 I think we'll get started now. We're running a little bit behind due to some technical difficulties, but my name is Chris Haisley. I'm a resident of College Street. I live in Ward three and I'm a member of the steering committee. I think you're up next, Jess. I'm Jess Hyman live on North Champlain Street, a member of the, of the steering committee from Ward three. And I will pass it to Tony. Yes, Tony Reddington. I am live on St. Paul Street and I am a member of the steering committee from Ward three. And I'll pass it on to Kevin. I'm Kevin Duterman. I'm in Ward two and a steering committee member. Who else is here? Miami. Go ahead. Hi, Miami. I live on Willow Street in Ward. I don't know which one. Sorry. But I live on Willow Street. So. Hi everybody. I think I'm the last steering committee member. I'm Molly. I was in Ward three. Charlie G. I live in Ward three on Rose Street. Thank you. So we're going to get going here with the agenda. I'll see if I can pull that up online to share for those who don't have it. See if I can share my screen. I may or may not be able to. I don't know if I can share my screen. I don't know if I can share my screen. Okay. This is my first time facilitating the meeting here of the NPA. So I do apologize. So I'm going to pull up the screen. Y'all can see that here. For those of you on zoom. So looking forward, if there, anyone has any items that they would like to have on next month's agenda, please use the submission form on the CEL website. I believe the link is at the bottom of the agenda. Thank you. Thank you. Our next meeting will be on Thursday, February the 10th. It's always the second Thursday of the month. The in person location will be here at the community center at 20 Allen street. And of course the online portion will be of zoom. Recordings can be found at the city's YouTube site as well as the CCTV website. So without further ado, we will roll into the public forum and then we'll move on to the next meeting. Thank you. I just respectfully ask that you please try to keep it to a two minimum maximum. If anyone has anything they'd like to say, raise your hand. I see that Mr. Bergman has his hand up. So. I will let Molly facilitate that. Go ahead. Hi, everybody. I'm Jean Bergman and I just wanted to let folks know that. I'm a member of the City Council. I'm a member of the City Council. I'm a member of the City Council. I'm a member of the City Council. And for reelection and for the city council seat for ward two, that I am going to do that. And I have done it before, but I've really. I've thought a lot about. Where we are at as a, as a ward as a city. And I'm actually pretty excited. About the opportunity that is presented. To tell you that if you want to get in touch with me, you can call me at. 802. Five, nine, eight, three, six, zero, two. That's my cell phone. And Jean Bergman for city council. Let's see. And let me just read this here. Jean Bergman for city council at gmail.com. Is the way that you can email me. And I've got a website, Jean Bergman for city council.org. So there are lots of ways that folks can, can get ahold of me. I'd love to talk with you. And I know that most of you are in war three, but not all some, like my, we live around the corner and I'll hope to get a chance to knock on your door sometime soon. Thanks a lot. Bye. Thanks, Jean. Looks like Tony has his hand up. Yeah. Hi. I think Jean Bergman, who I've known for some time. He's been involved in. Human justice issues at my church. You, you church and, and other issues. And I think some of you recall him being in a debate. He almost Jean single-handedly helped defeat the development. The downtown improvement district did issue two, three years ago, which apparently for some reason the mayor and, and Brian and planning to be going to bring him back. But what was exciting was Jean was in a hand-to-hand, literally hand-to-hand debate with mayor, with the mayor. At one point, grabbing the mic from the mayor and, and did say that, that he felt that Jean felt that the DID proposal was insane. And I think that still probably applies. So why are we even considering something right now in the middle of the, the biggest spike of COVID to be doing major changes and governmental structure in our downtown. I live in downtown now in these kinds of conditions makes no sense at all. And so, but I really want to talk about the fact that, and I think we, that, that Max Tracy is going to take a, a leave of absence from the city council and politics. And I don't think there's anyone who has made a greater effort and a better effort in, in being a city councilor and president of the council than Max has over the last few years. Max sort of became my counselor on has been for most of the time I was here in town and, and about the time I arrived in 2010. And on the NPA, I think that there is no one who has a better record as a counselor of attending and informing and providing information and listening to us here at NPA meetings for the last decade. We will sorely miss Max. And we certainly, no one deserves a break from the marathon that we all have been experiencing. And I think that Max has had to deal with as a community leader now for some time. And I can only say thank you, Max. Thank you, Max. Thanks, Tony. Looks like Jeff had their hands up. Thanks, Molly. And thank you, Tony, for that. And I echo that. Thank you to Max. I'm, my announcement is wearing my, my work hat, my CBO hat. I just wanted to let everyone know that there's a, a new community resource center or it's a second year of a community service center at the VFW on South Wenuski, a 176 South Wenuski, and is operated by CBO in partnership with the city of Burlington. And it's open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Except holidays and it provides services to people who are experiencing homelessness and any other community member in need. And it's a fantastic spot. It's warm. It's cozy. The staff there are so friendly and there's free meals and there's a lot of fun. There's a lot of fun. There's a lot of clothing, computer access, phone access, emergency housing services, and, and, and, and support and accessing other public benefits. So it's a really wonderful spot. Anyone can drop in. Get a smile, get a hot drink and talk to folks there. And so that's at the VFW at 176 South Wenuski, the community resource center and warming center operated by CBO. So that's all the hands that are raised on zoom, Chris. We have no one here to speak in public comment person. So we'll move on to the next item agenda. I'd like to thank everyone for taking time to come out and share their concerns. And I'd like to take the opportunity to welcome Mr. Bergman to return next month at our February meeting, where we'll have our annual candidate forum where we'll have the opportunity to speak to the candidates and ask questions. And I would encourage you all to come up and try for that. I just want to piggyback on what my colleague just said about CBO. The Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity. They have a lot of other great programs as well. They were the organization that I went to many years ago to help me with a business plan. So if you're thinking about starting a business, that's just one of the many things that they can help with. So check them out. Okay. Moving along. Our next item and we're getting close to being back on time here is the community development block grant award representative for the cause of the national collective elections. For those of you who are not aware, community development block grants is a federal grant program that's given out to major cities to support traditionally bricks and mortar improvements to the community. And for many years it was, probably the larger cities and then pay the smaller states like Vermont says, well, you know, we want our piece of the pie to you and so Burlington is known as what's called an entitlement city. So Burlington is the designated city that receives these funds the government for use here in our community. Unlike other communities though, where oftentimes the decisions are made by an executive committee, we have taken a community-based process and had sought to elicit representation from the various wards. And this has been the process for as long as I've lived in the city, which has been more than 20 years. So we're fortunate to have a community voice in the allocation process. And tonight, we're fortunate to have a couple of individuals who are with us. I think, hopefully, Julia Connell, I think I saw you out there and Allison Spasic, and I apologize if my pronunciation is a little off. But if the two of you are out there, you might want to hear from you. So I'll turn it over to Molly to facilitate that portion of the meeting. Yeah, I think I saw Julia out there. Do you want to give an intro, Julia? Hi, yes, I'm Julia Connell. I live in Ward 2 on Archibald Street. I've lived in the downtown area for probably these seven or eight years now. I graduated from UBM in 2015, and I've been in downtown Burlington ever since. I've moved around wards a little bit, but I've been mostly in the Old North End. I currently work for the state of Vermont in the Department of Housing and Community Development as a community development specialist. I work for the Vermont Community Development Program, which administers the Community Development Block Grant funds for the state. So I saw the ad in front porch forum looking for a volunteer to help with this committee with the Community Development Block Grants in Burlington. The difference between my full-time job in this position is that full-time with the state, we are the state program, and then Burlington is the entitlement program. So Burlington has its own pot of funds. So it is run through CEDO. So I, through the state, don't work, we don't work specifically with Burlington as they run their own program. So when I saw this position in front porch forum, I thought I would volunteer since I do have experience and it is what I do sort of on the day-to-day basis. So yeah, I'm just hoping to help you all out as best I can. Thanks, Julia. It's nice to meet you. I'm not seeing Allison out there. Maybe she's under a different name, but I'm not seeing her as part of the Zoom community. Okay, I'm not seeing anyone here in present for nominations from the floor. So without any additional nominations, I would propose that we split up into wards and take a vote for the two candidates here. And once again, I will turn that over to Molly to facilitate the online voting portion. And I will do the same here at the community center. Great, thanks. I think everyone who is at the meeting has been invited to be a panelist so we can have people vote by either using the raise hand function or by waving at us. So since we just got introduced to Julia, let's vote on the ward two rep. So I guess we need a nomination for Julia to be our candidate for the board. I would nominate Julia. Great, thanks, Jean. Do we have a second for ward two? And Mayumi is in ward two. I second. Great, thank you. Okay, is there any discussion? Okay, all in favor of having Julia represent ward two. Please raise your hand or wave at us. Great, thank you. Anyone opposed? Wonderful, great. Well, it looks like ward two has nominated Julia. Do you have ward two reps in the hall, Chris, to vote? Solvee, your ward two. Solvee, we have one person and they cast their vote in the affirmative as well. Great, well, welcome Julia, that's exciting. Thanks, everyone. We do not have the ward three candidate here. Just put this out to the group. Do we wish to table this until such point as that individual can speak to us or do we feel that we are comfortable making a decision tonight recognizing that Ms. Basic is the only unannounced candidate here and recognizing that there are no in-person attendees from ward three. We have no letter or information or background on her. I'm not currently in possession of any background information. If there's anybody here on the Zoom call that can speak to the candidacy, I'm sure folks would like to hear from that. I believe we can talk. I move that we table this until the next meeting unless someone else can represent or present her candidacy so we can know a little bit about her, about Allison. I think we should reach out to Allison again to see if she's still interested and perhaps table this until after we speak. I'll second Tony's motion to table. I think it's important to give the candidate an opportunity to address the full NPA. So for that reason, I'm gonna support Tony's motion. It's not debatable, I guess, so go ahead. We have no information, I just can't vote for somebody I know nothing about. Can someone acknowledge what the deadline is? When is the first meeting? The 25th? So are we gonna have a steering committee meeting, Jessica, before the 25th? The next steering committee meeting, I believe is the 20th, my apologies, let me just call it. I think it's the 27th. The 27th, so I think we can have a special meeting either via email or call a special meeting to discuss it before then. Okay, could we discuss this just a little bit further before we make a decision? Absolutely. Okay, so what I propose is that I would like to nominate Allison at this time and in the hope so that we could appoint her tentatively to her accepting the position. Okay, now if that makes people uncomfortable, I'm sorry, but we do need a representative for Ward 3. And so I would nominate Allison and hope for a second and make a contingent on her acceptance. I will second Charlie's motion as well, given the time crunch that we are dealing with and the fact that Allison is the only one who has expressed interest. I think it's important that Ward 3 secure representation on this committee from the beginning. So I will second Tony's motion, or Charlie's motion, sorry. And don't hesitate to vote against it if that's what you wanna do. I'll go along, I don't have a problem. I just wish that we had gotten a little information that's all. So I guess Molly, this is where we do the poll of the Ward 3 representatives on the Zoom call because we do not have any Ward 3 attendees in person. Okay, great, yeah. Any discussion on further discussion on the motion to vote for Allison? There is none. Let's have a vote on nominating Allison to be the Ward 3 rep. So everyone in favor, please raise your hand or wave. It's like we have a number of hands raised. Anyone on Zoom against nominating Allison at this meeting? I assume, Tony, are you voting against or is your hand still up? The hand was still up, I voted for her. Great, wonderful. Okay, Chris, it looks like everyone on Zoom is supportive of the motion. Awesome. So moving on to the next item, city strategic roadmap for racial equity. I'm gonna get a presentation from Skyler Nash from the Department of Racial Equity, Inclusion and Belonging. Skyler, I assume you're out there in Zoom land somewhere. So we'll turn it over to you there, Molly. Skyler. I am here, hi there. Just trying to get my rate. There I am. Hi everybody, I am here with two colleagues, one from my department and one from my life, Anastasia Light who is here, will be helping me with our presentation and also my dog Hendricks who is doing everything in his power to make sure that I won't be able to present tonight by sitting on my lap and holding my hands down. So thankfully, thankful for Bluetooth, Mice and keyboards, allowing me a little bit of accessibility here. Does Anastasia have the ability to share her screen with you all? I think Anastasia just rejoined the meeting. Okay, there we go. Are you all able to see the presentation? Yes. Okay, great. For some reason it's not popping up on my screen but that's okay as long as you can see it. So today I wanted to come by trying to get to all the MPAs to talk to everybody about our Racial Equity Strategic Roadmap Plan. This was a process that took place over about six to eight months last year working with an outside consulting firm, All Aces and Grayscale. We're also working with those firms for the Great Streets Projects. So they've been very consistent and supportive partners for the city on our equity work. And our Racial Equity Strategic Roadmap has a new plan for racial equity outlining for the city how we can collaborate not just with our BIPOC population and residents as city employees but with the city as a whole to ensure that we're seeing racially equitable outcomes for the city over the next three years. And so on the second slide that we have here you can see that the three main components of our Racial Equity Strategic Roadmap are based in building community of power, identity and representation and safety and freedom. Now, there's a bunch of different things that go into that but we wanna make sure that all of the work that we're engaging in as it relates to racial equity and following the strategic roadmap is grounded in those three ideals. So the first part of this report that was put together for us by this outside consulting group deals with budget allocations for city services as it relates to racial equity. And so the first part of this is talking strategically about the racial equity inclusion and belonging department. We're a new department that was just founded in 2020 originally a one-person department with our director, Taisha Green, myself and my colleague Blaine and Tensei joined on. And