 Would councillors please take their seats, councillors please take their seats. Good evening everyone. Would you all please rise and join me in resetting the Pledge of Allegiance. First item on the agenda tonight is the agenda. Councillor Buscher. Yes, I move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows. Note revised version of the PowerPoint presentation regarding agenda item 2.01 per Martha Keenan. Note final version of agenda item 2.01 per Martha Keenan per Councillor Buscher. Note written material for consent agenda item 4.13 communication, BTV housing summit June 2019 event and feedback summary per mayor's office. Remove from the consent agenda item 4.19 resolution appointment of E911 coordinator, Councillor Wright per David White. And I so move. Amended agenda moved by Councillor Buscher. Any discussion? Hearing none. Seconded by Councillor Paul. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favour please say aye. Of the agenda as amended. Aye. Any opposed? We have our agenda. Item number 2 is a presentation on the City of Burlington asset management program, the organizational structure and recommendations and the team come on up. Chapin Spencer, Norm Baldwin and Tim Tabor. Good evening. Thank you President Wright. Thank you. And Martha Keenan. Yes, we are joined, Norm Baldwin, City Engineer, Martha Keenan, Capital Improvements Program Manager and Tim Tabor from Barton LaJuse. Thank you for the opportunity tonight. We are going to in 10 short minutes talk about an ambitious effort to transition our city from a reactive to a proactive stewardship of the city's assets. We have worked to develop this executive report with INT information technologies, Clerk Treasurer's Office, Parks Department, Church Street Marketplace and many divisions within public works. The end result here is an approach to sustain the assets for the City of Burlington in the least cost manner possible. And with that I'm going to turn it over to Timothy Tabor. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for having me here. Just real quick, the overview of what we're going to discuss is just really a quick definition or discussion of what is asset management or the way that we looked at it for this report. And we'll discuss the Excuse me, Mr. Tabor, could you pull the microphone in close and just a reminder for everybody to bring the microphones right in close. Thank you. Sorry about that. Then we'll just review the process we went through to evaluate the current and make recommendations and then we'll focus on some of the recommendations we have as a result of the report. So we're just waiting for the PowerPoint to come up. So while they're bringing that up, I'll just talk about the first few slides here. So the framework that we use to kind of define asset management and the way we want to look at it is a definition that's adopted by EPA for municipal infrastructure. And it's a concept that's called the five core questions of asset management. And the concept behind this framework is that the city of Burlington can demonstrate they have good asset management practices if they can answer these five core questions with some confidence. And the questions we looked at, the first one says, what's the current state of my assets? And for the city to be able to confidently answer that question, you really have to know which assets you own, where they're located, what condition they're in, how much remaining life you have in those assets, and how much do you need to invest in them when you need to replace or rehabilitate those. And that's always sort of a foundational element for any organization that wants to implement asset management. You really have to kind of look at what your current state of the assets are. The second question in this framework is called what are the levels of service we're providing. And this is really understanding that the city of Burlington doesn't own assets or doesn't own infrastructure just for the sake of owning them, but these assets and infrastructure is actually providing services to the community. And page five, please. Thank you. So establishing the levels of service really helps you identify the criticality of your assets, which I'll talk about in a second. It also helps you understand that the demand on your assets, the demand on your infrastructure is changing over time. There's climate change. There's demographic changes within the city. And the original design concepts of what the infrastructure might have been created for or built for may change. So it's not just replacing kind, but you may need different types of assets, different capacity of assets, when those need to be replaced. The third question of this framework asks which assets are critical. And this is a standard concept in asset management is to identify assets that have a significant consequence if there is a failure. So this concept of consequence or failure or impact is evaluated for your assets and also the likelihood of that occurring. So you take these two parameters and you evaluate your assets and you're able to identify assets that have significant impact or consequences if the failure occurs and assets that are in poor condition and might have a high likelihood of occurring. And this is a risk matrix here, which is very standard in asset management project, identify assets that pose a high risk for the city and one that maybe have a medium risk or low risk. And this information is really used to help focus resources, limited resources, whether it's capital projects, preventative maintenance strategies, and other elements. So the third question is really once you know which assets you have, you need to know which ones are critical. The fourth question in this framework is what are your long-term capital improvement and operation and maintenance strategies? City has a 10-year capital plan. That plan should be dynamic and updated regularly and most cities are actually starting to look out 25 years or longer. So a long-term capital improvement plan that's dynamic, it's using the asset inventory and the risk assessments of the assets to really define when investment should be made and where they should be made. In addition to capital improvement, you have your operation and maintenance strategies. So are you doing the right preventative maintenance? Are you really doing the right rehab at the right time to maximize the life you want out of your assets and actually keep the assets at a total lowest life cycle cost? So that's the fourth question. And then all of that gets combined into the fifth question, which is how are you going to pay for your infrastructure and your assets long-term? So that's looking at your revenues, where they come from, when investments need significant investments need to be made to replace infrastructure or rehabilitate infrastructure to keep your risks lower. So with those five core questions, the EPA definition of municipal infrastructure asset management best practices, that's kind of what we looked at when we went through this project to look at the current practices and what resources and infrastructure, staffing infrastructure should be in place to sustain a good asset management program here for the city. So the process we went through in the project methodology is we reviewed the existing asset management practices. We looked at previous reports and documents that had been done, what the current inventory of assets was maintained by the different departments. But we really spent a lot of time interviewing department staff in various departments of the city to kind of hear what they felt they did well currently, what their struggles were, and really where they thought asset management could go in the future to help them. We also looked at the 10-year capital plan and how that's supported by asset management concepts. And we did a little bit of a gap analysis to what the best practice is compared to what's going on. We also contacted five similar municipalities that had been on an asset management journey and looked at how they staffed and structured their asset management staff, what departments were involved, what tools they were using, what has worked well with them, and if they had recommendations, if they were going to do it again, what they would have. And actually Burlington benchmarked very well with a lot of the municipalities we contacted in terms of resources. And from that we evaluated various organizational structure options. We looked at four or five different ways that the city could provide resources and where within the city organization those resources could be housed. From that, before we actually evaluated those options, we established some of the guiding principles of how we wanted to evaluate them. And I'll go through those in a minute. We developed those options. We did pros and cons for each of those options identified. And we came up with some overall recommendations which I'll go through as well. So the guiding principles that we established and how we wanted to do our evaluation when we made recommendations for staffing and organizational structure, we wanted to make sure that the resources were durable, isolated, and institutional. It wasn't something that could easily be dismantled from change in administration or changing staff. And so we wanted people to be able to look at strategic asset management and not get wrapped up into day-to-day emergencies and refocus their efforts. We wanted to have dedicated staff that had sufficient resources to be able to do the tasks. Broad city-wide buy-in, we wanted everyone to support the recommendations. And we want these resources to have clear roles and responsibilities. So it's not ambiguous as to what they're going to be working on. And they also were not isolated to a single department that they had interfaces with all the departments or all the asset-intensive departments here in the city. And it could be monitored and benchmarked to demonstrate that the improvements intended are actually being achieved. So with those guiding principles, we established the recommendations. And our initial recommendation was to actually house a separate division within the DPW called facility and asset management. This is the next slide. And our initial recommendation had three full-time staff resources in this division. Initially, some investments in software and consultants to get some of the asset management tools and processes in place with recommendation of revising and actually moving facility maintenance or building maintenance out of parks and putting it underneath this division. But after our initial recommendation was made, we spent some time looking at that and the amount of change within the city that was required. And there was concern that the amount of full-time staff and also the city's capacity for change with other things that were going on would struggle really supporting that recommendation. So we went back and we reevaluated some options and we ended up with the recommendations on the next slide, which is to create in capital and asset management section underneath an existing division within DPW under the technical services division. So the short-term recommendations we came up with, these are one-year recommendations, is to maintain primary asset management functions within DPW, create a capital and asset management section under the DPW technical services division. We also want a reorganization memo that will be drafted to create this new section approved, hire a full-time asset management administrator in this section. And a key recommendation actually is to establish an asset management steering committee. And this committee is going to be made up of representatives from all the departments that have significant infrastructure assets, and they're going to help steer and guide and prioritize asset management initiatives across the city. And that little org chart there lists some of the activities and different areas that that asset management steering committee will be working in. Additional short-term recommendations is to establish asset management program metrics and benchmarks so that you can, so this steering committee would establish those so that they can measure themselves or measure the asset management practices within the city and demonstrate the benefits that hope to be achieved. Conduct a facility functional assessment and that's looking at all the city's buildings and their adequacy to how is their intended function. Adopt an asset management policy which we're seeing a lot of municipalities across the country do when they realize that infrastructure is important to their city and it's necessary to provide service to the residents. And then implement some tools, GIS centric computerized maintenance management software as a tool to help the city manage its infrastructure. So those are a brief summary of the nine initial short-term recommendations and then the longer-term recommendations we came up with are to ensure the city has necessary resources, long-term support, both the tools, the computerized maintenance management system and also take another look at the city resources for facility or building maintenance. It's currently housed under parks and just make sure there's enough staff there. Using a BTV stat to monitor continuous improvements in the asset management program and demonstrate the benchmark achievements and benefits that the city will hopefully obtain. Evaluate moving facilities to a new dedicated section. So we saw this is next, yep. We saw when we reviewed practices in other cities we saw that several cities kind of create a general service division. This is a division within an organization that actually supports the other departments. So the departments that have vehicles or buildings to support their or inventory control spare part management. Some cities consolidate that within the city and have a single department or division that actually supports all the other departments. And then also develop a strong GIS centric support service and that would be under the innovation technology department. So that's just a summary of the recommendations I came out of this study. The benefits that organizations look to achieve with improving their asset management practices, really looking to protect the city's investment and reinvestment into the infrastructure and assets. There's been demonstrated long-term cost savings with organizations that have gone through the journey of asset management. Several studies will show this and this chart in the bottom right of this slide show. The initial implementation of asset management may not have initial cost savings in year one. The studies have shown long-term 20% savings in capital and operation and maintenance expenses that can be achieved by focusing resources in the right area and several other benefits I've listed on the next slides. Tying the assets to the capital plan systematically, keeping that updated, energy savings, climate change, addressing climate change challenges, and getting more sustainable assets are all key elements and benefits of a good asset management program. When we look at tangible financial benefits of asset management, and for time I'm just going to read the summary and you can look at the details in the slide. But improved effectiveness of capital planning. So you're looking at using risk-based analysis to address capital plans and invest capital at the right time. Extending the lives of the assets by doing the right maintenance and making the rehabilitations when you can actually extend the lives of the assets and not waiting for them to fail. Good asset management practices are starting to show lower borrowing costs when you go to get bonds or other financing for projects. Increased performance and reduced maintenance costs of your assets and energy savings, well-maintained assets are operating more efficiently as well. So that's just a summary of the report and the recommendations we did for the asset management program and staff resources. All right. Thank you for that presentation, Chairman. Did you just finish up that on the consent agenda are the two actions that we're seeking to take that follow up with executing the recommendations in the report? We're happy to answer any questions. Questions for the team? Council Busher. So President Wright, if indeed there is more time needed, could we pick this up after the public forum? If we need to. Okay. Thank you. So I had a couple of questions. One is I wanted to know, first of all, do we have a list of all of our assets in currently all the buildings, all the structures, and are we in the process of applying that chart that shows the likelihood of needing improvement and the impact? Are we in the process of doing that or have we done that? So the capital plan was your first step in that. And so when we did the capital plan, we did a huge inventory that was at that time. And we have been that has been evolving since the capital plan was adopted in 2016. We have 11 software programs that hold inventory on them. And part of this process is that we're hoping to be able to merge those together so that we can run reports that will take all of those into effect. So we continue to improve our inventory records. But like you said, it is not stagnant. It's continually changing. And that's one of our challenges is that an excel spreadsheet, which is what we use a lot of doesn't do it well. And so we need to continue improving that and move to the next step. Thank you. The other question I have is has to do with the Burlington asset management steering committee. My concern is this these are big dollars and we talked about departments prior prioritizing asset management. But I think the council needs to be involved in this. So I'm not sure who this steering committee is reporting to. And I do believe that Mr. Mayor, I do believe there needs to be a direct link with the City Council regarding this. And so I need more understanding about how that is going to interface and how we are going to be queued into this, whether it is the two committee, whether it's the Board of Finance and in relation to the two. It doesn't have to be answered tonight, but I do have organizational questions regarding that. Very good. Thank you, Councilor Bush. Are other questions hearing none? Well, Councilor Jang. Thank you for being here and thank you for the presentation. And I think the first question that I have is why DPW is the organization that need to take on the asset management other than, let's say, you know, airport or parks and recreation? Why specifically the Department of Public Works? There were a couple reasons we came up with. First one is DPW really has the most technical resources that are currently kind of applying these practices already. They have the staff that is closest to the assets to some degree, they maintain them, they operate them, they're doing a lot of the capital projects for most of the city's infrastructure. Parks and Rec, their mission is more recreation and services and the assets that they have really support those, but it's less of a focus and it's actually less amount of assets that they manage than what DPW does. And when we talk about also asset, to me personally, the first thing we need to think about here in the municipality is the people. Those are the best assets and you talked about