the team to do the work. So if I'm the only one who wants that, so I just, like, is there a broader sense or should we wait until that discussion before, like I could see that as an alternative proposal to amending the ordinance if we're like, oh, that gives me great comfort that in the policy, possibly, but I just want to be responsive to the chief's question of if that's a good use of the team's time and the interim before we take up the public discussions more. I mean, if you're comfortable with that idea, I am much more interested in enshrining that kind of policy rather than changing the ordinance. Speaking for myself. Yes, man. The only thing that our folks would need is just we just need direction. What do you want us to do when someone calls us and says XYZ is going on and we just need that to find. I think that's how it's to do what we're doing. So I would also say, just to say it a lot in front of everyone, it's gonna be a while. Unless you want to expedite this, it's gonna be a while. We have been habitually pushing things off and we've pushed a couple more off tonight. And right now the meeting list for the next meeting is extremely long, which tells me other things are gonna have to get pushed off. So in terms of the chief having time to write a policy, this may be one of these late June or July things before it comes back. I'm just trying to be realistic because there's just a huge backlog. That's okay. Carrie, go ahead. Yeah, it doesn't feel urgent to me to have a written policy right now. I feel pretty confident about how things are actually happening. I do think that that could be something that came out of a discussion or a couple of discussions down the road that the city council could make a formal request or recommendation or direction for some kind of a policy as opposed to getting rid of the ordinance. I also don't feel a great sense of urgency time-wise to get this taken care of right away because I do feel very confident in the way things are being handled right now by the police department. So I don't see, I think it's okay. That makes sense to me that that could be something that comes out of a discussion. Yeah, okay. Is that okay with you, Lauren? Great. So no on the writing of policy right now. But we still have a motion and a second on the floor to put it on the, well, some future agenda. So question. A motion to amend. Yes, exactly. So we got to do both. Any further discussion? Okay. All right, so on the amendment to take it up at a future meeting, all in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. And so now we're voting on the motion to take it up at a future meeting. Okay. Any further discussion? All in favor, please say aye. Aye. And opposed. Okay. Thank you all very much. Thank you. Appreciate it. And I also want to thank the police review committee for all your work on this. It is worth talking about. So yeah, I appreciate your good thinking about all of this. Okay. So we are not doing the officer recruitment standards or the social justice advisory committee stipend policy. I do feel like we could talk about a rep to the Montpelier live board. Anybody want to do that? Council member Erickson had been our rep. If they could have one, they would like one. Yes. We should have one. Yes, Jack. When this is a board that meets during regular working hours, I assume. I think so. I don't know. Yeah, I thought so too. I'm not 100% certain. It's there. Well, Justin Drexler was on and he used to be on the board if he's still here, maybe he can help us a little. It looks like he just left. I don't see him. Just went off. Okay. Anybody interested? Or should we find out when it meets? Oh, the face Lauren is like, you're thinking about it. I would need to know when it meets. Okay. It's feasible with my schedule. All right, we will find out when it meets. Okay. All right, on to council reports. Donna, you are up. Okay. I had one thing. Oh, shoot. We can come back to you. No, it's late. No, that's just, you'll come back if I think of it, but. Okay, all right. Thank everybody for being here and participating and dealing with the two minutes, much better than usual. We averaged three, three and a half. It was good. Good, it's good. Yes. The board for volunteer alive meets monthly on the second Tuesdays from 530 to 730. Okay. With that information, second Tuesday, 530 to 730, who is up for that? I might be able to, but I have to look at my COSA case load to see if I have any on Tuesday evenings. Okey-dokey. So can we revisit that next time? Yes. Okay. Super. Thank you. Okay. Carry. Yes. I'll be brief. I have been encouraging you, Steve Whitaker, for a long time. This is an organization that claims to not be bound by public records law that gets city money that has offices in city hall and is not accountable. Do you have a comment about the council rep to, because that is what is the topic? Yes. That council rep is going to be the focus of all my public records requests for the month till you're alive. So we will enforce some transparency on that organization. Thank you. Carry. I just want to reiterate what I said earlier about the appreciation for how many people who are actually using the Gertin structure coming out and talking to us about it, because we often hear from people who have opinions about what other people are doing and about other people's experiences. And so I encourage more folks to come out and share their personal experiences with us along those lines. Thank you. Connor. Just since we've been talking about advice and everything, Officer Phil Brick and I took a tour of the Patience Alliance dispensary. I just wanted to give an update on that. I think they've done a really good job reaching out. I know, yeah, Matt made with Bill the other day just to talk about the plans. But right now it looks like they're opening in July and would potentially be the first retail dispensary in the state, actually, because Burlington is not slated till October and I think Brattleboro as well. So you could see a lot of activity in that area of town. But I think taking the tour was really interesting. You got to see the security on it. It's a very professional operation that's had a really good relationship with the city while they provided the medical marijuana there. So they were very open that any counselor, anybody who's interested could pop in for a tour. I definitely recommend it. And also I may be at a town next council meeting, so I'll talk to you guys. Okay, good to know. All right, Jennifer. I just wanted to thank Chief Pete for the tour that we got last Friday. Carrie and I toured the police station and I did a ride along with one of the officers and I have to say, I have never had a good relationship with police ever in my life and my time spent with you and can't remember his name, Kevin. Such a different experience than my childhood with police officers and I really enjoyed my time. I had, we had a great conversation. He answered a lot of questions. I answered a lot of questions for him. We went on some calls and we rode by Gertin Park several times and everybody there knew him and everybody said hi to him and it was just a really great experience and I just really appreciate that. You've kind of made me feel a little less uncomfortable. And I, you know, we could go into this for hours but I just wanted to say thank you and thank you for this opportunity being on council to be able to do that. It's just, it was very special, so thank you. Yeah, that's all I have. Yeah, thank you. Jack. There are a bunch of springs here. There are a bunch of events coming up and the one I want to mention is this Sunday, the race against racism gathering at the high school, 10 a.m. to 12 30, there's going to be speakers, other stuff and then the 5k run or walk. So could be a good time and for a good cause. Yeah. Yes, just very briefly just echo the gratitude. So appreciate the input from the community. Appreciate that the council's taking up the police review committee. We took on some meaty topics. You're welcome and grateful to be able to have some hard conversations together in a really thoughtful way. And with the chief and the team at the city. So looking forward to more, but thank you all. Great. So I just have a couple of things. Thank you for mentioning the race against racism on Sunday. There's also a rally for the planet hosted by the youth lobby that is going to be Friday April 29th, the youth march goes from the state, I'm sorry, from the high school to the state house lawn that marches at 10 a.m. And starting at like 10 15, there'll be live music. There'll be speakers. There's a green jobs fair that starts at 11 30 also at the state house to be a student teach ins. It's going to be a great event. So check out the state house lawn on Friday. And also something that's super important. So I'm thinking about the July 3rd parade. And I hope that you all will be there to represent the council and one thought. So the signup form just came out for that. And it was saying if you are just a walk-in wave that was going to be a $25 fee. Do we, we've always just been a walk-in wave. I assume that's what we want to do again, but I thought I'd at least put it out there. If there's something you can, yeah, right. Do we want to have a float? Do we? If we have a float, we don't get charged. Right, right, exactly. You have ideas about what else we could do. Awesome. But if not, you know, whatever. Right, right, exactly. Anyway, just be thinking about July 3rd parade. That's all. Okay, John, okay, Bill, okay. So with that, we are at the end of our business. So 10-22, we'll declare the meeting adjourned. Thank you, everybody. Have a great evening.