since then we've steadily been trying to hire people and build out a new department to accomplish a lot of the city's racial equity work in collaboration with departments like CEDO and others who have been here for a lot longer than us. The second part of this budget allocation that's recommended on an annual basis for the strategic roadmap is for data disaggregation and policy research. Now, this is envisioned as being done both within the city and the racial equity inclusion and belonging department and also in collaboration with outside groups whether that be universities, our grassroots organizations really with their boots on the ground in the communities that we're looking to engage with. This third allocation for a BIPOC coalition is with the mindset that we wanna be in building leadership in BIPOC communities in the city of Burlington and making sure that there's consistent leadership and voices that are serving as inputs for us on a yearly basis as we're engaged in this work. This fourth allocation for planning, design and implementation support is an annual allocation that is for dealing with the policy framework that comes out of the research that was put into the strategic roadmap on a yearly basis being able to work with outside groups when we need to develop programs targeted to reach BIPOC communities and residents and making sure that we can continue to see those programs through on a yearly basis. And then this last allocation would be for community empowerment grants making sure that when folks have issues to solve problems or to make life better for themselves and for their communities that they don't always have to entirely rely on the city to take the lead in designing and implementing these programs. Sometimes all we need to do is inject a little bit of capital and let people who are on the ground in these communities experiencing these problems, fix them for themselves because oftentimes they know the answers before us and a lot better than we do. So our next slide after our budget allocation is talking about culture and then targeted universalism. And so we've got a definition of culture up there just to make sure that we're all operating off the same definition. And what this is really talking about is taking the culture of the city as a first step and understanding what does it mean in Burlington? What is Burlington's culture? But then shifting that towards targeted universalism that is setting outcomes and goals for everybody but recognizing in order to ensure those outcomes and goals are accessible to everybody. We're gonna have to take targeted, measured and unique approaches for different people in different communities and from different backgrounds. So our next slide is a little bit of background on how we got into the process of developing a racial equity strategic roadmap for the city. I take you all back to the summer of 2020 when the Racial Justice Alliance published their Operation Phoenix Rise plan that was talking around implementing cultural empowerment, securing equal opportunity and expanding racial equity inclusion and belonging. It was Operation Phoenix Rise that led to a lot of the equity policies and practices that were enacted by city council as well as the development of the racial equity inclusion and belonging department as the city department for the first time. The racial equity domains that we're working with which are education, economy, health, housing and justice those have been used by the city for years now. And so as we move forward with this inaugural plan for racial equity, we're gonna continue to be basing our work within those five domains for the city. And after the mayor engaged us on creating the strategic roadmap, our first step was to host a series of BIPOC listening sessions. For a lot of people, we heard back from them that this was the first time that they found themselves in the city sponsor space where it was just people of color. And we went to great lengths to make sure that those were protected spaces. They were closed down to not reported on so that people could really be in safe spaces around people that they knew from their communities that they recognized, had trust with and really tell us about their experience as people of color in the city of Burlington and what challenges came from that. And those three in those listening sessions were based around community building, empower sharing, identity and representation and safety and freedom and broke up in that way. And everything that we got from those listening sessions along with data, disaggregation and research is what really birthed this 115 page strategic roadmap. So as you get into the final roadmap, it's laid out for us that there are eight steps that the city of Burlington needs to take towards changing our culture and disrupting the existing culture of white suppression and the oppression of people of color and marginalized folks in Burlington. And the first step is a recommitment to urgency. And I take you all back and really ask yourselves is the urgency around issues of equity the same that we were all collectively feeling in the summer of 2020? And I think that this is reminding us that oftentimes when we're faced with a crisis and the suppression and these problems are put into our faces, we get a lot of urgency but then over time we can allow ourselves to forget about them. And this first step is just reminding us ourselves that we need to keep and remain in that sense of urgency around these issues along this long journey. That's gonna be a marathon and not a sprint to fix these traditional and historical problems. The second step is BIPOC Coalition Building which we referenced earlier in the presentation. This is around really building power bases of people of color within the community and in the city for them to be able to be leaders, not just in their communities, but also leaders within working with city government on issues of equity and making sure that these programs and policies are created in ways that are actually gonna solve the problems that we're seeking to solve for the people. We wanna solve them for. Third step is goal setting and data disaggregation. This is, okay, we understand these problems. Now what are the tangible outcomes that we're gonna be seeking through this work, through our policies, through our practices, through the programs that we're developing? Public engagement and communication, making sure that we're not just doing for people, that it's a two-way conversation, that we're taking in information from folks, taking in feedback and really making sure that that is actually impacting the programs that are being created out of this strategic roadmap. Asset mapping, funding and empowerment, this is going into the community and understanding, okay, we know that what the problems are, but what are the assets available to us? And that's gonna be city resources and departments and staff, but also having a better understanding of what are the assets and people that are in the community and available to us as partners on fixing these issues. Short-term wins, this is gonna be a marathon and not a sprint, but that shouldn't dissuade us from making sure that every time we have these small wins that we chart and then we celebrate them and we take note of them, that's gonna help us commit and remain urgent and motivated in this work. Sustaining our progress, making sure that we're continuing to move forward towards our goals and with our thought partners and then reflecting and re-centering at the end of these processes on a yearly basis. So as we talked about earlier, we've got five domains of equity and if you dive into this report, the recommendations are separated out among them, those economy, education, health, housing and justice. And I can take you through at a higher level just what came out of these BIPOC listening sessions and research as our goals for these domains. So first for the economy, we wanna build an economically sustainable community where BIPOC residents prosper and thrive. And so these goals are what is going to be directing us as a city in terms of the programs and policies that we wanna put together. I can tell you right now in the RAIB, we're putting an increased focus on the work that's already being done around minority-owned business enterprises looking at city contracting practices, looking at the availability of minority-owned contractors in the city to fulfill city contracts. And then understanding, okay, how can we give support to entrepreneurs and small business owners to continue to expand that ecosystem of BIPOC residents who are business owners who are contracting with the city, et cetera. Education, we wanna build and promote a healthy and nurturing learning environment that is representative of the BIPOC community. And so that's gonna be working with the school systems making sure that teachers have cross-cultural competencies and are able to tailor their teaching styles to kids of color and kids of different backgrounds that's gonna be looking at improving access to resources outside of the classroom to help facilitate learning for BIPOC residents and people from disadvantaged backgrounds. And so that's something that is going to be both in the classroom, in the community, making sure that we are resulting in equitable education outcomes for kids of color in the city of Irlington. Health, we wanna develop an advance and accessible and high-quality public health system to empower BIPOC communities and culture. As we've all seen through the COVID-19 pandemic that's ravaged the city. This is something that's touched people from all different sorts of backgrounds. But as we know, which is the case with public health crisis is that this is disproportionately affecting people of color, people with low incomes. And so that is shining a real light on holes in our public health system and inequities in public health outcomes. And we really wanna focus in on that over the next three years. And then finally, housing. Support and expand equitable access to high-quality housing and home ownership. Now this is not just going to be increasing the number of BIPOC homeowners even though that's important. But we also wanted to look at the full cycle of housing and that starts with people that are experiencing houselessness, people that are renting, then to that other end of the cycle of people who want to move into home owning in the city of Irlington. And that's something that our department is gonna be working with private businesses and CEDO over the next couple of months as a major focus for the city. And then justice. Build and strengthen justice and equity into all systems. Now, I know a lot of people are gonna see this and immediately think policing. And that's one aspect of this, but this is also really about expanding the umbrella of justice and public safety to include things that are not police issues. That's public health that is housing, tying in all of these issues to that contribute to whether somebody feels safe or is experiencing just outcomes in the city of Irlington as a resident. And so our commitments over this work as a department and then as a city as it relates to racial equity over the next three years are gonna be to continue to have sustained community engagement that is truly centering BIPOC voices. And that's not going to be the same voices all the time, but we really wanna make sure that we're getting a wide range of voices coming from our BIPOC communities in the city. Sharing decision-making and resource allocations with our thought partners, not just doing for people, inviting them in to be true partners, giving community members resources to solve their own problems and to start and implement their own programs, creating high impact systemic change. We don't wanna just put band-aids on issues of racial equity. We really wanna dive into the foundations that have been set over time that are resulting in these inequitable outcomes for people in the city of Irlington and then measuring and evaluating our process through data metrics. We don't do a good enough job as a city tracking outcomes through data for anybody and certainly not for racial equity. So we wanna make sure that we're going about processes that we don't have to wonder what our progress is that we're able to hold ourselves accountable to that progress and track it from year to year. And that's our last slide. Like I said, the report is 115 pages, although I do encourage everybody if you have the chance to look at it, we don't have printed issues right now, but the link is on the city site as well as I will leave the agenda for tonight. So I can answer questions, but thank you for letting us come in and share that with you all. So it seems like this is the conclusion of your presentation, Skyler. Yes. Do we have any questions or discussion from anybody here or via the online portion? So raise your hands and Molly will facilitate that. It looks like Jess has a question. You're on mute, Jess. You think after three years of this, I've remembered on mute. Yeah, thank you so much, Skyler. I'm looking forward to digging into the full report and I really love the focus on data collection because we can't assess our progress unless we have something to measure. So I really appreciate that piece of it and thank you and the rest of the REIB team for all your work on this. Thank you. Hi, Skyler. Hey. Okay, so you know further questions we're ready to roll on to the next item on the agenda. And I think we're pretty much back on schedule at this time. Thank you, Skyler, for sharing that important information. Without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to Director Brian Pine from the Community and Economic Development Office. And Mr. Pine will be addressing us about the downtown tax financing district and we'll be giving a presentation on that. So Brian, it's all you. Thanks, Chris. I am going to call up a slideshow. And so while I do that, I'll just mention that my colleagues are with us tonight from the Department of Public Works, Laura Wielach and Olivia Durice. And what I'd like to start with saying is that the focus tonight for this presentation is to provide a view of what is essentially a economic development initiative that is enabled by the state legislature for municipalities to make investments that they otherwise would not be able to make in important public infrastructure. And tax increment financing district is a tool that is used across the country. I'm going to ask my colleague, Laura, though, if she could call up the presentation, I actually am having some trouble getting it I was so I was listening to Skyler's presentation and really got into it. And I should have been preparing for this. And next thing I knew, it was my turn. So I'm going to confess, can Laura be given a screen sharing privileges? Brian, I'm on my phone at the moment on your phone. OK, then Olivia, do you have the slideshow? Do you have any chance? Do I have the final version of the slideshow, Laura? If you go into the S drive under Great Streets Main Street, it says the presentation has NPA written right in the title. So if you go there in the city council folder, Olivia. Sorry about that. All right, so while Olivia is looking for it, I can at least give you some more background on essentially what we are presenting. In 2011, the city developed the concept of a of a downtown tax increment financing district not to be or to be, I should say, distinguished from the Waterfront TIF district, which was created in the 1990s. So Burlington created the first district of this type in the state of Vermont. And then the legislature essentially looked at what Burlington's experience was and developed the statute that enables municipalities to set aside an area of their has to be within their designated downtown in order to qualify. And the notion is, is that public investment into the infrastructure, the public infrastructure in that designated area is necessary in order to entice and incent additional private development. You can think of Waterfront Apartments on our Waterfront would never have been built without TIF financing because the Waterfront had no access to that property. The entire street that was created, the extension of Lake Street that allowed for Waterfront Apartments to be built was a TIF financed project. In addition, the complete reconstruction of Lake Street was enabled with TIF financing, which allowed for things like the sailing center and the Waterfront Access North project and the building where skinny pancake is and a whole number of other investments, both private and public investments that were a result of the infrastructure investments. In this case for our downtown, the city put together a plan in 2011 and finally, Olivia saved the day here. So we will go through these slides for you. And I believe, yeah, this is the NPA presentation. So we got the right one. So you're the second NPA we've done. Last night, we did wards one and eight. And we'll just go through the slides, if we could. Next slide. So quickly, what is a TIF? I'll cover it in a little bit more detail in a minute. The approved projects already in the downtown TIF, which I will cover the downtown TIF that we're proposing as a the project that we're proposing in this bond vote and then opportunity for some questions. So go right ahead. So I was trying