 Good to see everyone, it's been a little bit of events since we last gathered, we have a full agenda tonight. So the first item on the agenda is the agenda and to get us started, Councilor Pine. Approval of the agenda and the actions as indicated. Great, thank you, Councilor Pine. They're seconded by Councilor Jang, I believe. And any discussion of the agenda? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. We have an agenda, thank you. I'll now open the public forum of the public that wish to speak to the Board of Finance. And that... Don't see anyone in the public forum inbox, Mayor. Okay. Mr. Mayor, just so you're aware, there is a fairly good echo when you speak. I don't know that, I haven't noticed that before when you've spoken from the office, but just so you're aware. I'm sorry to hear that, is that any better? I just moved the microphone. It's better. Okay, all right. Hopefully that does it. Yep. I'm gonna close the public forum if there is nobody who has signed up and we'll move to item 3.01, which is the Consent Agenda. I welcome a motion regarding the Consent Agenda. Councillor Pine. I would move the items on the Consent Agenda and take the appropriate action as indicated. Okay, thank you, Councillor Pine. It is, I see the hesitation. We don't always have Consent Agendas at the Board of Finance. In this case, it's just the minutes, which we haven't always done this way. Everyone okay with doing it this way? You'll let us know if not. Are, is there a second for the Consent Agenda? Thank you, President Tracey. Discussion. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and the Consent Agenda passes. That brings us to item number four, which is a presentation really led by Katherine Shatter, Chief Administrative Officer on really the, one of the central pieces of work tonight and which is to really have our first look of fiscal year 21 at how the year is unfolding financially, particularly significant to take stock this year, given all of the uncertainty and impact that COVID has had on our finances. We are getting a clearer picture of where, as we are well into the audit of where our FY20, which was a very unusual year impacted as it was by March where we ended up there. And Katherine has really done a great job and worked very hard to bring this complicated report and really summarize the whole complicated nature of the city's finances into report. I think you will find gives us a good sense of where we stand and I'm happy to say the general outlook is more positive than we feared it could be at this point in the fiscal year, given everything we're facing. So with that, I'll turn over Katherine to lead us through the details. Great, thank you so much, Mayor. As you may have seen, posted in the materials, I've got a PowerPoint which I have tried to continuously refine to make it both useful to you and not overwhelming, knowing that we have a full agenda. I think we do have time for some questions and discussion at the end. That said, if there is something that is confusing to you along the way, don't hesitate to let me know. Here's my screen here. Okay, and I'm gonna assume everyone can see our lovely flag and the financial update slide. So what we're gonna go through, thanks for the thumbs up, Ryan. What we're gonna go through today is the FY20 overall general fund performance, also the general fund unassigned fund balance, as well as the results from the first quarter, which seemed to zip by for FY21, make a couple of quick projections about FY21, recommend some next steps and talk about questions and discussions. That still leaves plenty for us to discuss another day, including all of the enterprise funds and a much deeper dive into the audit and general fund. But now is a really good time to do this because we are completing the audit in record time because we need to better understand our financial position this year especially, given the uncertainty of COVID. And because it's the end of quarter one, and as I explained, I believe last time, up through October 31st, we were still collecting receipts. So this is sort of an optimal time to look at quarter one and compare it to our budget, especially in this volatile year, see how we did. So how did we do? The headline, everyone wants the headline. For FY20, the news is better than expected. I, of course, am grading us on a pandemic scale, but there is still some cause for worry in FY21. I mentioned this a little bit in the last slide. I wanna say thank you to my colleagues in the clerk treasurer's office. We've said thank you to the election team, and the clerk's office has been working really hard. So has the treasurer side working night and day with the auditors to get us this information, but it is still a draft in process. So there may be things you want to know that I don't totally know yet, but what we are confident in is the range for how the general fund did overall and the general fund on assigned fund balance. So those are very important numbers that you need to know to work with. So the relatively good news is we predicted and as you may recall, we encumbered a $2 million deficit for FY20 in our FY21 budgeting process. And we will come in between one and $2 million deficit. So we will not come in over and it is quite likely we will come in under and we'll know more within a few weeks. Now, the general fund unassigned fund balance update. I would like to think that this all looks familiar to you because I sent it out with the final budget, June 29th, but a lot of time has passed since June 29th. So just a very quick review. This is what we used to really make decisions about our budget this year. We started from the amount of $7.8 million in our unassigned fund balance that came from our auditors. We added the BT balance of $4.7 million. And then as I mentioned, we encumbered $2 million for a probable deficit in FY20 and we used 6.2 million in the FY21 budget, leaving us with a projected balance of 4.3 million. You'll see in the notes, that's 7% of our operational costs our policy says we need to maintain between five and 10%. So that felt optimal. What has changed? Here's where it gets a little bit complicated. I have highlighted what has changed. And the first thing is the starting point. You will recall that in the last slide, the starting point was 7.8. Now the starting point is about 9.5. 9.5 million is also a number that you will find in our financial reports from last year from our auditors. It is actually the one you will see as sort of the official balance of the unassigned fund balance. And the reason why we used the 7.8 million in June was because in the FY20 budgeting process, that city council had already encumbered $1.7 million worth of unassigned fund balance to use throughout the year in FY20. So conservatively we had to assume that would be used. Now we, and of course the auditors need to start from the official number because that 1.7, as you'll see in the notes, is only encumbered. It was only committed. We don't know if all of it was used or some of it was used or none of it was used. So that is why we start from that number. We add back in the BT balance, same as the other. Sheet. And then we add in $1.6 million. And this is money spent from the general fund all throughout FY20 that needs to be reimbursed back to the unassigned fund balance. So this money was spent on activities that were approved by the FY20 city council to be paid from the fund balance, but we didn't do that true up until the end of the year. So now we're simply paying ourselves back from the general fund back into the unassigned fund balance. So that is also great news for our unassigned fund balance. The last piece of good news is despite the fact that there was a pandemic, we had budgeted conservatively in FY20 for health insurance costs. So you'll see there's almost a half a million dollars there that wants all the claims were processed. That is coming back to the unassigned fund balance. Then you will see we're projecting the same $2 million for FY20, the same amount for FY21. And that, but that gets us to a new floor of about $8 million. So that's a big jump and that's great news. Then you will see a note below the line. You may recall, although we haven't given you an official update, I believe in February maybe, Rich and I came to you and you approved the capital accounting project with a firm called CLA. And they have been phenomenal and I wanna thank Rich and Martha and Norm and Laura and everyone who's been involved in that because it has been a lot of work to go back and reconcile all of those capital accounts. But it has been very much worth it. Martha will be coming, Martha Keenan will be coming at some point and I don't wanna steal her thunder, but she was able to find money we didn't know she had to be able to use towards capital and that's great. And because of that type of reconciliation, there may be money as you see here that we could move from what we call non-spendable to the unassigned fund balance. That could be as much as $2 million, but you see I put it in bold, I put it in all caps because I don't want you to get attached to that because there's still work to be done there. So we have a floor of eight million for our new unassigned fund balance. And we are recommending that we use one million of it to eliminate the non-departmental expenditure control general fund from the FY21 budget. If you don't remember what that is, that is the wonderful name that our favorite Bob Rustin came up with. And it's really the unidentified cuts that we're gonna have to make or extra revenue that we were hoping to generate and or federal aid. At the time, because we thought we were cutting it kind of close with our unassigned fund balance, frankly going down to 4.3, we left this in the budget. And so we're asking via a resolution to use one million towards this. I want to be clear that of the eight million, about one million is already obligated or what we would call not liquid. And that is because we have already obligated money for Sergeant Bella Vance's settlement, for instance. There is about, I believe, $200,000 of it is unrealized gains. We don't need to go into all the accounting speak, but just kind of keeping that in mind. So there is really kind of $6 million there if you choose to act on that recommendation. And my recommendation to you is given all of the uncertainty that we basically leave that alone, at least for now, and kind of get more data. Speaking of more data, thanks for hanging in there. It's not that much longer, you guys. So FY21 quarter one, all of that was through June. So now we really want to see what's happening when we're kind of in the thick of the pandemic. This is July through September. Our own Jason Gao, who is amazing, came up with the name The Big Five. These are all items. I think all of you were at our fiscal orientation when the new counselors came, and we sort of talked about these, but they represent 69% of all general fund revenue. Property taxes are 50% pilot and fee for service, which are property tax-like. Franchise fees, which are paid by the water and electric utilities, and then gross receipts and local option tax. Gross receipts, otherwise known as rooms and meals. Sometimes people think of that. So here's how they did. You can see in the third column was the target and then the actual. And looking at the Big Five, they overperformed to use some of the election language, but it's worth taking a quick look at why I'm looking at property taxes. We have people who have paid a head $200,000 worth. We are not going to get, that is going to catch up to us. That's not going to be sustainable. Gross receipts, we came out ahead, but I will talk in a slide in just a moment about how we budgeted for that sort of aggressively. So I'm not sure that's sustainable. Franchise fees are interesting because it appears that they are ahead because people are staying home using more water and electricity. So it is perhaps they may stay ahead. And because of the way local option tax is paid to us by the state, there is no quarter one target because the first payment comes around November 20th. And then the only other drivers we'll talk about today are what I have just nicknamed the Sly Six. And that's because I'm not sure you would necessarily realize that these six departments contribute another 20% of the general fund revenue. So if you add all of that up, that's a great proportion of our general fund revenue. And as you'll see here, DPW is the largest of the six at 6%. This table has a lot of information on it, but I hope that you find it useful. I wanna point out two things. One is just about dead center is the FY21 revenue percent of FY20 revenue budget. This is how much each department budgeted for FY21 based on last year. So DPW was not expecting a big COVID impact. So they actually budgeted their revenues more than last year. But if you look at parks, rec, and waterfront, for instance, we were expecting a huge impact. So we budgeted them at 52% of last year's. So just for some context. And then in the next column, you will see their quarter one target, which is different for each department, the actual and then the difference. And everyone always wants to know about what's in the red. So I wanna speak very briefly about that and then we'll get to questions and discussions with permitting and inspections. I talked to Bill and a lot of this is big projects that just haven't come through, frankly. A lot of his revenue comes through with rental registrations in the fourth quarter, but there were probably some assumptions built in here that were not conservative enough. And so we are continuing to talk about that. For Burlington parks, recs, and waterfront, you'll notice they have a very aggressive quarter one target it's 40% of the entire year, even though only 25% time has passed. So they didn't meet that target, but I have talked to Cindy and her team and they are confident that they will make that up, especially with a busy fourth quarter, once things get going. Also with BCA, a lot of this is sponsorships for events that are not happening like Festival of Fools, but people may still be giving us money, but they haven't put the checks in the mail because there's less of an impetus to put the checks in the mail because the event isn't happening. But it sounds like things are just delayed more on that end. However, if those departmental trends continued, we would lose $2 million beyond what we projected. We talked about permitting inspection if those large scale projects don't come through. Here's how our gross receipts are budgeted. And at the time that made sense because we thought things were gonna get better and we didn't really know about COVID and having to be inside. And so now it doesn't seem as achievable that in January to March, we're gonna be at 50% even of last year's January to March. However, we may see other departmental revenue, those franchise fees or the local option tax as people buy more things online and we still get that revenue. Those may overperform and offset some of those losses. Next steps. As I mentioned, we recommend eliminating the expenditure control line. That's the exact amount of money. And then basically waiting other than two turns of the spicket, which I totally stole from our governor. And those are approving a series of reclassifications that frankly were put on hold at like the exact moment of Corona. They were supposed to go forward in the first or second meeting when all we did was COVID. And then we were so worried about the budget, we put everything on lockdown. So you will see those tonight. They come from CEDO, CT, DPW. There's a couple that were a little bit administratively behind, frankly. So you may see those on the 23rd, but we're trying to package those at once. We're not in a position to accept new reclassifications, but we feel that these are important because it's not anything that the employees did that caused this. And each of these departments has the money to pay for it. The second one is revisiting seasonal and temp hiring. And we've talked to department heads about this at last week's EOC meeting, asking them to contact us if they have needs that were not met. Also, we will continue to provide monthly financial reporting to you. Well, I say continue, but really we will provide in a more direct way financial reporting to you and plan to do a second quarter review like this in February. It became way too much to talk about the COVID budget with another five slides at the end of this. So I will be back with Katie Kinstead from CEDO on November 23rd to do that. Also with the hopes that we've heard from the state of Vermont on our Elgar grant as we are supposed to on November 15th. And with that, I am done. Thank you for listening to me and I look forward to your questions. Excellent, Catherine. Thank you for all of that and moreover the huge work behind that from you and the rest of the team even while I think we shall remember your team much your team is also administering this historic election which required a big push. So it's been a busy few weeks in the clerk treasures office. Thank you. The floor is open for questions and discussion on the report. Councillor Paul. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Thank you, Catherine, great presentation. I have a couple of questions. When I had reached out to you to get to have this presentation and report a couple of weeks ago I guess it was probably about a month ago now and you were waiting for some of the data to come in. One of the reasons that I had asked for it was to do with the property tax waiver that we initiated back in June. We knew that, I think we all thought at least at the time that we started this back in April that there were going to be potentially hundreds of people that were in property owners that were going to be asking for this waiver of interest and penalties and then going into the second and third quarter of, well, the second and third or quarter of the calendar year. And that did not end up happening. It was not, there weren't by no means anywhere near as many people who took us up on the offer but there were some. And I know that Councillor Pine also had raised the issue that we should do whatever we could to work with especially considering that there weren't that many people to work individually with as many as we could to ease this time for them. For example, they couldn't make the double payment to try to push this out into other quarters. So at this point, how many, I know that the numbers look good in terms of the property tax but that's because for whatever reason there are people who pay early. I'm gonna have to find out why people do that but I guess I shouldn't question it. I'm glad that they do but there are people or are there people, I shouldn't, I'm not asking a rhetorical question. I'm asking are there people who are still working with the city in terms of having property taxes outstanding on how many, not necessarily how many people although if you know that that's fine but how much money is still outstanding that we are waiting to receive at some point if you have an estimate on when that would be good to know. So of the people who took advantage of this program all 22 of those owners representing 45 parcels paid. For FY20, we are still owed about $500,000 which is in line with previous years and that is partially because we haven't sent out letters demanding. We've only sent out friendly reminders and yes, yes. Okay, well, that's good to know. So it really isn't, so really this year despite what has been going on in the world this year is really not that different than other years. No, not with property taxes so far. Okay, so and then the other question I have is I do remember the placeholder that you and Bob Reston had with the control expenditure. There were a couple of them throughout the budget. I think maybe three, maybe four totaling $1,000,000 and $23,000. I tend to all things being equal try to hold on to the unassigned fund balance for as long as humanly possible on always hoping that perhaps something unexpected will happen and we don't have to take from it. We can always put it back but I'm just curious to know, it seemed as though when we were talking about this a couple of months ago that we had sort of thought we would do this over the course of the year. And if we saw things were getting better that perhaps we would take back and not be quite as aggressive on taking from the unassigned fund balance. And I'm just wondering if you gave any thought to the idea of maybe taking $500,000 now and waiting to see, I mean, I think what we had promised was that we would do our best to balance the budget as expeditiously as we could. I don't think we put a date on that. I don't recall doing that, but if we did maybe I'm mistaken. No, we didn't exactly put a date on it. However, the resolution promises, I will come back to you, I believe by the end of December. So we're having this conversation and I'll probably come back to you. But no, frankly, I had not thought about splitting it up but I'm not opposed to having that conversation. Okay, so in other words, the resolution that is there tonight is not something that we must act on tonight. It was put in there effectively as a bit of a placeholder given this conversation. I do remember that that you had said that, the resolution had said, now that you remind me that you were to come back. That is in December. I don't know that we necessarily need to do that unless of course it's your recommendation that we act now. And I'm just curious to know how you feel about that. Kesher Paul, I think the important thing about this conversation is that we had real concern when we passed this budget and given the uncertainty that we began the year with that despite all of the cutting, painful cutting really unprecedented cuts that we had to make to get to a budget that we could pass that we still might need to cut further. And that was really what these control items kind of require by the end of the year if we have not solved. So I don't have any problem with waiting or delaying for further and looking as to whether, does it all need to come out of unassigned fund balancer or will there be some uptick in revenues over the second quarter that allows us to avoid using unassigned fund balance. I would welcome some sense from the Board of Finance that there's agreement that given the general improvement of the picture here that we are not going to, the Board agrees that we are gonna be able to avoid going on and having to find another, half a million to a million dollars worth of cuts. I think that's the important part of this conversation. And in fact, given that we are asking, that's our orientation right now, we are asking for these two terms of the spigot now. So as long as we have kind of consensus about that I think we can wait for the final budget adjustment if you will, that says exactly how we eliminate that deficit if you follow me. Yes, I follow you. I mean, obviously the amount of good news far outweighs the amount of challenging news. I wouldn't say it's necessarily bad news. It's not something that we weren't exactly expecting but some of the hardest projections appear to be, we seem to be ahead of those, which is great news. And the only other reason I mentioned that is just simply that while I don't think that we're going to see, given what happened last week, while I don't anticipate myself that we're going to see much movement in Washington in terms of stimulus, at least until January there certainly is the potential that we could see something in the first quarter of the first calendar quarter of 2021 which might help us in easing off the lever on the unassigned fund balance. So yes, I mean, if you're looking for the, if you're looking for my own personal opinion I think that there's no reason for us to make any further cuts. So I'll let others ask questions. Thanks for your time. Thank you, Councillor Powell. I think Councillor Pye and I saw a hand. Yeah, Councillor Paul touched on a few of the things that I was going to raise and she covered it very well. So I'll just say the, it sounds like both the local option tax, the sales tax and the gross receipts is where we have seen the shortfalls, is that correct? We have not seen local option tax yet where we have seen most of the shortfalls has been in the departmental revenue. According to my analysis, it's really in permitting and inspection, it's in parks and rec and waterfront and BCA and as you'll see that totals about a half a million dollars here. Now for this quarter, that is almost balanced out by this positive 350, 369 here from the revenues that my office is fortunate enough to collect. And as you'll see, because we had such a low target for gross receipts, that's actually over by 135 for this quarter, even though we expect it will be down in the future. Okay, so I was glad to hear you say that it's looking like additional cuts will not be needed and if we do have to tap into the unassigned fund balance, I guess this is probably for the mayor is, and if we are fortunate that the results of the election lead to some federal stimulus, which even with the Senate staying in the control of the Republicans, there's some acknowledgement that there will be most likely something coming out of Washington, would we be able to then recoup what we have essentially used from the unassigned fund balance or once we spend it where are we not able to then recoup that? So we speak every Friday with Senator Leahy's office about the situation in DC and it is, or every Thursday now actually, and John Tracy gives us updates. This situation continues to be fluid and uncertain, certainly from what he has said and what I've read in the papers it is not out of the realm of possibility that there be some nearer term action, even action even before the new administration comes in. The Democrats and Congress continue to insist and demand that states and local governments be on, be part of any coronavirus relief package, any additional relief package. There was talk of even on the Republican side, there was talk of a $2 trillion package in the weeks leading up to the election. If that in anything approaching that order of magnitude passes and the Democrats are successful at having municipalities part of that list, that could be very positive situation for the city's finances. Another possibility is that I think is entirely kind of tied to the new administration and I don't expect progress until President Biden is seated and comes forward but he has talked about a massive infrastructure plan as well a $2 trillion infrastructure plan he was fairly specific about in as a campaign promise over the final month. So it is possible that both of those initiatives could go forward and we could be go from this period of kind of pretty remarkable austerity and belt tightening to one where suddenly we really have very significant assistance and resources. We just don't, I think it is still too early to bank on that, it seems likely, I increasingly likely in some ways that we will get some form of additional assistance but we've been thinking that really since July and the weeks have continued to kick off here. So I think it's, so I guess I was a long winded not complete answer to your question. I mean, certainly if we end up, it's all fungible in some way or another, right? So I do believe if we are able to get assistance, we will be in some way able to reimburse ourselves and restore some of the unassigned fund balance that we've had to spend down through this emergency. Great, thank you. And as you look into your crystal ball for FY 22, do you think we're going to be facing some difficult cuts in 22 or the potential of having to balance cuts with a tax increase maybe? Yeah, I am, I continue to be concerned about 22. I think the answer is somewhat similar to is very much tied up with the conversation we were just having the draft coronavirus package that the house passed in June and then passed another version of, I think they call that their heroes bill had anticipated that this downturn would be like other major downturns we've seen in the 21st century and kind of recent decades in which the impact on state and municipal finances was a multi-year impact and the draft that the house passed envisioned two years of support. It was really a somewhat stepped down level in the second year, but still a very significant support. If something like that passes, which I really, I think would be a great, I think it has to be said like I think it is it would not just from our narrow perspective obviously we'd make our jobs much more straightforward. I really do, I fundamentally believe it would help the country with its recovery dramatically. Staying local governments will put this money into the economy, we will put it to good use. It will really help us fuel the recovery from this dramatic downturn. And yeah, if we get this it was envisioned as a two-year package and that would make the FY22 situation much better. If we don't, we have some of the cautions that Catherine, I mean, that was essentially the point of Catherine's kind of revenue projection. If we have only to rely on our local projections, our local revenues, we are getting hit pretty hard on the big five or at least a couple of them and that is likely to continue into a second year. And yeah, we could be faced with a situation where we are in the unpleasant situation when we look at a tax increase, even as our constituents are still struggling with their own financial situation. So a lot is hinging on the federal government doing the right thing. They're the ones that have the tools to do that. They can print dollars for exactly this situation. Let's hope they do the right thing. Yeah, thank you. That's good. Yes, President Tracy, sorry. Thank you, Mayor. And thanks for the presentation. I think one of the things that was particularly, I think heartening both with this and with our budget conversation back in June was that we weren't considering layoffs or furloughs for employees and that didn't come into this conversation at all. I'm just wondering if some of these trends don't reverse and if we don't get any sort of additional aid, is there a point at which you could foresee us having to consider those and go back to bargaining units and have those conversations? Because that's certainly a concern. I think we wanted everything we can to avoid that, certainly, but I just wanna bring that into the conversation and understand your thinking on furloughs or potential layoffs. Thank you, President Tracy. I appreciate the opportunity to clarify and just make sure this point is crystal clear. We were concerned when we passed the budget that if nothing improved, that that million dollars, what's the fancy term? Catherine had a revenue control line. I mean, that that if we didn't have a solution to that, the ultimate option that basically required us to come back to you and propose additional cuts and those cuts essentially at this point could only be personnel cuts. The best news out of this conversation in is because of the general improvement overall and where we're at, I don't, we are not asking for that and we are not anticipating coming forward in the FY21 budget. We are saying, look, we've got even without federal help, we've got things are sugaring off, modestly better than we conservatively budgeted, plan they might be. We do not anticipate making further cuts in FY21. You know, to just circle back to Councilor Pine's question, we don't, you know, if we get no help and the revenue picture does not significantly improve, we are not completely out of the woods here. It is possible the FY22 budget could include some challenging conversations. We are hopeful that is not where we're headed. It certainly won't be where we're headed if we do get assistance from the federal government and no matter what FY21, no matter where we end up in terms of the federal conversation or general economic improvement because of the report you've just heard from Catherine, we will enter FY22 in a substantially better cash situation, unassigned fund balance situation than we feared we might be when we passed the FY21 budget. So to summarize that all, I don't think we can say definitively we are out of the woods and done having to talk about painful job actions but we are done with that conversation for FY21 and we are in better shape than we feared for FY22 and certainly it will remain a goal of mine and Catherine's to avoid that kind of action that has devastating consequences for our city team while also worsening the general economic situation for the region. It is not the right thing to be doing economically to be cutting at the local government level just as we're dealing with a recession more broadly. So I hope as you take some confidence that we're in a better situation we are concerned we might be at this point. Okay, great. Thank you very much for that answer, Mayor. Thank you, President Tracy. Councilor Jang. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and thank you Catherine for the great presentation and great work with your team behind the scene alongside the administration. And I was wondering if you can come back to the two millions that you identified that might be coming from I believe the capital fund balance. There was a slide where you touched on it and to say to not hold our hopes very high. Yeah. Yeah, auditor review fund balance. Yeah. I was just wondering if you can tell us more a little bit more about this where does it specifically come from? If you can articulate that. I am not the best person to do that but Rich Goodwin is and I feel confident he is somewhere on this meeting and would love to speak to this issue. Yeah. Yeah, so we're still in the process of finishing up the audit and we've actually went back over five years to look at our capital spend. We're getting very close to finishing that exercise to answer your question is that there may be as a result of that audit a determination of $2 million that will either show up on the balance sheet as excuse me, non-spendable or may end up resulting in an actual increase to our unassigned fund balance. Interesting enough, I just finished up the capital reconciliations for the city on Sunday and I forward that over to our auditors and we're collectively looking at this. So I can't make any promises on how that is gonna end up but we have identified that there is the potential for an increase to that unassigned fund balance so we shall see. That's good. Can we say with high confidence that at least half of this would be coming? Maybe like and maybe on a percentage from... No, Ali, please, sorry, Councilor Cenk. The floor is $8 million. Please don't make us go beyond that but as soon as we know more, we will tell you more. I think you are probably right that some portion of this will come back to us but I am not confident and I don't wanna put Rich into a difficult position to pin down exactly how much that is because quite frankly, this is the most complicated audit I've ever been through and there are just a lot of moving pieces. Yeah, so it's just a way that I think because knowing... I know. I'm sorry. Yeah, no problem. Knowing also that we were really concerned, there was some worries about the FY21 but knowing that the FY20 projections were not good but now it seems everything is going very, very well, super well. But I wanted to also circle back around the debt policy and was just wondering how much do we have left to borrow from the debt policy? Mr. Mayor, probably. Yeah, Councillor Jang. It has been a little while since the last time we reviewed together the debt policy. There certainly is still significant capacity before we hit the limit that we kind of laid out when we passed that policy a couple of years ago now. My memory is there is perhaps the order of magnitude of $30 to $40 million of additional capacity there, which sounds like a lot of money. It feels significantly smaller when you start thinking about the potential uses of that money between the known infrastructure needs and our roads and sidewalks and then the Memorial Auditorium and the uncertainty around that building, which the last time we did a projection, we projected to take a significant amount. So there's definitely capacity there. It's been a little while. I appreciate you raising the question. It would probably be good for us to bring that back to you with sort of updated projections as we are starting to talk about next year. If that would be interesting to the Board of Finance, we'd be happy to do that in our, maybe when we bring back that next quarterly report, we could bring it out an update of that. Thank you. Thank you. And maybe lastly, this is more to request more update or a little bit of clarity from the relief package from the federal government. It seems we are maybe waiting for two different type of reliefs. One is about infrastructure and the second one is basically coronavirus relief package. Did I understand it right? Correct? Yeah, that's exactly right, Councilor Jang. There is both the possibility of another coronavirus relief package. I think it would be the fifth one passed by Congress. None of the prior ones have had large amounts of relief for state and local governments. The Democrats have been fighting for that to be included if there is another major package. They are talking about a two plus trillion dollar package. In addition, President-elect Biden made a quite detailed promise in the closing months of the campaign to bring forward as part of the recovery effort, a, I believe he put a number on it, a two trillion dollar infrastructure package. So we do have our city teams following that conversation very closely and we wanna be ready to act quickly when the plans for that effort become clear. I will actually just mention a third piece. Catherine mentioned this before, but she kinda rightly has spared you for tonight the detail on this, but another area where our projections could improve materially is with the reimbursement that we are expecting or hoping for from state government regarding the emergency and COVID related expenses that we have been investing so far. We are confident we will get at least $750,000 in reimbursement and our projections have kind of assumed that. We could do better than that. And we could do, it is not a real possibility that the state will decide to reimburse us for more than a million dollars of additional expenses beyond that. So that's another thing that could cause a picture to improve in the future. So those are three big things we're watching. You're watching. Perfect, perfect. And now one of them specifically, which is the relief package about coronavirus. Do we have strings attached on type of services or programs we should use them or can we make the decision to say this is specifically going to Memorial Auditorium, for example. Right. It is, we don't know yet. The state reimbursement that we're seeking is certainly not flexible money like that. It is money that is tied to specific types of emergency related expenditures. The rules, the way the house passed, the bear version of, I think some people call it C5, the coronavirus relief package, number five was very flexible money for states and municipal governments, is my understanding of it. It is, that is one of the major points of contention, however, so I don't think we can take that to the bank yet, both in both in that it's not authorized and whether some strings or restrictions are gonna come with that, that's certainly something that could happen in the final negotiations. Similarly, very few details have been released at this point about the infrastructure package and what we'll qualify for that. I have asked our teams to do everything they can, given that it could be that sometimes the way these federal programs come down, there's something of a race to submit shovel-ready projects. We have been meeting and following that and wanna be ready to move if there is support there. Happy to come back and talk more about that in the future if that'd be interesting. I mean, obviously if we get a green light here, we will be talking about it. I think we've kind of, that's probably about all we have to say for tonight, but it's something we're following closely and we'll have more to report to you soon. Thank you again for all you guys, all you do. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. All right, it is six, a little after six, Catherine. I'm sorry, because I heard the church bells and I know we need to move on and I don't wanna end on a bad note, but I did realize there was one thing I forgot to mention, which is I did say we would be coming back with a fuller picture, including all of the enterprise funds, but I did neglect to tell you that I believe Director Spencer will be coming with Jeff Padgett sooner rather than later to talk about the traffic and parking funds in particular, because as you can imagine, those have been particularly hard hit with COVID. So those are the kinds of things that we don't have full information on, but we'll be coming to you shortly. Great, I think that's an important caution. This is like every, like so much else that we see in this in which the way this pandemic has the community, you kind of see a similar thing within the city budget as well as the broader economy and certainly parking is probably the greatest example of that. So I'm more to come there, but it definitely will be challenging, but we will, with that, I think we should close this out, I'm happy to answer any more questions by email or more discussion at future meetings. I do think we have a number of items that we need to get to before. Max, are we shooting to turn this over to you at 630? Is that the hope? I'm here. So, Councilor Paul. Thank you. Along those lines, Mr. Mayor, is there anything on items 5.01 to 5.10 that we could do with the next meeting? Is there anything on that list? I don't want to take too long talking about it. Why don't we start working and I will try to make sure as we start going through this to prioritize if there's something that can wait, but hey, we got 23 minutes left. Let's see if we can get through as much as we can. So 5.01, if we're ready to move to, approval to enter into a contract with Cargill for FY21 Road Salt Procurement. I would welcome a motion on this item. Councilor Paul. Thank you. I'll make a motion to approve and recommend to the City Council, the Director of Public Works enter into a contract with Cargill to supply the City of Burlington with Rock Salt for winter maintenance of roads and sidewalks for $70.50 a ton for fiscal year 2021 subject to review and approval of the City Attorney's Office. Thank you, Councilor Paul. Do we have a second? Seconded by Councilor Jang. Discussion. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Great, any opposed? I do not see any opposition. Councilor Pine, just so you know, we cannot see or hear you at this point. So let's keep moving. Now we will go to 5.02 service enhancement. Thank you, Lady and Chairman. Service enhancements and extensions of City Enterprise Financial System Contract. Brian Lowe, our CIO is here. We welcome a motion. I mean, I'm happy to make a motion or if others want. Thank you, Councilor Paul. Seconded by the President Tracy. Is there any discussion? We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. I think that should be recorded as a 4-0 vote unless Councilor Pine, you are there. We will go to 5.03 cybersecurity information on disclosure agreement at Burlington Electric Department item. Welcome, Darren and Emily, Councilor Jay. Yes, I would like to make the motion to recommend that the City Council authorize the general manager of the Burlington Electric Department to execute attached non-disclosure agreement between PEP company, Vermont Tasko LLC, Vermont Energy Investment Corporation, Vermont Public Power Supply Authority, the Vermont Distribution Authorities and the Vermont Department of Public Service regarding cybersecurity information subject to review and approval to the city office. Thank you, Councilor Jang. Do we have a second? Seconded by President Tracy. Thank you. Discussion of 5.03. Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries 4-0 unanimously. 5.04, franchise fee, MOU and agreements. Thank you, Emily and Darren. Franchise fee, MOU and agreements, a clerk-treasurer's item. Are we ready for a motion? Yep. Councilor Pine. There we go. I would move to approve and recommend to City Council to approve the Chief Administrative Officer to assign a memorandum of understanding and agreements regarding payment of franchise fees with the Burlington Electric Department of the Water and Wastewater Funds of the Water Resources Division of the Department of Public Works subject to review and approval by the city attorney's office. Thank you. Is there a seconded by Councilor Paul? Discussion. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? And the motion carries unanimously. 5-0. We will now move to 5.05, reclassification of payroll manager, payroll administrator two and administrative assistant. This item and the next item, again, people should just be explicit. We are moving forward with these items. They have been on hold since March because of the financial situation because of our conversation earlier tonight. We now think that the right thing to do is to move forward with them. So with that, are we ready for a motion? Councilor Paul. I'd actually, if you're okay, if others are okay with it, would be happy to make the motion for 5.05 and 5.06 to reclassification. If you wanna take them separately, they are long recommended actions, but I would just simply to ask to recommend to the city council to approve the recommended actions. I think it's a great idea. Great. Thank you, Councilor Chang. Thank you, Councilor Chang and Councilor Paul. Further discussion? Thank you for joining us, Tony. If there is no discussion, we will go to a vote on, it's a joint motion for 5.05 and 5.06. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. And that brings us, we do have one more reclass and staffing update which is 5.07, this is a DPW item and a welcome motion on this if we're ready. I'm happy to do that. I actually should have done that initially, but I thought three at one time seemed like a lot. I agree and I thought maybe the staffing updates maybe should be different. Yeah, that's my thought. So I'm happy to make that motion to recommend that the council approve the attached resolution for 5.07. Great, excellent. Do we have a second? Seconded by Councilor Chang. Discussion? Councilor Pine. I just need to make sure I read it, but I can't recall. These are all exempt non-bargaining unit positions we're dealing with here, are correct? Yes, Councilor Pine. That is correct with all of the reclassifications. There is one minor retroactive pay request in here that is for a bargaining unit employee. Okay, thank you. So there's no, I didn't see any communication with ASNY, but that's because there's really no, there's no impact on bargaining unit members here, correct? Correct. These are reclassifications of non-union personnel. Okay, thanks for the clarification. Okay, any additional questions? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously. I wanna thank all the employees who were impacted by these actions for their patients and for their commitment to the city and working with us as we navigated through this challenging time. And I'm glad we're in position to take this action. And I think it was really important in terms of keeping the city team strong and the fair compensation of the city team. So, Chapin, thank you for your hard work on that as well as the other department heads involved here. And Lynn and Tony, thank you. And Jeff, thank you. With that, let's go to 5.08. It's another DPW item, so Chapin and Jeff are still here. General fund, budget amendment and job description reporting structure changes for the transfer of parking enforcement division from Bryanton Police Department to the Department of Public Works. Can you give us just a quick summary, Jeff, and update on exactly where this is before we dive in? Yep, sure, this is, so about a month ago, I gave a presentation with a three phase process where first it was administrative migration of the org chart and the budget from police into DPW and then phase two is the organizational streamlining, so to speak. And then phase three is actual infrastructure changes. So this is actually phase one A, the first half of phase one, which is administratively moving the police department into public works. So literally all we're doing is taking the org chart and changing the titles on it to be DPW titles and moving them under my jurisdiction authority, whatever. And then also changing the budget code so that the budget code now is reflected as a DPW budget item. And that's phase one A, phase one B will actually be back to you shortly within the next couple of months with a reorganization because now that I have folks sort of in my domain, now we're gonna start finding ways to optimize their positions in our organization. So we're here at phase one A, which is literally an administrative action to bring basically build my team. Thank you, Jeff. How'd the board like to proceed? Are we ready for a motion on this item? President Tracy. So I recommend that the city council approve the attached resolution. Thank you, President Tracy. Do we have a second? Seconded by Councillor Pine. Discussion. Okay, seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously. Thank you, and thank you, Jeff, for spearheading this important shift. This brings us to 5.09 authorization to apply for, accept and expend community development block grant funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development in the state of Vermont. CEDAW item. Welcome, Luke. And how would the board like to proceed? Go ahead, Councillor Jay. Yeah, quick question. Is this to accept or to apply? This is to accept. So it's a number of actions, but it's essentially bringing money into Burlington. That's great. Giving us permission to accept. Yeah, so then I think I move for the council to accept. Yes, this resolution. Second. Thank you. And just to be clear, it is you are, the resolution does include approval for both application and approval of grant agreements. It's a kind of global approval. So you just to clarify your, you've moved it as the recommended motion. Motion. Yes. Okay. Excellent. Thank you. And was there a second? Yeah. Second from Councillor Pine. Excellent. Further discussion. Councillor Pine. I would just add that this is one of those rare instances where the federal government doesn't make the municipality put together an application per se. This is a block grant. So it's really more of an action plan of how you're going to spend it, not shall we apply and hopefully we're going to get it. But we know in this instance, this is one we get block grant. So that's a real positive thing. Thanks for CEDOs work on this great work and a tough time. Appreciate the effort. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Further discussion. Seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and it brings us to our final item. 5.10, budget amendment to satisfy line 999-100, under score 100, expender control, general fund and the FY budget. So this is the, what we were discussing earlier and what we had some discussion, maybe a desire to kind of change this and maybe not take this whole action now. So floor is open. Catherine, do you want to say anything further at this point? Sorry, trying to unmute. No. Councillor Fowle. Thank you. So I have a strong feeling about the fact that we've worked very hard over a long period of time to accumulate an unassigned fund balance. I remember a time where we had a negative balance. I don't think there's really actually such a thing, but we had a balance below zero. I prefer to spend what needs to be spent and not spend just simply to cover a line item. If others really feel strongly that we move forward with this, I'll vote for it. It would just be my personal, I would just prefer that we not spend money until we have to. There's no law that says that we can't put it back, but I think that for purposes of a precedent that it's best that we spend money when we need it and not just simply to cover a line item. That's just my opinion. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Powell. So I think, so Councillor Powell, your suggestion would be that we just defer taking action of any sort at this point and return to this, maybe the budget resolution, I think does kind of compel us to take some kind of action by the end of the year, but I don't think there's any urgency to do so sooner, especially if we are in agreement. I do think it's an important conversation. I do wanna make sure no one is leaving here under any, and I think we've hammered pretty hard, but we are not continuing to pursue cuts. So we are simply waiting to make this transfer of unassigned fund balance until later in the fiscal year is what's being proposed, but not that we continue to contemplate cuts. No, I mean, I'm in agreement with that. I mean, honestly, if we still have this line item, we cannot, I totally agree. If we cannot have this line item sitting here running into the end of the fiscal year, we have to resolve this. If we can't resolve it through other means, then this is where we have to go because we can't have a line item that is effectively a placeholder. That's not balancing a budget. So yes, I would totally agree with that. Okay, unless Catherine objects, I'm comfortable with that and with deferring this so long with the, so let's just, everyone remembers this conversation and that if we do have to take this action later, that that's not a surprise to people or create some kind of issue. I am comfortable with that. I think part of the reason to do this is frankly, to reassure staff that we aren't making cuts. So I appreciate that that was said publicly in this meeting and also by supporting these reclassifications that were overdue, I think that sends an important message to our employees. So I really appreciate the board support on that. And I think it would be fine to defer this for the time being. I just went back to the resolution and it does say that I will come to you with a plan by the end of December for how to resolve this. So don't be surprised if I come back to you with this resolution before the end of December. However, things could change. So let's just see. Excellent. Fair enough. Okay, then if there's no objection, I'm gonna move off this item and that brings us to the end of our agenda. And I will, again, if there's no objection, adjourn the board of finance at 626 p.m. And hand it over to you, presentation for the next session. Thank you, mayor. I appreciate it. I'm gonna give folks just a couple of minutes. I'm gonna give folks a five minute break before we get started with that just in case we need to grab something or use the restroom for members of the public. We'll be getting started in just a moment here right around 630 with the presentation and work session around the legalities of overdose prevention sites. We have all the counselors on board thus far. We think pretty much everybody. Just text the couple of counselors and make sure everybody can get on. Okay, hearing from, I've heard back from a couple of them. Let's go ahead and at least get moving on the first portions of our meeting. So I'll call the order of the regular meeting of the Burlington City Council at 631. First item is the pledge. So we'll go ahead and do the pledge. And then before we get into our work session, which will focus on the legalities of overdose prevention sites, we need to adopt our agenda for this evening. So I'm gonna come to counselor Stromberg for a motion. I move to amend, adopt the agenda as follows. Note checklist for consent agenda item 5.22. Resolution restoration of rainforest mural. Counselor Paul per Sarah Katz. No written materials for consent agenda item 5.23. Resolution authorization for easement for urban reserve encroachment by 11 Lakeview Terrace. Counselor Pine per Assistant City Attorney Sturdevant. Note written material for consent agenda item 5.24. Resolution budget amendment to satisfy line 999 underscore 100 expenditure control, general fund in the fiscal year 21, non-departmental budget, Board of Finance per city attorney's office. Thank you, Counselor Stromberg. That's a motion on the agenda. Do we have a second? Second by Counselor Zhang. Seconded by Counselor Zhang. Any discussion of our agenda? Okay, hearing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously and we now have our agenda, which brings us to our next item, which will be a work session regarding overdose prevention sites. We'll start with a little bit of a rundown of the memo that is up on board docs for folks. I'm looking at the legal analysis. For members of the public, if you're looking to speak at public forum, that'll be at 730 and will be, if you are interested in signing up for that public forum, you can go to burlingtonft.gov backslashcitycouncil slash public forum. And that'll take you to a forum where you sign up and then that'll get you in the queue for public forum this evening. And again, we'll start that at 730. We'll have a public forum at that point. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to our city attorneys, both attorney Blackwood and attorney St. James. Very much appreciate you being with us this evening and all your work in providing this legal analysis on this potentially important and exciting new concept for the city. Thank you. Justin St. James, assistant city attorney has done all the work on this and I'm gonna let him make the presentation. Hey, perfect. Good evening folks. I'll just sort of give a 30,000 foot overview of the memo. And then I think, you will go where you want to go. So strictly looking at the legality of overdose prevention sites, really try to figure out what were the potential federal, state, local hurdles or legal challenges that were there. And just to sort of establish, I'll keep calling it overdose prevention site and OPS. There's a lot of acronyms depending on what jurisdiction you're in. But really what I mean is an establishment or a facility that's established to reduce the harm of substance use disorders, specifically opiates, heroin, usually administered intravenously at these sites. Medical care is administered, usually licensed medical professionals. Medication assisted treatment is encouraged. It's a hub to connect participants with social services. So just the framework. So there's currently no official or officially sanctioned overdose prevention site in the United States, largely because federal law prohibits them and the federal, at least certainly this US attorney and this department of justice have been fairly aggressive when municipalities such as San Francisco or Seattle or Philadelphia, start making progress potentially or exploring establishing or helping establish potentially nonprofit like in Philadelphia. An OPS facility, the federal government has been very aggressive in reminding folks that there are several laws, specifically 21 USC 856, which is the largest roadblock federally at this point. This law was established in 1986 in largely trying to criminalize activity related to individuals facilitating people using their house or using a building to use drugs, basically. This was in 2003 amended over concerns over, it was called the RAVE Act, an acronym basically looking at the sort of concern over MDMA and sort of revising the law again. But it's intended to create criminal and civil liability for an individual who allows a space to be used to use substances is sort of how it was created federally. And the federal government says that the creation of an OPS would fall, would be illegal and would be criminal. And one part of that is not just the fact that it's a felony that carries 20 years in jail or in prison plus a large bunch of monetary fines. But there's also the concern, if you're convicted of that, it opens up civil and federal forfeiture, which is obviously problematic as well in another way that has deterred folks largely a lot of municipalities from taking a step to actually establishing an OPS. Vermont actually also has, so that's the sort of federal side and we'll talk about the main federal case quickly. But it's important to note that Vermont also has legal challenges. Vermont has a law that's almost identical to 21 USC 856. It uses some of the same language and it seeks to criminalize, allowing others to use your building or a place you have control over to use substances. I didn't get to the legislative history, but clearly someone looked at the federal law. There's also an issue, for instance, specifically with heroin, it's still a controlled substance under both state and federal law as is the, so the possession and the dispensing. So there's some issues here to note. There have been some attempts made by actually some Burlington representatives in the last several legislative sessions to create a carve out in immunity so that folks who are working with an OPS would have protection from both civil and criminal liability. That bill has not moved out of house judiciary, but potentially with all of the changes, at least on the federal side and maybe the state side, that's something that also might change in the future. And so the largest case that everyone in the nation is looking at is called United States v. Safe House. It is a federal case. And what happened is a 501C3, which is Safe House, was seeking to establish an OPS in Philadelphia. The federal government, instead of bringing federal criminal or civil charges, instead basically sued Safe House and asked the federal judge in the district court to rule on the case and to tell everyone whether, because it has been sort of a question about whether the federal laws would apply to an OPS. So the federal district judge did a very large and long and intensive analysis where the legislative history was looked at going back to actually see testimony from 1986. There was a lot of case law. The government relied fairly heavily on prior court's interpretations of 21 USC 856, normally in cases where individuals were being prosecuted for in a much more traditional sense of allowing individuals to use substances in a building they controlled. So there was a lot of interpretation and application of legislative history and prior cases in terms of what this meant because it was an open question. And in that case, the federal judge last October, October 2nd, I believe, 2019 ruled that this law in this judge's opinion would not prevent an OPS from being created because part of the analysis was this judge did not feel that when Congress created 856 in 1986 that they were contemplating an OPS that wasn't sort of thought about. And they also, the real big part of the decision is that it's really well written. And the judge thought that because he didn't think that the purpose of safe house was to sort of, as the letter of that law says, to facilitate drug use or because the judge basically said, all of the emphasis on medical care, medication assisted treatment, safe house was very open. He felt that the primary purpose was actually to get folks connected with treatment and services and to make sure they were safe. So it wasn't facilitating sort of illegal drug use like the government said. So great, everyone was very happy. And after some procedural wrangling, an OPS was ready to be opened in Philadelphia. At that point, the government moved, actually there were some other issues. The neighborhood was, they ran into some issues with safe house, the Philadelphia city council actually right before COVID really struck in March was still introducing bills that I think they actually do call them bills there to potentially prohibit an OPS from opening until there was a show of 80 or potentially 90% support. So there were some internal political issues. And then in June, in the federal government at that point asked for a stay from the federal judge, which is basically hitting the pause button while the federal government had already appealed their loss up to the federal circuit court, which is the third circuit court of appeals. So while the third circuit was pondering that the case, the federal judge who decided it said in a very long decision said, it's understandable that this is the first time someone's ruled this way. People may disagree, let's see what the court say. And with COVID and with the social justice issues going on, the judge said, I'll put a pause on it pending the third circuit. So that has sort of stayed the issue. And I think nationally a lot of folks are waiting and watching to see what might happen. And so there are certainly issues at both state and federal levels regarding the OPS issue as well as sort of pending litigation. So I tried to summarize that in the report. And I think that's the sort of the high level view. Excellent, thank you, Attorney St. James. Attorney Blackwood, did you have additional? Anything else you'd like to add? No, I think we'd be ready for questions. Excellent, all right, great. Let's open the floor to questions. Is there any questions or discussion from counselors? Counselor Jane, go ahead. Thank you, President Tracy. And I think we all have to acknowledge that this is such a great and wonderful detailed memo report. It is just amazing. And I think you guys did not only look from the federal and municipal standpoint, you look into the organization, you look into the state, it is just amazing. I wanna say thank you. Thank you for doing such a great, wonderful job. Now, the first question that I have is, I haven't seen anything that stated if we approach this issue from a countywide standpoint and not specifically from a municipality standpoint and was just wondering around the nation or do we have more teeth when we take this approach from a countywide approach instead of a municipality? So, Attorney St. James, are you able to speak to that? Well, to say that I think for any government body to take any step at this point, there would need to be a clarification by the federal, I'd say, at the federal level and at the state level. So I don't know if it matters who is doing, whether it's municipality or potentially a nonprofit or if it is at a state or federal. I mean, if it was certainly at a federal level, then that would take all the concern away or at least would make it easier if the federal government was to say, this is not illegal, this no one's going to get either federally or civilly or criminally charged. So yeah, I think that sort of the issue is the roadblock of the laws. Yeah, I think to summarize that, I think the issue is that the law has to change, we can't change it in a municipal level. It has to get changed at the federal level and at the state level. So yes, I think it is going to take many communities working together to make that happen. And especially with Selena Colburn work within the state, I think the best avenue and in general, public health, I mean, including COVID should be, we should look at this from a country wide approach. And was just wondering if we can explore that better and get some more findings and at least start at the state level and then move up to the federal level. That's just a viewpoint. And if we can think about it that way, I think it's great. And again, thank you again for this great, wonderful legal analysis, no questions. Okay, thank you, Councilor Chang, Councilor Pine. Yeah, and I would second Councilor Chang's praise for the work of staff on this, Justin. This is a really excellent research project that you've done here for us really, gathering this information. Obviously there's probably dozens, maybe hopefully hundreds of jurisdictions across the country that are looking at this issue. And obviously having others looking at it at the same time gives us hopefully a little bit of notion of perhaps some movement at the national level with a change that is now underway as a result of the election. Do you think that there is a notion here of, would there be strengthened numbers if a couple hundred communities decided to go out and embark on this initiative? Obviously everyone would need to do it in a way that fits for their community. But do you see a way forward where we may actually see action rather than just more talk and study? It seems as though one of the challenges is going to be very political in nature. And that is understanding the new administration has not sent signals that it's going to be particularly persuaded that this is a good route to go. But who knows how that will change or what will happen. And I think particularly looking at legislation introducing legislation moving in that direction it probably depends too on, I think that even with legislation there could be assurances from the, even if legislation doesn't pass there could be assurances from the attorney general and state attorney generals of non prosecution that would be helpful in working in this. But ultimately it's not going to be municipalities that do it, it's going to be a 501C3 that does it with municipal support. And so I think working on those organizations to be prepared and in to be advocates for their clients is going to be a huge piece of this. That's really helpful. Yeah, if we have, I mean this type of thing can be handled through executive order does not absolutely require legislation. Do you agree with that? Well, the problem is there is legislation right now that says that has been being interpreted except for by this one judge as prohibiting these kinds of sites. And so ultimately there would have to be either court interpretation or legislation. So executive order from the president will not suffice. I mean, would it help? I mean, would an executive order saying to the attorney general, don't prosecute these cases? That would at least give people some security that they weren't going to get thrown in jail immediately. And then lastly, are we doing absolutely everything that we can do short of bumping up against this federal prohibition? I guess I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure I know the answer to that. We, I would say that the administration, this has not necessarily been high on our list of things that we have been working on. So I think if the council wants to give us some direction that yes, absolutely, but you want this higher on our priority list. I think we could look at it from, and I'm stumbling here a bit, mayor, you know, feel free to jump in here, but we can certainly put it higher on our legislative agenda and in putting some pressure on that end. We've had some discussions with the attorney general's office about it. We haven't had discussions with the US attorney's office about it. And that would probably be another route we could take. So I think there probably are some additional actions that we could take nothing definitive potentially. I don't know whether, I don't think we've done, I think because the third circuit case is on hold, everybody's waiting around the country. It seems to have that court case go forward a little bit before trying a lot of other challenges because there is a great district court decision there and there is a huge risk to bringing another case and not getting