risk, you talked about keeping them here, you talked about all of that, but why in your report it did not include how do we manage actually the best asset that we have here, which are the people? Your staff is your most valuable asset to the city in any organization. So asset management addresses that in several ways. First of all, you talk about inventory in your physical infrastructure. Asset management also inventories your current staff and certifications and experience to make sure that you have the right resources to manage that infrastructure. The other key feature that a good asset management program does is succession planning. So when your staff retires or leaves the city, a lot of the knowledge and information that they have on that infrastructure isn't just in their head, but the information is captured in tools. So it's passed on. So the next DPW director comes in, he has really good data on what infrastructure is there, what projects have previously been done on those, what the previous DPW director deemed as the most critical infrastructure assets and prior. And then also what staff is currently in the system to sustain and maintain that infrastructure, what skills they have, what certifications, what knowledge, etc. All of that typically gets captured, documented and maintained continuously. I'm sorry, but I felt that I meant the taxpayers. Those are the best asset we have, but not the staff. Right. So if you look at that five core questions framework of asset management, the second one is really driven towards the stakeholders, taxpayers, residents. And that's asking why does the city have any asset? It's really to provide a service to those stakeholders. And that information and understanding is what's used to establish how critical an asset is. So if you look at anything from a street, a sidewalk, a road, a bridge, a pavilion, you think about what is that doing to provide a service to the residents and how critical would be if that asset didn't exist or failed. So think about it. Take any sewer, water, street and think could we live with that asset for one hour, one day, one week. And that's kind of how you think about the consequence of failure, is what impact does it have to your residents, to your tourism, to your businesses, etc. And that's how criticality is established. And that's how your resources, capital investments, maintenance should be focused is with the residents and stakeholders in mind. Thank you, Councillor Jane. Councillor Pine. Thank you, Mr. President. The question I have is lots of city departments have their hands in the business of asset management. And it just strikes me that the one department that actually has the broadest perspective is actually the Chief Administrative Officer, the C. Cook Treasurer's Office. And I know that nobody really wants new duties handed to them. But I think DPW has got its hands full doing what it's trying to do. So I'm not really convinced yet that this makes a whole lot of sense to be DPW's responsibility, as much as I value them. And when I go out door to door, I hear complaints about issues that mostly relate to DPW. So it is definitely one place where the public interacts with the city most, I would say, is public works issues, the streets, sidewalks, those issues, for sure. But broadly speaking, I mean, this building is managed by the Parks and Recreation Department. Other facilities are managed by other departments. So I'm not sold yet on the notion that DPW is necessarily the right entity in city government to deliver the best oversight and the most cost-effective management of the inventory of our assets. So I'll just put that out there. Yeah. We should have put more information about this asset management steering committee, which does have heavy representation from parks and all the other departments that have capital assets. Putting them within DPW was evaluated, the pros and cons, I kind of listed some. A lot of the staff within DPW has technical capabilities to manage data resources. Asset management kind of has two sides to it. There's a strategic or tactical side, which is day-to-day activities, the maintenance, rehabs that are being done, and then strategic, kind of long-term financing, capital improvement plan, setting priorities. The only way to get that done is to really have people from a lot of different departments looking at it, because people see things differently. Parks and Rec, we looked at, but there was really more technical resources within DPW to support the activities of asset management, but to kind of address the concerns you bring up, we really felt this asset management steering committee, which would set priorities, is really kind of a key to make this whole thing work correctly and make sure we have input from all the departments and all the different ways people evaluate and prioritize. And I think we'll have to get back to you with more information on what this committee concept looked like, because we addressed some of these questions we got earlier in the report. The report does evaluate having the Clerk Treasurer's Office kind of oversee this effort, and happy to discuss it in more detail. It was an alternative we evaluated. Jay, can you make clear what we're doing in the Consent Agenda, the two items? Yes, I can. So, Item 4.04 would have the creation of the asset management administrator position. So, that would be a new position that the Board of Finance reviewed and recommended bringing to the Council. This would be the dedicated person that the presentation discussed that would focus on asset management. And then the second piece is the reclassification of currently the Capital Improvement Program Manager position to oversee this effort. And so, that would be reclassifying an existing position that Martha Keenan capably manages and give us the organizational structure to implement the recommendations in this report. Thank you. Any other questions? Hearing none, thank you very much for that presentation. And I will now go to Item number three, which is public forum, and we'll open the public forum. And everyone, you have three minutes to speak. Most of you know, but there is a time system, light system in front of you that when you get to the middle light, you're kind of winding down with a minute or so left when you get to the red light, you need to finish the last sentence. And these would be a short sentence and finish up. So, I don't have to cut you off. We'll start with Barbara McGrew to be followed by Will Hurd. Good evening, Ms. McGrew. Welcome. Mays to read in today's Vermont digger that the comment about the people who are concerned about the Champlain Parkway often don't live in the south end where the project will run and several have worked to block other projects, including City Place, City Hall Park, and City Hall Park renovations. Quote, there does seem to be a group of people who are opposed to things just for the sake of being opposed. This was from Councillor Shannon. So, if it's in our neighborhood, we are selfish nimbies opposed to progress, but if it's not in our neighborhood, we have no standing to speak out. Seems like there's no real way for the public to come before you with respect and credibility. Remember, this is one city, all of our lake, all of our downtown, and all of our south end, and our parks, and our roads. I'm sure you wish we would shut up and go away so you can just get it done like the motto says, no matter how ugly, how badly, how unsafe, how antiquated, or ill-conceived. Again, I must speak out against the labeling and marginalization of scores of citizen activists who love Burlington just as much as you do and who just might have some good ideas. With your name calling, you discourage the public participation you pretend to want. How about some of the deference and polite consideration you show for each other on the council? Where the public is concerned, where is your decency, where is your humility? You do this at your peril. You already have a stalled, perhaps failed, mega project at the city's core. This was totally preventable, had you just taken the time, had you just listened. The jury is still out on City Hall Park. Must we be silent and watch a 65 million dollar inferior road go up in the name of what you call progress? We are owed your attention and your thanks, and perhaps an apology, not your scorn and division. Whatever you call us, we will not be bullied and we will not be silent. Thank you, Ms. McGrew. Will Herd is up next, we followed by Jacob Hinsdale. Good evening, Mr. Herd. Welcome. Thank you. I'm Will Herd. I've been a Burlington resident since 1992, and I've called many of you and talked to many of you on the phone and left messages for other ones about a climate emergency declaration. And I'm really concerned about climate change and its impact that it's having on the world, it's having on the city, it's having on our future and on my son. And I realize that, like, you know, I ride my bike everywhere, I don't have a car, I watch what I purchase, but there's a sort of conundrum about being an individual doing something. It's no matter what an individual does, it doesn't really matter because it doesn't stop very much greenhouse gases from going into the atmosphere. But if collectively we did something, they'd have much greater impact. And so I'm asking the city of Burlington to pass a climate emergency declaration. Since I started talking to people about this, New York City has come out and declared a climate emergency declaration. In just the past week, the city of Austin did. That makes about somewhere around 20 cities in the U.S. And the value of a climate emergency declaration is it lets everybody know where the city of Burlington stands. Not only, and it also inspires other cities, hopefully, to then declare their own climate emergency and then we can follow this up with concrete action. So hopefully this will spread throughout the U.S. So I'm asking the council to pass a climate emergency declaration. And it's actually interesting that we've had this discussion about DPW because I was reading in the climate action report that one of the big effects on the city of Burlington from climate change is that the more frequent rains and a denser, a shorter amount of time have created a much greater problem for our sewers. And that's why we're having so much sewage running into our lake is because there's been a change in our climate, according to the Burlington Climate Action Report. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Herd. Jacob Hinsdale is up next to be followed by Richard Kemp. Good evening, Mr. Hinsdale. Welcome. I'm here to speak today about the issue 5.02 on the deliberative agenda as well as the application for a liquor license for Burley acts at 294 and Othernoski Avenue. I'm not quite sure where this fits. Pull your microphone in closer and speak a little loud because we're having trouble hearing you. The issues of Burley acts are essentially that it's fit into the neighborhood, specifically the building at 294 Othernoski Avenue for many years. I've worked and managed and tried to curate what I view as one of the anchors of the old north end at 294 Othernoski Avenue as a diverse and interesting place for people in the community to gather. I think that Burley acts would be an incredibly good addition to the mix that we have between food establishments, nonprofits, active studios for dance and for yoga. I think that acts throwing is one of those flashy, interesting things that people really crave for entertainment. I think the old north end would benefit from an interesting, more, I think, attention grabbing type of space. The issues of danger and the issues of alcohol being mixed with acts throwing I think are well addressed by our new resident at 294 Othernoski Avenue. I think Mike has done a good job planning and making the space safe for this activity. Just like any sport, it comes with its risks, but the type of flooring down to the type of cage protection around the acts throwing lanes and the limit of one drink per hour I think is a good remedy to any sorts of excessive risk with this activity. I think it would be entertaining and I think it would be a good addition. I'm not quite sure if there's any opportunity for the applicant to speak during the deliberative agenda, but I'm sure he would be willing and able to speak on his own behalf. Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Hinsdale, Richard, I'm not sure about the last thing I said, Camp, it looks like I may start with a V. Is it Richard? Vaughn? Vaughn, I heard it like six times now. Anybody else, Vaughn? Is it Vaughn? Mr. Vaughn, welcome. Good evening. My name is Richard Vaughn and I'm the owner of Perky Planet, a coffee shop located at the corner of King and St. Paul Street here in Burlington. My wife and I opened this shop for the purpose of providing meaningful, competitively paid and inclusive employment for people with disabilities. We also hoped to create an asset for the city, a venue where our neighbors could come in and get to know, value, respect our employees. Today my shop sits virtually cut off from the city that we serve, that we wish to serve by closed streets, closed sidewalks, open pits, chain link fences, barricade tape, and other physical and visual barriers. That's the way it is today and that's the way it has been every day since we opened in January. It wasn't supposed to be that way. My wife and I had many different options of where to locate our shop. It was only after that the city published a tentative schedule for the construction of St. Paul Street that we decided to pull the trigger and move to that location. We are operating under the assumption that that schedule was a good faith estimate on the part of the city as to how long that project was going to take based on what was known at that time it was not. That schedule detailed 140 days of street closure on St. Paul. We are now on day 360 and it'll be at least another 30 days and my suspicion is that there will be another delay and that will soon. I'm not here to complain about the construction schedule however that's going to take more than three minutes but rather to remind the city and the administration that the city has an obligation to secure, protect, and defend the public trust. Creating false schedules, timelines, and providing incomplete and erroneous documents does nothing to protect the public trust. In addition I would say to the city counselors that if you do not know why this project has taken three times longer than it was supposed to I urge you to read your emails. This seems to be a pervasive issue for the city. It is ongoing. Your constituents are being hurt on your watch. I would also here to memorialize my experience as a word of warning to anybody else who thinks it might be a good idea to start a business in the state or in the city of Burlington or relocate to the city of Burlington. I invite you to come and talk and take a look at my experience and just as a word of warning, the biggest threat to your business plan may be the city itself. Thank you so much for your time. Thank you Mr. Vaughn. Nicholas Floresh is up next. He's followed by Richard Halyard. Good evening Mr. Floresh. Welcome. Good evening. Thank you counselors, mayor, city staff. Some of you have received a letter about this but this seems like a good opportunity to share my organization's intent with the city and the public ahead of any decisions about support. So my name is Nick Floresh. I'm the co-captain of Code for BTV. Code for BTV is the local brigade or chapter of Code for America and we're one of over 80 brigades now across the United States. Code for BTV helps our local government and community organizations serve the public good efficiently and effectively through the use of modern technology. We do this as volunteers. We have many projects. For example, the green update mobile app, the Vermont Affordable Housing Coalition's website was redone by us. We're building a application for the Champlain Valley Office of Economic Opportunity and important to what I'm talking about now, we have been working with Vermont Legal Aid since September of 2018 to build a tool that automates the generation of expungement petitions during their expungement clinics. It has been used to submit expungement petitions for over 20 individuals since it was first used at a clinic this spring. Every year, our national organization, Code for America, designates a single day for all brigades across the United States to work in unison on a single theme or issue. This is called the National Day of Civic Hacking. It has been happening since our first year in 2013. This year, the National Day coincides with the kickoff National Expungement Week when groups across the country will be working to promote their more open and fair deliveries of expungement, sealing, and rights restoration services. Code for BTV hopes to host the local event for Vermont here in Cantois, Ivorium. For those who do not know how professional software design works, the first phase is usually getting to understand the users and the problems that need to be solved for them. Our event on the 21st will have a goal of better understanding the stories of justice-impacted individuals mapping their journey through the various services available to them and understanding what worked, didn't work, and needs improvement. We will use a software design approach appropriately named journey mapping. At the same time, we will survey all of the justice-impacted individuals who attend to build a scorecard of the various services that are available to them. We want to know which services they think are working, how they're, if they're good or they're so-so or bad and why and the why part is probably the most important part. For example, did they not use the service because they tried to use it and they couldn't get access to the right person or was the website that explained the service incorrect or just hard to understand? Things could be fixed. We want to see the existing rights restoration services in the state of Vermont through their eyes. Because of everybody's time being valuable, we are going to be offering free food for the justice-impacted individuals that attend our event. The results of this event surveys and journey mapping will be given to the Vermont legal aid, the state's attorneys, and we will be making it publicly available as well without any names or private information. These results should help both the Vermont legal aid and our expungement project move forward more efficiently. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Floresh. Richard Hilliard is up next. We follow by Kai McHale Force. Good evening. Thank you, Richard Hilliard, Ward 1. I'd like to address the Brookfields info item on the agenda regarding Burlington Town Centre redevelopment. But I'd just like to insert my full endorsement for Barbara McGrew's comments earlier on. So, I don't know if the Brookfield people are here, but if they are, I hope you'll attend the Ward 1 and Ward 8 NPA sooner rather than later. You've given us a miss so far, and we regret that. Three years ago, President Wright spoke at City Council saying he hoped the development wouldn't finish up like Newport. Presumably, he meant criminal developers and a whole in City Centre. While President Wright, we've got the whole. We have been promised fresh retail, affordable housing, and what I think is the most bogus promise of all, 750 new jobs to be generated by the redevelopment. Some of these were to be provided at a above-market rate by a lease from the Medical Centre. How is that going? As a clue, the Medical Centre is telling employees that they have a $40 million budget gap. Jobs are being outsourced, some out of state, and severance packages are being handed out. So, if we're banking on the Medical Centre to provide 750 jobs or a good part of that, I think we're backing up their own tree. So, I repeat my earlier request and hope Brookfield will attend all the NPAs with your update and to address Naver's concerns. Our NPA has been told via City Councilor that the election of Donald Trump is to blame for the apparent fiasco. So, I hope Brookfield that you can do better than that. Thank you, Mr. Hilliard. Kai McElforce, foresight. Good evening. Welcome. Almost, it's for Lee. Last name. Good evening, everyone. I was here a couple of weeks ago and spoke to two issues, and I'm going to return to one of those issues this evening, but I'm going to take you on a little journey as a way to discuss this particular issue. You're familiar with the issues that the state is involved in regarding PFAS, that class of chemicals that are persistent and dangerous to living beings like ourselves. The landfill, the soil line landfill in the state, which, as you know, is up in Coventry. That landfill, like all landfills, produces leachate. That leachate is sent around to various wastewater treatment plants in the state, including, as I understand it, the main plant here in Burlington down on the waterfront. Wastewater treatment plants are not designed to handle that material. The primary goal of the wastewater treatment plant is to reduce pathogens. When that material arrives, it's stored in a tank on site, a large tank, and this is something I only pieced together a couple of hours ago, which is why I'm here. I just need to raise the alarm. Rather than, like when a truckload of that material arrives, just running it all through the wastewater treatment plant, that material is dripped into the plant. It's basically metered in. What I think the goal behind that is to prevent triggering testing limits, according to the director of DPW, who's here with us tonight, and maybe can speak to this. There is regular testing done, I believe, of the effluent, perhaps of the sludge, testing for levels of PFAS. Apparently, those tests always come in under limits, quote, unquote. I don't know what those limits are. I don't know if they're using drinking water limits or what, but as I understand it, there's no limit for sludge, the amount that can be in sludge. There's no limit that I'm aware of that can be effluent. The problem is that in order to, or what I foresee is going on here, is that rather than then dump that material in all at once and trigger those testing limits, the city is wantonly and knowingly metering that material in and basically exploiting a process loophole in order to take money from Cassella, who owns a landfill up in Coventry, to boost the city's revenues, and is knowingly dumping that material in the lake. It's a persistent chemical as I've talked about. I don't need to tell you all about what it does to human beings and other life forms. I think that's wrong, and I just want you all to be aware of that, and I'd like you to look into it and put an end to it. I don't know why in one part of the state the Attorney General is going after corporations who engaged in a similar behavior knowingly and wantonly polluted the commons when it appears the city of Burlington is doing this exact same thing, so please take care of that. Thank you very much. Karen Long is up next to be followed by Charlie Messing. Good evening, Ms. Long. Welcome. My name is Karen Long, and I came to talk about a couple things. I sent you some pictures today, but we have a hole in the heart of our city because some developers and property owners are not held accountable. Tonight, perhaps Brookfield will address all of our concerns, but in the meantime, property tax revenue on the city place property is down $200,000. Parking revenue on the 30-plus spaces giving up to an idle construction site is down $50,000 to $144,000. The millions of dollars in incremental taxes promised from development have not materialized, and our downtown and its businesses are suffering diminished revenue, faith, and vibrancy in many ways. We have heard the silence. We have seen the dodging and weaving, but City Hall did not just happen. It was not an act of God or a natural disaster. It cannot be blamed on Trump. It resulted from decisions made here that failed to hold the developer to a performance standard. Meanwhile, and many neighborhoods, smaller scale city halls abound as a subset of property owners exploit students and makes housing less affordable. They buy up our housing and mismanage properties with no concern for their tenants, the neighbors, or the city itself concern only with the bottom line profit. Trash and mattresses piled up on the green belt are the trademark for this self-centered community bashing business model. It's time for the mayor and the city council to cease standing by but to demand accountability and make change happen. So I sent you more pictures. I'm not talking about my neighborhood. We're pretty healthy there, but I walked downtown. I raised my children here, and there are many neighborhoods that are just getting worse and worse. And I think we have a pretty healthy code enforcement office budget now. I'm not sure why it's not getting better. It is actually worse. And this, the move in is bad, which is amazing to me because move out this May was really bad. And we talked about it with Bill Ward. He admitted that it was worse than he would expect. So please, I ask you all, many of you have been on the council for a long time and it's pretty frustrating that nothing is happening. But this has been a problem for 20 years, and it is getting worse, not better. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Long. Charlie Messing is up next. We followed by Bruce Wilson. Good evening, Mr. Messing. Welcome. Thank you. It's nice to be back. I have three minutes tonight, so I thought I'd try and get the eye contact in there that I usually am too busy to give. Okay. The park looks like hell. Okay. There are so many things to complain about. It's so little time. Let's see. I have, I, of course, the F-35 is my idea of something bad happening. I am totally behind the gentleman who has got perky planet and who has been saddled with a year of no traffic. I think we should make it up to him somehow. We should be able to think of a way. I would like to speak to the public bulletin boards. We have what we call public bulletin boards. They're basically for the people who have no advertising budget. These are people who cannot advertise in the paper. They cannot even advertise for a hundred or two hundred dollars to have an ad like this in seven days. They have no money, so all they have is the flyers. They put up flyers that are either eight and a half by eleven or eleven by seventeen, and they put them up on the bulletin boards. But guess what? The bulletin boards are totally covered in every case with higher ground, nectars, the other one, arts riot, and someplace else. It's like Burlington City arts too, but that's okay with me. These places can advertise. They have an advertising budget. They're in the newspaper. They should not be taking up all this space on the bulletin boards, and they're now hitting the telephone poles. The telegraph poles, whatever the hell they are, the big wooden things that you can get a splinter from. They're taking those over. It used to be nothing but waking windows and the highly desperate bartending school. They were the only people who advertised on this thing. Now, it's got higher ground. They just, I mean, they'll put it up, maybe they'll put it on the houses next, but they should not be allowed to advertise in the public bulletin boards. They have their outlet, the newspapers, the radio. The people with no budget should own the public bulletin boards. I appreciate them being cleared nicely. Even the staples are gone, but it's got to stop, really. Perfect time. Very important. Yes, thanks. Thank you, Mr. Messing. The beep was late. That wasn't me. I know. You were right on the time. You were right on the money. Bruce Wilson is up next, and then the final speaker is Noah Cresty. Good evening. Welcome. Thank you, Mr. Mayor and City Council for allowing us to speak up, say a few words. And so I'm Bruce Wilson, Executive Director of Service Render, and a lot of you know me. You need to pull the microphone right in close. Okay. Don't take no time for me. So I'm Bruce Wilson, Executive Director of Service Render Incorporated, and you've served your body. You guys, a lot of you know what we do. So I just want to say I'm here with my Youth Board President and Board of Director Charlene Fu. And what I want to say is I want to talk about how incredible and wonderful the mall project it is. You guys already approved it. And so a blighted mall, right, that's turned into an incredible place that's going to compete with the rest of the country. You know, what it's going to do also is going to enhance Church Street marketplace business. People are going to come there like no other in around the state. It's going to provide jobs. It's going to affordable units. It's going to open up two streets that when I came in, the streets were closed in 1989, but they were closed when I was open for congestion reasons. Tourism will increase because we have green space and all these incredible stuff they're going to do. I want to talk about quickly that also they work with nonprofits like ourselves. We have an art gallery in that mall about to open up September 20th and recording to free for the community artists and in around to come in there and just have a free sale there in our gallery and also record free stuff. We're going to do incredible murals down at the lower level. And so it's very important that we got to make sure that this project, everybody, you already approved it. Make sure that it happens, you know. And so that's what I got to say. Hi, my name is Charlene Fu and I'm the youth board president of service rendered. I'm just here. I want to just share my experience working with Bruce and this program and it has been amazing. I always wanted to build an art gallery myself and I finally got the chance to with the support of city place and we're now doing collecting different artwork, not just from Vermont, but from different countries. And there's different artists with different backgrounds who's willing to work with us and they're trying to showcase their work. And we're also working with teenagers, college students and high school students. And they're all really happy to let their, you know, talents showcase in a space like this. And I just, yeah, I really appreciate everything. Thank you very much. Have a good evening. Final speaker is Noah Crosby. Good evening. Welcome. My name is Noah Crosby. I'm the owner and operator of Randall and music at 215 college street down down the street. I've been in that location for six and a half years and I work for Klaipi music and Berlin guitar and amp and Vermont folk music for 23 years downtown now. And what I'm really concerned about is this hole in the middle of Burlington that's you've taken over 600 parking places and now we have no parking and I've just been watching my business shrink by alarming rates. And I've been doing a statistical uh, analyzation with a friend of mine who is in the with Amazon as a statistical analyst. And the numbers we're looking at are quite alarming and I have people calling me all the time saying where can they park or they can only get a 15 or 30 minute parking place. And you can't come into a music store and buy a thousand dollar or a $500 or even a hundred dollar instrument in 15 minutes. So I really have questions for you guys is when and what is really happening downtown because I hear a lot of things and I hear some things that are like this isn't going to be finished for five years, which is very concerning if that's the truth. So I just like to I have more questions than actually a statement and I'd like to hear clearly what you guys are going to do and why we've come to this place. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Crosby. And with that we will close tonight's public forum and move back to item number four, the consent agenda. Councillor Busher. Yes, I'll move to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Councillor Busher has moved the consent agenda. Is there a second? Second by Councillor Roof. Any discussion? Hearing none. All those in favour of approving the consent agenda and taking the actions indicated, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. One Councillor in opposition, Councillor Jang. We'll take a not a real recess, just a break for just a moment. All right. Item number 5.01 is an appointment to the Special Policing Committee. Councillor Roof. Thank you, President Wright. I'd like to make a nomination. Thanks, President Wright. I'd like to make a motion to appoint Thomas, excuse me on the last name here, neck and cast to this committee. Councillor Roof has made a nomination. Seconded by Councillor Pine. Any discussion on the nomination? Hearing none. All those. Councillor Jang. No, you got to use the microphone. Councillor Jang. So, Adam Roof, this is more of a question. Is this the only application we have in front of us? Councillor Roof. Yes, the application that's in front of us is the only application to fill this spot, which is filling a member representing the domestic violence service provider community. It is just that she's not my constituent, but he did apply, but I didn't see his application in here. This is not going to be a back and forth, Councillor, Councillor Jang. It's to you, President, if he can answer that. Where is that application? I wasn't clear what your question was. There is another application that was submitted to the mayor's office that I could not find in here. Point of information, President Wright. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Councillor Roof. I believe I'm able to respond to the question that I believe Councillor Jang is asking if you would like me to do so. Proceed. Sure. So, at a recent meeting, there was a discussion around the table, short discussion about the positions that were not filled during the first pass in the appointment process for the special committee on policing. During that discussion, we had brought up that it was the mental health and substance abuse seat that remained open. And from there, there was some outreach to find folks to fill that position. That conversation was had an error. We did fill that position during the committee process and approve that as a council. During that point in time when we were communicating with folks, one did apply, and I did speak with that with your constituent today on the phone to inform him of the mistake he was understanding of that and recognize that he was not, did not meet the criteria to fill the position that was still open. Thank you, Councillor Roof. Are we all set to vote? All those in favor of the nomination, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? That passes unanimously. We are going to move ahead to item 5.03, and that is a communication from Brookfield regarding an update on the city place project. Good evening. Is Councillor, is Councillor Tracy joining us now? Good evening. If you could all three of you identify yourself for the record, please. Sure. My name is Anand Olson that's spelled A-A-N-E-N. I am a vice president with Brookfield Properties. Chelsea Zegelbaum, and I am a manager with Brookfield Properties. I'm Joe Gander Singh. I'm known as Just Singh, and I'm in the construction department of Brookfield. Okay. And if, just to make sure, everybody please make sure the microphones are pulled right in close so that everybody can hear you when you speak to it. All right, who's going to start out with the presentation? Good evening. Like I said, my name is Anand Olson. I'm a vice president with Brookfield Properties. We are here, here with me this evening are other members of our our development team, Chelsea Zegelbaum and Joe Gander Singh. We've been asked by the city and other members of this council to visit with you this evening to provide an update on the project status and what you can expect going forward. I'll, my name, I'm a vice president. I'm taking over for Will Vogel who was appeared here last time. Will took another position with a different company, got the opportunity to move from Cleveland to Santa Monica and Southern California. So we don't blame him for leaving, but I am here as representative of the execution team. We, the three of us are the kind of the core members of Brookfield's team here to take the project going forward and see it through to completion. And I'll let Chelsea and Singh kind of describe their roles. And again, please have the microphone like right in front of you kind of like this and talk loud because as you might have guessed, this is an issue that people are very interested in, the public in the audience, the city council, everybody, we want to make sure everybody hears you. And so you need to have it up like this. As I said, I'm in the construction department and Will Vogel, who was my colleague, he was the face in the city hall here. But I've been in the background, I've been on the project for last seven months. And I've been coming to the city pretty much every week. And I was working with the architects, engineers, and our construction managers during their entire building process, working on the budgets, estimates. And the bottom line is at the end of the day, the numbers were too high. And that's what we're sitting here. I'm Chelsea Siegelbaum. I'm a manager with Brookfield properties. I appeared here once before you with Will Vogel. My job on the team is to be the right-hand man for these people, as well as manage the process internally within Brookfield. So I'll continue. Over the past several months, a tremendous amount of work has taken place in an effort to commence construction on City Place Burlington project. Due to various reasons, including the complexities of the project, outstanding litigation, escalating costs, we've been unable to start. We remain committed to delivering a successful project for our partnership and the city. In order to achieve this, we are working diligently with various sectors within Brookfield to take a holistic approach to the development by considering all opportunities from Church Street through the former Macy's building. Moving forward, we will be working collaboratively with the administration, council, and stakeholders to ensure we deliver a project that is consistent with the community's values and goals and one that delivers an economic return for our partnership. As we work through these obstacles, we recognize it may require additional time before construction can commence. As such, we are working on ways to enhance the current site conditions. As an example, we're working diligently on parking and to restore pedestrian