to explain what this diagram helps to show. And if you look at the the item at the top of the circle anyway, municipal bond, it is essentially a municipal financing mechanism that allows the municipality to invest in the infrastructure. You build the infrastructure, private investment that occurs within that same district generates new value. And as it's shown up above in the chart, the original taxable value should be noted as going to the original taxing authority. So the school district gets it taxes and the city gets its taxes from these properties. In addition, the new growth in value that comes from the public investment in infrastructure, 75 percent of that new value gets captured to repay the financing and 100 percent of the municipal portion of the tax bill. So in Burlington, it's roughly about 70 cents of every dollar goes to fund education and 30 cents goes to fund city services. It's critical to mention that after we've paid off the financing, so after a certain number of years, and in this case, it's 2035 in 2036, those tax dollars start to flow back to the school's education fund and back to the city at full at full value, not the original taxable value, but the new full value. So the idea being that you can make investments in infrastructure with with future value or value that you've created rather than ask today's taxpayers to pay the full bill. So it tries to spread that out over time as a way to fund massive infrastructure projects. And I will just note that as a public finance with someone with some public finance background, the notion that federal government used to provide revenue sharing is an important point to note here that until until the Reagan era in the 80s, the federal government under Nixon started sharing revenue with local communities. And it was a very flexible form of grant funding that would come to municipalities when it was discontinued in 1986, the city was getting about a million dollars when our general fund budget was roughly 10 million, so sort of a 10 to one ratio. If today, our general fund budget, which is close to 90 million, was was a was being supplemented with federal revenue sharing. We'd be seeing about nine million in federal dollars coming to the city, and that would allow the city to do infrastructure. We wouldn't have to go this complicated route that was created and is now used for tax income and financing. So this is not like the easiest way to go. This is just the tool that's available next. So downtown Tiff right now, the projects that we're looking at right here that already have voter approval is the investment on the two blocks of Main Street. This is the Great Streets improvements, which we'll show in a minute what those look like. And the improved I'm sorry, the approved area runs right now from Church Street down to Pine Street. The two blocks east of that running from Union Street to Church Street are not covered, as well as the two blocks going the other direction from Pine to Battery. And so this would bring all six blocks into this project. That's the purpose is to get voter approval to reconstruct and completely rebuild the entire six blocks from Union, so Memorial Auditorium or Edmunds Middle School, all the way down to the end of Main Street. Next slide. So the idea of Great Streets is really to sort of rebalance the public realm, the right-of-way to balance the interests of pedestrians, public transit, bicyclists and vehicles. And also to invest in infrastructure improvements to deal with stormwater so that we're not sending as much stormwater into our system and therefore into our lake and polluting our lake. So one of the goals of Great Streets is to really capture and treat stormwater in a way that that really is going to protect our lake better. It's something that we should have everywhere, but we can't afford to put it everywhere. So for now, we're going to phase in wherever the city can. And Laura is really more expert on the infrastructure side, so if there's any questions about that. But it also is everything below the surface gets rebuilt in this project, all the utilities, all the connections. There's no piece of infrastructure in this six block area that we think is in good enough shape that we won't have to touch it, I think is fair to say. There really is antiquated infrastructure. So in the next slide shows you an aerial view looking up. Oh, thank you. Looking east on Main Street. So in the distance, you see a brick structure. That's City Hall. And this is a completely reconstructed Main Street, which you will notice has much wider sidewalk to provide a more pleasant experience for pedestrians. An area which could be dedicated for sort of outdoor seating and community gathering space, which also creates a tree belt. In addition, a dedicated bike lane, a protected bike lane, then to be followed by a lane of parking, a travel lane that in this instance, the travel lane heading east, a travel lane heading west, another lane of parking, and then again, a tree belt and a much wider sidewalk. As you can see, this is really a complete rethinking of how we manage the public space, the public realm to meet the needs of all users. So it really attempts to rebalance that public right away. Next slide. So we look at the infrastructure today and we don't have exact dates. The last time Main Street was completely redone. But it's been a very long time. It's been decades. It's been many decades. And a major capital investment like this is, you know, it only comes around sometimes every 70 or 100 years. So it's an unprecedented opportunity that we have in front of us. And I would add that the deadline that the state imposed on us is that we have to borrow money or incur debt for this project or a project in the downtown TIF no later than March 31st of 2023. So basically a year and two months from now, we really we have. So that's that's why this project is so critical. All the all the work that was done, though, to lay the groundwork for this project dates back to 2014, 2015. So this is this has been in the works now for several years. It's just finally coming to a point where we think it's it's ready and it's a good time to move forward. So you'll look at the infrastructure conditions. In addition, this project does envision and this is one of the more interesting aspects I think that many people have heard about or maybe haven't heard about. But there's a massive ravine sewer that runs across diagonally across Burlington and it doesn't go behind. I will try to do with my cursor. Yeah, it goes basically underneath the Fletcher Free Library behind the downtown fire station and all the way over to the hood plant, basically what used to be the hood plant. Sorry, that's not a building that people know of. But basically across Main Street, shooting across Winnieski Avenue and across King Street and just keeps going on down to really to to 230 St. Paul, which is known as Decker Towers, it kind of continues down through there until it finally eventually reaches the lake. So the fact that that sewer ravine is 20 feet below the surface and that it's we think it's was built in, I guess, Laura can not or say I'm wrong, but I think we think it was built in the 18 hundreds. And so it's really a barrier because if you build above it, you really have real risks about soil compaction, but also the ability for the ravine to hold up with new development occurring on top of it. And some may say, well, wasn't that city parking lot so at the corner of Main Street and South Winnieski Avenue wasn't that ability, wasn't there a building there before it was? It was a two-story building. It was actually the county jail until the 70s when it got torn down and turned into a parking lot. But this today's standards are building with steel and concrete and a much more substantial structure at that key downtown location would be much larger in order to maximize the development potential of the site. So the idea is to move this sewer line and get it out of this location so that that parking lot can be redeveloped. Next slide, Brian. We're at the 730 mark and anticipate to be a question. Do you have a few more minutes? You know, what I'd say, Chris, is what we will do is all of this will be available on our website very soon. It's not yet, but it will be and that we are hoping to come back if you will allow us, if you can make time for another visit in in February to provide more information. We want to get it in front of folks because ballots get mailed out by the 9th of February. Ballots will be mailed out. So we want to at least make folks aware of it and give folks a chance to ask questions. Not sure about where we are with the February agenda. We haven't had our steering committee meeting, but I was asking not so much to keep to the schedule but to ask if you perhaps needed some additional time. And I was going to suggest that if that was the case, that maybe someone can make a motion to extend the discussion for the purposes of questions, as well as an opportunity to provide a complete presentation. We do have about six more slides, so we would love that if that was available, but it's up to you all. Can I entertain a motion from a steering committee member or a member of the community to extend, say, 10 minutes, do you think is reasonable? Anybody oppose? OK. Thank you. Thanks a lot. Appreciate that. No worries. So as I mentioned earlier, just to clarify, there are two TIF districts that the one marked in blue here in this map is the downtown TIF district. And so it sort of wraps around the portion of the Waterfront District, which when it was created, went right up from the Waterfront up to Church Street, essentially, in the area that you think of as the parking garage, the hotel, what used to be Burlington Town Center and is slated for redevelopment. That whole area is part of the Waterfront TIF district. So those are two different districts with different requirements, but I just wanted to point that out. Next slide. Again, back to the district established 2011. That was incurred in 2016 based on voter approval. And we have a final date to incur new debt by by the end of next March, 2023. We retain the education increment. We're allowed to retain that to repay that debt until 2036. So that's the time frame we're working with. And next slide. We've put our current TIF funds into these projects. The St. Paul Street rebuild is entirely within the downtown TIF and there was some local match to that, but that was funded and financed with with with tax increment financing. Marketplace garage repairs also include some TIF financing as well as other resources. Browns Court parking lot was a brownfield and that remediation needed to be done in order for the development to occur there. And that was funded with with TIF as well as stormwater upgrades that are adjacent on Main Street adjacent to City Hall Park, which were very much an important upgrade for the stormwater in that area. Next slide. Proposed projects that investments that would come from the approval if this bond gets on the ballot and is approved. Again, rebuilding Main Street entirely from union to battery, including all subsurface utility upgrades, reconstructions were necessary, replacements and extensions, relocating or upgrading the ravine sewer, not not determine exactly how that approach is going to be. And this last item related costs really is is a number, which is the entire costs of managing the project within public works, CEDOS, staff time, the consultant who helps us get through this and managing the district for the entire life of the district until 2036. And so that's the the purpose of that. And we need to include that in the question as well. Next slide, please. So quick recap on our current finances. We started with an original taxable value in this district of 170 million. That means you add up all the properties and that was the value. And today, just 11 years later, the current value is 285 million. So that's a growth of 115 million or 66 percent growth, which actually exceeds the growth of areas outside of the downtown TIF. So it's a pretty it's clear that it's an area where growth in value has occurred. The 10 million has already been approved by the voters. We've incurred debt of a little under five point five point four, a little over five point four million. We are remaining, as you see, four million, five hundred and eighty thousand that is available to put into this project. So those funds would be combined with new funds that would be raised through bond issues that would if approved by the voters. Next slide. Quick summary again, Main Street, Reveen. We are new debt requests, which will be in the ballot question, is twenty five million nine hundred and twenty thousand. We have related costs that are anticipated at one million four hundred and seventy. All the all the increment from private development is is adequate to repay this financing. I just want to say that again, all the increment from new private development will cover this financing. And there is no tax increase to local businesses or local residents. There's no tax increase to anyone as a result of of incurring this debt. I think that's our last slide before questions. Here we go. Thank you, Brian, for the presentation. It looks like we have at least one question online. And anybody here and the adult and the community center that has questions did have a few folks join us a little bit later. Seeing none, I'll turn it over to Molly to facilitate the online discussion. Thanks, Chris, and thanks, Brian. We'll say we have a question from Gene. Hello there, Brian Fine. Hello, Gene. So what I'm curious about is for you to detail the projected new development that you see will pay for this. Great. OK. The the developments that we're counting on, although there's others that are close to being in the works, one is the redevelopment of the the VFW property. And that will be a Champlain Housing Trust redevelopment that will have the VFW staying in the building, a community kitchen and some nonprofit office space. It may be our Community Justice Center, although that's not definite yet, but that's what we're exploring right now. And it will have three floors of affordable housing above it. And so that's a that's a private taxable property. That's one. Another is on South Champlain, just south of the August 1st property. And there were several buildings that all came down in the last 15, 10 or 15 years that is surface parking. Right now, that would become, I think, somewhere between 45 and 50 housing units, both inclusionary units and market rate units. So that's that's another one in the mix. And the other one, which has a permit, but hasn't gone to construction, is the redevelopment of the YMCA, which is right now slated to the old YMCA. That is on the corner of college and Union is slated to become a hotel or an inn, I guess. But it may, in fact, be redeveloped for residential use in the end because the hotel market is not as strong as residential. So those are the ones that we're counting on. We also know that the Catholic diocese has put in a permit to knock down the church at the old cathedral. And that process is in the way. And that's in the downtown Tiff. And so that would be another, but we're not counting on that one. And just to follow up on that, the the numbers that are that are associated with all of those developments are public and available for folks to to test, you know, for example, the the affordable housing is subject to certain tax requirements under state statute that lowers the taxes. So, you know, double checking and verifying is important for folks. Yes, yeah, we'll be making everything more easily available right now. It's actually just spreadsheets that we we share, you know, we shared with the Council on the Board of Finance. But yeah, exactly. That's that that's the type of detail that we've gotten into is making sure that Jean just mentioned that tax policy says that you have to treat affordable housing a little differently. And we we did factor that into the calculation. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Mayumi, do you have a question? Yeah, just I was curious to know, so if the bond were to say say it passed and the development doesn't happen as planned and that tax base does not appear, who ends up paying this bill? When it comes to great question, the the question is clear on the ballot that if the city has to pledge its full faith in credit. So if if if if something catastrophic were to happen and no new development occurred in the TIF district, it would fall on the taxpayers of Burlington. However, we've done TIF in Burlington since the 1990s, and we've never that's never happened in Burlington. It's actually never happened anywhere in Vermont, and there's, I think, a dozen or maybe 11 TIF districts in other communities. So that has never occurred, but that is what would happen. OK, thank you. Chris, do you have a question? I have several Naomi humped out there. She asked one of them. Yeah, I think that's a very good question that Naomi had mentioned. And I'm going to turn on my video here. So you all can see me. I would just remind folks that we are in the middle of a pandemic. And as I understand it, one of the effects of the pandemic has been to see a market decline in city revenues coupled with a reappraisal that has led to some questions about the process and has also had an impact on the tax revenues of the city, because as I understand it, the commercial values have fallen for the commercial properties while the residential property owners were the ones that ended up absorbing the majority of that increase. It's concerning as a resident of the downtown that there is a significant potential that there could be an order of magnitude change, which would preclude us from realizing the expected or anticipated tax revenues. We would end up in a situation as Naomi has articulated. The question I have here is you mentioned the VFW property and redevelopment. I'm not an expert in tax increment financing, so I had to do a little bit of research here. I'm not an expert in tax increment financing. I'm not an expert in tax increment financing. Certainly there are concerns about this. And one of them has to do with the integrity of the process. And typically folks that are politically connected are the ones that would benefit from this. So the question I would have is with respect to the VFW property that had been mentioned, have they transferred title to Champlain housing trust or would their land be developed through say like eminent domain or state? They would have to transfer to Champlain housing trust. Actually a partnership that Champlain housing trust would create for purposes of new development. So in order to get rather complicated once we get into the details, but you have to in order to access federal tax credits to make these projects work and make them pencil out if you will, make financially feasible, you need to do a partnership. So Champlain housing trust will be the primary owner of the property and they are taxable. And the VFW today is tax exempt as well as some of the other properties in this district that are going to be. Okay. Thank you. And then to follow up question that I had, I have a couple, but I'm going to be brave for, you know, for time here. I'll circle back with you, Brian, just to keep that, the schedule here on track. Thank you. Great. And if I could just point out that, remember the taxes that flow today to the city and the Ed all the properties in the TIF district continue to flow as they are now. So there's no change in the flow of tax dollars that are flowing today. That does not change if the bond is passed. It's only the incremental new revenue that comes from new development that flows. And it does so for the number of years needed to repay it. So it's not in perpetuity. And the idea with TIF is this investment brought enabled the public investment enabled the private investment. Therefore that's why it's linked in that way. So that's the Nexus. the nexus. Looks like we have another question from Commissioner Kerry on the school board. Yes hi Brian, thank you for that presentation. You know I love the what's happened in terms of transformation in Burlington over the last 20 years. I've lived here for 40 years and I support just about everything that all the plans that you have and I love the designs that you have for Main Street. I'm glad you mentioned the famous 1880 sewer sewer because that came up when we were talking about the potential site for the high school being you know the Memorial Auditorium area. But you know I'm concerned about continuing development of really unaffordable housing and that's my question to you is that do you anticipate or what percentage of the new housing that you perceive could be a result of this district development would be affordable owner occupied places because it seems to me that just about everything that's built these days is owned by someone and is renting only, rentals only. So do you participate in any owner occupied affordable housing being a result of this development? Well try Steven that's a hard one because the city isn't a housing developer per se so we don't we don't determine whether it's owner occupied or rental but having said that there's some real challenges after the 2008 crash and the housing bubble bursting in 2008 that make condominium financing really difficult to do. So most new development across the country over the last decade has been in rental housing for that reason and so what I can say is we do require at least 15 percent it can be higher can be up to 25 percent it will be restricted as in inclusionary housing in addition when Champlain Housing Trust and other nonprofits are able to get involved they bring in additional funding sources that allow them to lower the rents even further and so the goal is is not to spur you know all market rate housing is to ensure that the downtown which actually has literally hundreds of existing permanently affordable housing units in our downtown that I'd have to list for you at another time but Burlington did a pretty good job in the in the 70s 80s and 90s in terms of converting properties to save them as affordable housing the Bob and Mill Warf Lane 101 college 10 North Champlain Pearl Street where Boves is you know there's a long cathedral square with a hundred units and so there will be more development of affordable units but that depends largely on public resources so the private development that occurs has to include at least 15 percent of those units as inclusionary affordable units well that's great thank you I just have one other question and I wish I understood it more I've been trying to figure out what the TIF districts are and you've explained that I think very well tonight again but you know we know that there's a major crisis regarding a building of a new high school I mean that is a crisis in the city right now and why should we support this expenditure knowing that in November of 2022 will be asked to support a bond for we don't know the price yet but it's going to be a pretty big ticket item yeah that's a great question Stephen I'm glad you asked that just remember for it's really important there is no additional burden on local property taxpayers when you TIF finance public improvements that's the only way to build public improvements without passing the bill to the local taxpayer I have to emphasize the high school bond however will be entirely financed by local taxpayers entirely unless we can find federal funding but that's an if and a hope and a prayer but in reality the TIF financing is the only way to finance public improvements without going to the same taxpayers we're going to be asked to fund the high school okay because they're not the same so it's really really important that we distinguish between those two we haven't done a great job yet and we'll do better between now and when people cast their votes I hope yeah I knew you said that before but I had to I had to hear it again thanks Patrick hi Brian good to see you yeah so we went through this old TIF thing and in my memory if the downtown mall redevelopment went through the one of the first steps besides the removal of the building and digging at the foundation was replacement of the TIF associated infrastructure even before the building went up now if we had made it to that next step which is the next step the city would have been liable for paying that back regardless of the infrastructure being the building being put up and those creditors would have been paid back before anybody else so the city is always on the hook regardless of the development which then affects our credit rating if the development and we will end up paying the you know I think it was 19 or 20,000 or 20 million dollars yeah had the development failed which it did so all even though you stated that we haven't I think we're awful lucky that we didn't I think the potential is there there's always lofty aspirations that fall flat due to pandemics housing collapses economy collapsing yeah yeah and I want to just there is tremendous criticism written and I won't go into it about TIFs and how they tend to target wealthier areas they don't necessarily benefit lower income areas and those are well published articles by public research interest groups great can I respond to that is that we have time okay yeah the important thing to remember here and this is really this is a good example of the level of oversight monitoring and due diligence that the city has to do and then the state has to do through the Vermont economic progress council means that the downtown TIF as as with the waterfront TIF we can't go ahead and do the bond issue unless we have certainty that that private development is happening like it it literally needs to be projects which are built or underway that are used to underwrite the city's ability to repay the debt so for instance on city place we would have net we never incurred the debt and we would never do that until the private development is is fully approved as a contract I mean that's our requirement you need to have a contract for at least 50 million dollars on downtown on the city place project in order to incur any of the TIF debt to build the public improvements but we'd have to come back to you to another time to tell you how the public improvements are now being covered because Laura I think is chomping at the bit to talk about that so unless there's any other questions online I am going to ask my follow-up here which I now remember I think that the goals of the project are very worthy and I think it's definitely things that need to be done and I think that it would appear that some of it has just been driven by you know societal changes you know with our transportation infrastructure the focus on moving away from fossil fuels pedestrian friendly bicycles and stuff which those were not always considerations years ago when the last time the city did this type of development I guess what I'm wondering is is that with all the talk of federal dollars coming into the state for infrastructure you know I'm curious as to you know if maybe there a way to do that looking at the other tax financing district which was referenced in the slide for the waterfront which I guess includes the what I would term be failed city place development which is been a hole now for about five years I'm curious you know how the city is going to make sure that our private developer partners actually deliver on their contractual obligations because when I look at that poll I don't see a very strong track record in that regard and I would feel more comfortable if the city could work with our federal and state legislators to bring in funding potentially through some of the federal infrastructure bills and move away from a tax financing because I think it's clear the work definitely needs to be done I'm just not completely sold that this is the way to pay for it I can assure you that we're going to pursue every single dollar we can get but if you're going to expect the federal government to pay for the main street improvements in addition to paying for other infrastructure we won't get it we won't get it all we have a long list of items that need to be funded we have bridges that need to be replaced we have lots of public needs and so I guess I'd say to that Chris the only way that main street gets redeveloped in this way in a comprehensive manner and not piecemeal over the next 15 or 20 years is is to use TIF financing there really is no other way to do it there's not going to be there's no magic bullet waiting for us in Washington there's no there's no grant source that's going to come and save the day and I would say I would challenge you that the TIF financing in Burlington has worked exactly as it was proposed the downtown project that is considered a failure that hasn't gone forward not one dollar of of taxpayer money has gone into that project so there's no TIF financing going into downtown until the project goes into construction so to pass judgment now on TIF as a source when we've been using it since the mid-1990s to fund millions and millions of dollars of public improvements is a little unfair to say that the downtown project is an example of the failure because it hasn't failed in our sense we didn't incur any debt for that so that's actually not a good example well I think you're absolutely correct that we didn't incur debt but we did lose tax revenue because where there were buildings that could be taxed from bringing revenue to cities we now once again have a big hole I'd also like to follow up on Commissioner Kerry's comments about it one thing that I was encouraged about with Schuyler's presentation tonight was as part of the racial equity initiative was to focus on homeownership for the BIPOC community I think that that is very very important here in Burlington I remember years ago Brian you and I when I was first moving to here to the city we talked about you know neighborhoods in your prior role and I think the number that comes to mind was I think 50% renters 50% homeowners and that number has tilted markedly in recent years in favor of the renters and we've heard a lot about affordable housing focused on the rental side of it but I think there needs to be some serious conversation about homeownership here in Burlington particularly with respect to folks in the BIPOC community one of the reasons that we see folks in that community you know the issues with poverty and getting financial independence is the lack of generational wealth. We can talk about homeownership for BIPOC folks that has varied right now in relation to this project Chris I would say that's a different conversation and Schuyler mentioned that we're working together on that so CEDA and REIB are going to come forward with a BIPOC and Black Home Ownership Initiative please don't conflate that with this project though I really I'm not getting the connection here I'm not sure what you're I'm not trying to conflate it Brian I would respectfully ask that you let me finish before you answer but the point is is I see these issues are intersecting and as a former school commissioner myself my concern is is that as home ownership becomes unaffordable to people in the city they're going to move to where they can afford and if families younger families with children and they move out of our city and our school district declines our enrollment declines rather I'm not sure how that's going to play out for our school district long term and I would echo Mr. Carey's concerns about the high school in my view I believe that that is a much greater priority than this particular project here so I guess we have a difference of opinion I can respect that and I'm happy to give you a minute to respond. Yeah we will hopefully make it clear but I want to make it crystal clear for this group tonight the linkage of property taxes to the high school is direct it's how we will pay back the high school bond the linkage with downtown Tiff and the infrastructure bond is completely unrelated and I think I think it's important that we at least give a chance to discuss that more and hopefully we'll get a chance in February because it is the only way to finance public improvements without the taxpayer paying for it and yet tonight it sounds like folks are linking the two when in fact they couldn't be more separately linked than they are. Well recognize in your expertise and experience on the housing issue I think you know we'd love to have you come back and talk about that especially in the context of the plan that Skyler put forward so if there's no it looks like Gene has a question so I'm gonna let him let him speak. Thanks maybe this is going to segue into what Laura was going to talk about Brian but I'm curious as to why the Main Street project and why the entire Main Street project instead of something else and I give you an example of like the sidewalk and maybe it is included in this but the sidewalk from Main Street up Winooski Avenue that butts the parking lot and then goes right across from the fire station is a terrible sidewalk it's really small you know there's no bike lanes there at all and you know there there are a lot of downtown infrastructure improvements that would actually benefit poor and working people and I really resonate that so I'm curious about why those were picked I think the ravine is a really important one so that's just something that you got to do to free up a whole you know whole block. It's a great question Gene so why these six blocks why all six blocks of Main Street as opposed to elsewhere and Laura I want to give you a chance to speak because DPW helps us define what are the projects that will have you know the biggest lasting impact so yeah DPW works with the administration most of the last year really trying to identify what effort we were going to come forward with we looked at everything from a sidewalk specific upgrade to to even looking at Winooski as a corridor for improvements and unfortunately the the TIF funding is a little specific about really creating a a transformational transportation multimodal community based project that will really influence and help promote new economic development within the city and the other projects really just didn't fit the bill with trying to propose them to the the VEPC board and and getting by and we recognize the importance of them and we've talked a lot about other ways to fund them but this is the one that really felt like it would be successful in passing that that straight face test for the purpose that it's out there for all right we do have one last question on this topic from a resident that is here in person so i'm going