as strong an opinion that leads you, I mean, these are the kinds of kind of advocacy issues that one weighs as one was looking at this. Thank you. Mayor, did you, were you looking to get in? Yeah, I would just add two things. What I just wanna remind folks that there is an additional piece of analysis that we are working on and plan to report back to the council consistent with the resolution on this that involves looking at the feasibility of such a site, looking at it, basically sharing a concept of what actually could be involved in creating such a site in Burlington potentially adding to the safe recovery site. And so that work is underway and we're managing our way through that while we are in between having lost our opioid policy coordinator and the public health equity manager coming on but that work is still progressing and we'll have that to you soon. In addition, I just wanna make sure it's clear that responding to the opioid crisis has continued to be one of the very highest priorities of this administration and that aggressive work continues. There's the latest, the 2020 work beyond trying to make sure that the systems that we've built with so many partners have remained in place and serving people suffering from opioid use disorder remain intact despite the pandemic. So that has continued to be a high priority as has what we identified at the beginning of the year as the top priority with the opioid crisis which is to address the problem of retention. We've made huge strides in recent years in inducing people into medically assisted treatment which is the only science-based proven strategy for saving lives and helping people eliminate, to overcome and manage their addictions. We've done very well in creating systems for people to start treatment. We had there has not been as much focus in the retention of people in treatment and we know that people staying in treatment is a key indicator as to whether or not they will succeed and be able to build back their lives and avoid overdoses. And that focus on retention continues to be a real high priority of community stat and the whole county wide effort. So just want to make sure it's clear that that remains a priority. Okay, thank you, Mayor. Councilor Klein, do you all set? Okay, great. I have Councilor Powell and then I can come back to you, Councilor Jain. Go ahead, Councilor Powell. Thank you, President Tracy. So certainly, again, Justin, as we all have said, great report. I think a lot of people don't realize that a five page report takes a lot longer than just writing five pages. A lot of research went into this and I appreciate it. I was quite heartened to see that November 16th is the day that there is a scheduled hearing on this case. And I'm assuming that since you just wrote this that you at least right now, right now, that is still on that scheduled hearing. Yeah, I checked today and it looks like it's still on the docket. So they did put out a notice saying it might be that week, they might have to reschedule, but yes, so. Okay. You at least have a next step. All right, so my question, so I just wanna make sure that I understand. So even though, let's assume that this effort is successful in Philadelphia. So in the area that is governed by, or well, I'll use the word govern, governed by the Third Circuit Court, that is not the law of the land. That is the law of that area. And I was just trying to make sure I understood that you had said that even though it's not, it's not likely or it's not the usual course that if in fact it becomes law in one federal court, that it would be, that another would necessarily, that there would be a similar outcome were it to come to the area that Vermont is governed under. Is that, did I get that right? Yeah, I'd say circuit courts can give deference, but it's not binding in terms of we're in the second court of appeals. So there's often different circuits, because they're often different facts and there's different judges, they'll interpret the same law differently across multiple circuits and districts. So yeah, just because the Third Circuit rules one way, it certainly could be helpful for if another case arose, but it's different than the Supreme Court, for instance, which will often take cases to settle differences across different circuits. Okay, so thank you. So if it were successful in Philadelphia, this case is successful, and does that mean that another case, I guess what I'm trying to figure out is once that goes through and that were successful, then let's say that the city of Burlington or safe recovery or another entity decides to do the same thing. Do we then have to be, does that have to be then challenged in order for us to then be able to say that yes, it's okay in this circuit? Like it sounded to me like sort of from what you were saying that it would then have to be challenged here. And maybe I'm not right about that. I think I was probably me not being articulate. I think what I was trying to say is the difference between a circuit court of appeals making a decision is that it's not binding upon everyone else in the sense that a case arose out of Vermont that went to the second circuit, they will probably look at that third circuit case, and I'm sure a jurisdiction would cite to it, but it's a question of whether they don't have to follow the precedent from that jurisdiction. But to answer the second part, then I mean, no, I think that you don't have to seek permission or legal clarity on an issue. I think you just run the risk or the city or a safe recovery would run a risk that it hasn't been addressed in this circuit or in this federal district. So it's unclear what may happen, but it could go through the same procedural steps in terms of depending on who is US attorney, they could ask a federal judge here of what their interpretation is. And the third circuit includes Philadelphia. What else does the second circuit include besides Vermont? New York and Connecticut. Yeah. New York? New York City is the big, big part of it. Okay, so I guess that's what I was sort of getting at is that we don't need to be the one that is challenged if there are others that are within this circuit that might potentially go before us, which it sounds like if New York City is part of it, if it were successful in Philadelphia, I could see them taking that action long before we do, I would think. Karen, I think part of the hope is that if the third circuit decides that the attorney general of the United States, the Department of Justice will then decide that they're gonna accept that ruling, that these kinds of locations don't fall within the law, and that then they wouldn't, that they would either issue a guidance or they would do something that would say, we're not going to go after these entities. So I think that's everyone's hope and why everyone around the country is kind of waiting for the third circuit, because the hope is that, combined with a new attorney general and a positive circuit court ruling saying the law doesn't include this, that that will become persuasive or that there will not be enforcement. Okay, and my last question is, when you see something as a scheduled hearing, and I'm sure there's specific things that are going on in that hearing, what would be, I hesitate to ask because I imagine like most lawyers will probably say it depends, but just on the off chance that you don't say that, if you're having a hearing on November 20th, so to speak, or around that time, I mean, you probably know what's gonna be going on or what the purpose of the hearing is. What, how many more steps are there? I mean, is there any, would you again, would you venture any guess as to when this might come to another fork in the road when we see a decision? The next steps, oral arguments. So, I mean, the question of how long it may take circuit court to rule, I just have no concept. Certainly not in 2020, I can't imagine. I mean, are we talking like potentially a year? I mean, maybe. I'd say I bet it's gonna be short sleeve weather before a decision comes out. Okay. Just assuming how it takes, depending on how things go, which is, it is an interesting, the two railroad trains connecting here, which are the new attorney general and this case is will be interesting to watch. And when president elect Biden announces the attorney general, in terms of that will be a lot of individuals be watching that as well. So, but that will happen before decision is announced, certainly. Okay. All right. Thank you. Thanks, president Tracy. Thank you, councilor Paul, councilor Jenga. I do have you in the queue, but you've already gone. So I want to get to councilor Mason on first round. I'll come back to you. So councilor Mason, go ahead. Thank you, president Tracy. Most of my questions were just adjust relating to timing and expectations, but maybe one thing you could touch on Justin is, it's my understanding that current US attorney has already stated her position in terms of OPSs. When maybe, I know the answer to this, maybe for the council's benefit, when do we expect a new US attorney for the state of Vermont to be appointed? And just the timing of that, if there were an outreach in advance of a decision by the third circuit. I believe in someone will correct me, probably Eileen, but I believe it is protocol for US attorneys to tender resignations upon the appoint, to make words over the last few days, upon the inauguration of a new president, and then it is the president's discretion to appoint or to reappoint or, so I would assume, but that process I recall normally goes into that first year. So just because there are so many appointments going on, I think part of it's a priority, part of it is whether this US attorney, US attorney Nolan would be reappointed. Normally as I recall, there's not wholesale, there is some folks stay, some don't. So, but I think that that'll be in the first few months, hopefully there'll be clarity, but I do believe resignations are tendered and then either accepted or not. And then there's a process of confirmation, I believe as well. I think it's advice and consent of the Senate for US attorney, right? Looking at the other couple of attorneys here, right? Yeah, okay. Thank you. I just, I wanted to set some expectations in terms of how quickly conversations can occur and try and let us all sort of, unfortunately maybe reorient our timeframe given some of the uncertainties we're facing. Thank you, President Tracy. Thank you, Councilor Meeson. Anyone else on first round? We're seeing none, I'll go to Councilor Jett and go ahead, Councilor Jett. Thank you, President Tracy. So I think two questions and one of them is for the attorneys and that one is specific to the legality, the interpretation of these findings and any law could be interpreted, I believe. But it seems here, we are talking about physical space, place where the permanently lease or rent and was just wondering if we take a different approach of having an OPS that is a mobile, mobile that can move around, that's not state. Will those, will these laws also apply to that mobile OPS if we want it to go that route? I don't think we thought about that. I did. And we would hesitate to answer off the top of our heads, but Justin, unless you've looked at that. No, I did see it. I do believe another jurisdiction, at least it was raised in some of the material. I think it'll be focused upon some of the same actions in terms of who is controlling the space or owns the space. So some of those issues in terms of that. So it's a little different. So I don't have a firm answer. Okay, yeah. Maybe we can look into it by the 16 maybe. Yes, in case before the 16. The second question is basically maybe for President Tracy and also Councilor Powell as our representative at the Consat and was just wondering what are the next steps from here and what has been the opinion of the Consat about these findings and the mayor can answer as well. Sure. I can start to speak to that. I think our next step as Mayor Weinberger indicated County Jeng was that we have the other piece of this coming out of the 914 resolution, which was to do the functional analysis or the operational analysis of how such a site might be actually set up and operated, understanding kind of the financial aspects as well of that. That may be ready for our next council meeting. So probably looking towards that meeting to hear more about that side of it. And then coming out of that, really trying to understand sort of where, who we might be able to partner with. I think that will be very clarifying in a lot of respects as to some of the other aspects that we need to have once we do have this legal sort of clarity around it. In terms of the Comstat, this was brought up not at our last Comstat meeting, but the one prior to it. And I think that it's fair to say that there's strong support for OPS at the Comstat. I think there is some debate around whether it makes the most sense to invest time in a sort of situation where you have competing priorities and limited resources if this is gonna give you the most harm reduction for the investment and the amount of time that it takes to get it going. But I think that, and so there's, I think legitimate debate and questions around that. I however think that there's strong support among the Comstat for wanting to continue to explore this as a potential tool within our harm reduction toolbox as a city. So I think that at least as I read that conversation and I would encourage the mayor and Councilor Paul the way in as well that there was strong support and such that, I feel confident that we're heading in the right direction as a council by continuing to push both on the legal side as well as on the functional or operational side to really stand this up. Councilor Pollard, Councilor Mayer Weinberger, did you have additional thoughts? I thought that was a very accurate summary where the conversation stands. President Tracey, I don't think I have anything to add to that. Councilor Pollard, did you have something? I would just say, I would just echo that. Certainly that's an excellent synopsis. And with the last council meeting, we did have time as we don't often, but we did have time for councilor comments and updates. I had given an update of what the, what had been discussed at the Comstat meeting. And also just wanted to just simply mention that we have seen an update, an uptick in overdose in very challenging situations. What we have done or what I shouldn't say we, but what others have done is map out where those are taking place. And clearly there is a significant percentage, very high percentage that are taking place within about seven or eight blocks of safe recovery, which does add a lot of credence to the argument that while we certainly could do a mobile site, there is a compelling argument for looking directly at safe recovery and seeing if that's an alternative that we could pursue. A lot of things that have to happen before that, but yeah, and they are interested. So I think that's great too. Thanks. Thank you, Councilor Paul. Councilor Chang, you saw the floor. Yeah, I don't know if my, not about the next steps, but the question specific to these findings and Comstat, the members of Comstat, I was just wondering if they have seen it and what are their opinions about? That was what I was trying to ask, I don't know. Okay, all right. So I don't believe that this has been on a Comstat agenda as of yet. We do have a meeting this month. So potentially we can work with Mayor Weinberger and others who helped to get those agendas set to just bring that to their attention and share. Cause I do think, recognizing the comments tonight around the value of this report that they would benefit seeing this as well. That's a great suggestion. Thank you. Anything else? Okay, are there other comments from counselors? Okay, seeing none, I'll just say that I really hope that in this coming legislative session with so many different priorities at play with COVID and so many other things on the table for this, that the city will be advocating for, that I would hope that this could be one of our legislative priorities cause there have been several meaningful pieces of legislation that I think could really, really give us the clarity that we need to effectively move forward on this. So I just encourage the team that does that lobbying to please prioritize this so that we can really get this moving. Okay, with that, we'll go ahead and close the work session and now move into, we're still a little early for public forum. So I'm gonna hold off on that folks. We'll get into that public forum in just a moment. If you are interested in signing up for public forum, the way to do so is to go to burlingtonvt.gov slash city council as one word, slash public forum. And then that way we can get you signed up for public forum and that'll take you to a forum that you fill out and submit and then we'll get you in the queue. So before we do that though, I will go to some non-deliberative items cause we don't like to take votes on things before we have the public forum. So I'm gonna go to item number four, which are the climate emergency reports. Did anyone have a climate emergency report that they'd like to offer this evening? Councilor Hanson, go ahead. Yeah, I guess I would just say, cause we, I don't know if we'll get to committee reports or not. So just flagging that the ordinance committee we're taking up two pretty big climate related items on the same night on the 19th, looking at weatherization of rental units and looking at decarbonization of new buildings. So that'll be on Zoom Thursday to the 19th. Just wanted to say that in case we don't get around to it later tonight. Okay, great. I think we're gonna go to, I'm gonna go to those portions of the agenda actually after that. So I appreciate you all. Sorry, Councilor Mason. Oh, it's fine. We're sealing your thunder. No, had no idea we'd be done with that session with this amount of time. So we'll be able to get through those and hopefully keep things moving. Did anyone else have a climate emergency report that they wanted to bring? Okay, seeing none. I'm gonna go skip over some of the other aspects of the agenda. We'll get to all the deliberative items and things after we do public forum. Are there, I'm gonna go to agenda item number seven, which is our committee reports. Are there any chairs of committees who would like to offer a report for us? On the high tower, go ahead. Yeah, I'm hoping to just offer a quick update on the joint committee, which is the public safety and the police commission, which we just selected a consultancy to do the community visioning RFP. So we're hoping that'll be on the council agenda in two weeks for your approval to finalize. And then we have an RFP that's gonna go up, I assume tomorrow for the full and functional assessment of the Burlington Police Department. So those two things are moving along and I'm excited to get started on the community visioning process. Hopefully next month, then the RFP for the assessment will be due December 15th. Excellent. Thank you, Councillor Hightower. Councillor Jang. Yeah. So maybe this is just a reminder that the director, director Taisha Green did send us findings and also a decision about company that she would like to contract to do the strategic planning around racial equity and inclusion. And I think their letter of, the cover letter they sent was just amazing and it was wide on with everything that's going on in the nation and they made a correlation around COVID-19. I think it's amazing. But on the 17th of this month, the racial equity and inclusion committee will be meeting at 5.30 via Zoom. And we have an important agenda item and he's specific to the hiring and retention of people of color within the city government. And also we wanna invite the community. Those of you who are here to check out that specific committee, we're doing great work, great conversation happening there and we welcome more people to come and contribute to help this, or this means to them. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Councillor Pine. Yeah. Thank you, Mr. President. The Community Development and Neighborhood Revitalization Committee will meet tomorrow at 7 p.m. And the topics that we will discuss are the issues around licensing of rental property owners and that issue which was discussed by the council at some point, it's now escaping me when that was but I believe it was during this past summer and was assigned jointly to ordinance and CDNR and we will just be discussing what the issues that the ordinance or the approach that the ordinance committee feels is the most appropriate path forward on this issue. The next issue is the Just Cause Eviction question. Councillor Carpenter has put forward some proposed language that she would like to discuss at the committee level. People have asked me, well, why is this still being discussed by this committee? It's already gone to charter change, they're recommending it to be debated by the council at a future meeting. Oh, but really it's just to acknowledge that the issues are fairly involved and complicated and that there's really nothing that prevents the council committee from taking up an issue. So we felt that since we had spent a lot of time on it it was appropriate to continue that discussion and hopefully we can find consensus. That's the goal tomorrow is to do that. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Any other chairs of committees interested in offering a report? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to City Council General Affairs. Are there any councillors interested in speaking to City Council General Affairs or City General Affairs? I'm sorry. Okay, seeing none, let me go to... President Tracy. Yeah. I believe Councillor Mason wants to get in. Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead, Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. I expected to do this at midnight, but I just wanted to take this opportunity to congratulate the Burlington High School Boys soccer team for their victory Saturday. They were crowned state champs. It was an odd season, I will say. It came in as the fifth seed, shortened season but blew through three playoff games and I was not at the game. There were COVID restrictions but I understand it was quite a dramatic finish. Essex actually scored in overtime, took the field, celebrating their victory only to be called off. They reconvened, BHS had a set piece and that was the game. So I'm sorry they're not able to parade in front of us and have us thank them and congratulate them all in person but I did not want this opportunity in the past without us expressing our admiration for what they achieved. So thank you, President Tracy. Wonderful, thank you for recognizing them. I really appreciate that, Councilor Mason. Are there other counselors on general city affairs? Okay, seeing none, I'll go into my report as city council president. So just wanna draw attention to the fact that the reparations task force will be having its first meeting on Wednesday at five. This is the coming out of the resolution from our August 10th meeting where the city of Burlington will be examining its role in chattel slavery and developing a proposal for reparations. I wanna specifically thank Director Green for her work in getting this task force up and going. This is really, I think some exciting work that we're setting out to take on as a city. And I look forward to what that committee comes back. So details for that and all these other committee meetings can be found on the city website. If you just go to the city calendar at the top, that function should have all the items there for folks who are interested in following along with this or other committees. With that, I will turn it over to Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Tracy. I want to just highlight a couple of events that happened earlier today. Actually kind of rare to have events on the time of COVID and they're both timely and then just speak a little bit about the current situation here in Burlington and Chittenden County with elevated risk levels with the virus. So first of all, I wanna congratulate and thank the CEDO-LED team for their successful securing of another multi-year, multimillion dollar grant for the LED program, for LED safety. Another 110 homes will be remediated for LED over the next several years as a result of this successful grant. This follows on 17 prior years of this program working in this community, more than 650 other homes have been improved and the work will continue because of today's announcement. We were also joined by HUD to announce that veterans homelessness has been ended here in Chittenden County. In terms of affairs, the VFA declared today, we joined about 75 other jurisdictions that have had this sustained success with veterans homelessness. And for people interested in knowing more about either of these initiatives, we put out, I do just wanna speak a minute further about the situation with elevated coronavirus risk levels and ask for the council's help in spreading the word on where we stand with this. On Friday, Governor Scott, Commissioner Levine and I all noted that in last week, we saw significant increases in the number of Vermont infections and Chittenden County infections. Over the weekend, we had a further concerning data point in that the wastewater testing that we have been doing since August did identify rising levels in the North treatment plant, which serves the new North end, essentially everything North of the high school. And these, I think the way to view all of these indications is that we are in a new stage of this pandemic. We are seeing outbreaks and incidents at a level that we really have not seen in Vermont since reopening began in May and June. And this is really a time for us all to be very mindful of what we've learned about the virus since the pandemic began and to avoid the three C's, avoid closed spaces, indoor spaces with other households, avoid close contact situations and avoid crowds, particularly indoor crowds where the three C's converge. There is new guidance that I wanna make sure everyone is aware of out from the state just over the weekend indicating that if you have been traveling or were in the last week at a high risk event, if you attended an indoor Halloween party or otherwise were in an event with people not in your household, it is recommended that you quarantine and that you seek out a test. We are particularly making this recommendation, although not exclusively making it for people in the new North end because of these elevated readings. We don't think that people should take comfort just because they don't live in the North end that there is not elevated risk or small community people from all different parts of the city are frequently crossing paths, but we do have this documented increase in the North end. We will continue to have updates on this and another good way that we are going to have a telephone town meeting. This will be the fourth since the pandemic began. We will be having a telephone town meeting tomorrow evening and joining me on the telephone town meeting this week will be both Dr. Leffler as well as Commissioner Levine and we'll be talking about all this, the potential for additional testing and more and I encourage people to join us for that event tomorrow night. Thank you President Tracy. Thank you Mayor Weinberger, certainly appreciate that. Councillor Carpenter do you have a point of order or just a quick question around the more pop up sites for the testing and will that be coming? Yes, so Councillor Carpenter, the currently people who are interested in testing, they should work through their health provider and they can also consider this site out at the airport which does have on demand testing available, we are working with the Department of Health evaluating the possibility of additional pop up testing in the coming days. The value of this wastewater testing is that it's a very early indicator and it actually starts picking up positives before other forms of testing would. We are evaluating with them whether creating some type of pop up facilities during the June outbreak in the old North End and parts of the New North End is appropriate and we'll have details on that soon. Great, thank you Mayor. Let's move on to, I'm really, we're not really, this isn't really a question item. I just, I didn't know that she had a question but I think it's an important one. So I'm gonna just move us into, start moving us into public forum on this if folks have questions for the Mayor's office please be in touch with them about those specific questions. I'm gonna move us into our public forum. We're about two minutes ahead of 7.30 but I do see that we have our first speaker on the call. I'll go name that person off and then a couple others to follow and we'll have two minutes this evening for folks. Like we have the, what we do in terms of public forum is that if folks are interested in signing up you can do so by going to burlingtonvt.gov slash city council slash public forum and sign up there that'll take you to a forum that will then feed into a sheet that I read off from within that sheet made an effort to folks who identify as people of color to prioritize those voices in this conversation or in this forum, I'm sorry and if they identify as such. So are with that, with those things being said I'm gonna go to our first speaker for the evening who will be Jessica Laport to be followed by Phoebe to be followed by Daniel Mutianu, Ben Press, Grace Field, Lillian Vincent, Lilla Fortunoff, Tiga, Christiana, Fayazaluski, Tyler Pastorock. So just Laport, I'm gonna enable your microphone should be enabled right now. Hi, good evening, counselors. My name is Jessica Port and I am a Black resident of Ward 2. I have addressed this council on numerous occasions related to a number of racial equity items and tonight in the public forum I want to raise some of the demands and concerns that the Battery Park movement has brought to the forefront here in Burlington. And I wanna acknowledge first some of the recent movement within this body towards some of the actions that we have called for. But I wanna reiterate our demand that violent officers Corey Campbell and Joseph Corough be removed from the Burlington Police Department. They are a threat to the safety of our community and the mishandling of these cases in the past should not be the responsibility of your residents to live with in fear and concern. I wanna acknowledge that it is the work of the Battery Park movement and before us, the BLM of Greater Burlington to even bring these issues to light, to pressure public officials to act on them. And quite frankly, the slow movement is really discouraging as a woman of color who cares about the BIPOC community in this city to know that many of our residents don't feel safe. The Battery Park movement continues to demand that the police operating in Chindid County wear bodycams and that there is a mandatory release of that footage to the public that protects civilians. And since the movement on firing these officers and removing them from the force is related to the city charter with the Burlington Police Department, we are specifically calling for the city's charger to be revised related to that body and to create a citizen oversight board with disciplinary and investigatory power over the police department. These issues have been raised regularly at the Charter Change Committee and I bring them back to this full body. I believe they're reporting back tonight. And I have severe concern of the depth and breadth of our demands to that committee being heard by given how that committee has been run. I recognize that I am over time, but I just wanted to also bring up that we are aware that Attorney Blackwood is going to be reporting back on the Mellie versus the city of Burlington case. And I understand that it is expected to go into executive session. And I would like to urge the city council to make public comment or have a public share out following that conversation tonight so that this can be on the record so that citizens who are concerned about this issue can remain informed. Thank you. Thank you. I was not able to locate Phoebe, but I was able to find Daniel Mundianu. Daniel, I'm going to come to you. I've enabled your microphone. Hello, could you guys hear me? Yep, go ahead. All right, my name is Daniel Mundianu. I live in Ward 1. I'm white and I use he and pronouns. I've lived in Burlington for two and a half months now, and I've been a follower of the Battery Park Movement. And I'm just here to reiterate our demands that the two violent officers, Corey Campbell and Joseph Coro be removed from the force and be barred from serving in any law enforcement capacity in Vermont. Bella Vance's, Jason Bella Vance's sort of sweetheart deal was really just a minuscule step in the right direction towards achieving racial equity and racial justice. And in fact, sort of the nature of that deal highlights a lot of systemic flaws in the system here in Burlington. First, the power of the police unions in dictating what actions are taken and a lack of civilian oversight. So I just wanna echo the call for a city charter change to allow for a civilian oversight board with disciplinary and investigatory power. And we asked this board center by PAC Voices and those most harmed by bias and violence in Burlington and sort of subject to the systemic issues that exist across the country. I'm also echoing the call for body cameras with footage fully accessible to civilians to be able to investigate and make sure that the officers born to protect them are doing their job properly. And similarly, we also call for continuing to defund the Burlington Police Department and have that money reallocated to alternative strategies for community safety. As well. So actually Ben press is sitting right next to me and he is also ready to give comment. Okay, great. Yeah, I wasn't able to locate Ben, that'd be wonderful. So I appreciate you doing a joint public forum. If the clerk could please just reset the timer. Okay, great. We have the timer reset. Ben, if you're ready, you can go ahead. You just reset that. Whenever you're ready, Ben, you can go right ahead. You're speaking, Ben, we can hear you. Hi, can you hear me? Yep, we can hear you. Go ahead. Okay, hi. I would also like to revoice some of the demands. Now I can't, I'm sorry. Sorry, that was a funny microphone here. I would also like to revoice some of the demands previously listed, specifically discrimination of both officers Corey Campbell and Joseph Coro and that the officers not be rehired by any other law enforcement agencies. On point two, call for all law enforcement officers to wear and use body cameras at all times for you an easy access to footage for the public. I call for brilliant police department to reinvest fund for more community led events, specifically BIPOC led events and for a call for UVM to balance the relationship with the brilliant police department. Thank you. I yield my time. Great. Thank you very much. I'm going to go to Ashley Laporte next. Ashley, I'm going to enable your microphone one moment. Okay, Ashley, you should be ready to go. Thank you, council president Tracy. Hello city councilors and also to the mayor. I'm calling in tonight for a couple of reasons. Both as a proud follower of the battery park movement to reinforce the demands to fire violent officers, Campbell and Coro as a member of the racial justice alliance in continuing to support BTV rise and the implementation specifically of the ISE portions of Operation Phoenix Rise that deal with the empowerment of BIPOC in our community. And I'm also calling as a black resident that wants to make clear to this council that I continue to pay attention and continue to follow your work as you claim, as some of you claim some of you are actually doing the work to dismantle systemic racism in our city. This past week, we stood as a BIPOC community in front of city hall mourning the death of yet another black person in our nationwide community at the hands of the police and mourned the fact that it wasn't more of an outrage for white folks in our community. I stood in the same place that our mayor stood when he declared racism a public health crisis in the city of Burlington. And yet I remain frustrated at the lack of progress that we have made against these highly sensitive issues. What I have said at the city council or at the charter change committee meeting most recently as we have been continuing to make it clear that we're watching and are pushing for a new city charter which will give investigatory and disciplinary power to the community over the police is that the way that I see it is that you all work for us. We elect you to move quickly on the issues that matter to us. And we are now in several months in to advocating for empowerment for BIPOC and for advocating for a transformative policing system that will better serve the historically marginalized in our community. We are doing this as BT Digger reports on and as state legislators are briefed on the imminent threat of white supremacy militias in our community. The public health crisis of racism could not be more clear than it is in this exact moment. If the council will not act with urgency now if every committee will not act with urgency now if the mayor will not act with urgency now I don't know when it will be more politically convenient and when the public will be in a better place to get the work done. So I urge you to continue with the work which includes firing Campbell and Corot which includes passing a city getting a city charter to the ballot in March this March which will enable a transformative system of community control of the police and to continue to support director Green's work when it comes to the empowerment of BIPOC in our community we cannot wait any longer. I urge you to work with urgency. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Grace Field to be followed by Lillian Vincent. Grace, I'm gonna enable your microphone. Go ahead. Hi, thank you President Tracy and thank you Ashley and Jess and the folks who spoke before me. Yeah, I again am here to uplift the demands of the battery park movement that the violent officers including Joseph Coro and Corey Campbell be removed from the force and be barred from serving in any law enforcement capacity in the future. I'm also here to uplift the demand that public police officers wear body cams and that that footage from those body cams be made public and I wanna continue to advocate for community control of police in the form of a civilian oversight board that board must have full disciplinary and investigative power and center BIPOC voices and people who have lived experience with the criminal justice system and people who have lived experience with mental health and with addiction and with being arrested. I think it's really important that you all take some time to reflect on what Ashley just said. I think a lot of people, most of the people in the city council did sign and endorse the racial justice resolution that was passed back in June. And I think, yeah, I think this work is ongoing work and it needs to continue to happen. It needs to be prioritized in all of these committees and every capacity possible because once you prioritize people who are most marginalized that makes everyone else in the city safer and that benefits everyone else in the city. And if you continue to not do that to not prioritize all of those folks our city is gonna continue to suffer and those folks who are most impacted by police violence by addiction, by homelessness all of these issues are gonna continue to suffer. And so I really wanna reiterate that, yeah I think it's really important that you prioritize prioritize BIPOC voices, prioritize taking action on these issues and that you put this charter change create this police oversight board and put that on the ballot for March. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Lillian Vincent to be followed by Lilla Fortunoff. Lillian, I'm gonna enable your microphone. Oh, hi, can you all hear me? Yep, go ahead. Okay, hi, my name's Lillian. I'm a resident of Ward 8 here in Burlington. I was calling to ask that the city council continue removing abusive police officers from the force. So I would be calling for the firing of Joseph Coro and Corey Campbell. And because this task has been considered so difficult by some people here on the city council I would ask that you create a citizen oversight board and change the city charter. This would make dealing with police violence a lot easier. It is also like what we mean when we are asking for systemic change. I'd also like to ask that all police officers in Chittenden County were body cams and that their footage is free and available to the public. And I also wanna echo what Ashley LaPorte said and that you all work for us and that the police should be working for us. And right now it really feels like the police are just free to brutalize members of our community and where they're only like so-called repercussions are getting paid like what was it, $300,000. And that some members of the city council are really, it feels like you're really just kind of talking, like you're talking the talk but you're not actually like doing anything about these really pressing demands. But thank you and I yield the rest of my time. Thank you. The next speaker will be Lilla Fortunoff to be followed by Tiga. Tiga, please correct me on that name from when we get to you. Lilla, I'm gonna enable your microphone. You should be able to speak. Hi, thank you President Tracy. Thank you council. My name's Lilla Fortunoff. I'm just gonna say my last name cause I'm gonna be calling into more of these meetings just so you know in the future. And yeah, so I'm a white woman. I use she, her pronouns. I live in word three. I have been a part of the battery park movement and have been part of the group that has been calling for all of the demands that you just heard a bunch of people ask for, reiterate again and again. We've been calling for all of these things for months now. And so I just wanna acknowledge what everyone, especially what Jess and Ashley have said before me and totally reiterate that. I also have been calling into the charter change committee meetings to demand that we make sure that the new way that our police are overseen is a committee that is not affiliated with the police. The police should not be policing themselves and that that body has full investigatory and disciplinary powers. The reason why we were paying, we had to pay Jason Bella Vance so much money is because he was not disciplined in the first place. And so we still want Corey Campbell and Joseph Coro off the force and doing whatever it takes to make sure that our community is safe and by them not policing our streets and our city anymore. We wanna do that but we wanna make sure that the city does not waste any more money going forward. Also calling for body cam footage to be available freely to the public. And again, for funds to be taken away from the police budget and put into the community that is part of the reparations in kind of a different and more community oriented way. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Our next speaker is Tige or Tige Christensen. And if I mispronounce her name, please again, help me to pronounce it correctly. And then that's to be followed by Thea Zalewski, Tyler Pastorak, Dan, Suksuba, Alicia DiMario and Zoe or Zoe Keniger. So I'm gonna come to Tige, I believe. If you could just again, please help me with your name that would be wonderful. It's Tige. Tige, thank you very much. I apologize. Yeah, so yeah, there's names other than English. Okay, so I would like to reiterate the statement said by my comrades Jess and Et Al that you should release the body cam, put body cams on all officers and remove abusive officers because let's be honest, as the system currently stands, we live in a state where the police can simply just abuse people. And it's not just by pockets. Also the disabled community who simply are not safe here in Burlington. If you are disabled in any way, you are at risk of being shot by police twice as higher than your abled counterpart. The deaf community has seen this in numerous ways with people attempting to sign and being shot for assuming that these are gang signs, which is not true, as well as autistic people literally panicking and being shot dead because they simply couldn't communicate, which is simply disgusting. We also are seeing in the city of Burlington because the city has a system that doesn't allow for any just discipline or reprimandation of its police officers that we see a massive free reign of these police officers just going after marginalized people. Which is just horrifying. And as a result, the city of Burlington, unless you are a middle-class white gentrifier is simply not safe for you. For example, my disabled ass cannot get around the city of Burlington on bike lanes. That's not green transportation, that's just plain ableism. And I see I've run out of time, so if you actually wanna make the city even remotely safe for us, you would do a charter change to fire those abusive traps and stop doing bike lanes. Thank you, our next speaker. I could not locate Thea Zalewski, so I'm gonna go to Tyler Pasterock to be followed by Dan. Tyler, I'm gonna enable your microphone. Hi, can you hear me? Hello? Yes, I can hear you, go ahead. Okay, hi, yeah, so my name's Tyler Pasterock. I'm a white resident of Ward 3. I'm calling tonight to just express some thoughts about the civilian oversight charter change. But first, I just wanted to express how I was pretty disturbed by some language under agenda item 1101 regarding the Melly versus city of Burlington case, just to really quickly read this recommended action motion one that the council find the premature general public knowledge of the city's strategy, legal advice, and other information in relation to the pending litigation with the Melly brothers would put the city at a substantial disadvantage. Jeremy Melly was brutalized completely unannounced by officer Jason Bellavance and sustained serious long-term injuries from this and officer Bellavance made out with $300,000. And so just the attitude that the city is concerned about maintaining a position of advantage in this case is really disturbing, especially amongst ongoing discussions of better accountability and transparency regarding police issues. So I just wanted to express that real quick. I see you don't have that much time left to talk about the civilian oversight board, but just wanted to echo the demands that have been expressed to the charter change committee, which are that of utmost importance is that a civilian oversight board has independent and final disciplinary powers and investigative board powers and the resources needed to carry out those duties and diverse representation that prioritizes those most affected by police and doesn't include current or former police officers and their relatives. Anything short of this on such a board would be pointless and ineffective. And finally, we need a Burlington specific model that sets a good example for others around the country. This means soliciting community input. And I urge the council to do this in time to create a Burlington specific model for a charter change to be voted on on the March ballot. Yeah, thank you for this time. Thank you. Our next speaker will be Dan to be followed by Suba. Dan, I found you and have enabled your microphone. Awesome. So I own my own DJ company, Rockmaster Studios, and I tried going to Orlando's to try and play for them, but they had a code appearing on their outdoor permit because there were complaints about it. Like I was just wondering, since all the other bars go till two, is there a way that I could possibly like still play there even with the code in effect? I wanted to ask you guys this because obviously you guys would know the most. So yeah, if you guys want to email me or anything, that'd be fine. And I also wanted to thank all of you guys for all your hard work. I, like I back in the hometown where I used to live, I lived in Bell's Falls. I would be on a, I was in an organization that also helped prevent substance abuse. We talked about the opioid crisis a lot. We talked about ways that we could end it, ways that we could also support one another while going through opioid crisis and all that other good stuff. I also helped out with the restorative justice center and like getting support out there with different communities and stuff like that. Yeah, so I only have four seconds left. So I'm gonna end on that note. Thank you, Dan. I appreciate it. And just so folks know, we don't usually engage in a back and forth in the public forum. Dan, if you, I'm happy to take on your question. Also would refer you to our license committee members and we'll be, I know that Councilor Hanson also chairs that. So you may wanna address your question to Councilor Hanson as well with regards to that. In terms, our next speaker will be Suek Subba, who is to be followed by Alicia DiMario. Suek, I've enabled your microphone. Suek, it looks like, there you go. You're on mute and now you should be able to speak. I'm sorry, I can't hear you if you're trying to speak right now. Still can't hear you. Okay, so I'm gonna move on. We can try to come back to you again. And then I do also see that you are wanting to speak to a second class liquor license that you've applied for. So, oh, okay, I see your hand raised. Are you, you should be able to speak. I've enabled talking for you. Is there still not able to hear you, Suek? Okay, I'll come back to you in a little bit and we'll try you again. So, I'm gonna move on to our next speaker who is Alicia DiMario. Not able to locate Alicia. So, I'm gonna move on to Zo or Zoey, Keneger have located you and have enabled your microphone so you should be able to go. All right, can you hear me? Yep, go ahead. All right, my name is Zoey Keninger and I'm a resident of Ward 4. I'm White and I use they, them pronouns. And I'm here tonight to basically reiterate what everyone has been saying and remind the council of the ongoing demands of the battery park movement, demands that have been in place since August of this year. We demand that violent officers Corey Campbell and Joseph Coro be terminated from the Burlington Police Department and barred from being rehired by any state or local department or agency in Chittenden County. I recognize that the council's buyout of Jason Belvance at the end of September is a step towards this accountability but is not where things should end and neither is an ideal way to handle these corrupt officers. They should not be receiving hundreds of thousands of dollars for harming and killing in Corey Campbell's case, members of their community. There needs to be greater accountability for Burlington Police Department officers, just why we also call for the city's charter to be revised allowing for the creation of a citizen oversight board of police for the police with full disciplinary and investigatory powers independent of the police department and with first, second and final say on the hiring and firing of police officers as everyone has been saying before, this board must be diverse and be representative of people who have been disproportionately harmed by police in the past and must not include members who have been part of police departments or have close connections with people in police positions. We also demand that all police officers in Chittenden County wear and continually use body cameras including local departments, sheriffs and Vermont State Police with jurisdiction in Chittenden County and we call for the mandatory release of all footage to the public on a regular basis and with free access. Release of this footage should be done in a way that protects the anonymity of citizens and third, we demand that the Burlington Police Department be systematically defunded and the funds that would go to the department be redistributed to the BIPOC community in the form of reparations and also to social services like housing and healthcare for all systems that are and will be far more effective in ensuring public safety. Thank you. Thank you. I was able to locate Thea Zalouski who I had was unable to locate earlier. So I'm gonna go to you Thea. You should be enabled to speak now. Okay, thank you. Yeah, appreciate you coming back around. I would also like to speak on what a lot of folks have been saying, reiterating the demand of the battery park movement specifically to terminate officers Corey Campbell and Joseph Kara from the BPD and related to the agenda item regarding Malibu, the city of Burlington. We've seen that these officers are violent and threats to the safety of our community. We've been calling for, folks have been calling for their firing for years but the battery park movement has been protesting since August and frankly, that's a long time to not be listening. So the firing of officer relevance was indeed a step in the right direction though. It was also a pretty big buyout and I don't appreciate seeing hundreds of thousands of dollars going to him as well. It's basically a paid vacation. And we also demand, yes, the body cameras be continually used and footage be released in a way that protects folks anonymity and that the BPD continue to be systemically defunded and that that money go to BIPOC communities and reparations. I'd also like to note the importance of the community control of the police and the accountability that could create the independent body must be formed through the charter change and it must have investigatory and disciplinary power and be comprised of BIPOC folks and folks that have been historically marginalized by the police. It's necessary for its effectiveness otherwise it's a waste of time. Thank you so much. And I, yeah, that's it. Thank you. So I'm gonna go back to Sukh Subban if we can get you on. So Sukh, I've enabled your microphone. You're gonna need to unmute on your end. So it looks like you're still muted Sukh. Okay, there you go. Like we are just struggling family right here. That's great. Okay, I can hear you great. Welcome. Thank you. Thank you sir. Yeah, we have a small restaurant in New North End and even in this pandemic we are just trying to open another store in Old North End area. So we were just here to like getting our second class license. So we don't know what the rules and regulations for the second class license and the tobacco and the lottery thing. So we were just trying to know about all these things. So like any channel we have to go through, it's really tough for us to navigate all those things. Language barrier. We do have the language barrier as an immigrant. Thank you. Okay, great. And again, I appreciate you coming in, working through this technical aspect for sharing with us again. With regards to the liquor licenses I would encourage you to contact the chair of the License Committee, Councillor Hanson with any questions that you might have. Councillor Hanson is just Jay Hanson at BurlingtonVT.gov with any questions that you might have. Okay, I'm gonna move on to our next speaker who is, I'm gonna look for Alicia DiMario again. Alicia, I have located you so I'm gonna come to you and enable your microphone. Looks like you need to unmute on your end. So Alicia, I'm still not able to hear you because it looks like you're unmuted on your end. Okay, we can try you again in a second. I'm gonna come to Brooke McKean now. Brooke, I've enabled your microphone. You should be able to go. Hi, can you hear me? Yep, go ahead. All right, hi. My name is Brooke McKean and I am a white resident of Ward 8. I am calling to reiterate the demands of Burlington citizens and the Battery Park Movement. We continue to see demands not being met and the urgency of the issue of racism in the city of Burlington not being acted upon. I just want to reiterate the demands that we have. So the first being we demand that violent officers, Cory Campbell and Joseph Coro be removed from the Burlington Police Department and not be rehired by another state or local agency. These officers use violence and force to pose a threat to the Burlington community, especially the BIPOC community. And as we have expressed in recent Charter Change Committee meetings, we are calling for an independent community police oversight body that has full disciplinary and investigatory powers and that is representative of community members with lived experience. And we demand that this Charter Change be present on the March ballot. I also want to reiterate the demand that all police officers in the Chinden County consistently use body cameras with this footage being made publicly available to citizens for free and be updated regularly. Lastly, we demand that the Burlington Police Department continue to be defunded. The massive amount of funding that is funneled into the department should be diverted and invested in our community, the BIPOC community in particular. This includes investment in alternatives to address community safety that is not policing as well as housing and healthcare for all. I'm also calling to ask for a public share out from the executive session discussing the Melly versus City of Burlington case. And then I just want to encourage the city council and the city of Burlington to center BIPOC voices within these discussions. And as we know, the city of Burlington declared racism as a public health crisis. So it needs to be treated as such. It must be addressed with urgency. It deserves and demands. Thank you. Thank you. All right. I'm going to try Malisha DeMario again. And Malisha should be enabled to speak if you just unmute on your end. Okay, still not seeing that. Okay, so our next speaker will be Marcia Johnson. Marcia, I've enabled your microphone. Marcia, you should be able to speak. Hi, can you hear me? Yep, go ahead. Hi, I'm calling to agree with many of the other speakers. I wanted to support the charter change needed to form a civilian oversight board with investigatory and disciplinary power. And I want to see that put on the March ballot. I agree that body cameras need to be worn by officers at all times and footage needs to be publicly available for free. I do also support reducing the police budget and having actual oversight of the budget. I think citizens and police officers may have a very different idea of what spending priorities should be. Police work for us and we as citizens need to have power over not only disciplinary decisions but also helping manage the police budget. It's not fair for police to say there's not enough funding for body cameras when citizens have no oversight of what their funding is going to. I also support removing officers Coro and Campbell from the force. I don't know if they've been formally asked to resign or if that's something that could be tried. I hope that city council will just keep looking for a creative solution to remove them from active duty and I'm really not okay with them being on force. And I think a lot of other people have said that as well. So I hope that you will keep trying and not give up on that. And I just wanted to echo the demands of everyone else who supports the battery park movement. Then that's all I've got. Thank you very much for your time. Okay, our final speaker for this evening will be Ava Fusco. Ava, I've enabled your microphone. You should be able to speak now. Ava Fusco, you should be able to speak. You just need to unmute your microphone. Okay, Ava, I'm not able to hear you at this point. Okay, Ava, I'm still not able to hear you. So we're gonna close down the public forum for this evening and we'll move on to our next item. Move into the consent agenda. Thank you to everyone for sharing with us this evening, I always appreciate so many people coming and sharing their thoughts with the council. And we'll have move into our next item, which is the item five, which is the consent agenda. Counselor Stromberg, may I please have a motion on the consent agenda? I move to adopt the consent agenda as amended and take the actions indicated. Okay, is there a second? Seconded from Counselor Pine. Any discussion on the consent agenda? Sorry, Counselor Powell. You're muted, Counselor Powell. Thank you so much, President Tracy. Just wanted to, and I apologize, I've gotta get back to it. Okay, take your time. Thank you very kind. We had not eliminated item 5.24 when we did the, when Counselor Stromberg did the the amendments, I probably just didn't make it on there, but just wanted to note that the council, the Board of Finance did not vote on item 5.24, so we should remove that. Okay, that's a great point. Thank you for explaining that, Counselor Powell. Is everybody clear on that the consent agenda does not include that item? Okay, great. Any further discussion on our consent agenda? Okay, hearing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, hearing none, that passes unanimously, which brings us now to our deliberative agenda, but before we get into that deliberative agenda, we have a number of other meetings that I'd like to address, so for members of the public who are watching, the city does have a number of other sort of structures in which we conduct business to deal with different aspects of the city's business that we will deal with as a full council, but that are nevertheless sort of considered separate meetings, so we're gonna recess this and go into three different meetings right now to deal with different kinds of business having to do with the city, so I'm gonna recess the city council meeting, we'll come back to our deliberative agenda after we do the business involved with these specific items relating to local control commission, the Board of Civil Authority, and the full Board of Abatement of Taxes. Let's get started with the local control committee, so I'll convene the local control committee at 8.13 p.m. The first item on that agenda is the agenda. Councilor Hanson, may I please have a motion on the agenda? Yeah, I'll move to adopt the agenda. We have a motion from Councilor Hanson, second from Councilor Stromberg, any discussion on the agenda? Okay, hearing none, let's put that to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, hearing none, that passes unanimously and we have an agenda, which brings us to item number two, our consent agenda. Councilor Hanson, may I please have a motion on the consent agenda? Move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Motion from Councilor Hanson, is there a second? Seconded from Councilor Stromberg, any discussion on the consent agenda? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. So now that brings us to our deliberative agenda and item 3.01, Councilor Hanson may have a motion on that. I'll move to approve the 2020, 2021, first and third class restaurant slash bar liquor license applications for Mad River distillers, 137 St. Paul Street with all standard conditions. Okay, we have a motion, is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Stromberg, any discussion on the motion? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, hearing none, that passes unanimously. May I please have a motion on item 3.02, Councilor Hanson? I move to approve the 2020, 2021, second class liquor license application for Hilton Burlington, 60 Battery Street with all standard conditions. Thank you, is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Stromberg, any discussion on this license? Okay, hearing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously, which brings us to our final item in this particular meeting, item 3.03, may I please have a motion on that, Councilor Hanson? I move to approve the 2020, 2021, second class liquor license application for Mayas, Mini Mart and Delhi, 78 North Street with the following conditions, completion of a second class DLC seminar training and all standard conditions. We have a motion from Councilor Hanson, seconded by Councilor Stromberg. Any discussion on this? Councilor Pine, go ahead. Yes, if I could, Chairperson Hanson, if you could, the applicant spoke during public forum and there seemed to be some questions about what is required. Did you actually have a direct, I guess you'd have a Zoom meeting, so did you have a Zoom meeting with the applicant and did it seem as though there was some unanswered questions perhaps that came out of that? Not that I'm aware of based on the subcommittee meeting, we didn't have any issues that I'm aware of. I think a follow-up question, Council President Tracy is just whether the, I guess the staff who handle the applications and deal directly with the business owners, the applicants seeking licenses could just confirm and double check and make sure that there's not a language barrier that's a barrier for the folks who've requested the liquor license. So that would just be, I don't know if that's really just a friendly request or if it needs to be in the form of a motion. I would look to Councilor Hanson, are you able to follow up with the licensee in this case, Councilor Hanson? I could, yeah, typically, Lori Olberg is the one that interfaces with the businesses in terms of letting them know what they need to submit and what's still outstanding and all of that. So that's the typical process. And I can follow up offline with Lori just to make sure that everything's clarified with this business. But if they're, in case they're watching if this is approved, they are approved just pending that remaining condition of the DLC seminar training. But certainly, yeah, I'm happy to follow up. Okay. Okay, thank you. I would just ask, I think this does raise that issue that we're dealing with right after this meeting into the next Council agenda item is the language access policy and whether the city can be a little more proactive about providing access to full translation for customers who come in and clearly have questions that can't be answered due to language barriers. So I just, it was interesting to have it highlighted right before we come to that agenda item. So I just want to call that out. Thank you very much. That's it. Thank you, Councilor Pine. Councilor Hanson, I can come to you in a second, though I did see Councilor Jang before you. So I'm just going to go to Councilor Jang first. Go ahead, Councilor Jang. Thank you, President Price. And I think Sukhsuba is here just to hear the verdict of his application. And also to remind everyone that he's not new in this process. When former city council, I forgot his name was the chair of this committee. We were having the same type of issues, but he's here just to hear the verdict of this. And we all looking forward with MPaSTions language access plan, which I think is a great point. Yeah, thank you. So thank you for that clarification, Councilor Jang. Did you have anything else to add, Councilor Hanson? No, that sounds great. Okay, wonderful. Thank you for that additional discussion. We have a motion and a second. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. And barring objection, we will go, I will adjourn this meeting at 8.20. At this point, I'm going to take us into the board of tax abatement, which is the other structure, one of the other meetings that we need to attend to this evening. So I will give folks a second to just click over to that screen. And I will call to order the board of tax abatement at 8.20. The first item on the agenda is the agenda. Is there a motion on the agenda, Councilor Paulino? Yes, thank you, Council President Tracy. I will make a motion to amend and adopt the agenda's follows. To note written material on agenda for items number 3.01 and 3.02, to remove from consent item 2.03, the request of tax abatement from Joanne Lafei Holdings, which involves six properties, same property owner, and place it on the deliberative agenda as item number 3.03 per Councilor Paul, with a second. Okay, is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Stromberg. Any discussion on the agenda? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. So we now have an agenda. Councilor Paulino, may I please come to you for a motion on the consent agenda? Thank you, President Tracy. I will make a motion to adopt the consent agenda as amended as previously stated by Councilor Paul's request and take the actions indicated therein. Thank you. Is there a second to Councilor Paulino's motion? Seconded by Councilor Paul. Any discussion? Hearing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of adopting the consent agenda, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, hearing none, that passes unanimously, which brings us down to our deliberative agenda, an item 3.01. May I please have a motion on that, Councilor Paulino? Yes. The motion is to deny the abatement request of penalties and interest in the amount of $1,583.87 and adopt the findings, the reasons for the recommendation, which was to deny the request for a property tax abatement for Sweetwater's LLC at 118 Church Street. Okay, thank you for that motion. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Stromberg. Okay, I'm gonna, now that we have a motion to second, I'll come to the city assessor to explain the case. I believe we also have the applicant with us as well. So I will find that person and give them a chance to address the board as well. So the assessor Vickery, are you able to just explain your recommendation? Yes, the committee decided to deny the request for abatement on the grounds that the applicant was late in making the payment. And the applicant, a petitioner made a request that it was an error on their end as a mistake. And with much deliberation, the committee decided to deny the request. Okay, thank you for that. I'm gonna enable David from, looks like Sweetwater's. I'm just gonna give our practices to give folks who are petitioning for abatement a chance to just address the board. So David, I've enabled your microphone so you should be able to speak. Yeah, okay, I just, can you get me now? Yep, go ahead. Okay, great. Well, thank you for giving me the opportunity to revisit this with you. When I got the abatement letter back that it was denied, I guess I was taken back to a certain degree. I get that if you're late, you're late for taxes, but it just didn't really happen that way. I mean, obviously the taxes were late, but it's pretty extraordinary times when middle of the pandemic. And the city had put out there that we would be able to defer taxes for three months and you had to sign an applicant. So it's not like anyone that didn't sign a piece of paper or form, they got their taxes to be pushed back three months. I was part of the mayor's task force as you saw in those notes. And so I knew about that. I went to the city website on two different occasions to look for the application. It wasn't up at that point in time. I did communicate to my bookkeeper who works in a restaurant to look out for it. I don't know if she misunderstood me or if I misspoke, but she just thought that it was an automatic, that the taxes were being deferred for three months. If it wasn't for COVID, this would have never happened. She works in the restaurant and the taxes would have come in and we would have paid them. The restaurant is starting its 40th year of business. We've never been made on our taxes. And so what happened was she has preexisting conditions. So I felt like I was doing the right thing by telling her to only come in the restaurant every couple of weeks. I would gather the mail for her and told her to come in in the morning when no one was around to pick up the mail. And it just so happened that by the time when she picked up the mail and then a two week period of time went by when I guess the taxes were due on I think the 12th of June. And then there was a notice sent that our taxes were delinquent. And then according to from what I understood from John, the city assessor that because it was the fourth quarter the window of time that you guys give to and I don't know what the technical word is for but to not be delinquent but pay it. It's a shortened period of time than normal if I heard that correctly because it's the fourth quarter. She came back into, so then the letter went back out I guess we were delinquent. She came back to the restaurant. I think a day or two after we had gotten that second letter and then when she was putting all the mail together she saw that we had some letters from the city. So she happened to open them at the restaurant and saw that we were late. I called Lori right away to find out what we needed to do. And then after about 24 hours everyone decided that I needed to pay the taxes and then try and do it, appeal for a tax abatement. And so I feel like we're doing 50% of our business. I'm trying to make it through the winter time. I have not that 16 or it's almost $1,600. That's a lot of money when you're doing 50% of your business. I haven't taken the salary out of the restaurants this March except for the small window of time we've had for the PP pay. And I could use that money to pay bills to try and make it through the winter where sales are even going to be going down even less or if we're even are available to stay open. And so I was just pretty taken back that considering I was in a pandemic we've never been late in our taxes ever. Normally Linda pays the taxes earlier and because I told her not to come to the restaurant work there because she had pre-existing conditions and she and I had a miscommunication and I don't know like if she did every right maybe I didn't communicate it right but it just feels pretty harsh to be able to have to pay $1,600 because we were a couple of days late in taxes when if we weren't in all the pandemic we just it would have never happened because the taxes she would have been working there and the taxes would have been paid. So I think that's it from an economic point of view and from a I think a human point of view and I know someone's late on taxes or they're late on taxes but what I would say to you is the fact that two weeks after we got closed down the city got in touch with me to ask me if I would cook food for the shelters. And so every while we were closed every Wednesday I went myself and picked up food from city market I brought it to the restaurant on Thursday I worked with two other volunteers in my restaurant opened up the restaurant we cooked food for 200 people on Friday I would go back to the restaurant package the food and get it ready for the city from volunteers that come deliver the food. And so I do that the whole time from March all the way through the end of September when the program ended and I'm getting ready to do the Thanksgiving day dinner it's your 30th year doing that and we're gonna probably do a thousand dinners the city has asked me to cook 650 dinners for your shelters and other people plus everything that I will do with people coming in and I'm gonna do my own deliveries as well. And so from a human perspective it doesn't feel really good to me that the city doesn't think that it might be unjust manifestly to make an exception and again I get it if I just said to you I forgot to pay my taxes I get how you have to compartmentalize that but I just think this is a pretty extraordinary times and things that went on and so I was only not only was I disappointed from a business perspective but I was disappointed from a human perspective because I try and do the best I can to get back to the community. So thank you for my time thank you for your time and thank you for letting me revisit it and put some color on the situation. Okay, thank you for that. Are there discussion from counselors? Counselor Hightower, go ahead. Yeah, if I'm allowed to just have a question as a freshman counselor is our vote supposed to be only on finding a fact or like I guess what is our like legal purview in terms of how we can vote is this like completely judiciary in terms of we are just supposed to do findings based on that? Or do we have more leeway in this? And that's not a question necessarily for President Tracy but for whoever can answer it whether that's Eileen or... Sure, I'll look to city assessor Vickery if you could please weigh in. The counselors want to bear in mind the facts of what if it's legally collectible or uncollectable if it's legal and if it's manifestly unjust and the manifestly unjust part is tends to deal with hardships. And the other component I think that David mentioned is that they made an error. So around a time where there was a lot of confusion. So I think you wanna as the committee you wanna weigh those factors and make a decision based on that testimony the information that's been received and keep manifestly unjust in mind, I think. One of information for... Sure, go ahead, Councilor Polinom. Councilor Hightower, I think that I can try to as best answer any questions you have. We deliberated hard and I can just tell you that all requests for that meeting were COVID related. It's unfair to me to say something without a question though I think because I could just tell you what we were deliberating, which would be unfair. But if you have a question, I'll try my best to answer something. I think Eileen also wanted to say something. Yeah, of course, yeah, I'll go to Attorney Blackwood, go ahead. If I understood your question, Councilor Hightower, generally if you accept the findings of the subcommittee you accept the findings of fact that they have made. If you intend to change those findings of fact in any way then you need to make findings of fact as part of your motion to say we find the facts to be other than what the subcommittee found and you have to do that in the context of the legal basis or those three possibilities that the assessor mentioned. And I think in this case, primarily you're probably looking at manifest whether or not it is manifestly unjust. So you need to make that finding as part of your motion. Okay, that's helpful, thank you. Okay, Councilor Jain, go ahead. Thank you. And I think a couple of questions and I'm getting to a point and this is for the committee members and was just wondering if you explore the avenue of working with the customer in setting up a payment plan. And also that's one question. The second question is also are there any late fees associated with the 1,000 and could those be waived? You know, can you work with the sweet water with a payment plan and also waive? So I was pleasantly surprised, Councilor Jang, it was my first hearing that all taxes were paid. They were paid within days of essentially the testimony that they found the payments to be late. So what they're requesting here is abatement of those penalties that you spoke about is to waive them. They've paid them already. Yes. Everyone did. Okay. And now those late fees, can you set up a payment plan for that? Is that possible, Mr. Jang? The recommendation of the city clerk's office, which is that basically it's not really recommendation. Basically your penalty is assessed by how late it is. So the recommendation is you pay it as fast as possible and then you apply for the abatement, which is what everybody did. Any further questions, Councilor Jang? No. I serve in the, yeah, not putting questions. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. I have Councilor Paul to be followed by Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. So my question is actually for the, probably for the CAO, I'm Catherine Shad, I believe is still on his, yes. Of course. Hello, Catherine. So my question is the, how, if you know, how many properties or however you want to, if it's dollars or properties, but preferably, you know, individuals were late for COVID related reasons that did not contest those late fees and penalties. In other words, somebody was late. They came to your, they communicated in some way with your office and they were told, you know, we certainly, we understand just so you know. And it's in the letter, I believe as well. You know, this can be appealed to the board of tax, but to the tax abatement committee and then the full board. Do you have any idea of the number of people who might fall into that category? Unfortunately, Councillor Paul, I wouldn't have that data. I could certainly get you, excuse me, the number of properties or taxpayers that paid late, but I would have no way of keeping, of knowing the reason. I don't believe we keep track of any of that. Okay. And then just as a point of reference in under normal circumstances, are you at all familiar with how many people, individuals, property owners are late with their taxes? How many under, you know, in any given tax payment? That is definitely a question that I feel like I should know and I don't. But if you wanna just give me a minute, I actually have those figures fairly quickly. If there's more questions, I'll just dig those up and come back if that's okay with you, President Tracey. Absolutely, yeah, for sure. I can go to Councillor Mason in the meantime, and then I'll follow it up with Councillor Hightower. So go ahead, Councillor Mason. Thanks. I'm sorry, Councillor Paul finished with her questions? Yes. Okay, so first I have chaired this committee for a number of years. I was not sitting on the committee, but I wanted to make clear a response to Councillor Chang's question. The request and abatement is penalties in interest. This is not about the tax, this is penalties in interest for late payment. I'm curious if the chair is willing, you know, this committee is a hard committee to serve on because, you know, oftentimes you have to establish a rule and then, you know, sort of stick to that rule. And we have been pretty consistent that late payments, you know, absent some type of city error, you know, we're not, we were not granting abatement requests over the course of years. What I'm wondering is what the committee, you know, we had a unique circumstance here though because of, you know, this opportunity to defer taxes. So what's not in this decision is sort of the discussion at the committee level in terms of how did you factor that, you know, into your deliberations. It sounded like in your lead-in you were maybe looking for that question. I don't know if you might be able to shed a little bit of light of how, if at all, you know, that distinction worked into your deliberations. Absolutely. President Tracey may respond. I think that we all went into it with a different mindset than when we ended up and through deliberation. And I certainly at the outset struggled with this application the most in large part. And there were a lot of questions about, because I remember talking to businesses at the time, March and July. And the turnaround here was, I think it was seven days or something, you know, for the, that we're talking about interest being charged. So very fast. There was a weekend and it was just like, some people weren't even checking the mail. That's the one counselor Paul pulled from consent due to COVID, which is totally understandable at the time for days, you know, according to news reports, they were putting the mail and quarantining it for three days. So we took it all into consideration. And I think in the end ended up sticking to a blanket rule, which is in, you know, honestly, somewhat harsh because you're talking about a business that probably had the best lifeline to the RSC and what was going on downtown than any other, other than maybe like, you know, I mean, they're across the street. I think what sealed the deal for me personally was that they received the notices and that the website was up when running and that it was incumbent upon the owner to basically check the website. And I totally understand that we struggled over hitting business with more taxes at a time when they had just been open, I think for two weeks at the time that this payment was due. And, you know, there's a personnel aspect to it. Obviously there's a bookkeeper here unlike our other applications. So we struggled with that too because we understood that person not to be in the office. Thank you, that is helpful. So, Councilor. Okay, I had Councilor Hightower next. Was there anyone else on first round? Councilor Pine, I'll let you go on first round. Go ahead. I think the conditions here are so unusual. This is not something we've ever encountered in modern history because of COVID. It does seem that the, at least the findings of fact that you've presented here and the comments from the taxpayer suggests that, you know, there was a series of unfortunate events that led to this outcome. But I do share Councilor Jiang's idea, notion that we should work with the owner to create a payment plan so that it's, if this is the required decision based on past precedent and that's just how we do it, I think we ought to show a little bit of flexibility around how to pay it. You know, that's a, this, because there's another one coming, the next item, for the same property or it's a much smaller amount. But I just want us to be, hopefully we can find a way that is recognizes the limitations, financial limitations during the time of COVID and yet is consistent with precedent and past practice. And it is always an issue of equity and fairness to all taxpayers when you do these issues. I know that, but I do share that view that we should try to be a little flexible right now because of the conditions we're living in. Thank you. You Councilor Pine, anyone else on first round? Okay, seeing none. I'll go to you, Councilor Hightower. CEO Shad, I'll come to you if you have that answer that Councilor Paul was looking for. I do. Thank you for giving me some time to look that up. So for total delinquencies, we have 587 taxpayers representing 613 parcels. But it is important to note for context that 17 taxpayers representing 21 parcels, excuse me, represent 25% of that. And then the rest of it is as you would expect smaller amounts. Okay, thank you for that answer. So Councilor Paul, did you have something you wanted to follow up on that? I'm sorry. I just want to make sure, thanks, President Trace. I just want to make sure I understand this. So 586 taxpayers representing 613 parcels were late in paying their taxes during one, no. That is our total. For when? For how long? That is all of our, those are basically all of our delinquencies. I don't have the number for, I think that is, I guess I don't want to say for sure that that is this year without confirming. I don't know if there's anybody else from the CT's office, but I believe there may be, there are old people in the city there are old delinquencies that I am aware of. And so I guess it would be, it may be helpful to make sure those are not included. I don't think they are. I believe I've gotten them out of there, but I would want to confirm that. Okay, I mean, I don't know that we're going to be able to confirm that this evening. No. I'm just trying to understand how many other people there are who for whatever reason are late with their taxes and they're charged interest and penalties and do not come before this board. We're just in the interest of fairness and I'm just trying to understand. So I guess that's about as close as we're going to get at this board. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Councilor Hightower. Yeah, sorry. I have one more question than just a comment, which is, and I apologize. I was not adequately prepared for the taxes meeting. Sometimes I forget about the side meetings, but Councilor Pauline, if you can just speak to a little bit, what put items on the consent agenda versus the deliberative agenda? I had the same question. Basically, I think because we were unanimous, it's they went on consent and unless a counselor pulled it, it like, well, actually, I don't know about the sweet waters one, but the other one was pulled. Maybe City Assessors, Bickery can say why sweet waters was on deliberative. Councilor, are you able to speak to that? Yes, sweet waters was on deliberative because David asked for it to be on deliberative. And I think he has a right to speak as well. So as anybody would. So that's the other. Yeah. And then the other part of it was, I had unfortunately just missed. I had assumed that all of the consent items were yes, and I just looked at the deliberatives and assumed they were no's. So I guess I would have hoped, and maybe this is my freshman Aivite showing through, but that given COVID, we would have had a lower standard for what it takes to obey penalties and interests. I obviously don't feel comfortable now saying yes to one application just because it has to be, but if somebody goes through the whole process of requesting an abatement, it feels like special times call for special measures. And I wish we had taken that a little bit more into consideration and changing the rules for a few of the meetings in 2020. So I'm a little sad to see that this wasn't something that the city considered doing, especially because it's not the actual payment of the taxes that's just penalty and interests, but those are my two cents. Thank you, Councilor Hightower, Mayor Weinberger. Well, I mean, to Councilor Hightower's point, I think, I mean, this is our opportunity to make the decision. I support, listen, we set up a whole program directly aimed at supporting people exactly in the situation that Mr. Mellancamp is in. We know that our downtown merchants are facing enormous pressures and threats right now. We set up a program to make it possible to waive these, exactly this type of interest payment and a buck for a mistake with the application we would have granted this. I'm inclined, given these unusual times to grant this request in this situation. Sorry, just to, if I can speak to that again, President Theresa. Go ahead, yeah. You stop for me. I think the only reason that I'm not comfortable with that is I don't completely, having not looked or not gone to the committee meeting, I don't know, and maybe Councilor Polina can speak to this, how different this one really is from the other ones, in terms of if they were all COVID related. I don't want to necessarily have just one exception because they asked for it when a whole bunch of other people also asked for an exception. I can try to my best and looking at, so I recall this being the only business. There was another one that owned what we all know as the property, the actual physical property of the African market on North Street, which everybody's seen the story that they're moving. That owner is technically a business owning a commercial property, but that one was granted. That one was an error in the city having the wrong address for the bill. And it was a recent purchased, recently purchased property, just to give you an example of what one we did unanimously grant. The other one, Councilor Paul pulled, so we'll get to that one. The other one was, I would say, a tough mention of COVID in the sense that it was reported in the, every hearing is different, right? So Mr. Milikov showed up, other people didn't. When someone shows up, you have more information, you're able to get more of a discussion going. We talked, I mean, the very confusing piece to the mayor's point that I was really sympathetic to is that we did waive these taxes for the following bill. And then we did waive some taxes during this month, but not this one. So I forget which, I think it was the personal property tax up until, so it's like, if you're a business owner and you're shut down and you're trying to keep track of like three bill, three or four different taxes, you're being told different, we were very sympathetic to that. So the one I'm talking about, the Appletree Point Road was a residential house and that person just said they were a healthcare worker and basically they just kind of like missed the bill and they were very busy and stressed. That was basically the basis of the application. So on that basis alone, we didn't feel that it was enough, like Mr. Milikov provided, clear details of exactly what happened. And the last one, which is 2.07, trying to remember just opening that one up. Oh, that one was a property. Basically, they admitted that they forgot to pay the bill. They didn't actually refer to COVID on that one, but obviously it was a lot going on in the world at that point. But they admitted that they just forgotten, they have never forgotten, but this time they just forgot and they did not appear as well. So we weren't able to ask clarifying questions on that one. The person here for that counselor, Paul's pulled the item 3.03 did show up and did provide the basis that I already said that she was an elderly person and she's lived in Burlington. She owns these like six properties and she was watching the news actively and basically was taking things very seriously, including the fact that she was quarantining her mail and she was reading these reports about us waving, again, which we then extended, right? We did do an extension of these payments the following FY1. So I think she was basically confused and we're talking about, again, less than seven days from when it was due to when she got the bill, didn't open it and then they all paid like the day they found out. I mean, it was pretty remarkable. Okay, thank you. I'm sorry to take up the next time like this. No, it's fine. It's a tough issue. I'll take one to my jar. Yes, thank you. I have Councillor Freeman to be followed by Councillor Pine. Go ahead, Councillor Freeman. Thank you. I wanted to quickly weigh in. There were three as Councillor Polino just pointed out that stood out as being COVID related. The first one we addressed as a committee was item 2.06 on the consent agenda, which was the abatement for 147 Appletree, request for abatement for 147 Appletree Point Road. This was a healthcare worker and the committee voted unanimously no on abating the taxes. I felt that once we got to making a decision on sort of a COVID related issue and it voted no, that once we got to these requests for abatements as Sweetwater is the 118 Church Street and also the properties owned by Lafayette Holding that it was ultimately creating different exceptions for sort of the same issue and qualifying in a way that felt too subjective. I think tax abatement committee is so in some ways ruthlessly difficult because it's so hard not to hear the subjective cases and make subjective ruling, but it always feels really important for me on the committee to try to apply the same rule sort of across the board, especially because I think unconscious bias or just bias in general can play into things. Like you have two property owners who are expressing or who are requesting abatement for COVID related issues that are potentially posed at this point given how the council votes to receive abatement whereas the healthcare worker was not and I think those biases of around as a worker, a healthcare worker versus a property owner, people who already have potentially access to sort of networks in the city or financial, well, certain financial standing or whatever, those are things that I think can play into scenarios like this that concern me around the way that we sort of would conduct abatement and sort of decide on abatement. So I was sort of like an either it would be, I think my feeling on it was that either all three of those would be abated or none of them. And since we had sort of gone with the ruling on no on the first one, I was like, my idea was to keep that consistently. I think it's incredibly hard. I could see it really going either way. I agree that these are, it was like, unbelievably extenuating and also like excruciating circumstances that we've been through. This has been an incredibly tough year. I do just, I just did want to point out that sort of aspect around my thoughts on it in general and also the reason why I had ended up voting the way I did in committee. Thank you. Councilor Freeman, Councilor Pine. I have to say, I was leaning toward proposing that we reverse this decision as from what was recommended but Councilor Freeman just persuaded me not to do that. Councilor, I'm sorry, are you? I'm done, yeah. Okay, Councilor Carpenter, go ahead. I wonder if Assistant Vickery could clarify that the first circumstance that Councilor Freeman talked about, I thought that was a third quarter late payment due to COVID but not a fourth quarter when we, there's sort of two things. The Sweetwaters and the Lafayette properties have stated they did not understand they had to file an application and part of our rationale was the sense that that had been fairly well advertised and made available and other people did or they were not late. The one circumstance that was a single family residence, there's two circumstances. One was, was that a third quarter payment which was not at the time? I mean, there was no option for deferring at that time. Am I right on that? Can you weigh in? Yeah, go ahead City Assessor. Thank you. My understanding is that Sweetwaters was part of this committee and knew that there was supposed to be an application that was supposed to be filled out. I think there was some miscommunication given the fact that there was a lot of confusion at that time with other forms from the state and the federal government. Are you gonna lay off folks? What are you gonna do with your staff? How are things gonna play out? So I thought there was a lot of confusion there and they just missed it. Miss Lafayette, Joanne Lafayette Holdings, she, I think that she just missed that there was supposed to be a form to be filled out and was assuming there would be an extended deadline. I think that's to separate those two out. Was the, I believe it's the apple tree property. Was that a third quarter delinquency as opposed to a fourth quarter delinquency? I'm not sure. I'm not sure. I don't see the date in my notes, but I'm gonna guess it was the fourth quarterly payment. Okay. That's more likely, but I don't have that in my notes. Okay, are you also at Councilor Carpenter? Okay, anyone else in the queue are we ready to vote? Councilor Freeman, go ahead. I think this was, I'm looking at the document for apple tree. It was that the tax and interest is no, is not paid in full by April 13. I think for me, the reason why, even though it was earlier than the late quarter, the late payments on the other in terms of the quarter that they were, that was in delinquency. I don't know if that's the proper term, is that like for me, when I, as being in like also in a healthcare setting, like March and April were by far the most stressful time of my life this year, and we're just like unbelievably stressful. And so it actually made a lot of sense that it was that time period that it was delinquent. And so it actually, for me, just seemed pretty, just like that just, I think it just impacted people differently. And I think even though the city created a structure, I think we can, like my feeling around sort of the way that the US, I mean, we were, Burlington has done an amazing job in a lot of ways. I mean, Vermont has done an amazing job, but because of sort of the overarching structure in the US, we were so late, I think, in a lot of ways at understanding the response to COVID and the sort of degree. And so we did put things in place in terms of people being able to ask for being able to make late payments and these sort of things. But to me, like it kind of was staggered a little bit later than when it actually hit. And so like the underlying principle is understanding that COVID and the pandemic has been just like incredibly stressful. And so that was sort of the underlying principle behind why we would be considering this. And then I still felt like even though I could see why we would then abate if we were not obeying for one, then it should be at least just consistent, even though it's an incredibly difficult decision. So that's just the explanation on the quarter in terms of that one property. Okay, Councillor Paul. Thank you. And thank you for giving me another run at this. So I do remember and I could have my facts wrong but I do remember the number of years ago there were properties that are on the lake. They're in the new North end that had extensive, extensive flooding to the point where the properties were completely unlivable. And the city, the city sent them a tax bill. And they didn't really wanna pay it. And it was, I remember spending a long time discussing this. There are a few of you on this meeting that probably remember this. And I believe that in the end we recognized that it was an act of nature. And there were a number of them that were abated. And that was also for the tax payment as well. You know, I probably should be a little bit quicker in terms of working on this. You know, I did read the other ones, the one particularly with the properties. It appeared as though there was a lot of cross and the cross currents which is why I took it off consent. I don't know what the protocol is here. We all voted in favor of the consent agenda. But I am swayed by what Councillor Freeman said. I think that if you're going to do this for one that you should do it for all. And I don't think I really feel really good about 2.06. There is a protocol for a motion to reconsider the consent agenda and at least be able to take 2.06 off consent and deliberate on that. And so I'm asking the city attorney if that's a possible, if that's something that we can do and how to do it. So attorney Blackwood, are you able to answer Councillor Paul's question about reconsideration of the consent agenda? If you could give me just a moment to think it through, that would be helpful and come back to me. Okay. Okay, yeah. That was my only question. So I'm happy to, I'm happy to see my time. Okay, were there other councillors looking to get in the queue on this item? And okay, Councillor Jang to be followed by Councillor Carpenter. Go ahead, Councillor Jang. Yes, and I think this is a question maybe for the mayor. And we're just wondering if, when you asked Mr. Malenkov to step up and serve the city in the capacity of being in the task force, did he receive any stipend from that? No, he was just a volunteer. That's right. It's a group of downtown organisations that have worked with the city throughout the pandemic for two-way communication for us to be hearing what small businesses need help with right now and for us to be pushing information back out to them. And he's one of a number of participants and none of them receive compensation for the task force. And the other question maybe for Mr. John, John, yep, John. And over the past couple of years, have we come across the same issue with the same property with sweet water? I don't believe so. You don't believe so. I don't recall any times where they have come before the board. Thank you. Okay, Attorney Blackwood, go ahead. So yes, I think you can reconsider this year within the same meeting and this requires someone who was in the majority, which I think it would be unanimous. So anyone could make a motion to reconsider a particular item. And I think probably you would need to make a motion to read to, I think you would first have to go back and make a motion to reconsider the consent agenda. And you're going to have to pull it off the consent agenda and then you're going to have to vote on, re-vote on the consent agenda without it and then vote on that, I apologize. No, they're still delivering and delivering for 30 minutes after mic. Okay, so thank you for that, Attorney Blackwood. Attorney Blackwood, can I just ask, would we need to take care of this item of business before making such, before such a motion was made? I believe you currently have a motion on the floor and pending on this item. So yes, I think you would need to do that. Okay. President Tracy, if I could, I'll make a motion. Councillor Paulino, Councillor Paul, so I'm going to go to Councillor Paul because this was a question that Councillor Paul had asked. Thank you. Point of information. Yes, okay. Can't we move to table this until after reconsidering the consent agenda like the other motion? Sure. If we want to do that first. Sure. Just to get into it. Sure. Yeah. This is some real, some real parliamentary Robert's rules, we really interpret ourselves for the Robert's rules paces tonight, Councillor. This is really, really pretty interesting. I'm going to go to Councillor Paul because this was your question and I just wanted to give you a chance to. Thank you. So I just want to make sure, am I in order or out of order if I were to make a motion to reconsider the consent agenda at this time? I believe you're out of order at this point. I am what? I believe you're out of order at this point. Then I will wait until I am in order. Okay. So now I have Councillor Carpenter was in the queue. And then I'll come to you, Councillor Shannon. Go ahead, Councillor Carpenter. I guess I'll defer for now. Okay, Councillor Shannon. I think that we, in adopting the consent agenda, we took the actions indicated on each item. So I would argue that we can just reconsider a single item. And with that, I would move to table this item and to reconsider item 2.06 on the consent agenda. Attorney Blackwood, are you able to make that? Is that a? That sounds reasonable to me. Okay, all right. Okay, I'll, I will allow that. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Paul. Any discussion on that motion? Okay, hearing none, we'll go to a vote on the Councillor Hightower. Go ahead. Sorry, just a quick question. Just wanted to make sure I get Councillor Polina's take. That was the only relevant item to be pulled in terms of COVID. The only one that in your discussion, you all felt bad about not. That's really that so explicitly, right? I mean, we're talking about, what is it? What was the exact, I just had it up. The exact. The exact opinion. Well, the answer is explicitly, yes. But you have to understand, this payment was due, all of these payments except for the one in April we just talked about were due June 12th. So Councillor Freeman pointed out that 2.06 April payment to that person is equivalent to the June payment for sweet water in terms of like where they were at with COVID. So explicitly it would be the one Councillor Paul pulled. 