access. In order to improve the aesthetic appearance, there will also be an art installation on the barriers. We expect this project to be completed in the next 90 days. Additionally, given the success of the holiday parking plan last year, we're working with the city to donate additional funds to create a similar program and continue to drive shoppers to downtown Burlington. This has been a difficult process for us all. We can only thank you for your patience and we look forward to working together to move the project forward. That said, and we're happy to answer some questions. Right now, there are two major constraints to why we can't share more. One, the project is the subject of active litigation. In fact, the last time we made a public statement and it wasn't even to this body. It was just a kind of a press release. Not two days later, an amended complaint was filed in court. And the second, this is a very big complex project and we are actively putting significant resources to work to try to find a path forward. And as soon as we're in a position to give you a full update, we will. We've committed to visiting some of the neighborhood groups and we are open to active dialogue. That's it for the presentation. That's it. Okay. I have a feeling there's going to be a lot of questions. And I think people were hoping for a lot more to start with. I'm just going to ask you first. Is Brookfield 100% committed to this project? We are 100% committed to this project. We would not have sent three people here in a tie to Burlington to not commit to that. Okay. We'll open it up to the council. Councillor Busher. Thank you for being here tonight. I have to tell you I'm at this side of the table. It doesn't make me feel very secure that the faces representing Brookfield keep changing. It doesn't make me feel secure at all. It makes me feel like this is a project that nobody wants and that you keep passing it on to the new unfortunate people that have made it moved up in the organization. And I have to be honest with you that that doesn't make me feel secure with what is being shared tonight. So I represent a section of the city and the residents that I represent have had it up beyond, I'm not very tall, but beyond me. They are frustrated that I can't share any information. They're frustrated that we got ourselves, the city got ourselves into this situation. And there seems to be a lack of commitment. You might have been here tonight for the public forum and heard some of the comments made. And a number of those comments came from my ward where people feel like the council isn't sharing and you're not sharing. And what are we going to do about this? My concern and I understand, I don't know if we're a priority for you. I feel that the lack of communication to the council suggests otherwise. And so I've said it over and over again that the communication does not have to be you coming here in a suit and tie. Although I do want you here frequently in a suit and tie or freak, I don't care what you wear as long as your clothes, but the information you share is more important than what you have on. But there are other forms of communication in today's world. And so I really urge you, I did that back at the beginning, urged people to use email, text. I don't care, but get us some information. Let me just share one thing. I shared this with the mayor. Like I worked at the hospital for 50 years and I was involved in bringing in a computer system for transfusion medicine. And we gathered weekly and all the players gathered and they gave updates. They either said we're on track or we're falling behind or there's this problem or that problem. I can't believe that this isn't happening also for your company if you really are engaged in this. And there has to be something to share. Either you're on track, you're falling behind, whatever. There has to be something to share so that people know that you actually are meeting and you really have this project on your agenda. So I really urge you to do something like what I've suggested. The other thing that's looming for me. And so people referenced that I was one of the counselors who said that I got information that part of the reason cost escalated is because of Trump and his tariffs. So I did share that because that's the information I got from some people from Brookfield. So that may not be true, but that's what I was told and I passed that on as true. So I'm not going to take that back unless you want to take that back. But the thing that really is looming now for me is the discussion from people that know economics better than I, that we may be facing a recession in the next 12 to 18 months. And I don't know how that's going to play out for this project. And I'm really worried about that. And I need to let you know I'm worried about it. And I think that many residents and many businesses are worried about that too. Maybe no one else wants to say it, but I'm naive enough to say it. So those are my comments to you. I really, really don't know what else to do. I'm not mayor, but I really want you to communicate with this community. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Any reaction? Thank you very much for your comments. We communicate on a daily basis, if not an hourly basis. And I agree we could do a better job of communicating with you. We live and breathe it every day. And we will do a better job of communicating. Yeah. And I'm just going to add that both Singh and I have been on the project from the beginning as well as a few other members of our team who are not here tonight. Anand has also been part of our larger team and involved in this project. And now he's just taking more of a lead role, but this team has not changed in the commitment from this team. It's still our dedicated project on a day-to-day basis. It's the only project most of us work on. Thank you. I did want to say one other thing. Thank you for agreeing to, and I expected you to put money in for the holiday parking. And thank you very much. I'd like it to be more than last year. I'm just being honest. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Busher. And I have a number of councillors lined up in the queue to ask questions. And I hope hopefully there'll be some more information to share because I've got to tell you that right now the headline I think to this would be Brookfield comes to the council to tell the council that they have nothing to tell the council. So, Councillor Pine. Thank you, Mr. President. I think I'm going to start with some specifics and then I'll give what I think is my, I'll share my perspective. The the public right of way has been impacted for quite some time by this project and I'd like to hear what your plans are to basically give back the public right of way since you're not going to start building for quite some time. It's evident you're not, you're not moving ahead. Definitely not in 2019 I think at this rate. So when are we going to see basically the streets reclaimed by the public? I'll let Singh take that. He's been working with the DPW and your engineering department. Yeah, we have engaged engineering ventures, Kevin Warden who is the civil engineer for the project. Actually him and I walked the site last week. We kind of surveyed it, saw the site conditions and came with the plan. How should we restore it? And we took the plan to the city at a meeting last week and they gave us a couple of comments to tweak it. The bottom line is that he's going to revise those plans hopefully this week and go back to the city and we're trying to implement a plan that's safe for the public and we can do the best we can giving the site conditions and implement it as quickly as we can. We were told by Mr. Vogel when he was here several months ago that there was essentially a commitment to finance the project and I guess I'm wondering is that still the case? Do you still have essentially a commitment from a financing source? That is correct. We still have a commitment. Okay, so an executed term sheet? Correct. I think what's especially challenging for us up here is we are the public representatives and you are the private and this is a public-private partnership but that spirit of partnership just hasn't been here lately and I think it's hard for us to continue to sort of speak to the public about a project that we have not felt that the private sector partner here has been an actual partner in a meaningful way and so what we're really hoping to get is more transparency, more candor, more sharing to the point where it may make you a little bit queasy and uncomfortable to share but I think that's what a public-private partnership is. This isn't a typical development deal that is done without a major public involvement and public investment so the voters of Burlington voted essentially in favor of this project if you will and I think in exchange for that there's a reasonable expectation that you'll share information in a timely manner that's meaningful about what's going on as quickly and as honestly, as candidly as possible so that's what I hope we see going forward because we haven't felt that yet. Like I said, there's been a tremendous amount of work behind the scenes, you know, analyzing the project and we will make that commitment. We will make that commitment to be more transparent going forward. Thank you, Councillor Payne. Councillor Paul. Thank you, President Wright. Thank you very much for coming this evening for being here with us. I know it's not easy and we appreciate your being here. I have a couple of two specific questions. One of them really I think is for you, because you're dealing with the construction and I understand that you've been actively engaged, as you said, since January or maybe even before that, basically since Brookfield took over as the lead on the project and that you've been working diligently on the cost analysis and the mixed-use approach to the project, you know, the former iteration of the project did not take into account the Macy's property because at the time the partnership didn't own the Macy's project property but it does now and I'm wondering does that, it would seem as though that adds a new dimension that hopefully presents opportunities and I'm just wondering how that may have changed your view of the project and if you feel that you may be able to have some idea to be able to present to the public a rough rendering that could happen before the end of 2019? Yeah yeah I mean I'll take that. The inclusion of the Macy's parcel does open up opportunities. Like you said it was not part of the original plan for what we call block 2, the middle block. So it does offer opportunities and that yeah as soon as we have a plan, as soon as we have a plan we're happy to share it. And just adding on that this has always been, we were always considering a phased approach to the project. We still have the remaining model today. We own the Macy's site. We were always considering doing different opportunities to different sectors of the project. So this just adds an additional opportunity. They don't all have to go together. They can go separately so we are looking at all those options. Okay and then I have if it's already president right I have one other question. Yes the gentleman I wanted to respond to that as well though. Okay just to reinforce that now if we look at the project from church street all the way to Macy's and yeah it gives us the opportunity that we can phase it because logistics is a big piece of this puzzle. We're between four streets. How do we construct the entire project? But this will give us the opportunity to phase it properly. We can do church street first, do the middle block sacking or vice versa. In a way it does help. Another thing because I noticed here because this is my first time in Burlington by the way, build buildings all over the country never here before and I found out like this is a small town let's face it. It's a pretty good size project. This gives us the opportunity even to get smaller contractors so they can work on one project rather than an entire big mass of a project. So they have more opportunities to bid on this job. Some of those local smaller contractors if we phase the project. Continue Councillor Park. Okay thank you. I also wanted to mention that particularly for the public that might be listening and those that are here that Chelsea you and Will did I believe engage with every single city councillor either I believe maybe even one-on-one with each of us to sort of gather our perspective and hear our concerns and I think probably what you heard from many if not all of us is that we made it pretty abundantly clear I know I did that there are some challenges to the dimensions of the project. I'm hoping that the addition of the Macy's property will I mean I'm hopeful that a redesign could make accommodations for the dimensions that would more fit the Burlington skyline now that you have a larger site to develop. The other the other question I had is that I think the community is looking for details but they're also very eager to have community engagement and by engagement I don't really mean necessarily although we appreciate coming to meetings and speaking with us and speaking with those of us here but real genuine dialogue by being able to get feedback and hear suggestions from the public and I'm just wondering if you have plans for that if there's anything that you might be able to you know give us in terms of even broad ideas about how you might pursue that. So we understand how important community engagement is and as we continue to refine our plans and as we continue to look at the site holistically we are very committed to engaging with the community in forums like Devin Wood had engaged it in the past. Okay and then my last question is just for for any of you the the medical center UVMMC I assume you're in fairly direct contact with them on a fairly frequent basis how are things with that relationship? The relationship is just fine we are actively engaged in conversations with them we understand how important they are to downtown and to the project so they are an integral part we are keeping them we are keeping them as informed as we can. Okay thank you very much. Thank you Councillor Paul. We have Councillor Tracy on the phone with us is that right? Councillor Tracy are you there? Right. And Councillor Tracy you can hear us? Yep I can hear you. You've been able to follow the testimony. Thank you very much. Okay I appreciate the opportunity to speak to this. It has been a year since we visited the development agreement again to provide updates to that development agreement specifically the amendment to that was at the time stated to needed as as being needed to facilitate the development and that was the decoupling of the showing of full financing in order to give the foundation permit of course that was not true and we've sat in a position of stagnancy since that point at that time when we had that meeting I raised the alarm saying that I had grave concerns about the project however those concerns were quite frankly ignored and we've continued to see nothing but delays and a failure to explain why those delays are happening we've seen that that explanation that failure to explain come from a rotating cast of characters that have not provided us with any degree of transparency with regard to this crucial project that's happening in our downtown that is having a detrimental impact to our city I think that this failure to provide transparency as well as the failure to maintain consistent construction is in violation of the development agreement and in my opinion means that we really have a situation where we need to continue to take increased action against the developer in order to merit compliance we cannot continue to sit here and have these non-update updates take place this is not acceptable for our constituents many of whom have for months now continually come to me and I'm sure many of you many of my other colleagues on the council in increasing frustration wondering what the fact is going on with the hole in the ground and so what I would suggest and what I would hope is that instead of allowing the council to and allowing Brookfield off easy and continuing to accept these non-updates is acceptable that we would continue to that we would pursue a course of increasing penalties and accountability for the developer with regards to this development the time for playing nice has long since passed and I would certainly advocate for us to take a much harder line with the developer they have taken advantage of our good faith our good will and our and the city's willingness to play ball it was not necessarily my personal willingness but they have taken advantage of the city and the voters and residents of this city who placed their faith in them to actually execute this development based on the proposed based on the the perspectives and the information that they were told so what I would advocate for is that the council take increased action with in order to maintain accountability on this project what I would also advocate for is that the developer not only if they are in fact going to be redesigning the project commit to a completely open and transparent public process in which we do not just receive a pre-baked plan but that the public actually has an has an opportunity to comment on the totality of the project meaning that the developer does not get to pick and choose what they what they want us to what they want us to develop if they're going to be reopening the project I would say that we need to have full opportunity to comment on all aspects of that project moving forward to make sure that the will of the voters whose trust quite frankly has been violated in this situation have the opportunity to take to take full part in it thank you very much thank you councillor tracy any reaction I can only reiterate our our commitment to the project and to clear communications going forward thank you I think we are going to be losing councillor tracy now thank you councillor tracy we will continue in the queue with councillor Paulino now so as you've heard councillor tracy express some serious concerns that I think we've heard throughout for a long time I'm a new councillor but as you can tell I was knocking on doors for over nine weeks and this was one of the things that came up then because then it was you know just a short delay was six or seven months now we're at a year anniversary about for this delay so I think that for me what's important is to you know your success is our success you know it might be your main project but it's our only project you know this is the biggest taxpayer in the state of Vermont and the city potentially and I think that it's easy to show up and say that you get it but I would just say that we want to feel that you get it and one of the things that would show me that you are committed to Burlington is to make the taxpayers hold for the 12 month delay in lost property tax revenue and parking benefits and the business and the surrounding businesses it it's an insignificant amount of money for a large project of the scale but it would send a clear message that you're taking the effect that this has had seriously so I would just ask that you consider that it sounds like you have a plan to visit our MPAs and