to turn the microphone over to Solvei thank you hi Brian this is Solvei I know we've talked about the the the gateway block project that you were actually working on in your earlier incarnation in CEDO and my question is the the the work on the ravine the buried ravine goes underneath the corner parking lot the publicly owned parking lot there at the corner of main and south Wanooski and i'm wondering if the intent of that you know repairing that and taking that is is to facilitate the process of redeveloping that whole giant block from memorial auditorium down to the publicly owned property and potentially the if the fire station actually does get moved which I know is actually in the works that would create a huge property there and i'm just curious from your perspective are you working with developers that that's why this underground ravine sewer needs to be moved from that location so larger development can happen in that area and and i'm concerned actually about the sale of that to a private developer i have a concern about sale of any more municipally owned properties yeah i would say there's a lot in that question there Solvei i'll try and hit on it real quickly there's there's no private developer right now that i'm aware of and they haven't certainly spoken with our office CEDO about redevelopment of that property so there's no development in the works i would add that the fire station itself is a very important historic structure so under any scenario if the fire department moves to another location it's more advantageous for the fire station and for public safety it will stay that building will will be preserved i believe i think it has enough protection memorial is a very as you know a very challenging structure because it has very significant capital needs that we don't have funding for right now so memorial is a is a whole different question but the idea with relocating the sewer pipe is that we then have the ability to build and the ability to plan and as a community hopefully help define what goes um on that corner but there's nothing currently in the works and and would that be a sale proposed like the grounds court property it doesn't it doesn't have to be a sale it could no i've actually negotiated yeah i've negotiated lease arrangements for the city in the past where the where the developer leases the land from the city so what are for apartments is city owned land 1.6 acres and it's leased by Champlain Housing Trust they pay a lease fee so that option is available to us we can lease public land rather than sell it and that continues to accrue benefit to the community in that way as well so that it doesn't have to be sold at all that's not a guarantee that's that's down the road a little ways though quite a ways thank you appreciate everybody's questions and all the excitement and interest in this we have hopefully a chance to come back in February if we can get on your agenda will um we'll be back to to talk more about this thanks everyone thank you um the next item our agenda is the npa funding i have a few presentations uh round one regarding the npa grant applications we are a little bit behind schedule so i suspect our meeting time tonight we'll run over to accommodate that i just wanted to give folks a heads up particularly those who are prompt and getting here for the representative updates i see that there are several of you out there so i just wanted to call that out if you wanted to step away and come back interrupting we have some people in the waiting room that need to be let in sorry to interrupt no no more no worries so um do we have anyone out there from the grant applications because uh i don't think we're gonna hear from you folks uh from laboratory believe that so you mr fryer excellent um if you uh need to share your screen i would like to speak i'm happy to still pick up you hear me good yeah okay good all right thank you uh yeah i don't have any slides um but uh yeah i'll just uh try every brief say repair cafe um we've been going for two years now yeah we started right at the beginning of the pandemic um repair cafe itself is international sort of movement or organization and the old north end repair cafe that we run is uh an officially registered repair cafe so we meet we meet monthly at the laboratory be hacker space at 12 north street and um everyone in the community is invited to bring anything you can carry basically uh and we will try to help you fix it so that includes clothing computers bicycles furniture uh appliances you know anything anything you can carry um so you know it's we're located on north street so it's an easy location for our ward two and three residents to walk there um and we hope that by running this we reduce things going to the landfill and to teach new skills also volunteers get free food um so uh it's equitable because it's free there's no cost um you know some people choose to donate but um it's not necessary and so the specific activities and timeline for the project so again we've been going for two years um we try to make it every third saturday though this what's not happening this saturday um doesn't seem safe to have one this week um covered wise the uh but so yeah the event is ongoing um if we get the npa ground hello um if we get the npa ground we can continue to feed volunteers and purchase some new tools such as a knife sharpening equipment um so we can increase the range of items we're able to fix and that's sort of the gist i can answer questions or if that's that's good thank you trap is there anybody that has any questions about uh mr fryer and his uh grand application for laboratory bees repair cafe looks like mr representative mccormick you have a question followed by jessica miss hyman i have to confess it's not a question it's just a quick pitch i worked with these guys a couple saturdays ago well i guess a couple months ago now and um they were just really great it's a fantastic service very much needed people lining up and and these guys were really good i mean these are really these are technicians he's i was very impressed with what these guys were fixing um so i i would think that we would like to give him that thousand bucks thank you thank you great um i guess i'm next um i just wanted to add a quick question which was approximately how many people have participated over the past year um and that's my question if you trap and then just a general just general information for the for the audience you know we're going to be hearing from each of the the applicants there are four applicants in addition to the the npa steering committee um and and then after we hear from all the applicants we'll have the opportunity we'll open it up to to the community to vote on whether to fully fund partially fund um or not fund each of the applicants so i just wanted to make sure that folks knew what the process was and so and so we could go ahead with the presentations thank you yeah um we don't have super up-to-date statistics because the numbers aren't in from december but my guess is it's about a hundred items have been repaired which sounds fairly low but um we also have a number of things that weren't we we tried our best and we weren't able to and or we provided um some diagnostic information just in troubleshooting um so that people can go off and and then repair it themselves so we get most of the webinar all the way thank you okay any other further questions we'll move on to the next presentation from food not cops do we have anyone there from that organization wishes to speak i'm here and liam is also on here via zoom so i'll give a brief description of the project that's super easy we're food not cops we do a daily distribution we share food and gear every day at the marketplace garage and this project is open to anyone who wants to join us for lunch and community we build community cohesion by actually creating a new community creating a space for anyone to join where previously there wasn't any and our project is equitable it's accessible in the center of the city with easy access to public transportation word about us is spread by word of mouth we're open to anyone um and really what what we do is share anything that people might need and we hope to use our grant money to facilitate doing what we're doing that's just sharing food and gear that could include tents sleeping bags hand warmers um toiletry items we'll basically fulfill any request you know we have people that have vehicles and who are willing and able to get the stuff for for folks and what we do is we we create the space and there are people with excess material goods and we are just feeling you know just moving it from person to person and having some extra funds to acquire these goods would be would be amazing so thanks for this space here and if Liam has anything else to add thank you Daniel um does anyone have any questions for Daniel regarding his application and the work that they uh have been doing or Liam okay so yeah hi oh sorry someone's they know who's talking no go ahead go ahead okay yeah so I co-organize food not bombs from that cop and the big part of what we do is tie the other resources is in the community where people really don't know where to put stuff to help and we're saying we're here every day at 1 p.m. we have a full hot lunch and that's been going for about 670 days now it's great since March 2020 what we are is an organization of community members and I have two interesting stories to share that help color what the organization is one of them came from just this week when a married couple did not know where to obtain a cell phone and cots referred them to us and they came to us now unfortunately we didn't have those cell phones because we don't have the funds to be keeping them in reserve but it's so significant that cots the uh it was a committee on temporary shelter uh referred uh people to us when they didn't actually have those resources themselves um another one came earlier this summer when a gun man was dropped off uh at the corner of cherry in north wanooski uh it was his first day out of jail in 12 years uh he didn't know anyone this was a foreign city didn't know what to do but thankfully we were there and we were able to give him a hot lunch and give him resources that were in the area and I like to think that uh that had an impact on his first day out of jail in 10 years um and I think that was a really important event and really touched me personally thank you that's all thank you Liam um do we have any questions from the audience or uh on via zoom okay not seeing any we'll move on to our third project on oh sorry okay so Charlie G is here okay so regarding this project um the way our the way our grants work you have to give us an idea of the types of things that you're going to get receipts for so what are you specifically going to spend your money on and collect receipts that you're going to submit to us for um to pay you back for that amount of money that you spent so we're looking for like food purchases or equipment purchases do you know can you give us a better idea of the things that you're going to submit receipts for we can and it's actually in our application we gave some examples camping gear medical supplies such as first aid kits phone and phone cards pet foods is another area where there is a lot of need a lot of folks come with their pets and as much as we'd love to have extra pet food sitting around that's not always the case cleaning supplies other things for the home hand and toe warmers um all sorts of things like that but camping gear I would say is the largest expense since especially in the summertime uh the the need greatly outstrips supply and and we like to be a place where we could consistently be available to support people with needs of this time okay so I'll just ask the other steering committee members does the response allay your your concerns about this particular grant because of all the grants this is the only one that we questioned in our communications back and forth so our does this allay the concerns that steering committee members had concerning this grant anybody dealer dealer I'm going to yield to the other members uh looks like we have a question from representative Tina I'm familiar with the work that you do and I'm curious like the name of the group is food not cops can you speak a little bit about the not cops part like what is giving people food have to do with the police state or with the carceral state thank you much Tina so basically that that is actually an outstanding question and we I like to say that we are 99 percent lunch one percent political education but it goes to show where where the state is failing people in a lot of ways these are people who have experienced a lot of adversity a lot of interactions with the police that have have not gone well and um you know really this is a protest and we are showing people that you know the police is essentially obsolete when you have these strong communities and of course we have a long way to go um and this is just an education project what might a world with without police look like what can strong communities do when people are looking out for each other and not policing each other's behavior and I don't know if Liam has anything to add to that but that is certainly something that I've given a lot of thought or ought to give more thought to um yeah so the the not cops stuff it comes from working with other local organizations um and we just kind of throw in our our lot and kind of manpower hours together um what it's it's showing is uh demonstration of uh uh sharing food as a gift that is not barred behind any sort of uh legal or other requirements so if you're curious what the not cops uh means it's just that there's well there's not cops there anyway thanks thank you any further questions from anybody here in the audience anybody online looks like Naomi you're up hi everybody I'm Noah and we are the people's farm stand we'll go ahead and share um from our recent report um so yeah so we're the people's farm stand and basically we are a um pay what you can payment optional largely free pop-up farm stand operating in uh the south meadows neighborhood in the south end as a collaboration project with the people's kitchen as a fresh produce a free fresh produce add-on to the people's kitchen hot meal distribution and that quickly last season based on need and availability of local fresh farm produce from our farming friends because we are local farmers as well in the pomerate in pomeray park in the old north end um basically in the two of us farming over many years we realize that every farm inherently has a surplus of produce has an availability of quote-unquote misfit or seconds produce that is perfectly delicious perfectly edible perfectly nourishable but just doesn't have that commercial market available so where we come in is we have many friends in our farming community we go around to local farms we're currently partnered with five or six local vermont mainly local burlington farms we collect that produce and we set up that pomeray park and distribute the produce for largely to our recurring families for free um some give a small three to five dollar seven dollar donation if they're able to um and basically we operate under the premise that no that um local fresh farm vegetables should be available to all regardless of ability to pay we're not our target demographic is not those that are currently part of csa is that can walk into city market and you know honestly purchase the expensive the amazing but expensive local produce where after you know working class individuals students families living in the old north end that feel daunted by the farmer's market experience um and daunted by some of those prices they come to the the people's farm stand they can get a large delicious bag of produce right from farms and friends in their community they get to meet the meat farmers such as us that are providing and harvesting those vegetables and they get to come away with again based on household size family size portions of vegetables for for pretty much free if if they like yeah and a huge part of why we're doing this and what we've noticed as we've gone along is that it like really builds um a sense of community like people are coming and they're bringing their friends or meeting up with friends there we've witnessed like new friendships kindle at the farm stand and um people just get really excited and it's become a place of joy and celebration and that's really important for us um and the grant money would mainly be going towards like things like a tent for us when it rains and tables and baskets and things that add to the feeling of like a beautiful market it's not just like a handout it's like it's an experience um and it's a joyous one and one that gives people it's yeah we've had multiple recipients and family members come to us and say that this was the first community space that they've had an opportunity to meet their neighbors since COVID and maybe even before it's an outdoor space um you know open air conscious for COVID purposes and also like Naomi was alluding to people can come you know meet meet some of their neighbors have a community space uh share recipes share resources um we also hope that in the uh so this is kind of just a picture of what the farm stand looks like and we're hoping to