2.06 we granted, the 2.05 was a person who bought a very large apartment building that live out of Florida. And they said that they, again, they didn't testify and they said that they weren't used to paying taxes. I forget, I think basically receiving a tax bill by mail that they get it by email or it was the quarterly, they weren't used to the deadlines because in Florida it's different. I guess it's once a year and I have four times or something like that. I forget the exact. So as a technicality, they also just bought that property. But again, we felt like they had lawyers on both sides. This is something that you do in a very complicated real estate closing where obviously you're told, hey, by the way you're gonna pay this or that. Unlike 2.04 where that happened but we sent the bill to the wrong address and the person said, I didn't get the bill. 2.07, the last one was a person with the residential property on Lake Street that just said, I think it was, that was the one where I said they didn't cite COVID but it's clear that it was a factor for them, I'm sure but they didn't put it in the application that that had an effect. Let me see here. Okay, that's, thank you. I'll set. So we're on the motion to table and to reconsider the consent agenda item. Councilor Freeman to be followed by Councilor Carpenter. Oh, I think mostly Councilor Polino addressed Councilor Hightower's question but I think these were the main ones where it was like the primary if not like the sole reason in the sense. Yeah, that's why these I think were stood out to me. Thank you. Okay, thank you. Councilor Carpenter. Well, just to clarify again, the Appletree property did not have an opportunity to defer the other two Lafayette and Sweetwater's could have deferred it had they filed the paperwork. So it's a, I just want to make that point. Okay, was that, I'm sorry, was that a question you were looking for an answer or were you just trying to make? No, just making a point. Okay, thank you. All right, I appreciate that. Anyone else on this, the motion to table and then to and to reconsider that item on the consent agenda. Okay, so we'll go to a vote on that. So all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Hearing none, that passes unanimously. So we've tabled this item for now that we were just discussing. Now, let's go back to that item on the consent agenda that we reconsidered because we had a two thirds majority that would allow for reconsideration. So let's go back to that item that we've just voted to reconsider on the consent agenda. May I please have a motion on that item itself? Councilor Powell, go ahead. Councilor Powell, I got you. Go ahead. Thank you. So I would make a motion that we grant the abatement request for penalties and interest of $578.64 and adopt the findings and reasons on, well, I'll leave it at that interest of $578.64 recognizing that this is manifestly unjust. Okay, thank you for that motion. Appreciate that, Councilor Powell. It was very quick. Second from Councilor Shannon. Is there any further discussion of this motion? Councilor Hanson, go ahead. Yeah, I'm just wondering if the committee itself or the chair or any members can weigh in on whether or not they still agree with the decision they made at this point or if they've changed their mind? I can speak for all three when I say we struggled really hard, we did them in different order. I think we did Mr. Mellonkopf and 3.03 first because they were there. And so by the time we got to these, we sort of, it's like Councilor Flurman already said, we had basically developed a de facto rule where we felt like we wanted to act as a rule where we felt like we wanted to act as just the fairly to everybody. So I think I will be supporting it. Yeah, I agree that if we apply this consistently, then I would support granting this abatement as well as the other COVID related request for abatement. Okay, thank you, Councilor Freeman. Anyone else on this item? Okay, so are we ready to go for Councilor Mason? Go ahead. I guess I appreciate that, but I'm not sure I'm understanding when someone says we apply this, I'm not sure what this is. Is this a COVID related reason behind not filing one's taxes? Is that the this, if no one wants to answer that, that's fine. I'm just trying to understand what is the articulated policy that we're now following. Okay, Councilor Mason, I'll go to, it looks like Councilor Freeman has an answer. Councilor Freeman? I mean, this person specifically cited, I don't know if I have it open anymore, but the reason they didn't, I'm trying to go back to it. Was that your question? Yeah, I mean, I was trying to read it. I mean, my read of it was it was pretty shut down, but this person was a healthcare worker, obviously an essential worker, and asserted that they were not as attentive because of fatigue. Or stress, I think that, so like the aspect around how we're being, like we've made it allowable that are like permissible that the person has underlying conditions with the sweet water property, the, there's so many initials, the person who was collecting the mail. And so that was like a subjective reason that that was like more permissible that we grant the abatement. Like it just, it seems to me that if we have one reason around sort of, it's not, to me, it's not, the reason why we're abating it or is it's not explicitly like quantitative, it's not just like cut and dry. There's a qualitative aspect to it. And so the consistency to me is around, is around, I mean, those components of trying to, yeah, deal whether you're an essential worker and, or whether you're, someone on staff is now, having a hard time getting to the mail or whatever it is, there's just a lot of sort of qualifiers that have made this an incredibly difficult time. So again, I think that's why I was sort of on the fence. It's, it's hard because it's so hard to say it's a hard and fast rule, but I feel like if we do one, then we should do all three of them because all three of these folks, like solely said that because of COVID, it was incredibly difficult and I did not pay my bill because of my tax payment. Great, Councilor Mason, I'll come back to you. Does that answer your question? Yes, thank you. Okay, were there any other Councillors wishing to speak to this item? Okay, seeing none, all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. So that leaves us, that brings us back to the, well, we had tabled the other item 3.01. I believe when you put something on the table, you need to make a motion to bring it off of the table. Is that correct, Attorney Blackwood? Yes. Councilor Freeman. We can move to take 3.01 off the back of the tables at the motion, I don't know. Remove it from the table, yeah. Remove it from the table and to grant, can I do this one? Let's do the remove from the table and then the other one, sorry to be. So sorry. It's okay. So there's a motion to remove it from the table as seconded by Councilor Shannon. Any discussion? Okay, hearing none, let's go to a vote on removing it from the table. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes and we're now, we've removed it from the table. So now we can bring it back for consideration. Councilor Freeman, were you wanting to make a motion on that? Yes, please. I move to grant the abatement request for penalties of interest of $1,583.87. Okay, and are you able to include in your motion just the condition under which you're... Manifestly unjust. Okay, thank you for specifying that. We have a motion. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Pine. Any further discussion of this item? Okay, seeing none, looks like we're ready to vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, that passes unanimously. So now we're on to item 3.02, which is another request for abatement of taxes with regards coming from Sweetwater's LLC. I'm gonna come to one of the committee members. Are you interested in making a motion on this? For, I'll make a motion to deny the abatement request of penalties and interest in the amount of $578.64 and adopt the findings. Well, I'm sorry. I'll make a motion to grant the abatement request of penalties and interests of $578.64 for the findings previously made regarding collection. You're on mute, Councilor Paulino. Sorry. I have multiple screens that I navigated off the page and I was reading off another item. Sorry, I'm with you now. So we're 3.02, right? Yep. Gotcha. All right, motion to approve the abatement request of penalties and interests of $147.01 with the same basis previously stated by Mr. Milankoff regarding Sweetwater's for the same property, different taxes, different penalties and regarding the finding being that it manifests and just based on the current natural disaster pandemic during the time the misinformation regarding when and which deadlines were due for these specific taxes and penalties. I second the motion. Okay, thank you. From the motion, Council Paulino and the second, Councilor Freeman. We'll go to the city assessor as we did in the last case, city assessor, can you just explain what's going on here with this item and then we'll go and then we'll move David from Sweetwater's another chance to weigh in on this as well. Sure. This item is related to business personal property tax that Sweetwater's has and it's a similar situation where there was a late payment and penalties and interests were applied and it was missed due to a lot of confusion and you see it I guess as a hardship it's manifestly unjust. Okay, thank you for that. I'm gonna now give David Milankoff from Sweetwater's a chance to just address this item if you'd like to. I think we got quite a bit of context in the last one. So David, if you wanted to address this again though but I just ask you to be a little bit more brief this time around just so that we can keep the meeting going. Sure, I can be concise. Well, it was the same situation and I think it was all part of the same tax bill. So I don't think I have anything else to say except for thank you for the approval of the last one. I appreciate it. Sure, okay, great. Thank you for being here this evening and for giving us some context to that. I'll turn now to counselors any further discussion of this item? Okay, seeing none. We'll go to a vote on that. All counselors in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, hearing none that passes unanimously which brings us to our final item on the tax abatement agenda item 3.03. Counselor Freeman, go ahead. I move to grant the abatement request of penalties and interest of $2,134.23 on the finding, on the reason being that it's manifestly unjust. Okay, second. We have a motion from Counselor Freeman a second by Counselor Stromberg. Any, actually let's now I'll go to City Assessor Vickery for an explanation of this one. Okay. The Joanne Lafayette holdings has, I think it was five or six different properties. Same situation. She thought that penalties and interest would be waved and that she had more time to pay her tax bills on these rental units that she manages and owns. And her request is that it's manifestly unjust because there was a lot of confusion around that time as to when to pay it and she missed it. She made mention that she didn't want to touch her mail for a few days and that's why more penalties and interest were applied from the delinquent notice and that she paid it as soon as she found out. Is there anything else? Okay, all right. Thank you for that explanation. Counselor Polinot, did you have something to add? I just want to confirm it, but from memory, she paid it the day the interest was assessed, which I found to be remarkable. So it's like if she had, you know, and there was like a, there were COVID restrictions with how to pay your taxes at the time as well. I forget exactly what was the situation for that, whether it was a drop box, but just wanted to point that out. Okay, thank you for that. I've looked for the petitioner not able to locate, looks like that person to have them speak to this item. So I will now open the floor for counselors if you have comments or questions. Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, hearing none, that passes. So barring objection, any objections, we are adjourned as the Board of Tax Abatement, brings us to our final meeting of the night, which is the Board of Civil Authority, which I'll turn over to Mayor Weinberger. Tracy, I will call into order the Board of Civil Authority at 9.30 p.m. And the first item on the agenda is the agenda. I would welcome a motion on it. Councilor Paul. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. I'll make them to adopt the agenda as presented. Great. Is there a second? Second from Councilor Stromberg, any discussion? We will go to a vote. All those in favor, adopt the agenda, please say aye. Any opposed? We have an agenda and that brings us to the consent agenda. I welcome my motion on that. Councilor Hightower. Move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Excellent. Seconded by Councilor Freeman. And any discussion? All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion carries unanimously and that brings us to the end of the agenda and without objection, President Tracy, we are adjourned at 9.31 p.m. Great. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. So with that, we will reconvene the city council, the regular city council meeting at 9.31 and we will go into our deliberative agenda, which is item, which begins with item 6.01, a resolution on the approval of the language access plan. I'm gonna go to Councilor Pine for our motion and before we get a presentation from the CIO's office. So, Councilor Pine, can we please have a motion? Yes, I would move that the council approve the language access plan as proposed and as outlined and request the floor back very briefly after a second. Okay, so we have a motion. Is there a second? Seconded by Councilor Stromberg. Go ahead, Councilor Pine, you have a floor. Mr. President, if we could just highlight for discussion, hopefully, maybe IT director Low can answer the question about whether the implementation plan that is also part of this resolution would result in a clearer path for folks for whom English is not their first language to access and utilize city services and programs. So if you could just answer, help us with that because of what we had heard earlier was an applicant asking that he was partially here to understand some of the process and the condition. I just wanna revisit that briefly and if you could, thank you. Great, thank you for that. I'll turn it over to CIO Low at this point. Thank you, Council President Tracy and Councilor Pine. Very happy to be here tonight to talk briefly about the language access policy. And I'm joined by my colleagues, Pet Kiyomunivon and Carolyn Felix, who've done a great deal of work to advance this policy. I also wanna thank Joy Hovstatt and Eileen Blackwood in the city attorney's office, the city and our committee and Councilor Jang, who have done a lot of work kind of repeatedly engaging on this and over the last couple of months. We have a very brief, effectively four-slide presentation to kind of explain what this is and how it will work. And Councilor Pine, I'll make sure to address your question as part of the presentation here. So, Council President Tracy, is it all right to share my screen and speak briefly? Yes, please do. And are you able to see the screen here? Yeah, I can see the screen. It's still in the, it's not in like the display mode. It's still showing the full PowerPoint. Okay, as long as you're okay with that, I'm gonna just scroll through with the... I think that's fine. Councilors also have it on board docs as well, but yeah, go right ahead, Councilor. I see, I hear a low. Okay. So, the language access policy basically follows federal guidance from the Department of Justice around language access. And federal law requires that cities set aside resources when any more linguistic group reaches the 5% population threshold within the community. That's not yet the case in Burlington and I'll turn it over to my colleague briefly or in a moment to speak more about the current situation in Burlington. But despite that, the mayor has wanted us to proceed with developing language access policy for our community. If you were to approve this policy tonight, you'd set in motion a series of steps, a needs assessment and an implementation plan that would result in a series of resource allocation and prioritization questions being resolved for the city to make sure that there is meaningful access across all city departments for language access. The goal really is to provide timely and meaningful access to all our residents. Councilor Pine, you asked a specific question about whether the example we heard earlier in public forum, whether this plan would help address some of the challenges that that individual had faced. And the way this works is that the policy is providing a set of criteria by which the city would make judgments. So this kind of implementation plan that you would see again in the future is based around four criteria laid out in federal law. If city attorney Blackwood wants to correct me, I'm certainly would defer to her, but the criteria I believe are the proportion of people who have what the federal government terms limited English proficiency who are served by a program, the frequency with which those people come into contact with the program, the nature and importance that the program or initiative or service has in people's lives and the resources available to the grantee, which in this case would be the city and the cost. And so those criteria are how those questions are adjudicated in our policy. We distill it basically down to emergency and essential services. We really want people to be able to access services in the city. So let me turn it over to Pet here and then we can come back if you have additional questions. Thank you for having us speak on this really important matter. Why do we need the language access policy? Well, in a sense, you all know that city of Burlington is a pretty vibrant city. We attract a lot of diverse cultures and visitors across our city. But over the past few years since the 80s, we've grown in our demographics, particularly in non-speaking residents due to resettlement. And then in addition to we've also, we attract a lot of visitors from our neighbors in Canada. As Brian had mentioned, there is a federal requirement that if you have one specific language that exceeds over the 5%, you would need to provide the language services across your city departments for municipalities. We are not there, but that doesn't mean that it's not the right thing to do and the equitable thing to do. And we want to develop a way for people to have meaningful access, get information what they need and also to be represented in city programs and civic engagement. So this way, having this policy will ensure consistency across our city departments so that we can train our city departments to our staff to have consistency around how to implement interpreter and translation services, what needs to be implemented and also to provide a much more centralized coordination support for our city staff. So I'll turn over to Brian again to talk more about what this would do, more in the logistics. Thanks. What this would do is it would lead to effectively some significant restructuring within our city. We have currently across well over a dozen city departments a variety of different translation and interpretation services that are offered, some of which work well, some of which don't, some of which maybe don't always appreciate how time has evolved since they were initially put in place. And so a big part of this effort would be standardizing those contracts and those resources making sure that we're consistent across city departments. There would be a likely reclassification of an existing position that would come back to the council through the board of finance to and be informed by a needs assessment what is happening in our community, what's happening in our city and how do we need to apply these resources and the reclassification would centralize responsibility for that significant responsibility in one position in the city that one individual would manage a variety of different contracts and trying to standardize the current system. The other thing I want to flag for the council we made sure to flag with CDNR as well is the city is committing to providing emergency essential services, those things that meet those thresholds laid out in the Department of Justice guidance. There may be some services ultimately that need to be balanced against other budgetary or programmatic constraints. That's something that would be informed by a needs assessment but it's something that I do want to flag here. And then I'm going to turn it over for the last slide to my colleague, Carolyn Felix. Thank you Brian and thank you counselors for listening to this plan for this evening. I think that one thing that's very critical here is having a clear understanding of the need in Burlington, especially across the various language groups. And so one of the first steps would be to conduct a needs assessment and the policy outlines a requirement for a needs assessment to be conducted and updated every three years. So we can continually check in on the community needs. The needs assessment would be conducted in partnership with the INT department, with CEDO and with racial equity inclusion and belonging department as well as other community organizations. And it's kind of a three tiered approach. There would be a desk research phase. There would also be city staff engagement and surveys and community kind of focus groups. Although I anticipate there will probably be remote focus groups. And the goal would be to have the needs assessment completed by April 1st of 2021. And then from there, based on what we learn and updated data, updated census data which will be released in December, we can then put together a more formalized language access services implementation plan. And that implementation plan would be implemented in part with INT support, support from our racial equity and inclusion belonging department and led by CEDO's community engagement specialist. And I'll turn it back over to Brian or others if there are questions, President Tracy. Great, thank you so much to the three of you for that wonderful presentation. Was there anything to add, CIO Low? No, nothing further from me, Council President. Okay, great. So let's open the floor to questions and comments from counselors. Councilor Pine, go ahead. I recall a couple of years ago, understanding that the New American community in that is often referred to as Bhutanese or Nepalese, that they were approaching a significant number. Is there a reliable way to, I mean, the census is a pretty slow and kind of not a very accurate count of every population. So I think I just am curious about how you derive that number, those numbers, when you look at that 5% figure. And so if you could speak to that. I do think it's based on census data. So I don't have an alternative source to the census to drop on that. But it is the three year sort of rolling American community survey, not the 10 year count that has done the decennial census that is just wrapping up now, right? It's not that one. Correct, I think it's a five year rolling, but yes, correct. Okay, so you have those numbers for the various populations, population groups in Burlington for whom English is not their first language? Yes, and our numbers put that at about 14% of the total population. But then within that, there's no one group that is above 5% of the total population, no one linguistic group above 5% of the total population. And then lastly, any estimate if, I guess it all depends on what happens with federal relocation program, refugee assistance relocation programs, right? Because that under this administration has halted to a standstill really. So I think it seems like it's largely driven by what happens at the federal level and where those priorities are as far as, folks from what countries are being prioritized by the State Department, I think. You may know more about that process than I do, Councilor Cain. I don't know that I should weigh in too much there. I do think that 14% figure is a notable figure. It's a significant part of our population that is non-English speaking. You're not English speaking is the first language. Okay, thank you. I would also add that when we're talking about limited English proficiency, it's not just populations that are non-English speakers, but we're also talking about hearing impairment, vision impairment. So we're talking about other disabilities too. Great, I'll second Councilor Cain. Okay, other Councilors? Councilor Cain, go ahead. Yes, I think it would be important to really thank Brian and Caroline and Pat for the outstanding job that they have been doing. And this is since maybe last year. And what I like the most is their approach in making sure they hear directly from those that will be affected or will be served better. I think that patients and Brian in some cases in weekends, he finds a group of new Americans and bring the policy forward. I think, I don't know how many, many times we read this, redo, revisit, read, so many times. And it also would be important to point out that this is all about where are we going? Because seven months ago, you look at the city website, there were almost no meaningful translation and now it is already happening. Ballots, even the ballots people are voting, those ballots are now translated. It's all on city's website, right? And some issues that are happening here, water, hour break, the tweak turn around, I really do appreciate it. And I think this is all about where are we going? And it is a policy that really construct the road in which we should walk in carefully and meaningfully in order to implement something that might work for many people. I just wanted to say that. Thank you so much for all your hard work on this and looking forward to the Finnish project, right? And in collaboration with you, of course. Thank you. Any further comments from counselors? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote on this item. All those in favor of adopting the language access plan, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. I want to thank the city team for bringing this to us in such a great presentation this evening. We will now go to item 6.02, which is a public hearing regarding front yard parking. This is actually the public hearings for all of the zoning items. So for those folks who are interested in speaking to those specific items, and I believe one of the folks who did sign up for the public forum, Alicia D. Mario, had noted that they were interested in speaking on these items. So if folks are interested in speaking just to the zoning items, this is part of the statutory requirements of adopting a zoning changes that we open a public forum prior to the consideration of these items. So I'm going to go ahead and open the public forum for the following items. The consideration of front yard, ZA 20-07, front yard parking, ZA 20-08, convalescent home lot coverage, ZA 20-09, 311 North Ave, rezone parks lot coverage standards, WRM height exemption, ZA 21-01 day cares and preschools in RCO, and ZA 21-02 temporary tents. So we'll open the public forum. So if anybody's interested in speaking to any of those specific zoning amendments, please use the raise hand function in the Zoom, if you would like to speak to any of these items. Again, if you'd like to speak to any of these items. Okay, I see that Alicia D. Mario has raised their hand on this item. Alicia, go ahead. Hi, thank you for having me this evening. I am here representing Birchwood Terrace. I'd like to thank you for everyone's efforts thus far in assisting us in all healthcare operations and obtaining appropriate parking in the city of Burlington. We've stemmed, our parking situation has stemmed back to 2017-2018 when the parking, with the parking ban on North Ave and it created what we found to be an issue with parking for the skilled nursing facility. We are zoned for 45 parking spaces to run a facility of 144 beds. We have over 100 employees who work there daily as well as staff, visitors, vendors that come. I really just appreciate the fact that you have made the exception or recommendation to add convalescent care in the inclusionary bonus which is consistent with practices elsewhere in the city. So thank you for that. I was saddened to hear that we did not approve the one to two parking spot ratios but I am happy for the small victories that we have. So thank you for the consideration in allowing this inclusionary bonus for healthcare and convalescent care. It's very helpful in allowing us to operate efficiently and take care of the city's frail and elderly population. So thank you. Thank you for those comments. Are there additional members of the public interested in addressing these zoning amendments? If you are, please use the raise hand function that's part of the Zoom and you can, okay, see none. I'm gonna go ahead and close the public hearing on items and we'll move into the zoning amendments themselves. I'm gonna come to, so that will be moving on to item number 6.03. Councilor Mason, may I please have a motion on item 6.03? Yes, thank you, President Tracy. I'd like to make a motion to waive the reading, waive the second reading, adopt the ordinance as drafted and ask for the floor back after a second. Okay, we have a motion as our second. Seconded by Councilor Stromberg. How you have the floor, Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. The front yard parking amendment before us as noted in Scott Gustin's memo has been before the ordinance committee bouncing back and forth with ordinance for probably over a year, year and a half. This latest iteration attempts to address the consistent concerns over the potential for parking between a residential structure in the street even when not actually within a front yard setback. This sort of got kicked off when it became apparent that there was an interpretation from the DRB that was inconsistent with the planning offices interpretation. So that's what sort of started this and it has gone back and forth. I appreciate even when discussing on our caucus last night there was even a little bit of confusion. So I have asked Scott Gustin and I know David and Megan are both here to maybe afford a little bit more background discussion in terms of how we got here and also the interplay between this proposed amendment and the outright ban on front yard parking that is in another provision of our ordinance. So with that, I'm not sure, Scott if you're the lucky next speaker, but I'll turn it over. Thank you. Sorry, if you have something to add, go right ahead. So sure, this amendment tonight is a site design standard for basically for where dryways can be for residential properties. That's really all it is. There's no new policy here. The zoning code has had this provision for 20 or 25 years. As Councilor Mason noted, there was a, the DRB had a different take on what the present reading actually meant versus how it was implemented. And we have the discussion. Do we want to clarify it and continue to implement it as intended or go a different route? And there was merit found in keeping the provision and simply clarifying it. So again, it's just, it's a site design standard for where dryways can be for residential properties. The outright ban on parking on the grass is something different. That's actually under a separate city ordinance under chapter 26 and basically applies to the city center. It doesn't apply towards four and seven and parts of five and six. I will point out that if you simply decide to park on your lawn and do it long enough that the grass dies and the dirt gets compacted, you've established a de facto unpermitted parking spot and that can sometimes be a zoning enforcement action. But again, that's, that has nothing to do with the site design standard in this amendment tonight. Okay, thank you for that clarification. Are there, the floor is open for Councilor Comments. Okay, seeing none, we'll, oh, Councilor Chen, go ahead. Yeah, and maybe this applies to citywide and not on the specific neighborhoods. This, yes, this applies citywide to residential properties. Yeah, thank you. Any other questions or comments from Councilors? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote on, on the zoning amendment. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. We'll go now to item 6.04. Councilor Mason, may it please have a motion on that? Yes, President Tracey, thank you. I'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading of the ordinance. Ask for the floor back after a second. And I also, when my motion would like to send the communication from the Planning Commission that we received to the Public Works Commission. Okay, thank you. Is there a second to that? I see Councilor Stromberg. Thank you for that. You have the floor, Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracey. So this proposed amendment as Mr. Mayo noted before came to the Ordinance Committee and sought two things. The first was to adjust the maximum permissible law coverage to 44%, which is consistent with the inclusionary zoning allowance. And the second piece was to adjust the minimum parking requirement from one parking space to two patient beds. The Ordinance Committee, as Mr. Mayo noted, did move forward the first, but not the second. And I wanna explain why. There was some concern at the Ordinance Committee that this, you know, I appreciate that there's an issue just at Birchwood, but if implemented this amendment would apply citywide. The other concern that the Ordinance Committee felt was, it seemed odd at a time when we were bending over backwards and spending an inordinate amount of time trying to reduce reliance on parking and vehicles and transportation and demand plans and everything else to turn around and double the size of the parking at this facility that's on North Avenue, on a major bus line. Having said that, we were sensitive to the specific requirements of Birchwood and we were, you know, there is a parking waiver that is still available to Birchwood should they choose to go down that path. So for that reason, the committee, you know, did not act in support of the second requirement increasing the number of patient beds. I wanna call to everyone's attention, there is a memo that if this passes will be referred to DPW that sort of walks through that the Planning Commission put forth explaining how some of this is due in part because of the resident only parking and then, you know, in some of the adjoining streets that is currently in place. So many of the nurses who might be able to park or staff, you know, on an adjacent public street are not able to do that. Again, I don't think that's something we're gonna be able to solve tonight, but I think it's important, you know, again to get this before Public Works Commission and make them aware and as well as us of some of the consequences of resident only parking. So with that, I also note there are many members of the planning staff here who can answer any specific questions from counselors. Thank you for that, bottom of there. Any questions or comments from counselors? I see none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Okay, hearing none, that passes unanimously, which brings us to our next item, item 6.05. Councilor Mason, can I come back to you for another motion on that one? Yes, thank you, President Frazier. I'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading about the ordinance as presented. And again, ask for the floor back after a second. Seconded by Councilor Hightower, you have the floor, Councilor Mason. Hold on, let me turn the paper. Thank you, President Tracy. This proposed amendment seeks to rezone 12 acres that were acquired in 2016 as part of the transaction involving the Burlington College property. It seeks to rezone it as city parkland but also as a technical cleanup tries to eliminate a conflict between our existing ordinance and form-based code. And finally, it eliminates the waterfront RM height exemption, which my understanding and David will correct me if I'm wrong, really only applies currently to a very small sliver of property on Depot Street that is not really developable. So, David's saying yes, he's not speaking. So, with that, I will note again that planning staff is here to answer any specific questions on this amendment. Okay, thanks for that. Any questions or comments from counselors? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote. Oh, Councilor Shannon, did you have something? Yes, thank you, President Tracy. Why are we changing the height limit on undevelopable property? We're taking it away. My understanding, David, but my understanding is we're bringing it down. Correct, I'm happy to speak to that. In the waterfront RM zoning district, there was an allowance for additional height that was created specifically targeted when it was created back in the 80s or 90s to what was the Catholic diocese property, the orphanage property. Because of the way it was defined, it was a distance from the shore and a certain elevation. There was a small sliver of it that actually extended to a small section of RM, WRM, that's off of Depot Street. It's really not applicable anymore now that the Catholic diocese property is developed as Cambrian rise and where it remains is really an area that's undevelopable at that height limit. So we're just removing it and cleaning up the ordinance. Okay, thank you. Okay, any further discussion? President Tracy, if I may. Yeah, go ahead. Thank you, I just wanted to clarify, there was a typo that we found. And so there's two versions of the amendment on Bordax. I just wanna clarify that you're really passing the one under consideration is identified with city council second reversion in the title in the attach maps. Thank you. Thank you. Councilor Mason, is that? No, yes, my apologies. The city attorney's office informed me of that and I forgot. So thank you, Ken, for reminding us. Okay, thank you for that clarification. Is there any further discussion of this item? Okay, seeing none, we will go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously, which brings us to another zoning item. Item 6.06, may it please have a motion on that, Councilor Mason? Thank you, President Tracy. I would like to make a motion to waive the second reading, adopt the ordinance as presented and ask for the floor back for a brief introduction after a second. Any other motions or a second? Seconded by Councilor Hightower. Go ahead, Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. This amendment originates from a request made by the Windowsky Valley Parks District on behalf of its tenants, the Ethan Allen Museum and the Forest Preschool. As a result of changing needs, there was a look at the zoning ordinance and it currently, as currently drafted, it's limiting the expansion of Forest Preschool in two ways by limiting the gross floor area of the facility enrollment to 20 children. After planning office looked at this, the ordinance committee was presented with these amendments, which will address those limitations. The recommendation that was approved by the ordinance committee was to amend the CDO to eliminate the distinction between large and small daycare and preschool facilities as there is no material difference between them and also remove the gross floor area limit on their size relative to museums within the RCO districts. As with a number of these other proposed amendments, the ordinance committee has heard no opposition or even for support for that matter. These have sort of gone through without any comment. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor Mason. Any discussion of this item? Okay. Seeing none, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? I have to abstain. Are you up for, you don't know how abstentions are. Are you recusal? Yeah, recusal. Yeah, recusal to avoid the appearance of a conflict of interest. Okay. Okay. Thank you, Councilor Pine. Councilors, if you have recusals, please state so at the beginning of the item before the debate. Thank you though. So that passes unanimously with one recusal noted of Councilor Pine. Our next item is 6.07, yet another ordinance or last ordinance of the evening, Councilor Mason may please have another motion on this one. Thank you, President Tracey. I'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading, adopt the ordinance as presented and ask for the floor back after a second. Okay. We have a motion and seconded from Councilor Hightower. Go ahead, Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracey. This is the easiest of them. This is a COVID related amendment exempting the zoning ordinance to provide additional flexibility in the temporary structure provisions to exempt tents, which we are availing ourselves of during this pandemic as defined in the National Fire Protection Act 101 from requiring a zoning permit, provided that's for up to 100 day period and also remaining contingent on the fire marshal's issuance of a temporary tent permit. Thank you. Okay, is there any further discussion of this item? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. Thanks to the Ordinance Committee for moving all those along and for those members of the plan for joining us this evening providing explanations where necessary. That brings us to our final item of the deliberative agenda, which is a communication in line with an earlier resolution that came from the City Council. I'm gonna go first to the Charter Change Chair, Joan Shannon, and then had to be followed by Attorney Blackwood. So, Councilor Shannon, go ahead. Thank you, President Tracey. On our agenda, it says we're going to accept the communication and place it on file, but if you're willing, I'd like to not make a motion at this point. I'm hoping that all of this work doesn't just get placed on file and the Council has some different options as to what to do with it. So, is it okay if I kind of introduce, start the introduction of what we've done, why we've done it, where we're going, and then turn it over to Attorney Blackwood, if that's all right with you. Sure, go ahead. Okay, thank you. So, the Council, what was referred to the Charter Change Committee was this, that the Council, acknowledging the need to change current policies regarding discipline and oversight of our police, requests that the Charter Change Committee review options for who makes and review disciplinary decisions and report on the various options to the full Council in October. So, we worked diligently, didn't quite make that October deadline, but here we are first meeting in November. This was a lot to wrestle with. There are, of course, infinite options regarding who might make disciplinary decisions and after doing some wrestling with it ourselves, we asked Attorney Blackwood to do some research and see what's happening in other communities. And so, that is the document that's before you, looking at different police oversight bodies in different communities, as well as recommendations from the ACLU. And I wanna, it was really a tremendous amount of work and research that Attorney Blackwood put into this to help us kind of make sense of some options. And I am so grateful to her for that work. So, the Committee has referred this back to the Council, but at the same time, based on this work, the Committee has also looking at some possible charter changes, well, a really a rewrite of this section of the charter based on these recommendations and the recommendations of the ACLU. That may be what the Council wants us to do, but you haven't really told us that that's what you want us to do. And it's a little bit in conflict with what you have told us you want us to do. So, I want to also bring your attention to the racial justice through economic criminal justice resolution, which at that time, you asked the Charter Change Committee to review and propose amendments to the charter, to the City Charter that authorized the Police Commission to approve by simple majority any disciplinary decision, including a decision of non-discipline, the Police Chief wishes to implement in a use of force case with such approval, including the right to impose a new and different discipline as the Commission deems appropriate. That didn't have a report back deadline. Attorney Blackwood has drafted something that is responsive to this request, but that is in conflict with going in this other direction of creating a new body with new authority, which is the road we have started down. And at the same time, we have the Joint Committee of the Public Safety Committee and the Police Commission that are also doing a lot of really important work, working with the community to determine what our policing needs are, that arguably needs to come before we completely restructure the oversight body and the disciplinary process. So, I'm hoping that the council might give some guidance tonight. As to what you would like your charter change committee to do at this point. And if you want us to continue down the road that we are on working on this charter change, or I mean, it is taking a lot of particularly city attorney resources to do this and I'm concerned about that. I don't think that that's, by our council rules, we're not supposed to use a lot of staff resources without the approval of the council. So, if that's what you would like us to do, I would like a motion to that effect if it's more appropriate for this to be working in conjunction with the Joint Committee then perhaps this should be referred to the Joint Committee. And I'll also just note that one of the advantages of creating that Joint Committee and the work that they're doing is that it is a more diverse body and a larger body than the Charter Change Committee. And it's including the police commissioners and the police commission has not been included in this work up to this point. So I'll leave it at that and turn it over to attorney Blackwood to kind of give you a brief run-through of this. I would really encourage everybody to dig into this work because I know that attorney Blackwood isn't going to be able to go into all the detail that's there but it is really important to read it carefully. Thank you. Councilor Shannon, attorney Blackwood. Thank you. So this, I hope you have a chance to look at least skim through these materials because there's a lot of information and there are a lot of options. I think the key issue here is let me start with the question that was referred to the committee which is options for police discipline. And in most communities in the US police discipline matters are investigated by an internal affairs officer within the police or a bureau or supervisory officers and decided by the police chief or other command staff. But some communities include various civilian bodies in that and one of the big issues that has come up around police reform in the last, certainly highlighted in the last number of months is enhancing the role of civilian oversight. So this document that I prepared and a lot of what I reviewed is really looking at what are the models of civilian oversight? What are the options? How do you look at that? How do you pull that civilian oversight into police discipline? So one of the primary resources and if you don't have time which you probably don't to look at everything it would be good for you probably all to skim the National Association of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement called the COLE. It's guidelines for communities that are trying to work their way through these issues. It gives you a good overview of some of the issues. It takes you through starting with kind of goals. What are the goals that the community is trying to meet? Because one of the key things of all of this research is that there are somewhere in the neighborhood of 160 different communities that have these police oversight boards. And according to these experts that have looked at it no two are the same. So there is not a single best practice in how do you do civilian oversight? It's very tailored to each community. And that's why it's taken the Charter Change Committee so much time to kind of think about this to look at this. But when you look at goals and certainly the goals can include things like improving public trust ensuring there's an accessible process for members of public to make complaints ensuring thorough and fair investigations of alleged police misconduct ensuring transparency in the process all of those things and many other goals seem very clear to be goals that Burlington has or what we're looking at and how we wanna look at these issues. One another key piece is that there have been lots and lots of calls for an oversight body that has independence from the police department that in and of itself doesn't isn't just another arm of the police that the public is able to see it and see that there is some independence. So those are pieces. There are a number of other key elements that I think will come through as we look at a variety of different options here. The ACLU has submitted a position paper with a model that they have put forward and a lot of that is what's gonna get that will come out I think as you get into some of the details here. But in general, it's widely considered there are essentially three different models or three different functions that a civilian oversight board can do. The first of those is a review board and that is basically that the independent, the body can be independent but it allows the police department to conduct investigations, it can review them, it can act on, it can take information, it can have staff, it cannot have staff. It generally doesn't adjudicate complaints, it doesn't like hold hearings and have findings to determine discipline but some of them have appeal rights. Again, these are all over the board but generally a review board is sort of seen as the initial level and in many ways the review board is very similar to the police commission that we currently have that where the police department consults, they can send the police department back and say, hey, we don't really like what you recommended chief, we have these questions, we think you should do this differently, things like that. And it generally is the primary issue is being able to provide civilian input into the police process. Smaller communities around the country tend to use this review model because it's the least costly model and yet it provides a role for civilian oversight and that can be a broad role. It can have a very, that review board can have some authority but it is sort of the smallest level role in the materials, there are some examples of this kind of body. The second level of or the, and these are kind of in more progressive levels of the way that folks think about how you move through this because one of the recommendations that, that on the poll and some of the other advocates say is that a community should do sort of the lowest level of intervention that meets its need. And in this instance, one of the reasons why Burlington is considering greater civilian oversight is because of some lack of public trust around decisions that have been made in the past. And that's a reality that we're all looking at and considering as, and that seems from all of these reviews to say, yeah, that's what you're supposed to do. If what you have isn't meeting everybody's needs is it's not building public trust then you'd try the next level. So the investigative model is the next level and this is a board that is fully independent of the police department. It has paid professional staff that conduct investigations and does, and so it wrote, they interview witnesses, they gather evidence that it is a very much more robust system. That system is built in with the staff and a board and then the board takes the results of the investigations, makes findings on those and either can make recommendations or can make disciplinary decisions on the investigation. There are also many, many hybrids of this where this independent board only investigates certain kinds of allegations or it chooses which allegations, which complaints from members of the public, for example, that it is going to investigate. And the police departments in most of these situations still have their own internal affairs bureau that conducts their own internal investigations on matters that the investigatory or board does not do. And then the third general type is what they call an auditor or monitor model. And this is a model and it's based on the theory that it is less individual discipline matters that make change in police reform than large pattern and systemic review and analysis and change. So that based on that theory, this third group of boards has a, it has a board, they generally have a staff that closely monitors and audits police practices and individual disciplinary systems. But with a lot of focus on trying to use data and look at what kinds of complaints are we getting? How doing research in those, so what can we do to address those complaints on a systemic level? If there are, if use of force, if there is too much use of force or use of force, people aren't comfortable with what digging into what kind of training needs to get changed, things like that. Looking at the big systemic issues, that's kind of the third model of these. Again, as I said, many of these systems combine elements of all of these three functions or models in them. So just moving forward through and in the report, I talk a little bit about some of the strengths and weaknesses of each of those different models. And then in part four of the report, I picked a number of different communities that had some element of similarity to Burlington and some of them are larger, some of them are smaller, but that had some issues and laid out for you here a little bit about how those boards were constituted, what their level of authority was and the kind of models that they have. And I did them in a chronological order starting with Denver, which first started up this independent monitor and auditor role. They were one of the first communities to really robustly put that kind of monitoring and analysis in place. And they started in August of 2005. So they've had some time, there are links to annual reports and things from that department that are very interesting. I also suggested looking at Farmington, New Mexico, which the Police Assessment Resource Center, which is another advocacy group for civilian oversight reform, did a report for Farmington. Farmington is about Burlington's size and so it was interesting in how they recommended that a smaller community would be able to have the elements of independence, but still have the police department continue to conduct investigations, but would have a director of this independent body that would help structure the investigation, work with the police department to do that, would observe the monitoring and auditing the processes that went along. I also put Chicago in here because Chicago has made a lot of changes over the time and currently is still contemplating more changes because there are folks there being very active in working on options for how these various boards can operate. I included Ferguson, Missouri as an option just because it has been so high profile, it's been operating under consent decree and it's a much smaller community than Burlington. So, but it has put a lot of time and energy into trying to reform its police department. I included Charlottesville, which is closer to Burlington's, but they have a, they have more, they have closer to a review system, but they have done some enhancements to that system that are very interesting in terms of having an independent employee for that board and having that board have some broader representation. The newest model that I found was from Madison, Wisconsin, which was just adopted in September and it's a kind of updated, modified version of what Denver does. It's a much larger community than we are, so, and this is our first police oversight agency, so they haven't had one before. And again, they are giving them a fair amount of authority. Under Wisconsin state law, it appears that they have, they already have civilian, they operate under something like our old commission system, so they have a police and fire commission that already has involvement in hiring and firing of folks, but more the civilian board is set up to do a lot of the monitoring and looking and following the investigations closely and making recommendations for that, the other board to make decisions. So, there were out of all of this, there's a lot of consensus about various elements of what should happen that it's key for these independent boards to have access to any and all records of the police department, have full cooperation, access to all the management, access to all the policies that they should be able to review all the citizen civilian complaints that come in, even if no matter what their role, whether they're doing review or monitoring or investigation themselves, that they should look at all of those, that they should make policy recommendations for the department, that mediation should be a piece of what is offered to citizens, that there should be a lot of community outreach and that that's one of the things the civilian board should do as part of its role that it should analyze patterns and trends and deal with data and should be able to recommend all kinds of changes and that there should be annual and almost all of the systems have quarterly reports from these boards that are in writing and available to the public so that there's a lot of information about numbers of complaints, what they look like, what's happened to them, what kind of discipline, virtually all of these do not include names of complainants or officers and folks like that, things like that, for the most part. So there are a number of different areas in which these various systems vary between what the jurisdiction of it is, who does the investigation, who holds hearings, who has subpoena authority, if anybody, making findings, making recommendations and I've reviewed some of that and in this report, I then also posed several questions and summarized what the ACLU and public comments that have been received by the Charter Change Committee have archivaled it. Certainly the ACLU and all of the comments recommend that Burlington have a charter change that includes a civilian board with investigatory and disciplinary authority. The details of all of that is part of what the Charter Change Committee has still been talking about. So that includes my report. All right, thank you for that. I didn't want to interrupt you, but it is 1031 so we do need a motion on suspending the rules. So is someone prepared to offer a motion on suspending the rules? We just have, this is our last item on deliberative and we do have the executive session as well. Councilor Stromberg. All right, I move to suspend the rules. I don't think we need to add more, right? That's the last one. Are you meaning to include both this item and the executive session in that motion? Of course, yeah. So I would move to suspend the council rules to include the rest of this item and our executive session. Okay, excellent. There's a motion to suspend the rules. Is there a second? Seconded by councilor Shannon. Is there any additional discussion of that? Okay, hearing none, we'll go to a vote. Requires two thirds. All those in favor, please say aye. Any opposed? Okay, hearing none, that passes unanimously and we have suspended our rules to complete this item and deal with the executive session item as well. The floor is gonna be now open. I had councilor Paulino and then I'll follow up with councilor Hightower on Carpenter. Go ahead, councilor Paulino. Thank you, president Tracy. I reached out to councilor Hightower earlier today and I wanna share some of my thoughts. You know, I had the pleasure of serving on the special committee with her and I'm just so impressed by her work and dedication to herding stray cats, really. We all have different opinions. We're all committed and deeply invested. So she's been doing a really good job as a result of that. I don't mean to unnecessarily wanna be first but since I am, I plan on making a motion to refer. So I'll make the motion but not in an effort to stifle conversation. So to refer the options of who makes and reviews disciplinary decisions and report to the special committee for consideration. And so that's my motion. And I guess for the second, I'll discuss why I'm making it. That would probably be the best way to do it before I forget. Okay, thank you. So we have a motion. Is there a second to Councilor Polino's motion? Seconded by Councilor Carpenter. Go ahead, you have the floor, Councilor Polino. Yeah, so back to that committee. So that committee is super specialized. You know, we have Randall Harp who served in the previous committee who's very knowledgeable. We now have Professor Guino who already at her one meeting showed great value to the team focusing on substantive matters. And we're really slugging through word for word, these RFPs, we're gonna get them out. And I just think it would, one, we have to bring this item there, like period. If I said nothing else, we would have to do that. That would only be fair. But I guess the second question is, you know, we're doing a top-down assessment. And I heard the word a lot of public input, public complaints, public options from city attorney Blackwood. And we're gonna hire someone to do exactly that, to do a survey to the community to tell us what they think about BPD. That's just one of them, you know. The other part is that we're gonna pay someone, a lot of money to give us a top-down human resource assessment of this department to sort of give us an idea of what the problems are from, I guess, you know, an executive managerial to an employee level and what can be fixed. And I just think that if we jump to conclusions on how to reform the police commission without that information, we'd be putting ourselves at a great disadvantage. So that's my intent. For right now, I just wanna be able to discuss this in that committee, that's all. And then we go from there, who knows what's gonna happen, but that's the base of my motion. I'm not doing it to stifle communication. So I wanna keep it broad so people can just talk about what attorney Blackwood said. Thank you. I have a counselor Hightower in the queue. Great. So, I'm gonna also try to speak kind of broadly to address both counselor Shannon's point and counselor Polino's. So I guess the first thing is kind of an observation slash question is to step back because I do think that there's, I certainly feel, and I think probably a lot of us and certainly the public feels a sense of urgency around this. So I have not delved as deeply into the substantive matters as I think the folks on the Charter Change Committee have. And I think the thing that we kind of wanna prioritize getting done quickly is the, to me the valid question and the getting that whole process around Charter Change started. And then I think the part that we wanna do slowly is figuring out the exact structure, who's on it. And so I guess the question for me is as someone who hasn't been following the Charter Change process is how much those can be parallel process. I wouldn't want it to come out of Charter Change Committee without an understanding of what, like, yes, we heard about all those models, but to some like you were talking about like the auditor monitor model, it doesn't sound to me like that necessarily requires a huge Charter Change, because why would we require a chart? Maybe that's not true. I see counselor Shannon smiling, but it's like, how much of a Charter Change do we need to collect data and to make recommendations? That sounds like it's already in the purview of our current police commission. Whereas the investigatory sounds like it needs much more Charter. So I guess if we're looking at these, at the end, Attorney Black would list all these things that are very common throughout all of the different models that we looked at. And I guess I wonder if we look at that list of things that are common. Can we start, can the Charter Change Committee start to build a list of things that we know that we'll need, that we can get in front of voters and in front of the state even while we're still debating what that exactly looks like for Burlington. Councilor Shannon, go ahead. Thanks. I don't think, maybe you want Attorney Blackwood to answer this, but I think that when we're diving into these details and there's, how much we really have delved into these details is actually pretty limited. I would say Attorney Blackwood has really delved into the details at this point. And she has kind of presented us with some options, but those details are in the Charter Change because it's a major change from what we have now. Right now, who our Police Commission is, is in the Charter. And there's kind of a simple Charter Change that gives them more authority that was presented, but we haven't forwarded that to you and instead have been working on that more detailed change about how do we appoint these folks? What is the process by which we appoint them and what are their powers? That's those details that you're saying maybe can wait until we do this other work, that is exactly what we're working on now. So the Charter Change is pretty detailed. And I think that the less detailed Charter Change that is what you had requested in the Racial Justice Resolution is probably not ultimately what you want to end up with, but it's kind of an interim Charter Change, maybe before we can hash out all of those details because it's a lot. And I'm concerned that this small group is, and honestly an all white group is wrestling with all of these details while there's other work going on in your committee and that the commission is not part of this discussion either. So I'll leave it at that. Great, and President Tracey, do you have stuff for? Yep, go ahead. Yeah, and then the other thing is I do, it is a lot to make decisions and to come to consensus in a 10-person committee. So I don't think I support council members of Paulino's motion quite yet because I do think I would like the Charter Change committee to at least narrow down the universe of what is possible and give some direction to the joint committee before we hash out details there just because it seems, again, it's really like writing RFPs with 10 people. It's like a hard thing to do. And I also think that exploring an entire universe, getting 10 people to do all of the research is incredibly difficult. So I know it's also difficult, but I think I feel better asking three counselors to do that work than to ask seven citizens. And so I think I would really like a little bit more direction from the Charter Change committee before it goes to the joint. Okay, I have Councillor Carpenter to be followed by Councillor Freeman and Shannon. Go ahead, Councillor Carpenter. Thanks. This is more for Attorney Blackwood, but I wish someone could speak to me around what has to be in the Charter and whatnot. So stepping back, the problem we ran into earlier this year, when particularly the discussion around discipline for the three officers that we talked about was very limiting thing in our Charter that gives authority primarily to the chief, higher in fire, and that was not adequate. That was clear. And what we all said was we need to fix the Charter because that's just too limiting and too narrow. I have done little research on this, but it appears that Burlington has more in its Charter around police discipline than most any other municipality in the state. So I'm just wanting to understand before we even talked about which structure is the best, how much of it has to be in the Charter and how much of it is under the purview of the council to decide and recommend. So I guess if Attorney Blackwood could kind of answer some of that, that would be helpful for me. Or Attorney Blackwood. Depends a little on what you're trying to accomplish. You could have very general authorizing language in the Charter that is similar to a lot of the other general authorizing language that says that for example, that you can have a civilian oversight board and it can have these powers. It can do these various things. One of the difficulties that you face is that one of the largest issues that many folks have struggled with is the role of the union and in the union contract in setting out what disciplinary process will look like. And so one of the things that I think folks are looking for is for the Charter to have more in it that says, you know, what this is what the process is going to be rather than leaving it up to the bargaining process to come up with that. Does Burlington have more in its Charter about discipline oversight than it's typical or is that consistent with other communities? I don't know in terms of comparing it. It certainly has more than it has about other areas and other folks for hiring, but a good portion of what it has in there is fairly standard. Well, it was set up for the during the commission system and it lays out a lot of the due process that officers needed to be guaranteed. So it lays out a lot of that currently current law requires most of that anyway. So it wouldn't have to be in the Charter. Right, you don't necessarily, I mean, my sense is there are a lot of due process rights that wouldn't necessarily have to be. I mean, the ACLU would still say to you, you know, you wanna make sure that employees are clear on what their due process rights are, but they're probably are part of what is there now that don't need to be in there. And there are probably other things that you may want to have in there given everything that you all have been hearing from members of the public about the police and the public trust or lack thereof in the police. Thanks. Okay, I have Councillor Freeman to be followed by Councillor Shannon and Hansen. Go ahead, Councillor Freeman. Thank you, President Tracey. In regards to this motion for the communication to the committee, I don't, there's so many things to respond to. Struggling at this hour to collect my thoughts. To me, I guess I'm a little bit, I'm not really understanding how that like, there's this aspect where I just don't understand like why? Like I understand that there's an intention to get input and also specifically around the police commission, which is the current body that has certain sort of aspects of being able to review and certain aspects of oversight that are very limited, but are still, you know, at least the body that is designated for those powers, whether they'd be limited or not at this point. But like, for like, it seems in a, like in the sense of this moving through the city, it just doesn't make sense to me. I don't know if it seems like, it seems sort of like in a bureaucratic sense, it just seems very odd. Like, because of course the police commissioners who don't actually have, they can review it, but they can't, they don't have any powers in terms of the charter change language itself, I mean, the model. But this was sort of the whole conversation that we got into around the fair and partial policing policy, which is that we have this police commission that doesn't actually have like the powers vested in it to actually make policy. And so it seems sort of like a matter of like formality, which I don't really understand at this junction when there's so much urgency from the community and the amount of testimony that we've been getting at Charter Change Committee and the urgency around wanting it to be on the March ballot, the amount of testimony that we've gotten, we've had hours, I don't think we've had less than a two to three hour meeting while meeting weekly, you know, at those meetings. And so, and of course police commissioners and public safety committee members can come to Charter Change Committee and weigh in. And there's nothing more that they're going to really be, I mean, I guess they could take a formal vote as a committee