provide the public with a good explanation of the delays and the going forward and I think that that's a smart way to go what we want to see is action you know we don't want to see even drawings we obviously would like to have the conversation of when's the first date the construction start date uh whether it's one building two buildings you know church street or Macy's first or whatever I think that those are the main things that I just wanted to express to you and welcome to the team I think you'll hear we'll reach out as the project goes further more and I think you in fact said that you are working with the administration on a plan in regard to monetary or help in regard to parking issues that type of thing as was done last year but hopefully more that's correct thank you uh council roof thank you president right hello and thank you for for being here especially those who are here for the first time in burlington welcome you'll hear from from all of us most likely that it's important that you share with the council in this community as much as you can when you can and I know that you know that and you'll hear it time and time again even if your update is that you have no update please share those are sometimes good enough even when not satisfactory they're good enough to know that we're we're hearing from you it is in your interest it is in the community's interest in this project's interest to not be silent and so even if you're in constant communication with folks from the city we need to be making sure that the the most information is possible is being expressed publicly when possible now for something of a request i've asked for something like this before and this might actually be a question for mr glasberg to respond to but i'll offer it up to all i've asked before for an accounting of the project and process milestones that will need to be accomplished as we move forward and i i think that a listing of those steps is important so that we're all operating on the same page and we all have the same understanding of what those next steps are is that something that can be shared tonight verbally and if so could that be shared in in written form as a follow-up good evening councillor roof the request for milestones is logical and is an ordinary part of the development process i think as these good folks at the table would likely share with you i have pressed them for that information for reasons they've described tonight there's a reluctance to provide a more fulsome and detailed update at this time what i have been working with them on are some action steps that we can expect to see during the remainder of the third quarter and into the fourth quarter of this year those include the restoration of the rights of way on bank and cherry streets a meaningful outcome those include the coordination with burlington city arts on trying to turn those barriers into somewhat of an amenity for the city at this point further activities during that time we know that brookfield is continuing their negotiations with the hospital to secure their continued commitment to the project broadly and that in turn may then be the key to allow for the creation of more meaningful construction related guidelines having a customer helps move the process forward also during the fourth quarter i expect that i will be back to the council seeking your guidance and that may be in executive session as we look at what are necessary amendments to the development agreement and those amendments in particular counselor roof will deal with updating schedule milestones and timeline finally we have been working together to implement and work with church street marketplace bba and dpw on another parking initiative for the holiday shopping season as well so those are practical things that i expect will be happening during the the third and fourth quarter as we look to the the year ahead and the activities that would unfold those would include a range of community engagement design and potentially regulatory processes to enable construction to proceed and to that extent and to be able to comment further on that these good folks need to be in a position where they're comfortable to make those commitments and are aware of whatever legal ramifications they have identified as being of concern in in being able to share that information but from a logic perspective that's where we should be early next year those are the sorts of activities that should be underway to precede commencement of construction uh just a quick follow-up uh to the degree that it's it's able to to capture um i got most of it not all it would be great to capture that in a concise write-up that could be shared with the council if that's possible absolutely and on the point of communication please let me be clear if and to the extent the council wants updates from me about the activities i'm engaged in the joys the frustrations more likely uh of the day-to-day effort to move this ahead i'm happy to provide that at your request one of the things i've tried to do in looking out for the city's best interest is to make sure that the city is not in the position of making representations about what is happening with a piece of privately owned property so it's it's challenging to talk about issues like schedule like what the next logical activities are when it's not the city's ability to to make those actions occur so i've seen my role as trying to encourage cajole nurture the relationship with the folks we're working with while holding the city's interests um at heart and i'm happy to report on that on a more frequent basis to avoid a situation where we have folks coming and and you're getting president right as you've described update update that's not serving your purposes either so trying to find a path where you feel like there's sufficient communication you have your finger on the pulse of what's going on that's what we should be heading for and i'm i'm eager to play a more active role if that would be helpful i'll just add councillor president right that i truly feel that every step we take away from that that old mall that we had is a step towards progress it's a good thing let's not forget that we are working to undo what i would call the travesty of urban renewal that literally leveled a neighborhood a residential neighborhood in our downtown and and dropped the cement block in the middle of our community that cut off not just one but two streets so now while recognizing this is not an excuse for delays or or lacks of communication i think it's important to keep in context what scars we are trying what wounds we are trying to to heal i feel that quite quite quite genuinely so i do hope that we make progress please do communicate as much as you can i look forward to seeing what can be shared in written form thank you mr glasberg for that thank you council roof and i would just add there's no doubt that the council and the public more importantly through us do want regular updates and communications and we want to be much better as you've heard many times we would hope that the future updates will have some more significant updates councillor mason thank you president right to sort of pick up on that i just heard a lot of what i had hoped to hear from brookfield from mr glasberg you know relating to what his envisioning of the next five six months looks like in terms of updates i've heard a commitment but i didn't sort of see head shaking in agreement with mr glasberg you know is it what are i hear your commitment but if they aren't just you coming and saying you have nothing to disclose what are you envisioning would be the updates or information provided to the council and the public over the next five to six months um i jeff said it very well um those those actions the um uvm mc uh conversations the the rights of way um and just in working with the community um are our you know absolute next steps um you know and just keeping open lines of communication so i heard also i mean i want to make sure we're on the same page you know potentially renditions relating to one or more sites i also heard you know moving forward on potential amendment to the development agreement whether that incorporates macy's again i don't know what the next phase looks like but is it unrealistic to expect we'll be starting that conversation and have that disclosure over the next six months um i'm not going to hold you to this i'm trying to set our expectations and public expectation of what because you you know this you showing up again and saying we have nothing to report even if true doesn't help so i'm trying to understand that i did not want to sit here tonight right i'm sure you don't have an update um we have we have two issues uh one of which is a uh a lawsuit pending litigation um against against the project um and it is it is just recently been updated amended uh which starts the clock all over again so while we are dealing that's going to be one of our first tasks is is dealing with this lawsuit and trying to uh to remedy that at the same time we have a number of professionals and consultants working on um uh you know just working behind the scenes to uh to to push the project along yes just to follow up so this is a bit of a new statement that you know is it your position now that until there's a resolution on the litigation you're not moving forward because that's that has not been impediment to the investment that's been made thus far and this is the first at least i've heard that things are on hold until we resolve it's not necessarily on hold we are still working diligently on uh on the project but depending or the active litigation is uh is an obstacle that we have to overcome okay thank you thank you councillor mason councillor jang thank you for being here i think what i need to start is you know to be truthful to you because we were not elected to be here and listen to people knock on our heads and then go home we were elected to represent our constitution to the best of our abilities we did swear on that okay and you know maybe member of the council we in different phases about this project but i has always have trust in the brookfield always but on april 30th this is a quote after the meeting and it vogal said he thought the question from the council will fair and that he understood the concern raised the reality is though we are pleased with the progress we have made and we are happy to report that progress today and happy to reinforce the communication that's what he said communication and according to you what are the biggest why people bring all the people to court most of the time do you know the the the biggest item asked why people bring people to court i i don't know i think it's a lack of communication and if you are in the construction field if you are in asset management field you should know that lack of communication last time you were here you told us clearly you indicated that this project is no longer feasible and since then we have not heard from you total silence total we have not heard from you and here you are here in front of us today telling us that you still want this project to move forward but you should give me a reason as to why i need to believe you on this one please someone need to respond all i can say is that we've been working very hard to make this project happen and we are here tonight to reiterate our commitment to the city and to the project that's all i can say i mean i think i did ask that question here and i think it was you here and i say from zero to five how likely is the project going to go but you reassured us you cannot give numbers but it will it is going to happen is this your first now that was that was this is my first time here so you look like one of them then you know i look like one of you today but when i saw you i didn't want to be associated with you today reason why i put it away and just be able to be troops to myself here most of the time there is this term in construction you guys know this more than more than everyone litigated damages you heard from our constituents here some people are losing business right and if you have an agreement with another party and you don't respect it we have the right to put penalties and i think you've been very you've been nice enough to give us at least maybe ten thousand dollars a month because you haven't started the project but why shouldn't we go hundred thousand dollars a month because you have not you have not hold your part of the bargain i think that's what we need to think about at this point this is no longer we have to be nice this is no longer we have to be diligent and we don't all of that for you we take critics you're not here but we take it it's our constitution because we believed in you right you are here again in front of us with no project with with with no plan and i think it is really really problematic to me i think we need to do this definitely this is what we need to do for you maybe to think about just giving us the lot have you thought of that as part of your you know what you're trying to do with the lot have you thought of that no okay thank you thank you councillor jane councillor shannon thank you um thank you for coming here i appreciate that this is probably about the last thing that you want to do but unfortunately it's part of doing a public private partnership and um we as councillor roof said we this did not start out as um something really stellar that was torn down or something historic it was an eyesore in our community which was torn down and but there wasn't a whole lot that could have been worse than what was there except this what we have now it is worse it's really impacting our community and i think that you know that and there's just um in some ways it wouldn't take that much to make it a lot better for the community for the businesses it's about parking it's about moving out of our right of way it's about at least temporarily creating something that isn't just another eyesore while you figure it out and the other thing is there there's um you know the probably the major public aspect of this project is the tiff funds and getting our streets back so i hear that you're 100 committed to the project but for the public this is an essential piece it's why you have been given so many benefits and i'd like to hear from you if you are 100 committed to meeting the deadlines that are required to make sure that we get the tiff funds to make sure that we get these streets built we are keenly aware of the deadlines in the tiff agreement we are we are working on resolving those and meeting those deadlines we can commit to the restoration of the street grid as as part of the project okay well that's that's good to hear and i appreciate that um other counselors have talked about you know penalties that should be imposed on you and forcing you to do things i do want to acknowledge and respect the fact that you are the owners of the property um but we're still your partners um in some ways penalizing you is penalizing ourselves and i hope it doesn't come to that but we do need to see some progress for it to not come to that we do need to see that um you're at least making progress to remove the current severe negative impacts that you have by being in our right of way and i hope that that that is a top priority for you um and that if you could give us an update next time about what you're doing there i don't think that this is impacted by the lawsuit i think no you're correct um and sing touched on it i touched on it we uh we are in active design and uh negotiation to try to uh bring back as much of the right of way as we can feasibly and in a in a expeditious way so i i do hope by the next time you come back that it's not just an update about what you're thinking about doing but that we see a real difference there okay thank you thank you councillor shannon councillor hanson thank you um i have a few a few questions for you um so a couple of times you've reiterated the the ongoing daily hourly work going into this project can you share even even vaguely even from a high level what that work looks like what are you working on every day as in relation to this project like like any development project we work on um both both cost and income analysis uh we work on um just design um one of the things that um that Brookfield has taken over just recently is we've taken over all of the digital assets for the for the property so we will be managing um all of the uh you know the websites the facebook all of that stuff so those are those are the other things that we um those are the other things we work on and and it will be another avenue that we have to uh for outreach and for just and for communication so those are the things we work on thank you um and and you spoke to moving forward and working collaboratively and aligning with the community's values and goals um could you just provide you know some more specifics on what that looks like for you what does that mean to you how will you seek to understand our community's values and goals and what our community wants to see in this project um in terms of i'm wondering what you're going to do to um follow through on that commitment like we said we've we've committed to visit the npa's um and and do as much kind of personal outreach as we can so and i appreciate the commitment to visit the npa's and and definitely will follow up on that in terms of the the ward one eight npa um and will there be other public forums or you know will you host events that the public can attend and allow the community to weigh in on on the the uh new design yes i think as as we stated earlier we are definitely um committed to community engagement we understand how important it is to the city of burlington um and to you all here so we are are committed to do things like that as devin would have done in the past if that arises um and if there's opportunity to comment we definitely will reach out to the community in similar forums could could you give any specific commitments around that you know hosting a public forum by the end of the year anything just so i know that there's a concrete commitment to back that up we can't do that tonight but we will work with with jeff and mr glasberg and uh and the administration too to coordinate those uh to make everybody's time more effective okay thank you thank you councillor hansen councillor freeman thank you president right and thank you for the presentation and um jeff for being here tonight i had a follow-up question regarding which i think you know jeff you might be is a good question for you and i'm glad you're here tonight and all of you are here together to ask us um and to talk about this a little more but just the element of you know i understand it's it's private um land it's a private development um but i want to have more perspective on you know i've read and have seen you know things like community benefit agreements and these sort of things that have um leveraged more of a benefit for the community um and have made more of an impact and i'm wondering you know of course we do have the development agreement and um you know that's one way to arrive at a certain level sort of exchange and agreement um but there are instances where communities have come in and created sort of a more um comprehensive agreement and so i'm just wondering you know