with the funds again create a new a new banner um you know get a new table new baskets as Naomi alluded to but just kind of upgrading our materials again uh to you know make it a welcoming and beautiful experience it's not simply a a vegetable distribution it's a community space um that you know we want all to feel welcome to and hopefully can serve as a space for other community partners to you know to share the space with us shout out to food now cops the other projects that are applying seem awesome and we'd love to collaborate food now cops we you know we have been been working with since day one they are you know sometimes a recipient of ours sometimes spreading the word about us so we're we're definitely mutually engaged with them as well and they're doing really great work um yeah and we also one last thing is that we see this as an opportunity for further like community events because we're generating a fair amount of traffic at this point when we set up weekly and other organizations are doing rad things or looking to spread the word about something that easily set up the table next to us and like use the traffic that we're generating to uh spread their word all right thank you all right thank you for your presentation uh there any questions here in the room regarding the the grant application seeing none we'll turn to the folks on the zoom call any questions from zoom all right seeing no questions we'll move on to miss shelby glass with the braille trail at 311 north avenue miss glass hi everyone good evening um so i put in an application to kind of take the 311 poetry walk um on north az like it'll step further and its accessibility so i don't know if anyone's been able to see it but it's that there's this little trail past scout on north avenue that goes by the community gardens and they like revamped it and there's all these signs that with poetry and there's this new little loop and it's very small and it's really lovely and on all these signs with local poets there's now um qr codes which is really awesome so you can they're consistently in the right top corner and so you can scan the qr code and it will um it'll take you to a screen and if you just press play it'll auditorily read it to you and so i have a background i work for the roman association of the blind individually impaired and um something that i learned about a few years ago and it just got recently brought back my attention is there's um there's this project around the country called braille trails and it doesn't actually have to mean like braille it's just kind of the what they're called but so how to make a trail accessible is you can um you know have qr codes to read signs and then you create um kind of like a rope boundary um along the trail so if you're blind you can hold on to the rope as you walk and it'll be a rope guide for you and so i'm proposing since this um this trail is really small and it's off the bus line on north avenue i thought it could be a great opportunity to kind of access um this community fund and make um like i said take this um project one step further and making it even more accessible um than it already is and then i also um within my funds that i asked for um the trail off of north avenue it's not very noticeable and so if you're visually impaired you might miss that so i um i also am asking to make some type of like sign or landmark so that you would be able to locate it to turn into the trail and then access it as anyone else would um so yeah it's really to increase awareness about accessibility and access to nature and art um yeah just getting berlington thinking one step further in those types of ways um that's it thank you shelby any questions here in the room regarding the application from shelby seeing none do we have any online as well okay not seeing any questions from the zoom portion of the meeting uh let's move on to the next two items the npa operations uh which can include yard sides flyers another outreach in the community dinner so i don't know if one of my colleagues wishes to speak about that i can i can pipe in on that um and so the npa steering committee is requesting $250 for outreach materials to help make more people aware of of the excuse me of the npa meetings and the opportunities to participate um and the money would be spent on more yard signs i'm sure folks have seen i hope folks have seen yard signs around around the neighborhood and then also other outreach materials to reach a broader and more diverse um segment of our of our community to make sure that people can um know that this this event is going on and participate and i'll turn it over to molly i have a question in the room i got questions so outreach materials sounds great i was just thinking about we have all these other proposals too and is there a way to pair our outreach materials with these other efforts that people are doing um not not to say that as they're doing them hey go to mpa hey go ahead yeah but at least have that material there and so that we can spread the npa to all these different groups that is an excellent question thank you for asking and it's an excellent um prompt because one of the requirements for use of city funds for npa grants is that um in fact i'll read them city funds can only be used to further the purposes of the npas which are according to the resolution created by the npas to be open and accessible to all voters of the city residing the ward so increasing so access to provide residents with information um help obtain residents point of view to help provide residents with an opportunity to participate in public process um and to provide advice to city government so one of the main goals of this grant program is to get people more connected to the npas and so um an answer to your question yes definitely the outreach um goals could be combined with the community grant goals okay looks like we have a question from kevin just additionally um as far as like outreach and one of the planned additional things you know not only the yard signs but making like flyers and other like hand outable materials and that's that would be part of the next year's uh promotional materials so so something to actually give out you know and whatnot yeah thank you kevin any other questions or comments regarding any of the grant applications right so having heard the presentations we need to make a decision tonight on how we wish to move forward i will be entertaining motions from the floor on how to proceed uh jess i will actually unmute myself um so i i move that we make a vote on these proposals uh combined by wards so we officially we have twenty five hundred dollars for ward two twenty five hundred dollars for ward three we have applications from both of those wards um i propose that we combine the grant funding and combine the voting so that everyone is voting on on the proposals um and i propose that we vote on each application individually um with a fully fund partially fund or do not fund vote um and that the steering committee uses the results of this vote um to make an allocation decision it's a long motion okay i'll second the motion a motion seconded by charlie g here in the community center do we have any discussion on the motion okay seeing none here in the community center nor any online i'm going to call the question move to vote um so all those in favor just raise your hand online here in front okay seeing a lot of hands online it looks like we have consensus here on that overwhelmingly in support of the motion so i think the motion carries whether or excuse me is there anybody that it's opposed i should say okay not seeing or hearing any opposition now it looks like the motion has carried so thank you for coming out everyone for speaking about the grant applications it's very exciting about the important work that you're all doing here in our community glad to be able to support this in some small way um and without further ado unless there are questions i'm mr carrey it looks like you have a question sir it's getting carried no that was a yes vote sorry that was a yes vote okay thank you okay so now we will move on to the representative hold on i have a i have a point of order sorry mr jim go ahead i have a point of order um the the motion that i heard was that we were going to first vote on i feel like this is such like a sorry it's such like a elected thing to do but like i heard the motion was that we were going to vote for that process but then there was going to be an additional yes or no vote on each proposal so my point of order is like wasn't the motion what i wasn't what i just said what or did i hear that wrong you are correct brian and we do have a poll set up so that folks on zoom can vote on each and then um chris will need to facilitate the voting within the within the room thank you for that uh point of order there brian i appreciate your diligence to the process here and it looks like we have our polls are now opening to actually pull that second vote so without further ado we will move forward with those votes thank you um do you want to break up into room you guys are all or two or three here so for folks who are on zoom can you see the poll do you see that in front of you excuse me could somebody clarify what the total amounts there are you know that we have to allocate and um you know so we can figure out in terms of the fully partially and do not how the numbers fit would you like me to take this Chris yes please and i'm going to share the agenda which has those amounts thank you mr bergman yeah thank you gene so there is a total of five thousand dollars available twenty five hundred dollars for more two twenty five hundred dollars for more three um and this is all reimbursement based and so we have um a total request of uh oh we should have put the total on the agenda of a little of over five thousand i'm sorry i don't have a total sorry the four hundred twenty three dollars and seventy nine cents perfect thank you so that is the total request and so what we are asking everyone is to um not to specify an exact amount but just to vote whether to fully fund partially fund or not fund each of the applications and you'll see the if you're on zoom you'll see the poll on your screen um if you're in person um chris will be collected christen sam will be collecting that information from from you just there seems to be a a technical glitch where most of the people are attendees or panelists and unfortunately none of us attendees or panelists can vote interesting okay both of people present are not allowed to vote interesting uh sam how should we how should we deal with this we could hear you could you please repeat that Patrick um so when most people here go to vote um it says at the bottom of the voting it says hosts and panelists cannot vote now everyone has been allowed into the zoom meeting by virtue of a host or a panelist if i look at the list i think the bulk of people here it says there's 25 panelists and two attendees so that means those two people pretty much uh have the vote here no pressure on those two no worst we still didn't really hear what you said here Patrick in in the world here so the bulk of the bulk of people on this meeting are panelists uh and as panelists we are not allowed to vote um utilizing the current poll thank you i think sam um was picking up what you were putting down and it be emailed to us um per ha you know we could move um we could move everyone into the attendee um area and so everyone could vote that could be one option um or this could be done via an a um a community survey which would increase participation um those would be that would be two options as the facilitator i'm going to abstain from the voting uh we can perhaps move along with the agenda and then when this is all settled we can come back to it and hopefully everyone will stay around so we can move along with our agenda are we waiting to tell you the votes here uh okay all right uh while we're telling the votes it sounds like there's a desire to move on with the agenda i'd like to first recognize all of our elected representatives from the state level our senators and our school board and city council members who were here promptly on time 37 minutes ago i think we as a steering committee have some work to do in terms of getting our meetings to run on time so thank you for being patient as we work through the important but sometimes slow process of community engagement and without further ado we'll turn this over to our state representatives um i see several of them here um have you decided among yourselves who wants to go first or should we simply just go in alphabetical order can i make a request before we begin um can you please give us a time limit and can so that we can all speak in the same amount of time because that's an ongoing issue is some people will self restrict themselves and others don't and so it creates an inequity in the amount of space we're taking up like for example could we keep it to a minute each and then have discussion or something like that uh thank you brian i appreciate that suggestion i'm gonna ask one of my colleagues on the steering committee that's on the zoom call to service timekeeper for that reason uh we had typically uh all the time keepers all right thank you uh typically give two minutes um if you guys are comfortable with one we can certainly uh go with that but i i try to give people an opportunity to speak so is there a preference from the elected members of our uh mpa tonight would you prefer one minute or two minutes per person um it's late so i would like to check people's time so i would i would suggest one because it's pretty late and i we have a lot to cover and i really appreciate the comment about working on agenda timing because i think that means makes for a more meaningful participation for everybody okay i want to i just want to jump in just did send us an email probably last weekend did ask school board members to do 10 15 minutes on budget and bhtc build i'm maybe that needs to be tabled which is fine um or i can just do one in five minutes uh it looks like everyone uh sam our facilitator uh or from cdo is said that the poll was done so one of the folks on the zoom call can announce those results that would be helpful sorry how can the poll be done at most sorry most of us didn't even vote in it though that's what patrick was trying to tell you that hosts panelists didn't have a vote in the poll it appeared on our screens and said we couldn't vote yeah i think we'll have to revisit this voting and perhaps do it at the next at the next meeting we'll find another way Emma as you have children would you like to go first i'm gonna totally take that privilege because my two-year-old got exposed to covid i'm just gonna real talk it it has been a day so uh thank you i'm gonna take that and run up with it all right everyone i love the award two three because i can just be real with you all i am state representative emma malvaney stanek i represent in six two which is the west side of the old north end from park north champlain over to the lake and then the southern portion of the new north end it's like 50 50 split i serve on house commerce it's been a wild start of the second year of this biennium and i'm going to try to keep this in one minute just briefly uh the house passed a senate bill this week to allow open meeting laws to go back to full remote participation and stop the hybrid the it's now to the governor so that might be something that burlington will want to use fully to protect both staff and anyone who's been having to go in person until we're through this big surge um two bills i want to highlight um that i am the lead sponsor on i mentioned this briefly in the prior meetings but it's they're numbered now and introduce h616 will start an unemployment advocate office for the state of vermont modeled out for the healthcare advocate office and also the tax advocate office um it would allow there to be someone several people most likely through legal aid to support people through the unemployment process um it is much needed and the process is convoluted and complex and vermonters are left completely on their own to navigate a pretty um tricky system there'll be other reforms will be considered around unemployment including um revising the harsh penalty weeks that are involved in the system as well as looking at changing the definitions of fraud because it's it's used as a one size fits all system right now which is harsh and hard and a harsher punishment than most states um and how we define fraud so look for that soon and the second bill i wanted to highlight was h615 which is a wage discrimination and transportation transportation transparency bill wage transparency not transportation um which would strengthen our wage disclosure laws for prospective employees this is a big gender and race gap um bill wage gap bill to really um both cast light on this issue and create real policy meaningful policy that will help folks get paid fairly closed wage gaps that people are not aware of um and make sure that we have protections for folks in terms of discrepancies happening now at within employers one other piece about that bill require employers to post the wage or salary they are offering in every job posting which now does not happen in the state of vermont which makes it really hard for people to