and review these models as a committee. But I just, I mean, are we also going to send the Charter Change language once that comes back from Charter Change to the committee? I guess I just don't really understand. So maybe once I get through other points, I don't know if you'll allow it. I would be curious to hear from Councilor Pino who maybe we don't throw motion on that. I think I just wanted to make a few other comments which was just that I don't, regarding the language in general to the Charter, I do think that we should, the draft that I put forward to the committee is extensive and goes through all the details. The amount of work that was done on it was extensive. So I guess I disagree to the point like I have, I feel like I have delved into the work. I feel like I've been reading and researching oversight models for years at this point. And this is the culmination of all that research and all that work. The draft is extensive. The committee is working with City Attorney Blackwood to sort of review it and go over it. So I do actually feel like we are in a pretty good place. And there's been so much public testimony and so much input that I feel like, and by the time it comes to Council and there are hearings on it potentially that they would actually have a lot of pretty good input. And I guess the only other last point that I wrote down here was just that I don't really understand why we would go through the effort of putting language forward to the voters that was like an intermediary change, which is, I believe Councilor Shannon, you're referring to the change to section 184 as opposed to the changes that I proposed, which were to sections 189 and 191, which are more, sorry, 189 and 190 of the charter, which are more extensive and like a more extensive shift in terms of what the community is asking for. It just sort of seems like, that doesn't really make sense to me. To get to your point also, Councilor Carpenter, I think that unlike and maybe some other aspects of the charter, this does have to be, there are aspects of it that are general authorizing language, but it also does have to be somewhat specific, but I think that's okay because I think we have done extensive work and have heard extensively from the community, from various folks advocating for various models. And so there's actually quite a bit of work that's been done. So far, and there's quite a bit of language that's drafted at this point. Thank you, Councilor Freeman. I'm gonna go to Councilor Shannon now to be followed by Councilors Hansen and Stromberg. Go ahead, Councilor Shannon. Thank you. I just wanted to speak to Councilor Hightower's request. I really respect that it is hard to move 10 people into a place where you can make decisions and it's valuable to narrow the universe. So we had the same challenge in the Charter Change Committee because we got this report from Attorney Blackwood and it is kind of overwhelming and Councilor Freeman did bring forward a draft of a resolution that we didn't debate a whole lot. We referred that to the city attorney asking the city attorney to then add to the work that Councilor Freeman had done, her input as well as that of the ACLU and kind of redraft that. And we have gotten a lot of public input but from the same point of view. And I think that what we've done I mean, it wasn't completely monolithic. Some people liked one version or another version but we haven't done, I think that the focus of the Joint Committee is really to do some public engagement and to pay for some help in doing that public engagement. And that's the piece that we're missing at the Charter Change Committee. And I don't think you want us doing it in parallel either but the universe from this report, the universe has been narrowed because there's a draft Charter Change and in that draft Charter Change, Attorney Blackwood defines certain decision points, make suggestions and says you can kind of go this way or that way. So we do have something at this point that narrows the universe from the document that you have before you tonight. And if you wanted that referred to you as well, I think that that's an option. Thank you, Councilor Shannon. I have Councilor Hanson to be followed by Councilor Stromberg. Go ahead, Councilor Hanson. Thanks. Yeah, I think the, I haven't been able to attend personally but I've talked to members of the committee and a lot of folks that have attended the Charter meetings and it seems that they're pretty deep into this work and deep into hearing from the public. The Joint Committee is also busy and has a lot on their plate and is deep into their work. So I don't know that at this moment it makes sense to add something that the Charter Change is pretty far along on and put that onto the plate of the Joint Committee for sort of tandem processes. I'd rather let the Charter Change Committee, as we've said, continue to refine and narrow down and move forward because I think, well, one is the public input piece and the fact that there has been a lot of testimony there and if the public testimony is expressing, if folks from the public are expressing similar sentiments, I don't see that as a bad thing. I think that could be helpful in a way in terms of helping the committee know where to go and hear that feedback from the community and be able to move forward with that. So I would say that's where I'm at and I think, yeah, I think it's pretty clear from the community a couple of things and even from Council just as we've discussed over the last few months that we, there's a really strong feeling that disciplinary decisions shouldn't just be made by the Chief of Police, but should have some sort of community oversight and I think there's widespread sentiment around that and there's also sentiment around really pretty incredible urgency surrounding that and so that's another piece that I think is important is to let the Charter Change do their best to try to get a language that addresses, at the very least, some of these broader points that we have consensus around and work through to what extent it can be flexible versus specific, also work through if there's gonna be legal challenges from the union, if the legislature's gonna have issues, just like really delving into how we move this forward and how we get this done. I wanna let that process go out and ideally I'm very hopeful and determined and I hope we all are that we can get something before the voters this March. I think that's really important and what that means is we need to get it back to the Council just next month, which is tight, but I think we should really try as hard as we possibly can to make that happen and I think letting the Charter Change continue is the best way to do that. Okay, thank you, Councilor Hanson. I have Councilor Stromberg to be followed by Councilor Hightower. Thank you, President Tracy. I have a few more or less instinctive responses to this conversation. One, I just wanna start by saying that I will be supporting this referral and I apologize if any of this is not as eloquent, but I, yeah, as a member of the committee, we have put in an extensive amount of time, multitude of meetings, really heavy discussion and the second I heard about this referral, I thought, well, what was the point of that and that instinctive response is based on the fact that we were given this job, this task because the public is not satisfied with how anything is set up in terms of our police commission and the oversight and the powers that currently exist by any means. And so I find it contradictory that we are thinking of elongating this process and trying to bring back into the conversation voices that are incredibly important, but also not what has been asked of us from the public. So that's my instinctive response to that. I also wanna address the fact that, yes, we are, as Jones Shannon had, or a counselor Shannon had mentioned, yeah, we are, I don't wanna oversupply, we are three white women, but I want to, I guess, emphasize the fact that that is all the more reason why we need to be doing the listening and the work of the people who have been calling in and really honestly sacrificing a lot of their time, their mental health and listening through all of those grueling meetings, literally week after week, we have been doing this for a week straight. So I think that that is important to note. It's not a comfortable conversation for some, but I think that it's incredibly important to point that out. And I just, yeah, I really think that there's a lot surrounding this conversation that is, yeah, it's a heavy topic, but also we've been doing the work and we are continuing to do the work. Councillor Freeman brought forth this draft that I've been looking at literally every single day since that meeting, and we are, I feel like we are delving in and we are listening to the public and we're gonna continue to do so, but I don't wanna stall this to the point where we hand it off or pawn it off to another committee and then we have a lot of time go by there and we don't even get this to the ballot in March, which is what the public wants. That is what I've heard from the public. So that is what I have to say about that. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Stromberg. I have Councillor Hightower to be followed by Councillor Polino. Go ahead, Councillor Hightower. I'm gonna, I'm just have a few kind of practical points. So I do think that at some point this, the police commission needs to be involved. And I don't know if that means inviting them to a charter change committee or bringing it to the joint committee. I will say just so the police commission did meet four times in the last three weeks, which they were gracious enough to do to try to get this, with three of them being joint committee meetings. And I personally don't have a weekday night free again until our next meeting, which is in December, December 3rd. I do think if that, if we wanted to bring this to the joint committee on December, not that there's a very competent, we have a very great vice chair, so she could definitely handle it if there was a sense of urgency. If we wanted to bring it to the joint committee, I think that would be a good date. If charter change was planning, it's good to hear that there's a little bit more that's been going on. You know that council free minority had some proposed language that's been redrafted and decision points. I don't know if the charter change has the ability to meet again before then, but I think the joint committee could look at it. December 3rd, if that was the council's wish, clearly the more streamlined it is at that point, the more the charter change committee has weighed in at that point to give the joint committee some direction the better. And if we could have it by the Wicca Thanksgiving so we can look over it, that would be great. But other than that, I do, yeah, I think emphasizing the points of what do we need for the charter change? What can wait and get like more detailed input? I think it's gonna be an important distinction. And I think one that the charter change committee is more qualified to make since the police commission isn't necessarily as familiar with charter language as you all are. So those are my two practical sense in terms of closing out the year with going through this. Thanks for that. And we have councilor Paulino. Hi there. So I just wanna give a little bit more as we talk a little bit more from my perspective. There's no, my goal here is try to do the right thing. All right, that's the way I see it. I have been equally as moved by all the public forums we've had. We've all been through this experience that none of us will ever forget. No one here will ever forget what we went through this summer and the amount of listening we did and how impactful that was. And we hope to get it right, not just do something because people want something. I agree that people need change and that we deserve change and that we've been trotting along for too long and it's time to bring that about. I guess, you know, to back to what councilor Furion has asked for clarification, you know, normally, I keep calling it special committee because to me it is under the rules special committee even though it's a joint committee in that special committee is created when you have a subject matter that is complicated that requires a lot of time. So you give, you create a committee that is not normal, you know, under the normal existence to deal with that issue specifically. And you give that committee power, you give it money and go, and so we did that. And we hired, we recruited very talented people, including as councilor Hightower said, people deserve on the police commission with this promise of like, you're gonna be part of this change. You know, you're gonna be, you're gonna have a voice in this. And what we're saying here tonight is what I'm hearing is, well, we've worked really hard on this issue and we wanna get it forward even though none of the police commissioners have weighed in and I've spoken to at least a few who wanted to and who tried and who object to basically having their body recomposed without their input, which is unusual. Usually it would go to them first or at least for consideration then it would come to charter change. Just like if we were to change the council and it would go to the council makeup, it would then go to charter change, you know. So we have these processes that we've been abiding for for a long time. And I understand people want change now, but you know, we have to recognize that things have been going really well with citizen police encounters during this time of need that we've been in through the pandemic, through the protests. We haven't had a lot of incidents. So I understand that there's this need, this emergency, but we also have to recognize the evidence that there's been a significant reduction and that's to BPD's credit. You know, I feel like they've listened to us in a way in the sense that they've toned a lot of encounters that probably could have escalated and they've de-escalated them because we haven't seen anything. So I just wanna say that because it's worth saying. I feel like we talk about the opposite end of that a lot. So really it's just a way to get back to the proper process of trying to get it done. I don't know how we can reformulate the police commission and then later find out all this other information, all this data, both from the public side, from the one consultant that's gonna do the surveys to then the managerial aspect, because I've been talking to police commissions since I first got elected. Before this happened and it was clear to me then that they were lacking a certain amount of guidance of what their role was much like we as counselors are unsure about what our goal was. So I think that's why the second audit within the department is so important to the police commission is they'll finally have the information. We've wanted, they've wanted and they can sort of from there. So I'm not trying to step on anybody's toes. I'm not pointing fingers. I'm just saying this is how we've gotten to this point. What do we do about it? I understand that nobody planned for this. You know, nobody planned for charter change to be working on one thing, special committee, the police commission is doing their own thing. So that's my goal. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Councillor Polino. I don't have anyone else in the queue. I'm hoping we can, okay, Councillor Pine, go ahead. Councillor Pine, you're on mute. You missed all the good stuff I said already. No, really. I think the, it's just a quick point is that the council went on record in 2017, looking at, or maybe it was 16, looking at the issue of community oversight. The council felt that that was important and it was being discussed and it was looked at. And then it morphed into some other activities. Nobody to blame, but just to point out that time has passed and we've reached a point where we're going to need, I believe, to advance, our obligation is to advance something that we have spent some time on and spent some process on. And I believe that we can kind of do this in parallel paths where the police commission and the public safety committee and can really essentially work in tandem. And I think Councillor Hightower already said that. So I don't wanna repeat too much, but just to say that there really is a way to move this forward in a timely manner and in a way that is prudent and judicious and is respectful of the fact that there's lots of stakeholders involved, but we really, after all is said and done, it is too often that more is said than done. And so I think here is our chance to actually move and act and move in a way that is clear and do it very disciplined, very focused, but do it in tandem and not see this as let's extend the process, let's wait to bring this to our voters in another year from March, but let's really push ourselves here to try and get this thing done. Thanks. Thank you, Councillor Pine. Any other councillors wishing to speak or are we ready to vote on the motion to refer this to the joint committee? Okay, Councillor Freemaine, go ahead. I actually think that's in my head. Oh my gosh, it's really that time of night. It was in response to, oh, sorry, I'm really, yeah. I just, I think that ultimately, I mean, I agree with what Councillor Pine just said, I think it makes sense to not push this down any further, you know, the timeline in terms of the Senate passed in the year. I think the central question really at stake, no matter what body or institution or individual or person in the city is interacting or engaging or reviewing or making, you know, decisions on this question at this point is like the central question to me seems to be over whether we are divesting the powers of investigation and discipline from the police department and investing it in another body and an independent body. And that is really the central question. And the way I, whatever entities review that and look at that, I hope, as I think Councillor Pine and other councillors have just said, that they act in tandem as much as possible, that that work is as collaborative as possible, that we don't push this down a timeline even further and that that question is the one that comes forward in a timely manner. So, and that's, I guess they just feel like no matter where we kind of push this and move this, that's still going to be the question and that's still just going to be the question at the end of the day. Anyway, I know we can go to a vote. Okay, anyone else? Councillor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. So, I'm not a member of Charter Change nor of the Joint Committee. So, I'm somewhat gathering my information of what's going on here. I'm a little confused about, you know, the, I appreciate what we're battling two forces. One is the desire to get something on now. And the second seems to be a recognition that we've come through significant process to set up a committee at some expense engaged a facilitator who's expected to do outreach, but we're not, if this moves forward now, we will have done no outreach using the paid facilitator to allow additional input from the, you know, from the public other than those. And I don't know my assumption is it's like most committee meetings, there is a very devoted group of small people who are attending, you know, a group of people very involved who are attending, but my assumption is that the general public, you know, is unfortunately not paying attention. So I'm supportive of this because it's my belief that we should be using those that we have tasked with doing this work beyond the Charter Change Committee, as well as availing ourselves of the opportunity to use our paid facilitator to actually get input from the public. My understanding from this conversation is in the absence of using the facilitator for that, we are assessing things that I'm not sure fall even close from an importance, you know, information such as what is the public's view of the police and other matters. I'm not, you know, to me, the model we use for civilian oversight is a far more important thing I'd like to hear from a larger percentage of the public than how people feel about the police department. So I will be supporting this motion. Thank you. Okay, any further comments? Okay, Councilor Hightower. Sorry, this is more point of information. I'm not actually sure what the original motion was and if it means it's coming on a Charter Change or if it's just saying this also goes to the Joint Committee. So I guess I'm not sure what we're voting on. So. Okay, that's fair. Councilor Paulina, are you able to restate your original motion? Yes, thank you, President Tracy. My motion was to refer all matters referring to who makes and reviews police disciplinary decisions to the Joint Committee for consideration. Does that come to clarify for you, Councilor Hightower? Yes. Yes. Okay, Councilor Jain, go ahead. Councilor Jain, you're on mute. Thank you. This is more of a question. I was just wondering what... I think I need some input or guidance from Mr. Kyle Dodson. What does he think about what we debating right now within his review, within his role if he can promote him or the mayor? That's a question, Councilor President Tracy. Sure. I was knocked out of a meeting just a little bit ago so I don't actually have host responsibilities right now. If someone gives me those, I can do that, but I don't have that ability right now. Okay, there we go. All right, I've enabled Kyle's microphone. Okay, so what was your... Did you have a question? So we debating whether or not we referring to the joint committee or the charge, and I just wanted to hear the perspective of Mr. Dodson about that question. Hello, President Tracy, can you hear me? Go ahead. Thank you, Councilor Jain. I would actually say that my comments, I don't know if it's echo, but they do align in part with several of the Councilor's comments, most recently, Councilor Mason, in that for me, the most important part is the public input, more important, quite frankly, from my perspective than mine and others at this point, this is a significant change. And as people have pointed out, there certainly has been a public outcry for these changes, and it's about public trust, which is one of our biggest challenges. But there does seem to be some merit to the issue of the broad community input. I attend these small committee meetings, and I have not been on one where there's even been 10 people there. And for a community our size, that doesn't necessarily amount to what I would say is broad community input. My biggest fear is that, as Councilor Mason pointed out, it's a problem of democracy that there's a lot of people on the sidelines, but they may not stay on the sidelines for long and they may do what often happens and come out after everything is done and then not understand the process and not have things move the way we need them to do. I think these changes require a pretty broad public mandate where people are all bought into the change. So I don't have the exact answer. I think there's a significant tension here between the timing. I think the waiting of a whole cycle is definitely deeply problematic, but that does need to be weighed against something that didn't have the process, perhaps that would be optimal and runs into perhaps another set of challenges in terms of something that's sustainable and that is something that the Commission, I do think there's an issue around the Commission. I don't understand enough. A lot of this was in motion by the time I was brought on board, but it does seem that who they are and the fact that a lot of these changes will impact how that group is constituting the future and what its powers are that there hasn't been very much opportunity for them to be involved seems a bit of a challenge. So unfortunately, I do not have an easy resolution to the situation, but if there is a way, I heard Councilor Hightower, if there's a way and Councilor Pine, if there's a way to do some sort of concurrent process where you can bring the Commission in and meet the timing goals for March ballot, I would think that would be optimal to at least bring the Commission in if it's challenging to get broader community input. Thank you. That's my piece. Okay. Councilor Jayne, you still have the floor? Good. That was my only question. Thank you. Okay. Thank you very much. I had Councilor Carpenter be followed by Councilor Hightower. I guess my comment has echoed others. And I just feel that it's critical that we get the input of the John Commission. They were tasked with a whole bunch of stuff and we can't make this decision without their input. And I just think that's important for me. Okay. Thank you, Councilor Hightower. Sorry, I'll be super brief because this is my third time speaking. So I will be voting no, but if it fails that I'm happy to propose an alternative motion that charter change continues to work specifically on figuring out what charter changes need to be made and continuing, it sounds like the process that Councilor Shannon said that they were already starting to do and that we authorize her to continue to use staff resources to do that. And then Joint Committee takes it, reviews what is done December 3rd. And I think we can maybe set aside two days to do that. And that on that meeting will also be, will be our first day with our paid facilitator so that we emphasize that in getting public process, we also, or public input, we also have this question as part of our public input in December or prioritize this as some of our questions to the public and focus groups and things like that. So that we're not, because I don't want to leave with charter change not feeling like they have the mandate to continue to work on this. So I will be voting no. Okay, thank you, Councilor Hightower. Anything else? Councilor Carpenter. I guess I'd ask Councilor Polinow, if his motion excludes having work continue, I mean, you want, I want the input from the Joint Commission, but that doesn't necessarily exclude other work. What do you- Yeah, well, presentation today. Go ahead, you're good. So I use the language that was based off the original resolution on September 8th, 2020 that is attached to the item on the agenda. I don't know the answer to that. I think I would defer to Attorney Blackwood. I don't see, I don't, I don't, I think I'm hearing more about deadlines. My motion wasn't necessarily based on meeting a deadline. It was just about making sure that we consult the people who are at least, that are on the body and give them an opportunity. And honestly, people who honestly care a lot about it. So I would defer to Attorney Blackwood, Councilor Carpenter. Okay, I'll set Councilor Carpenter. Okay, Councilor Shannon. Thank you, President Tracy. I think that what people have expressed in this discussion is that it's important to them that this go to the Joint Committee and get that input and have the ability to have the benefits of the facilitator and the public process that they're looking at in that committee. I actually think there's consensus on that. And for efficiency's sake, I'd actually encourage Councilor Hightower to amend the motion as she stated, which is going to then have the Charter Change Committee continue the work that we're doing. And then I think we'll get, maybe we'll have something complete. Or an option. Or maybe there's still some work, not yet some undecided points. And then refer that for December 3rd to the Joint Committee, I think. Sounds like that accomplishes most people's goals. Okay, thank you, Councilor Shannon. Councilor Hanson. Yeah, so, I mean, given that Councilor Hightower the chair of the Joint Committee is saying that they have capacity to look at it and can review it and give some input, that seems good. I think what a lot of us were expressing was just the concern around the Charter Change Process not being delayed. So if that's clarified that that process will continue forward, then I'm comfortable with this idea of letting the Joint Committee look at this as well and give input, but that's just for me what I would really want to clarify. So if Councilor Hightower, if you're making a motion, maybe you could just clarify that within it as well. Okay, thank you, Councilor Hanson. Councilor Hightower. Yeah, so if I can move to substantially amend Councilor Perlino's motion to authorize or to encourage the Charter Change Committee to continue their work, whatever that looks like, especially through December 3rd and then to also refer this issue to the Joint Committee on the Police Commission and Public Safety in order to work with the consultant who should be hired by that time to both provide input as a committee, but also to kick off the process for public input. Okay, so we have a motion seconded by Councilor Stromberg. Is there any discussion on the amendment? Councilor Paulino. I don't have a problem with the amendment. I think this has been a very productive discussion that we would have needed to have, if not now, when we get whatever comes out of Charter Change. So I wanna thank everybody for their patience and engaging in somewhat of an unexpected conversation. I think that was the intent of this motion is to sort of like talk about what we really wanna talk about. And I think that's why the Charter Change Committee referred it to us to kind of get a sneak preview of what we're gonna be at. Having said that, my question that the issue that arose for me that I wanna discuss, I don't really, it's about Councilor Hightower's motion is so let's say we now discuss it. What is the goal that whatever comes out of Charter Change won't go to the committee or is Charter Change meeting this week? So by our meeting on the fifth, Councilor Hightower, did I get that right? Third. Third, there you go, you're always on top of it. All right, so we'll have it. All right, thank you, that was my point. Any further comments on the amendment? Councilor Carpenter, go ahead. There's a clarification. So Charter Change is working on some substance and then the Joint Committee won't meet for really, that's three weeks. Is there time in between? I mean, I'm sensing the urgency, but is there ways in the interim to get some input or do a joint committee meeting to update everybody? I mean, I just, since this is such a high priority for so many people, it needs to sort of rise to the top of the list so that there's not a sort of a lag time. And I know we have a holiday weekend there, but I guess I'm, is the Charter Change going to decide next week and then let it sit for 10 days or? I'm sorry, Councilor Carpenter, who are you addressing your question? I guess I'm unclear of people's intent. And I guess I'm urging, and this maybe doesn't need to be in the former amendment, but there'd be conversation in between the work of the Charter Change Committee and the meeting of the Joint Committee to consider it. Okay, I see Councilor Hightower, go ahead. Yeah, if I can speak to that. I don't think I've been doing a good job of liaisoning with Councilor Shannon on this issue. I think I've been focused on getting the RFPs through on joint committee and I think I can do a better job of making sure that I'm aware of what Charter Change is planning and being communication with Councilor Shannon. And also then going back to the Police Commission and keeping them updated on the material so that they have time to review it between now and November. Okay, thank you for that. Councilor Shannon, let's try and move us to a vote. I think I've shared with all of the police commissioners that draft that we're working on for their input. I have gotten extensive input from Stephanie Saguino, but I also think that their bandwidth, like many of ours is very stretched. And so it's hard to work on the things that they're working on and also working on this on the side, but certainly we're trying to keep the lines of communication open. Okay, thank you for that. Any other Councilor's wishing to speak to this? Okay, seeing none, let's go to a vote on the amendment. All those in favor of the amendment, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. So now we're back to the original motion as amended. All those in favor of the original motion as amended, please say aye. Any opposed? Hearing none, that passes unanimously. So we have now completed that item and we are now moving into our final item of the evening, which is a expected executive session regarding the case Mellie v. City of Burlington. Before we entertain any motions regarding executive session, I'd look to Attorney Blackwood to see if there are any updates that you're able to share in public and open session at this point. We engaged in mediation again with the Mellies and it was unsuccessful. The cases therefore moving forward in discovery, depositions are being conducted of witnesses and folks like that. That's about what's happening. Okay, so you're not able to offer anything additional in public session? Right, I mean, there's not really anything else public to tell, right? Okay, and do you expect action to come out of any potential executive sessions this evening? No. And would we be in any sort of position to have any public update on the other side of executive session? No. Okay. All right, well, with that understood, we have a couple of motions along the lines of what has been recommended to us with regards to going into executive session. So is there, is someone prepared to offer those motions? There's the two-part motions to go to have a finding and then to go into executive session. Councilor Mason. Thank you, President Tracy. I would like to make a motion that the council find that premature general public knowledge of the city's strategy, legal advice and other information in relation to the pending litigation with the Mellie Brothers would put the city at a substantial disadvantage. Thank you. We have a motion on a finding that's seconded by Councilor Shannon. Any discussion of the finding? Okay, seeing none, we'll go to a vote on that. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. Now, based on that finding, are you able to offer the second part? Councilor Mason. Yes, President Tracy. Based on that finding, I would move that the council go into executive session to consider pending litigation in confidential attorney client communications, pursuant to one VSA 313A1E and F. I would also note for the record that invited into executive session would include not just the council, the mayor, the mayor's office staff, the city attorney, CAO, Shad and Taishik Green, I believe. Thank you. Okay, so we have a motion and a second from Councilor Shannon to go into executive session. Any discussion on this? Councilor Stromberg. Not so much the content, but where is the executive session link? Yep, so because of the way that our Zoom accounts are set up, that will get sent to counselors once we are off of this. So we'll get that set up and just keep an eye on your inboxes, counselors. We'll get that right to you. So any further discussion of the motion to go into executive? Yeah, are we going to come back here or we will adjourn there? So after what attorney Blackwood said, we do not anticipate that we will come back into public session. So we'll just finish our meeting from there. So that will be it because we're not having any other additional items or action coming out of executive session on this matter. Thank you. Okay, any further discussion of the motion to go into executive session? Okay, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. So again, keep your eyes on the, in your inboxes for that link for our executive session conversation counselors. Thanks.