with your expertise and you know with um brookfield here you know i'm confused or or i i guess i'm just curious how how you know what your perspective is on that so the existing development agreement contains a number of features that committed the developer to delivering a range of benefits to the city most notable of those is the restoration of the street grid but further than that there were commitments in terms of recruitment for jobs there was a commitment to a level of affordability on the residential side then uh that is higher than required by zoning sure there was a commitment to work cooperatively with bed on district energy service it's moving on another track but to some extent this delay may allow that track to to catch up if you will there was a commitment to some real innovative stormwater treatment that was dealing with treatment not just from the site itself but also from surrounding areas there was a commitment as part of the project to a public art component as well there may be other features and and obviously cancer freeman you may be thinking about things that are in the development agreement currently and that a reopening of that agreement might provide an opportunity to to raise and the and the additional option of a community benefit agreement is you know a potential option for this this project perhaps it's not a term of art with which i'm particularly familiar but i understand the intent would be to codify document and provide an implementation path for those things so much as had been done on those elements i listed i expect that there could be further elements to that certainly but beyond i mean the development agreement is something that's determined by the by the city and the developer but the community benefit agreement is an additional agreement with sort of community stakeholders and this is i mean this is a type of project that could be eligible i'm just wondering you know at this point we don't have one but you know given some of the concerns that have been raised thus far and some of the real detriment that has happened to the you know to the community based on sort of a lack of progress in the project so far that that might be something that is really useful to turn to now potentially as an example and and a model to have a community driven development project i understand brookfield is very invested in this and you know that's wonderful but the community has to have you know become an equal partner in this project and i feel that that has been lacking up until this point but thank you for your for your perspective and for your update thank you councillor freeman i would like to just make comment and a couple of questions one so what i continue to hear and i assume other councils are as well as what kind of timeline are we looking at i know you're not going to give us a timeline tonight but that's what people are wondering are we looking at the hole in the ground and downtown brooklynton being there for with nothing moving forward for 10 years five years four years i know you can't give us a specific timeline tonight precisely but what should i be telling people are we starting back over at ground zero with the scaling back of the project which would mean potentially potentially an immense backing up of the project and timelines what can you can you give us anything that we can tell the public in that regard it's certainly not going to be 10 years uh or even four i think with um phasing of the project i think you can uh anticipate seeing some action in the near term um in the next year so you know we're here to push this project forward and you know that's what we're going to do um a couple of quick wins is is there anything that the council and this is partly just to answer questions by the public is there anything that council or the administration has done to create any barriers that have slowed the project down not under our not under our watch no and is mr synex role in the project i know he's still a partner does he have any ongoing i know he's not the face of the project anymore where is what's the relationship at this point with mr synex uh mr synex is still a partner and uh as a partner he um he has certain rights um and and obligations but uh we are brookfield is the development partner for the project okay um i'm going to turn to the mayor thank you president right um i don't um muck it out a lot you know have the opportunity to engage these folks outside of the setting and and uh they know that um the comments that uh jeff and i have been making in our meetings very much parallel the comments from the council of needing um needing greater information the day that brookfield announced that they were going through this refinement and that there was going to be a significant delay i put out a statement saying that we uh as soon as possible um needed illustrations uh timeline and uh information about how um impact on the project uh impact of the delays would be minimized um and i think we started to hear the answer tonight um we had some good information tonight on the third piece there's there's details to work out but i think uh we started here um what brookfield's going to do to be a good partner through this extended delay um i i hope the comments from the public and the council tonight uh show the urgency of being able to get to a place where the the more information can be shared um about the first two my my sense is there's um promising information and good information to be shared and it is uh certainly disappointing and and frustrating uh to me and i'm sure it's on mobile it is to you as well that um tonight is not the night that you can can make that share that information um jeff and i will certainly be continuing to move forward from tonight continue those conversations and as i think jeff stated well continuing the discussions with the council about uh how we formalize codify the the the process from here and um get this project back on a predictable path forward thank you president right thank you mr mayor so again i want to thank you for being here tonight and i i know you have the messages come through loud and clear how important this project is to the city to the public as it is to you i don't think we want to continue to be good partners as i think this administration and the city council have been throughout this process so i think talk of penalties is is not helpful to that i i do hope that you continue to work with the administration as you've indicated to find ways to um because of the scaling back and the many different problems that there have been that um you are work with the administration and the council to find ways to alleviate some of the problems downtown parking etc for the businesses and the public um so we look forward to working together with you hopefully to despite our frustration to see this project happen thank you very much thank you for having us and uh you will see us again thank you i am now going to recess the city council the regular meeting of the city council to convene the liquor control commission meeting first item on the agenda is the agenda commissioner roof thank you president right i moved to adopt the agenda moved by council roof seconded by council pine uh any discussion on the agenda hearing none all those in favor of the agenda please say aye opposed we have the agenda number two is the deliberative agenda uh commissioner roof uh sure i'll move 2.01 approval of a 2019-2020 first-class restaurant bar liquor license application for burly acts at 294 north winewski have with the following conditions all city permits need to be closed out contingent upon fire marshal approval with all standard conditions motion made by council roof second second the motion by councilor hanson discussion council busher so um is the applicant here yes yes president right may i yes he is on his way to the microphone and could you identify yourself for the record please my name is mike garber the owner of burly acts thank you so i wanted to thank you very much mike i sent you a series of questions and you responded and i know i asked you to send them to the rest of the council and i saw that communication um i i just this this establishment does give me pause still um and and you've answered all the questions but it does give me pause um regarding the number of axes and how you keep track of them um you mentioned one thing in your final communication that said when you have larger groups the bartender actually will track the fact that each um individual will only have one drink how is that do you have a system are you going to use a stamp or how is that going to work when i say a large group um this facility can only have 30 people they're throwing axes so when you think of a large i mean you know that's the size of a large group is just 30 people per hour um i think a bartender should be able to keep track of 30 people um they're there it's the same group of 30 people that would be there for the hour so i mean as far as the system i'd be happy to look into brisk bands or stamps or i don't have a system in place at the moment but i was just asking you because to me i'm not a bartender but keeping track of 30 people and understanding whether they had one drink or more seems a little bit onerous so um so with hesitation i'm going to support this application but i must admit i i want to ask through the president of the um local control commission if indeed there is a violation a safety violation what is our recourse make should i ask the chair of the committee you can ask through me and i can ask for you okay would you would you ask do you have any other do you have any other points or did you want to make before we ask that question i just want to understand if indeed there was a problem that arose that didn't have to do well i mean it would be linked the only thing we're granting is a liquor license so i just wanted to understand safety wise if okay an axe went missing or something councilor roof can you respond to that commissioner roof excuse me yes um well like with any liquor license violation or any permit violation that we would be informed as a as a city license committee and local control subcommittee and then we would if appropriate work with the city attorney's office to schedule a hearing around options such as putting conditions on that permanent license uh suspending that permanent license or revoking that permit and license remember also this as a caveat that it's actually the state that is the issuing body for these licenses in so many times it's at that level where the adjudication of sorts is done okay thank you very much thank you councillor busher councillor pine i was hoping that the um there was a member of the committee who voted no on this proposal and i think it's councillor tracy so he can't speak for himself and i'm wondering if the chair of the committee would be able to characterize his opposition if you could because you were there so that's tough to ask another councillor to speak for another councillor but councillor roof there's anything you'd like to add i don't want to put you on a spot to try to maybe in my great peril to attempt to characterize councillor tracy sentiments um so i will try i won't do that i will say that at the at the committee level in general we did discuss those who are supportive well our supportive pieces and and those that were not supportive we were discussing matters of of safety and control of the space and of the of the alcohol consumption uh some did find those and whether or not this was a inappropriate um uh use for the neighborhood that it will be located and some agreed with the the operator and some did not i think that would be a fair assessment without going into detail and i'm wondering if the committee asked for and received um information about how this type of establishment is similar to other establishments elsewhere that have acts throwing as one of the primary activities so so councillor pine once again we're i'm not good we don't have a back and forth between councillors here on the board if you have do you have a number of things you want to put out there is this the okay councillor roof i think the question was did we ask for we did discuss those items we did not ask for anything in in written form i don't i don't believe but i think the operator may be willing to verbalize that response if the applicant could that would be helpful speak to me yes uh i'd be happy to provide a list of the acts throwing operations that operate very similarly to what i'm proposing to do uh that do have uh alcohol as a part of the activity although not the primary uh so important an important distinction is that this is in a bar that allows people to acts throw this is actually a um a uh health and fitness studio uh essentially um it's a it's an activity that you're doing sort of almost like a sport uh sort of like a bowling alley is sort of like a sport um and there's alcohol that has served under a very limited uh very to a limited to a very limited degree but that's not the primary uh focus of the business um i'm not sure of the exact number but i know that there's somewhere around 200 of these operations operating around the country for the past five years uh there's three that i know of in massachusetts there's two that i know of in main uh there are at least two or three up in montreal and that's just the ones that are in the local area that i've been either visited myself or or been in contact with over telephone and email uh it's not a franchise there are franchises available i'm not part of one but all of the businesses operate very very similarly and there's two uh organizations that um don't control the industry but they are sort of formalizing it and standardizing practices guidelines as far as the way you construct the lanes the way you construct the targets the dimensions of the targets and the way you score uh they're developing it more for like a tournament or a league uh kind of to sort of level the playing field so that people from different cities and different uh countries either come together and they're operating in the same environment with the same kind of targets so they're not they're not giving lots of guidelines as far as business management or liquor control for obvious reasons but they're very involved in just generally the way the business works and uh the the way customers move through the business um and many of the member organizations you know member businesses do serve alcohol as part of the business so it's as well established business model i guess is my point i'll say cancer pain cancer roof thanks uh just a quick uh quick responses to a few things that came up as a former bartender controlling a crowd of 30 is a lot easier than several hundred which we ask bartenders across the city to do uh most weekend nights and so i'll just want to bring that up and also we we ask them to do that in spaces where in the state you're allowed to bring in a firearm or another weapon and so this is not something that is um proper weapons and i would consider an axe not an overt weapon we could any of us could head down to ace hardware right now or when they open and pick one up for for $15 i've done axe throwing it is exercise it's it's fun if managed well and we do know the operator to be a responsible operator in his other establishment the escape room and so i'm taking that into account and council right if this does pass maybe we could have a council retreat at the axe throwing i think that would definitely be a good venting outlet for some frustration here throw some axes uh councillor shannon thank you president right there's there's part of me that that shares the concerns that have been raised around the table um i will be doing yoga in this building and i'm going to vote on faith that you're going to be running uh safe and very exciting business that's going to be a real asset in the community and maybe once i'm all zen i'll stop by and you can show me how to throw an axe thank you thank you councillor shannon councillor jane i want to also thank you for always being diligent you know people usually they apply get their license and movement but you accommodated people to come visit you came here second time and i think you're bringing a service that doesn't exist and it's always good to get some type of diversity in the offering so i'll vote for you and recognize me when i come next time not for the beer part but just to try it out thank you thank you councillor jane i think we are ready to vote and um once again i think you can expect to be scrutinized and uh watch very closely and hopefully as councillor shannon said there are no problems so with that all those in favor please say aye any opposed can the whoever said no please raise your hands just councillor freeman is a no vote thank you with that we are ready for motion to adjourn second by councillor hanson all those in favor of the motion to adjourn the liquor control commission please say aye any opposed we have adjourned and we will now reconvene the regular city council meeting back to the deliberative agenda item 5.02 the indoor entertainment permit application for early acts council roof thank you i'll move 5.02 uh move approval of 2019 2020 indoor entertainment permit application for burly acts still at 294 north winewski yav with the falling conditions all city permits need to be closed out with all standard conditions thank you councillor roof seconded by councillor hanson any discussion councillor freeman thank you president right i had actually some questions follow up since i was the only one who voted no also since the environment i didn't know that was going to happen so fast sorry yeah yeah um uh perfect thank you um so i was reading through um the your entertainment permit i think some of my initial concerns um you know being in the old north end being in that location is just um how this sort of impacts the fabric of the neighborhood and i think there's um been very legitimate concern around gentrification and the the fabric of the neighborhood changing and i was actually so when i was reading through um the entertainment permit i think there's a part here that talks about um i don't this is so funny that this is in here but the example of a fashion show at the location are you familiar with the aspect of the permit yeah okay so i didn't i was just reading through it and i saw this aspect of the the the beard and flannel shirt contest and i think that in a lot of ways sort of encapsulates some of the aspects that i worry about it being exclusive um and not really um catering to the the broader community of the old north end um i mean i understand this is just one example but um there is like a demographic which i think is maybe predominantly white and wealthy um that would feel like this um and entertainment um facility is accessible to them and um but there's a lot of folks in the neighborhood who um might not feel included by that aspect and so i just was sort of thinking about the overall fabric of the community of the the neighborhood and wondering about the accessibility and that's why i you know have been voted you know we'll vote no on this but i was curious to hear um from you if there are elements around making this space inclusive around um you know sort of the price point that this is at is this inclusive