know what they're applying for until they're well into the process and um new york city just passed a similar provision and i'm hoping that gets some traction this year i will pass them mic thank you for the privilege i appreciate it so much thank you representative malaney sanak representative mccormick representative colburn representative chena go for it hurt okay i'll go okay trying to do one minute good job himma um okay so some bills that i'm working on now that have been introduced um is the transportation bill that a group of uh the democrats from the transportation committee of which i'm one uh have been working on all fall and it puts a lot more money into ev incentives or electric vehicle incentives and electric buses requires all new buses to be ev school buses as well as transit um and provides for perpetual uh fair free transit i'm going to put in the rent control bill again with brian um and i really think we can pass that this year um and then um i've got a bill that will be um uh eliminating the enable repealing the enabling legislation that allows towns and cities to zone what i call sprawl zoning setbacks parking requirements uh 10 acre zoning that sort of thing the zoning which actually requires sprawl um and take take that um right away from towns they just can't do that anymore under this bill uh and then i have my cfc my hfc bill cfc is with 30 years ago hfcs which is the chemical that that's um commonly used now in most refrigerants and refrigerators and in their conditioners car air conditioners truck air conditioners stationary air conditioners um we're moving away from those and this bill would move us away from them faster they're major greenhouse gasses that's it did i do it one minute all right thank you mr representative cormick next up uh representative culbert representina i can go first okay um set my timer here folks um um so i could tell you about some bills i'm working on be happy to come back and do that another time but um i really have spent a lot of my last week as have many of my colleagues i think here among us trying to really connect with educators and parents and students and families after late friday afternoon the agency of education dropped some guidance that really scaled back access to testing and contact tracing in our schools in the middle of this amicron wave um so i've been really doing a listening tour on that i'd really like to invite folks to share feedback with me with emma brian and kurt um and i'll just say a number of us did release a statement after hearing from um educators some of the things that i've heard that they want are testing access regardless of vaccination status high quality mask distribution more testing access in early childhood set et cetera i'm at a minute so um not a lot of time to tell you what's going on there i will say that i just came from a meeting with um that the school district put together for parents that was super helpful and it does sound like some there's going to be another dump of guidance from the agency of education tomorrow yet again on a friday and it does seem like some of these things but not all of them are coming in that guidance so you have my commitment that i'll continue to fight for them and more in legislative spaces and i really do welcome feedback especially from our school board members as well i shared that you know the one eight npa last night as well i'd love to connect with you okay thank you representative fulburn um representative chin i think you're up yeah thank you so i just want to start by saying that this update only represents a fraction of the things that we're working on or that i'm interested in and if i don't say something it doesn't mean i don't care about it because at the last meeting um there were people who and took it that way so um i'm going to i'm on the health care committee as many of you know i'm a clinical social worker the health care committee's been looking at um at the budget adjustment in which we're looking at um implementing retention bonuses for workers in state agencies as well as the designated agencies and specialized service agencies to try to um take care of our health care workforce during this tough time and we're also looking at increasing Medicaid reimbursement rates for primary care providers and the designated agencies and specialized service agencies we have not increased the rates in a very long time and our health care workforce has been under strain so hopefully this will help um uh in in general i'm committed to working on uh improving the social determinants of health in every possible way um i'll talk a little bit about housing this week we reintroduced the BIPOC led land access and property ownership bill in house general and um they are going to be looking at that bill and at ways to address racial and social equity in property ownership and land access um and also introduced a bill with some others that would give the tenants of apartment buildings the right of first refusal to collectively purchase their buildings um what this would mean is like we currently do with mobile park park park home mobile home parks that if a apartment building was going to go up for sale the tenants would have a few months to be able to organize themselves and collectively by the building before it goes on the market um last but not least the energy and technology committee is poised to um pass the uh the second AI bill and i'm happy to talk more about that another time but even though we're in a pandemic AI the risks we can minimize the risks and maximize the benefits as we go light speed into the future so on that note i will hand it over to whoever's next thank you thank you representative Tina it looks like we have a question here from Molly Flanagan yeah i was just wondering if our representatives could give us an update on the Burlington Charter changes that we voted on last march what's the um path forward for those i will take that one as the unofficial and unpaid uh chair of the Burlington delegation it's just a joke because there is no such thing um but uh we have been trying to steward it through so there's four there are four charter changes i'm going to try to be super brief on this as well happy to come back when things really start to move um but the one item that moved from house to senate last session was the airport commission which was adding seats to the airport commission um that is uh still i believe in the senate rules committee and waiting to be assigned to committee um there's some concern about regional oversight with that but we're also just trying as a Burlington delegation to stay united in in um seeing the will of the voters to move forward um and have that separate conversation about regional oversight of a regional airport in a difference in different way the other three items are still in house um government operations um and that was the thermal energy issue um the rank choice voting for um city council um level it's not school board right it was city council sorry i used to have these memorized and then thanks max i just needed an odd and then the um the third one being uh just cause eviction so those are in house uh government operations but we also expect the for various reasons those bills to also have to make a drive by other uh committees that sort of touch on those policy areas it is a tough road sometimes for Burlington issues um and on a Montpelier stage on a statewide stage because these issues are you know passed by Burlington voters but it brings up a lot of other competing viewpoints let's just leave it at that on a statewide level so we are trying to stay united and figure out ways to make sure it stays a priority that's the last we heard from the speaker of the house that those would um have a fair shot of moving this session but there's a lot of competing issues going on like redistricting and pensions in house government operations stay tuned we have been advocating with the chair too and she did give me um maybe i'm already said that i'm sorry but she did give me an indication that you know she's on our side and trying to get these things moving so i hope i hope that holds true okay well thank you i'd like to thank the Burlington delegation for bringing us up to speed on the many things going on in Montpelier it sounds like you're all very busy and i just want to say that you know my personal preference and the recommendation i will be bringing to our steering committee is to move this portion of the meeting um a little bit closer to the beginning of the agenda um recognizing though that for those of you in Montpelier there is a travel time component so we'll try to work with you uh for that so thank you for being patient uh as we work through this and uh look forward to seeing you uh next month i have a quick question any of you like to declare you're running for uh you know a a federal office no okay um for president actually i don't know maybe i don't know i'm just kidding just kidding it's like to see their delegation also has a as a sharp sense of humor as well on that note the question okay uh we have school board and uh city council coming up um i believe i heard a little bit ago that the school board has a more substantive presentation uh i see councillor tracy and councillor megee um do you guys uh i think we'll let those folks go first if there unless there's any objections um then we'll reserve the final portion of the meeting for a school board so that they can get into the details of the issues they wish to discuss um i'll uh go with councillor tracy first as the president of the council and then we can move on to you mr councillor megee sure so um the council's in the process of finalizing the ballot for for november so there's a number of issues that are going to be coming to the ballot um joel touch on one of the on one of the issues which is charter change but we did discuss a number of issues at council in addition to that and i'll go through sort of the the meeting um that we had this last this last time so we have heard this mpa from uvm about their on-campus housing we heard again at council on them about their plans to build uh several hundred um bed facility on their trinity campus and their desire to rezone that campus to allow for that that's where we kicked off the meeting we then um talked about um and had a hearing about the tiff which you heard about at this meeting um we um a enhanced weatherization standards um for rental properties um that's been an ongoing effort um where we started with the worst properties first and now we're continuing to go down um the list and continue to require um more stringent for properties that weren't um as bad by by sort of the um the some of the assessments that were done the other piece was also that we um looked at or that we passed a responsible contractor ordinance that requires um all contractors doing work for the city of burlington to um be clear about um the deck how they're declaring people whether they're independent contractors or not and also to pay prevailing Vermont state prevailing wages um on the ballot um we were talking about two issues um some of which the discussion of which took place more at the board of finance than at full council we talked about um a the potential need for a uh tax increase to um continue to fund some of the a variety of the programs that the city engages with um so that conversation is ongoing and has not been finalized yet and then the last piece was um a conversation about bringing back a trimmed down capital bond um the bond went down in December we've um the the mayor's proposing coming back with a smaller bond so instead of 40 million 25.5 million is what it's looking like now with um the memorial piece of it um being probably the most significant shift going from 10 million dollar allocation for memorial to a one million dollar allocation final decisions have not been made on either of those those will be made at this upcoming meeting on the 24th yeah i'm seeing some uh polls popping up here on the zoom portion this is screened and i suspect i'm not alone and i'm not sure what that's all about but it doesn't look like the things we're being asked to vote on or to grow with the things that were presented so um i'm working on it because nobody else was uh and i was as we were losing participants so i was trying to get it done okay uh we'll bear with you work through that um council tracy did you have any further uh items you'd like to share okay before we move on to councillor McGee i would like to thank councillor tracy for his i think what close to a decade of service on the council oh yeah and on a personal note i'm not running for city council again i totally left that out um yeah i made that announcement last week and just really appreciated the opportunity to to be a part of this mpa over the years it's been one of the the places that i've really enjoyed coming especially back when we used to have community dinner just loves sharing that time with neighbors and found a lot of a lot of community and just a lot of friendship and support there so really appreciate that certainly um you know want to continue working with and attending mpas and and working with you all more broadly in the community but just wanted to say that and thank you all for your support and friendship over the years thank you councillor tracy and councillor McGee uh without further ado thank you and uh just a quick personal note it's been a pleasure to serve with uh councillor tracy over the last few months i'm sorry it's not going to be longer but uh i am uh running for reelection myself and uh hope to continue serving ward three uh for a full term so um and uh look forward to continuing attending these meetings so um i got a couple things that i want to touch on this evening um the first is as max mentioned um we're working on finalizing things for the ballot in march uh the next step for our charter change that will be on the ballot in march related to sex work um will be a public hearing on tuesday um so this charter change removes a lot of antiquated and harmful language from the charter around sex work and gets us moving in a direction of removing the stigma surrounding that and you know starting path to hopefully support some similar work in legislature as well so that public hearing will be happening um on tuesday at i believe six o'clock um that agenda's been posted on or box for that meeting's formed and if anybody has any questions i don't have to reach out on that the other thing that i wanted to touch on is that we are um still accepting accepting applications for uh the ad hoc reappraisal committee that the city council um passed a resolution relating to in november this is a delayed start for the committee we outline in the resolution a number of um backgrounds that we wanted represented on the ad hoc committee and we didn't get applications for all of those we're still waiting on applications for two renters and a commercial property owner to serve on the ad hoc committee so the deadline for those applications to be in is tomorrow at the close of business for the clerk's office if folks are interested in serving on that committee and meet either of those um position uh descriptions i would be glad to answer any questions you have between now and tomorrow and 4 30 and could send you the link for that as well so um i am really glad to be getting that work started i think it's really important to get those public hearings going and figure out how we can make the reappraisal process work better for everybody going forward so that is all i have for this evening thank you councillor McGee so just to recap uh the ad hoc committee on reappraisal uh currently has a couple of vacancies that they're looking to fill um from renters so if there are any renters out there that uh wish to participate in that i think councillor McGee or councillor tracy would be able to answer those questions deadline is tomorrow at 4 30 okay i think the school board is up now it looks like we've got full house i actually had a question for our councillors before i start is that okay absolutely can we get an update speaking of three-year appraisal and um our lovely tax bills mine of which has doubled i thought there was mention of some sort of uh opportunities for relief financial uh through this transition because we're a year behind how we could access um our income-based um tax rebates you know is there any update about that or um so in december we passed additional um funding to go towards that program i think the numbers were run and the folks that qualified for um the lag relief exceeded the the initial dollar amount that we had allocated for the program so the CAO's office is working on uh standing that up now and i think last i heard it was supposed to be um getting going i think the end of this month and hopefully um that's i will get an update for you genie and see if they have a specific date when they're looking to launch that thanks joe also you know i'm can i just segue right into basically everything that's happening um taxpayer dollar rise is a major consideration that that the district is taking in forming um their budget so i'm just gonna i am sorry if i go over i had prepared for 15 minutes so i'm gonna hopefully not have give you information that seems disjointed but the essentially what the school what the schools