to um everyone in the neighborhood you know sort of just hearing more about how you think this might actually impact the fabric of the neighborhood and um the economics of the neighborhood i think that's a really valid question the price point is uh $25 per person uh per hour so it certainly falls into a higher range of um uh entertainment options uh i i'm building this uh business model very closely related to my escape room business model where although it's completely different kind of an activity uh it's something that you book ahead of time for $25 per hour per person just like the escape room um as far as inclusivity what i do with the escape room is uh i offer a lot of uh deep discounts and offer for for instance of um work with uh youth build both in um direct trade with them for for construction work uh in the space um as well as a lot of different summer camps and municipal schools parks and recreation's been in a lot of different organizations uh we generally give a 20 discount right away for any non-profits as well as group discounts so obviously tax exempt um bookings and so forth so we we try to create a an entertainment opportunity for organizations and we're happy to discount the the rate for people you know that that come as part of a group in that way um as far as uh i'd be interested in looking into i mean well another thing is the league that we're trying to put together would be something that would be deeply discounted just because it's sort of a volume discount kind of thing so you you pay for a block of 10 visits as part of a league and then you come in and it's more of that's definitely focused more towards the the local um you know person who's gonna go there from the community rather than as a like a an entertainment option for someone who's a traveling you know tourists so to speak right but i'm not sure if i understand exactly what you what you would see as a um as a solution for for that i'm not sure i mean that's why ultimately i think i will vote against it because it it doesn't um to me have enough of that those elements yet to to support um when i think about the comparison to bowling i can see some of it but also it it does seem different in terms of i think bowling is pretty accessible at least um my grandfather was a you know first generation immigrant and loved to bowl and you know never had a college degree and you know that that is a pastime pretty frequently and my concern is that this just doesn't necessarily um cast a wide enough net in terms of um so i imagine it will pass um i'm probably the only one who will vote no um at this meeting um but it is definitely something i think to keep in mind i think just in terms of you know we have a very multicultural city in a growing multicultural city so how can we continue to make this inclusive um how can the price point be inclusive um i think the aspect of leagues is really interesting you know bowling leagues are great a lot of people that i work with are in bowling leagues um my grandfather was in a bowling league um but how can we really make it inclusive going forward and um not turn the neighborhood into a place that only um you know certain people can really access thank you cancer freeman cancer roof just want to appreciate the uh the operative willingness to engage uh so much it's not typical we go back and forth this often but this is an atypical um model business model this note also that acts throwing i did a little reading and research on this actually has a lot of interesting cultural uh uh history to it and the the practice as an art as a as a sport and as a practice in certain cultures um is actually quite fascinating and i think that bringing this to a community that obviously is maybe not fully in tune with with that culture i think is actually advantageous but i do hope that uh you do think in terms of councillor freeman's perspective and making sure this is inclusive but quite frankly i also uh appreciate you bringing a different cultural piece to this community thank you councillor roof we should be ready for the vote now all those in favor of granting the indoor entertainment permit application for burly acts please say aye any opposed for the council for the clerk's office that was councillor freeman that the the one no vote thank you and uh here i'll set we'll move back to the regular to the agenda now on item 5.04 resolution requesting public engagement from brookfield properties councillor freeman thank you president right and i wanted to move to um refer can i do that yes you can great wasn't sure about the timing um referred the agenda item 5.04 to um cd our committee for further um consideration so the community development and neighborhood revitalization committee i um can i is it okay if i have go ahead and make some comments thank you uh so i this started um second you know just sort of let's let's get a second first oh sorry second by councillor jang now continue this resolution resolution came together just as an idea a few months ago to really sort of think more critically about the updates that we're getting from brookfield the regularity from that the the relationship that we have as the city as a community with the developer i was really impressed tonight by the council's questions with the developer with brookfield i feel like we're moving in a direction to um have some more public process and accountability and transparency and i think that's something that a lot of people um both the public and the council is really in the administration is looking for going forward so um i understand that there is um an interest to refer it um for more consideration to cdnr i absolutely would support that i think we could get more public input more um input from um the council uh from the administration and um yeah i would move to refer it all right motion has been made to refer this to the cdnr committee uh i think we should be ready for that vote all those in favor of the motion to refer police a i any opposed that passes unanimously thank you very much item number 5.05 is an ordinance on the comprehensive development ordinance trees junkard and cross reference direction this is uh the public hearing so we will open the public hearing for this item is there anyone that would like to speak to this the brookfield company has a development ordinance za dash 19-04 on trees junkard and cross reference correction and the chair does the chair want to say anything about this beforehand he does not okay anyone in the public who wishes to speak on this in the public hearing going once going twice closed so we have opened and closed the public hearing item number 5.06 is the actual ordinance councilor mason thank you president right i'd like to make a motion to waive the second reading adopt the ordinance and ask for the floor back briefly after a second second by councilor roof councilor mason you have a floor back thank you um this is a proposed amendment to the cdo that makes corrections to three separate elements uh of our ordinance that were discovered through routine administration of the ordinance related to tree removal standards junkyards and automobile vehicle salvage yards the amendment was approved by the planning commission following a public hearing on may 28th 2019 and by the ordinance committee on July 31st i know david white is here if there are any specific questions relating to the ordinance thank you thank you councilor mason anyone any discussion councilor busher president right i just want to ask um well i want to alert the city attorney that online 69 there's a word that says place i didn't notice it before it should be placed since you're gonna publicize this it just needed to be correct so sorry i would have notified you earlier but that's it thank you i don't think it needs to be a formal amendment it's just a missing a d that's a typo that can be corrected without a yes that's a technical correction thank you anyone any other just any further discussion hearing none all those in favor of waiving the second reading and passing the ordinance please say aye any opposed that passes unanimously thank you councilor mason counts uh item 5.07 is an ordinance on fletcher free library rules of conduct councilor mason thank you president right i'd like to make a motion to consider this a first reading refer to the ordinance committee and ask for the floor back briefly after a second second by councilor roof councilor mason you have a floor back thank you president right um so this is a first read it's on our deliberative agenda as opposed to our consent agenda only to bring it to your attention and solicit if there are comments you know questions that you'd like the ordinance committee to delve into um please feel free to raise them now or reach out to any member of the ordinance committee this did come um which was a bit unusual before the ordinance committee at our last hearing typically it just comes to the council first um at the meeting the director of library miss denko and i city attorney were both there to sort of explain how we got to these proposed rules um it was a combination of you know some litigation with the aclu surrounding it correct me if i misspeak city attorney but um some you know sort of updates as well as based on uh mary did a very deliberate um check in sort of with her board so you know i think in the comments we've i've received since then have been positive um i expect you know there will be another public hearing back before this body in a public hearing before the ordinance committee so if there are questions comments things that you'd like the committee to further delve into speak now thank you thank you councilor mason discussion council busher so as as a member of the ordinance committee i i have a question because this is this deals with trespassing and i know that we are going to entertain a more generic trespassing ordinance and will they mirror each other or not i just wanted to understand that that you have a question for the committee chair or for city attorney blackwood it's for the city attorney so they will they will at least fit together if they don't mirror and and part of that is the we're still discussing with the aclu whether how much they want a distinction between open spaces like parks and buildings so i so we can my question really to you is we can move forward with this even though we haven't entertained the more generic trespass ordinance correct and i'm hoping that i'll have the more generic one teed up for your next meeting the next council meeting okay because our meet our next meeting is wednesday yeah anyways okay thank you i do think it's not coming to the ordinance committee this week so right i know that thank you thank you council busher any further discussion council freeman council freeman sorry i was grabbing the microphone thank you president right i do have a lot of thoughts about this ordinance i think in some ways it has improvements from the current ordinance in some ways i see it still embodying some of the issues in the current current ordinance i think that you know it sounds like the aclu aclu did collaborate on the trespass portions in particular and i think there those are considerable improvements especially the bare minimum of respecting first amendment rights in and the constitutional rights there is definitely an improvement though i just see a lot of trouble with continuing to have certain elements that make it a crime to be poor essentially or mentally ill which is what ordinances like these often do the the history of this is you know it used to be vagrancy laws were legal right so you could say you're out on the street so you can be locked up just for that right and then in the aclu in the 70s the aclu fought against this and said we're not going to lock up people anymore just for living on the street or being in a situation of poverty or homelessness unfortunately a lot of times municipalities will have workarounds that continue to criminalize or sort of penalize the the behaviors of poverty and now because of the complete lack of support for mental illness and with mental health care in this country to really also penalize and criminalize people who are experiencing mental illness and i was speaking with someone recently and and looking into this because the the cost to have private care for long-term care for if you have a mental health issue is i think like $30,000 a month so this is $360,000 a year and your Medicaid will not pay for this so say you know i don't make $30,000 in a year and say tomorrow or anyone you know i have a mental health crisis and i need care too bad you know so this is the kind of system that we're living in it's completely lacking in compassion and i understand there are concerns around the impact that this has on our community but i don't believe that we should be penalizing people who are being failed by a broken system in the meantime and one of the concerns that i saw about the new ordinance is that it removes those restorative justice components that were in the initial ordinance that allowed for a waiver of the fees because you cannot escape poverty or any situation with mental you're mentally you know struggling with mental health with substance use i mean the the attack on people who've been completely preyed upon by the the pharmaceutical companies who have manufactured the the opioid epidemic and now we're penalizing people i mean this is it's really you know it concerns me um and that restorative justice component i think is really strong um in the original one but i'm i'm i'm glad and i do think the the change of the trespassing element is an improvement in this one so i am looking for it i do support that aspect of it so the other i you know i can go line by line and i'm happy to also email the committee on that um some i would say the the one's the language that most glaringly sticks out to me in terms of that aspect of just penalizing people who are in a situation of either experiencing homelessness or um you know not being supported by the system is on line 91 um the term primarily making use of the library premises for sleeping or 120 storing or using personal materials such as bedroll sleeping bags large bags or suitcases in the library i don't know anyone um who has a home who's doing that so um this really is just targeting um anyone who is experiencing houselessness and i understand that it makes us uncomfortable um but it is not it's not fair to penalize people who are being failed um in that way um who don't have the security of housing um or mental health support and i can speak on that further but i know um i've already said quite a bit so i appreciate the ordinance committee looking at this i will vote yes on it because i do think it has some of those considerable improvements especially around the trespassing aspect from the original um or the current version um but i would like to see some um distinct improvements in those other areas thank you thank you councillor freeman councillor hanson thank you i would i would echo a lot of that and this does raise a lot of flags for me um i i do appreciate um the positive changes that councillor freeman highlighted though i think um the concerns for me uh are enough for me to not not support this unless i could hear you know a stronger justification for it um i think just looking at it it seems like it's using this blunt instrument of fines um and and firm firm and pretty strong fines that would be very difficult for for folks in in situations of homelessness or um or poverty to to really deal with and i i don't see this as a solution to these issues and i i appreciate it in the current ordinance the ability to um go through a restorative process um and i think losing that to me is is a huge loss i would like to see other opportunities for us to address these problems without just um implementing fines on folks who are often already struggling economically and otherwise thank you councillor hanson are we ready for the vote this is the first reading of this ordinance all in favor please say aye any opposed councillor hanson is a no vote that passes first reading council uh item 5.08 is a resolution amendment to section seven of appendix b rules and regulations of the city council councillor shannon we'll move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution and ask for the floor back briefly would move by councillor shannon seconded by councillor hanson councillor shannon you have the floor thank you president right um the charter change committee was asked to look at our at our charter with regards to um conflict of interests and make a recommendation as to whether or not it needed to be uh changed or updated um the your committee did not feel that the charter needed to be updated but thought that it would be helpful to clarify what happens when there's a conflict of interest how we determine there's a conflict of interest um in our council rules um we asked the city attorney to to draft language that was consistent with the advice that she gives to people around conflict of interest so that it would be more transparent so that the public understands the rules under which we are operating um and we thought it was important to have some flexibility because there are cases where um you can disclose pretty directly what your conflict is um and there are other situations where you cannot and um so the the wording that is in here is consistent with our past practice it's consistent with the city attorney's advice um and also offers flexibility given that there are different situations when it comes to conflicts thank you councillor shannon any discussion on this change councillor hanson yeah just very briefly i do i do support this i mean i think councillor shannon alluded to this a little bit but um for myself and perhaps others you know i in theory i would like it to to be a bit stronger and go a bit further but um there there are limitations that prevent us from doing that and this seems like the the the best we can do at this point so i definitely do support this but just wanted to throw that out there for folks who might see this and might think that it's it's feeling watered down um into some extent it is but but by necessity so thank you councillor hanson are we ready for the vote all those in favor of this change to the rules as proposed by the charter change committee please say i any opposed that passes unanimously item number six is committee reports any committee chair that would like to report to the council on committee activity councillor maize councillor maize thank you president right i've got to call the agenda the ordinance committee is meeting this wednesday 5 30 sorry bear with me it's someone else in the queue our agenda includes exciting accumulation of garbage trash abandoned vehicles appliances and prohibited furniture and also taking back up the inclusionary zoning there was a piece relating to how we treated institutions planning commission has finally made a recommendation we'll be taking that back up that is again a wednesday i can't see where the meeting is do you know what it is i don't have it i couldn't find it it's this wednesday i know it's wednesday but i don't know where it's at 5 30 too right room 12 let's go with that room 12 all right we got it any other committee chair councillor jane the hr and institution committee will be meeting on september 10 which is at two tuesday and it will be at five o'clock at 200 um cheer street the location may change but we will be revising the diversity equity and inclusion director position the job description and we definitely would want the community to come in have an input about in that process we will so we'll be looking into a little bit about some changes around hr policies um those are the two main um subject we'll be discussing the 10th at five o'clock 209th street cheer street thank you thank you councillor jane and the other committee chair hearing none we will close that item and go to item number seven city council on general city affairs councillor busher thank you i have two topics the first one is that um this is germane to our meeting today about city place um when we when the board of finance renewed the contract for jeffrey glasberg i had asked that he not only report to the mayor but he report to the council on a regular basis so i think that we need to seize the moment and actually set up a schedule so we get updates also um and i just wanted to inform people that that was the understanding um and i think we need to exercise that the second thing is something that is frustrating for me to report so i'm a community gardener and our garden site is at the medical center and on saturday night um we have a number of older people now i know all of you think i'm old but they're even older than me anyways who have used raised beds and one of the individuals had a beautiful statue that stood about this high that sounds weird but a pink rabbit that was significant to the individuals to the couple and they had tomato plant and some flowers it was beautiful um on sunday morning i was coming back from um walking past there and the rabbit was gone the flowers were ripped out the tomato plants were knocked over and actually severed so that they were they were dead um now i have to tell you that last year when a certain university returned to vermont we had vandalism in our garden um i cannot substantiate that there is a correlation but one could say justifiably that there may be a correlation between the fact that the college comes back and we have vandalism in a garden site that has no vandalism throughout the summer um this is incredibly frustrating to me um this is so for me i just want everyone to know the level of my frustration um if i knew which who the student was i would ask to have them removed and i would ask them to go home and have their parents tell them right from wrong this was theft this was vandalism this was not acting as a community member and i don't care if they came back to you to burlington or not because i don't want this type of person in our community and i understand that everyone says well it's linked with alcohol that's an excuse i'm tired of jekyll and hide you're an adult you come here you're 18 years old start acting like one so that's it thank you thank you councillor busher councillor paul thank you so uh i have two things i wanted to mention um the first is that uh the ward six npa is having its fall kickoff meeting on september fifth and the steering committee has been working very hard to put together an agenda that has a number of improvements to the meetings as well as um a few special things that i don't want to steal their thunder i want them to be able to say what they are they're going to be announcing this in the next day or two um these are to welcome people back after ward six does take a hiatus during the summer our last meeting was in june um and i also wanted to again thank the mayor for putting the additional funds for the npa um in this budget year um one of the things that uh the mayor said when he was making when making this budget um uh with the npas was that uh hope that they would spend the money i can assure you that ward six will spend that money um because they're really working hard um to get um to get a uh to get agendas that are responsive to the community um the other thing i wanted to mention um is that i had reached out to counselor shannon and freeman who are the two city counselors that are on the police oversight committee and let them let them know and as well for the administration and others to know that a number of people approached me um over the last couple of days um as you may have noticed on board docs the first meeting of the oversight committee is um to is it's coming up it's next you know it's this way it's tomorrow i believe tomorrow at eight thirty in the morning and um there were a number of people who approached me and were um disappointed that the first meeting of this very important committee that we all work so hard on is happening at eight thirty in the morning um you know i in normally we do have most of our meetings most city meetings are after what are considered to be normal working hours and while you can't get everybody at who wants to attend a meeting all the time no matter what time you make the meeting um i think that it would be worth considering to have the meeting in the evening and then the other thing i just wanted to ask is for whomever it is that is um the staff that is doing this meeting that we please have the meetings recorded so that people can watch them um that's all thanks very much thank you councillor paul councillor roof i think president right um two items related to the university of uh vermont um returning to our community many students have returned i just wanted to bring up two items related to this on september seventh uh there's an annual it's called a welcome bag distribution sounds kind of cheesy but it's actually really important it's an opportunity for especially student heavy rental areas to interact with community members we go around and drop off welcome bags for many for many young people this is their first time living alone they are figuring out how to be an adult and sometimes that does have negative impacts on our community um and while this is not a way to eliminate that it is a way to communicate with them that they are part of a community they're no longer living in dorms they do have neighbors that do not keep the same hours and in my experience and over the years in doing this both the city councillor and as a student um i tend to recognize that when students have that that moment of recognition that they're no longer a child they're no longer living in the dorms they have added responsibilities that our community oriented the vast vast majority of them do change their behavior and that's an exciting thing to see and for those who don't we have systems hopefully in place to keep them accountable on the topic of uvm i was able to work with the university in in arranging for or helping to arrange for the new uvm president to be present at the ward one eight mpa which is tentatively scheduled for our november meeting the second wednesday in november is the 13th and so uh president will be as of right now uh coming to speak to the mpa between seven and seven thirty on that evening and and all are welcome if you're interested in hearing from uh the new president himself thank you thank you council roof hopefully hopefully we can get to president of the university to come and speak to the full city council um other city councillors who would like to speak hearing none then we'll close that item and item number eight is city council president update and i am overdue in appointing a committee uh councilor to the peddlers committee and i'm appointing councillor mason as that councillor and my understanding from the clerk's office is that councillor mason will chair that committee so thank you councillor mason what am i calling what's it supposed to come it's fine it's been referred to that way to me what's it technically called central peddling district action committee there you go that works too yep there you go okay item number nine is the mayor on general city affairs mr mayor take us home okay thank you president right um i and i know there's a particular topic you will spend a little time talking sorry sorry i didn't fully hear you president right the particular topic that i will address is i um yes i am planning it has been a request for an update um on st paul street so i do have a full update um on that and i will hit several other topics after that i was going to touch on the housing summit um and uh a couple events that are coming up so uh i'll start with st paul street um so i'm happy uh relieved to say that the project is um is really nearing full completion the upper block is essentially done at this point the block between um main street and king is open to traffic in one direction it is going to be and it will it was closed today um in the northbound direction it's going to be closed northbound off and on not because of the city's work but because the owner of the uh the building there on the corner of the building with the griffin in it um uh has is you can look up and see major work going on on their parapet um they have a safety condition that needs to be addressed and so they've got a lift in there that um over the course of uh september is going to close the northbound direction from time to time they're keeping the pedestrian routes open the work is closing in time for the restaurants not to be impacted on that block uh at night but there is going to be some additional work there the the only really the only construction work not uh complete yet um on that block you know construction work project work is uh the landscaping that will go into the major green areas landscape areas stormwater gardens um on on the street the parks recreational waterfront team will be doing those plantings and they i'm told they're intentionally doing those later in the season because that's the way um they will winter best as if those uh those plantings take place a little bit later on in the fall um the lower block uh the southern block will be complete by the um end of september is the current is the current plan there may be as as the team has done throughout the project when they can open elements of it sooner they do so um you know uh sidewalks have generally um they've found a way for a lot of pedestrian traffic to be taking place um from in recent months um that will continue and if they can open traffic partly early they they will um so you know uh also the council may remember that it was on the consent agenda but a couple weeks ago you approved um the uh one of the major changes that we think is you're going to see on st paul street as a result of these design changes is that there will be considerable space for outdoor seating for those restaurants along st paul street that uh that that upper block of st paul street that um really haven't had any opportunity before at trattoria delia the pizzeria verita the soto anateca all of those now have the possibility of having outdoor seating and and kind of expanding their business and and uh really adding to the street life which is one of the things that we hope to get out of this design um other elements of this design so uh let me just i'm going to take a moment more because i know there's some we heard some tonight and uh have gotten some communications questioning the design um you know why is it is accurate that the design is different than what was there before in in many respects and in one of those respects that people are encountering and some people are having questions about is the turning radii that have been put in in place it is these streets have been designed so that the curb to curb distance is only 22 feet from one curb to another um and that the turning radii are such that it is challenging for larger vehicles to make turns from st paul street onto the side streets both those things are very intentional elements of the design uh counselors have been around for a while recalled you know that there was discussion about the design and it was approved by the council for safety reasons the uh we are these are intended to be a very safe street for pedestrians it is intended to slow down uh the traffic that is is going through that area and it is also intended to make it challenging for larger vehicles to turn um east and west onto the side streets to discourage truck traffic larger vehicle traffic from from going on to those side streets um i um encourage people who have questions about the design to give it a little bit longer before you reach firm conclusions about this in that it you know really the area still is particularly down at the southern end where you have a lot of traffic coming up from the south and turning right or left that is that condition there now is not the condition that drivers are going to experience once st paul street is fully open in a number of important respects first of all um most traffic the majority of traffic will continue north not turn when this is done you'll have far less turning movements happening there uh and so traffic will move much more quickly than it is right now secondly um the there will be um crosswalks and painting markings on the street that will encourage uh drivers to park to stop at a further distance from the intersection that will help them uh when they are making these tight turns versus what they are doing now it's sort of a construction zone people aren't quite sure how to negotiate it they get out into the middle of the intersection before they turn and that complicates things so um uh a final thing is that there's still layers of asphalt that will also i mean this not is not it will impact the the experience of the intersection so um you know we're pretty optimistic this is going to work just as design when it is fully open one of the reasons we're optimistic about that is the set the standards that this has been built to are the same as another intersection that was uh built um a couple years ago at uh King Street in South Champlain that too was an intersection we had some complaints about early on but you know people have gotten used to it and I think appreciate the uh additional amenities and the additional safety of that area I'm very hopeful that's what's going to happen here as well that said uh we are conscious this is really the first major great street project uh we are learning new things about with this design that will inform the new building on Cherry Street and Bank Street um uh when when those great streets move forward um as our plan and could inform Winooski Main Street as well which are our other projects that are slated for the future so I I hope that addresses the the update uh present right that you were hoping to hear um and that other counselors I know had an interest in um I will now let me just hit a couple other areas quickly and get us out of here um uh the uh I do want to call to the council's attention to the public's attention that the second phase of the housing summit is going to take place here in Kantoys um a week from Wednesday on September 4th there is a pretty extensive report in your package tonight about the first phase of the housing summit it was uh I know amended on it got in a little bit later in the rest of the packet in case you missed it um a lot of work by a big team of staff went in to really trying to create a comprehensive record what happened there um and uh I hope you I hope counselors will can sit we'll we'll know it's there um we also got a question from uh counselor at the board of finance tonight about what is the council's role from here um I want to be um explicit that you know we are doing nothing that we've been talking about in either the first phase or the second phase of this housing summit can kind of result in any on the ground change of course without um council action our plan is to take the feedback from this second phase of the housing summit next Wednesday as well as feedback that I'm going to be seeking I'm going to go to all five mpa's in September um and we're seeking input in other ways as well we are going to be taking that feedback from these proposals that we'll be making that's really what's happening at next week's presentation is we'll be laying out in some detail specific proposals in five different policy areas related that relate to housing we'll then be taking feedback on that over the course of September we'll finalize those policies and then hand them off to the council at the at an early october meeting is the plan um so uh related last point on housing relatedly there's another event coming up on september 26th which is the mayor's book group conversation on the book the color of law um we have uh we we we ran out of copies for a little bit but we've gotten restocked there are copies available in the mayor's office and at the library for people interested in participating in that if you've never been to a mayor's book group event before I encourage you to join us they are always really interesting stimulating conversations on topics of the day this has to do with the government's role at the state local and federal levels in promoting how you know formally de jure you know the actual law and policies promoted racial segregation um and uh raises some interesting questions uh major questions for us all to grapple with about what we do to um undo that legacy that we have here in this country um so uh september 26th uh and again we can provide those books for free because the uvm humanity center um purchases those books and makes them available to the public um i want to council know i've heard as i'm sure the council did the claims made um uh and concerns raised about p p f as and the wastewater system and just want you to know that staff is is following up on that and i'll update the council um in response to that uh that you know detailed uh critique that's been offered a couple times now um we'll get that to you as soon as we can and then um just want to look ahead to uh two other events um uh hopeful optimistic great great events coming up first of all wednesday is uh the first day of school here in um uh here in the city and i just have to share with the council uh you know one of the touching moments uh for me the last seven years is is the night that um when i had to leave a council meeting to go meet aida at the hospital as we adopted her that night the council gave us a beautiful picture frame and present from that night aida will be part of the incoming kindergarten class uh on wednesday can't believe that six years um has passed so quickly um also coming up this weekend there is a uh sorry not this weekend the seventh of september two saturdays from now will be the first um will be a a ribbon cutting for the opening of the first burlington wild ways path this is um this initiative that uh um zoey richards and former councilor uh richard dean and many others have worked on to um uh really bring awareness to and and better um mark the wonderful uh trails that we have in this community and make them more accessible to the public um the first ribbon cutting is happening at the ethan island homestead at noon on the seventh and hope to see you all you all there if you can make it and hope to see the public joining us as well what day was that again mr mayor that is september seventh which is a saturday at the ethan island homestead at noon thank you mr mayor thank you motion to adjourn moved by councilor ruf seconded by councilor pine all those in favor please say aye we are adjourned