are asking for is a decrease in taxes from what we've asked in the past and that is because i mean the actual budget is going to be increased because every year wages benefits utilities other standard costs increase but the state education fund is very healthy this year and in addition to that um there's covid related american resource funds uh and the district was incredibly conservative with this ask so i know that probably sounds a little bit concerning as far as maybe how well are we serving our students um i want to believe that we care about that and not just about how our wallets are going to get hit so just to let you know the and i am going to start a timer the initiatives and programs uh that have been not necessarily added but invested in are things like restorative practices there's now a specialist at every single school um but the american resource plan funding has allowed us to introduce um social emotional learning and attendance engagement uh mostly about reengaging the students who in some level were checking out during remote learning um of course continued covid precautions masks filters testing chromebooks uh but we did add two pre-k classrooms and a literacy curriculum for k through five which is a big deal uh there's also the creation of a mental health assessment tool um obviously very much needed and there's uh they were able to do home visits for kindergartners and they're uh working on a program to do home visits with older kids and this is not the unannounced knock on the door because you haven't gone to school kind of truancy thing this is about connecting um and of those uh covid related funds ten million dollars is being set aside for the bh uh burlington high school burlington tech center uh build uh project which is as you know uh the goal is to have that in august of 2025 and so when i talk about the state education funding at fund being healthy basically that it went up significantly or maybe we were afraid it was going to go down because of covid it turned out not to there's surplus um that means that uh they the state can support oh god this is impossible guys the state can support uh a higher level of spending without having to increase taxes so i don't know what else of the cost of bhs the rent etc that has been baked into this this budget we're not it's not a new ask on task taxpayers uh we also uh the district had a surplus that they are uh they are going to take 600 000 out for improvements at bhs mostly about noise mitigation and security features in addition to it's not a temporary space as much as it's temporary it's it's for a couple years so there's upkeep and i was going to talk about bhs btc future stuff but um i don't know how much more time uh probably steven should go to oh steven is not running we need somebody to run for war to school board i will send the link to the forums and then steven don't leave me you're raining on my parade i'm not raining i'm let me just jump in here it won't take more than a minute you know i just want to thank people for the support that you've given me and the board and the school system over the past four years that i've been serving i am stepping down this time around i feel a little guilty about it um but but at this point i haven't changed my mind about that and i but i haven't seen any candidates come forth and i really hope that we have a candidate from war two who will come forth and represent this part of the city on the school board i would be happy to talk to anyone about it it's really an it's actually really an exciting time to be on the school board because we're going to be looking at a new design for a brand new building very new tech center we're going to be looking at um you know changes in curriculum um which is really a positive way to approach it and we have a fabulous new um superintendent as you know and the people i work with on the board are absolutely wonderful and i'm going to miss them but i'm going to still be around i may even be tuning into some of the meetings but anyway i just wanted to quickly mention um you know we're battling this covid badminton games so so to speak and um it's very scary actually i'm working in the schools every day i work at south burlington every day and it's quite frightening the numbers of absences and of students and faculty there's a huge need for substitute teachers if you are able to do it i can't do it in burlington that's why i'm focused on south burlington right now but um and and again as genie was talking we we need a full court press for uh the funding mechanisms for bhs btc we haven't gone to the point yet where we know the number but that will be coming up soon as will the design for the new building so that we can expect fairly soon um and as usual everything is is really uh transparent there are meetings all the time about about people sharing their opinions about it um and i can stop there i can stop there but there's so much more as usual there's many balls to juggle but it's all it's been very very interesting for me and i'm going to miss it i am stepping down i would love to have some candidate come forth from ward ward two and please give them my email and i can meet them at any time and talk about the responsibilities and the excitement of it okay thank you same and just i'll send you all the information with the form link to the form requirements fingers crossed okay any questions for our school board members saying none here at the community center nor any online um i think this we up representative chena and may any corner um oh just i want to say i just want to say thank you i know it's hard being on the school board and i know these are really tough times for the school um not just covid but also the financing pieces the people waiting piece has been stressful so i just want to say thanks to you both and um thanks steven you you you're sitting in a seat i used to sit in and you don't get paid to be on the school board but it's very rewarding when you get to go visit the schools and see the difference you're making for so many the lives of so many children so i hope we can find someone who will step up um so thank you for your service thank you genie thank you representative chena may me cornell please um i just really wanted to say that um like covid has really hit home this week for me like i have my neighbors um they all like her whole family has it and so i was exposed and i'm quarantining at home and like i see doubt like i see people all day every day on facebook asking for these at-home tests and there aren't enough and the way the school wants it done is really difficult if you don't have a car or you don't have a parent that has the time to take their kid to first of all find an at-home test and then they still have to get the other test so then it makes no sense of what is the point of having the at-home test done if you still want the other test done like i'm just hearing this a lot again and again and again and it's just it's very it's very frustrating you know it's it's very scary you know i i just like i don't know i hear you and i you know there's been this whole thing about the test kits and everything but there was a mean Flanagan had a meeting tonight with with some doctors and some people who joined them it was a zoom meeting at six o'clock and it was recorded but and i he did mention i listened to a little bit of it he did mention that there were five thousand new kids just arrived in burlington so i would not i would encourage you not to give up on trying to get those i know it's it's tricky just to get them oh no i have them because i have access to like i'm i have access to a place that has access to the test but the thing that is scary is that i i see people like someone asked it someone in winewski um you know someone needs a test to go back to work you know i mean and just like seeing how many people have gotten infected this is the first time that it's really gotten this close to where i live you know like i i've been very careful and i am lucky i have the ability to stay at home and to keep myself safer than some people have but you know kids can't not go to school and then parents are put in a position well do they want their kids to go to school when the numbers are so high like these are the conversations that i see happening and people are scared like they literally like people are panicking because they can't get their hand on a test or they have to take their kid to school so they can get a test but they work and if they don't work they can't pay their bills you know because they're a single parent household you know and i'm not like i'm not placing any blame i'm just saying that you know there are some things that factor in when you're you know when you're low income or you're a single family household even if you have a car you know you then have to take off work you have to get your kid tested and then you miss a day of work you know thank you ma'am just did you have a question looks like we have somebody from the school was there was that you patrick that was going to had a response it was just 915 i was just asking jess yeah i was gonna say jessica does have her hand up so i was like going to rescue recognize her okay thank you yeah and me and me that's such you know a really important point and we do need to make sure that there's more access to test kits and that access is is equitable and and that everyone can can can get to them i did want to just quickly thank steven for for your service um as a school commissioner we really appreciate the time and energy that that goes into that work um and also to thank mac so much for your decade of service to the city and and your spirit of community and um compassion and the fire that you've put behind everything you do um and i know that the you know heading up the city council has not has not been easy and you've done it with with tact and with grace and i really appreciate that and so thank you for thank you for your service um i do before we finish up as you know we only have 20 some people left we never really had a proper vote for our our grantees and i want to thank our grantees for the for their time and putting in this application and apologize for the fact that we had some technical difficulties that didn't allow folks to to vote since everyone in in the zoom or most people in the zoom are panelists we didn't realize that panelists didn't have access to the poll which is how we are going to do the voting which was going to be the super efficient system which became incredibly inefficient um so there are two things we could do now for the voting we could move everyone into the attendee section reopen the poll and folks could vote granted we'll be getting responses from only you know 22 people all together so that's one option the other option would be to table um the grant vote until the next npa meeting which would be in march um so i would open this up for a a motion on one of those options okay i'm here in the community center could i propose another option since the total funding requested was 5400 dollars if everyone would be amenable to this if the food not cops portion be changed from 2500 to less than that essentially if we could vote for all of the proposals as a slate since you know we are all here tonight we got to hear the proposals and i support full funding of all the other proposals do we have a second i second this this is lamb or any discussion on the motion uh the motion as i understand it is that we will be voting on the proposals as a full slate um to point of clarification you had mentioned a reduction in the requested amount for food not cops um what would be the new amount that you would be seeking i could tell you precisely since according to the email that got sent out by jessica i saw a total amount in here somewhere 54 23 79 uh 2076 dollars and 21 cents if we are indeed dispersing the full 5000 as a shared group between ward two and ward three any uh mr representative mccormick it looks like you have a question yes should we all be voting on these questions or um just the steering committee now um as i understand the process uh this npa is open to all uh residents of wards two and three uh and residents of wards two and three do have voting rights and that would include all of our elected officials including state representatives school board members and city counselors jessica looks like you wish to add something to that sorry and just a point of clarification so we did have an earlier vote that established the process which would be that folks would vote to either fully fund partially fund or not fund each application and that the steering committee would make the final determination about the dollar amount allocated um so that was what we had voted on and approved earlier so if we're going to change that process i think we do have to have a vote to change the process um just so i guess it's not out there and representative cheena since you're kind of our acting parliamentarian tonight if you would weigh it on this it seems that this motion would not be germane because it is in conflict with the prior motion which had passed i had my hand up for that i didn't want to call a point of order but i was going to ask about the process and furthermore uh i i think it's undemocratic to have an election um after there was a a technical issue um there's a there's vermont statute around the purity of elections and not that it applies to this but it it lays out how when there's a a someone opens a ballot bag too early someone something goes wrong you can't just plow forward you have to stop and kind of assess and so i lean towards like i i actually think we're it's we're probably going down like the wrong path trying to like overturn that motion and i would lean more towards like how can we move forward on that motion like perhaps there's another process like um some poll could be sent out to people you know where you i know you can do a google form where you can only vote once from your email maybe there's some way that that could happen or maybe the vote could happen at the next meeting i don't have an answer but i do have concerns about us pushing forward with a different process and with voting without everyone here i don't know if that's helpful but i totally understand that i just want to state that uh as the facilitator i believe very uh strongly in maintaining the integrity of the process so if at any time in a future meeting you feel that we're deviating from that please feel free to speak up and say your piece process is very important and it sounds like there are some concerns there looks like we have representative mccormick again and uh jessica you did have your hand up but it looks like it's down so uh representative mccormick yes thank you um i want to agree with brian um you know we have people who voted tonight thinking that they voted and then maybe they're not with us right now i take it there are some people that voted and they're not with the meeting any longer so um we'd be disenfranchising their votes um without them even knowing it so i think we have to do a a restart a revote i would like to make a proposal that we uh table this till next month and work out the details so unfortunately all those people who can accumulate receipts now who know they likely get approved for funding next month and those receipts will be paid postated and given everyone has already worked out the numbers to meet the five thousand dollar criteria i believe call us not food can just adjust their budget appropriately point of order it's food not cops not cops not food there's a big difference um so with respect to our process do we have a second for patrick's uh motion to table uh second okay we have two seconds uh this is a priority motion this does take precedence over the prior motion so all in favor of tabling this discussion and vote until the february meeting uh say i or raise your hand hi hi i anybody opposed hearing no opposition seeing many folks in favor the issue is now tabled and we'll be rescheduled for the february uh meeting um thank you all for coming and thank you for being patient it was my first time facilitating and i think it was uh one of the first times for our staff folks from cito that have been helping us um so thanks for that and bull is a steering committee circle backs talk about ways on how we can keep things more on track and also be a little bit more cognizant of the time of our elected officials i know you guys put in a lot of time whether it's here in burlington or down in the state house you all deserve you know time to come home and spend with your families and get a good night's sleep so i'll do it i kind of see that that happens and and thank you for being patient and coming out tonight um with that said i'll entertain a motion to adjourn uh do we have represented in the cormac did you have a comment no my hand was often from people before thank you uh do we have a motion to adjourn uh daniel yep motion to adjourn and sorry for interjecting so early with that idea i wasn't sure of all the technical difficulties online or that a lot of folks seems to be a theme tonight uh trailer g has seconded that motion so all in favor of adjournment say aye aye we have by a vote of affirmation um meeting is now adjourned thank you for your time thank you chris nice job thanks everyone for coming out