 Hello and welcome to Channel 17's Town Meeting Television and our live coverage of Town Meeting 2019. I'm your host, Matt Kelly. I'm pleased to be joined this evening on the anchor desk by Diane Meyerhoff, the always insightful Diane Meyerhoff. Diane, an exciting night tonight, I think. Yes, yes. Thank you very much for having me. Appreciate it. We are looking in Burlington. We're looking at four city council districts. And we have three incumbents and a hotly contested race is all around, it looks like. So we're going to be watching them very closely to see how they're doing. We're hearing kind of low turnout, so I don't know how that'll affect. Also in Burlington, a bunch of ballot items. Certainly. And I think the Downtown Improvement District will be an important one to look at. I think so too. And we're seeing a lot of opposition driving around the city. I saw a lot of signs saying vote no on four. Of course the polls are open until seven o'clock tonight. So you have plenty of time to still get to the polls and cast your ballot. Absolutely. And we encourage folks to do that. We're also looking at Winooski, brand new mayor in Winooski. Seth Lenders retiring and we have an open seat. We have two candidates running for mayor. Winooski City Council also. We have three open seats, two unchallenged and one challenged. So we're looking closely at Winooski. And hopefully we'll have that information really quickly too. We're hoping, quick results. Then we have three year select board seats or city council seats in three communities. So South Burlington, Essex and Williston. Bit of musical chairs in Williston. And we'll talk about that later as well. So we're looking forward to getting the results in and letting folks know what we know. And that's some of the candidate issues. Diane, I understand there's a lot of ballot initiatives as well throughout our community. A lot of them basing the local options tax. A way to bring in some increased revenue for local jurisdictions as a way also to keep property taxes low. In some cases, or in some cases do more. Capital improvements, water, wastewater, a whole bunch of performing arts centers. All kinds of things people are talking about. And most of the urban communities have some kind of local option tax. And that's that 1% on the sales tax essentially. And this time around, South Burlington is looking at 2% to raise it 1% more. That will be the highest. That will be the first community to actually do this. Of course it requires legislative approval in order for it to pass. But I think if it does pass, I think we could probably expect to see some other communities go to 2% as well. I think so as well. And that has a different impact on folks depending on, you know, some of the cities have much higher sales. So that number gets really quite large by adding 1%. So it'll be interesting to see. And then Winooski is coming out for the first time ever to have that. So that's brand new for them. Well, there is a lot going on in Winooski including the local option tax, the pool, allowing new Americans to vote. And we have video from Winooski to take a look at now. Hey, I'm Barry and I'm here at the Winooski Senior Center on Town Meeting Day. It's March 5th, 2019. And as I said, we're in Winooski and there is a lot happening in Winooski this year. There is a race for mayor. There's some city council seats. And it looks like there's a right-in candidate actually for city council and mayor. So in addition to a lot of ballot questions and initiatives about sort of keeping the momentum of growth going in Winooski, and there's the pool issue, there's infrastructure upgrades, and there's more that we'll be hearing about from voters very soon. Thanks for watching. I don't know, Winooski's had a really interesting transitional period. I think that we've got great candidates representing, you know, old school, new school, transition, everything in between. So I'm just really excited to have strong all the candidates have been this year and getting fresh faces, young faces out there. So, no, expecting a nice high turnout and excited to see how it goes. After 87 years, we've got to vote. We've got to make ourselves heard. Can we see your sign? Your daddy is running? My husband's running for city council. Oh. Congratulations. That's very exciting. I mean, we vote all the time anyways, but this one's a little more special. I feel lucky to be able to vote. I don't know. My family's lived in Winooski for multi-generations, so I figured it was just a part of my duty, you know. You know, this is the place to go and make your mark and talk to people who are in positions who can actually do something for you. It's a city that's on the river, and having a place where kids can go and learn how to swim I think is imperative. So, we'd like to see the pool developed, and we'd like to see Winooski continue to grow and develop. Certainly, the school budget was something that was really important to me. It's such a great school, and being out to support it in any way possible, especially as they serve such a diverse population, and they have so many different challenges that come with that. They need all the support that they can get from us community members. So, I actually didn't know who to vote for, for mayor until the other day. We actually pulled up the Channel 17 debate, watched it for all 32 minutes. Well, I'm invested in my mayoral vote, but I also think in the grand scheme of things, this is not what we consider a major election. These are important issues, but, you know, every two or four years we get to rethink our decisions. I feel like just the school budget, you know, that's always something education is really important to me. I'm interested in the Abenaki garage because I live down there, so I'm going to go home and look it up, and actually I didn't know there was going to be a hotel as part of it, too, which is an interesting addition to traffic in my part of Winooski. I do think that the smaller elections sometimes get lost, and that's really unfortunate, because especially since we're voting for our new mayor, we're voting for the school budget. I wanted to vote for Eric Covey. I'm really interested in anybody who's going to save us money. He has a good plan to put in the pool and have the pool make money on its own and have it not be a burden to the taxpayers. That's really important to himself. Great. Well, thank you so much. No problem. I'm just going to end at seven for our live results show on Channel 17. I always do. You guys are the best. Appreciate it. Thanks. Take care. And that was Barry Silver on production for that, as well as producer Mike Kuznit and David Rush as intern. Exciting to hear that one of the voters there in Winooski wasn't sure about the hotel part of this. There's a land swap that's all part of this as well. Yeah, there's this parking garage, 300 space parking garage, and involves a hotel adjacent to it and a land swap on the old hotel site next to the Champlain Mill. Which then will hopefully be combined with another small city parcel to have a new park in the city town of Winooski. Well, as we take a look again at some other city council races, it looks like the progressives are really mounting a serious challenge to Democrats and it's a young slate of candidates. It is. It is. It's kind of the new guard versus the old guard. So we're seeing there's four candidates in each of the districts from the progressives or independents with a progressive endorsement. We have to be careful, right, in that case. And then, of course, the race we're really watching is the district, the central district. Jane O'Dell is running as an independent after being a progressive for many years, progressive candidate Perry Freeman. So yeah, this is going to change the dynamics no matter who wins. Well, in fact, there will be, in fact, a new city council member on the city council tomorrow because Dave Hartnett has left the race out of the north district. So we will have a new member of Burlington City Council tomorrow and it'll be exciting to see who that will be. We'll let you know. Right here at Channel 17. If you are heading out tonight, just a reminder that you can take us along with you for complete election results on your smartphone or tablet at ch17.tv. And we're excited this election season to be simulcasting our town meeting 2019 coverage with 99.3 FM Burlington's community-powered local radio station WBTV and we welcome all the listeners joining us there this evening. Turning to our South Burlington District Council race, the council candidates had some different opinions, particularly as it revolved around ballot questions and how they are put on the ballot as we hear in this report. I think that the city, there's a good reason why in state law and why the city council gets to decide whether or not to put these questions on the ballot. I don't think we want to live in a direct democracy. We've chosen a representative democracy and there are good reasons for that. One thing is the timing that when you put something on the ballot, when it's gone through a whole lot of process and permitting and you're halfway into a project, you can't come back and put the project on the ballot. It doesn't make sense. You have very limited information from a yes-no vote on a ballot referendum question where oftentimes you need a more nuanced answer to, if you don't like that, what is it that you do like? What is it that you want the city to do? People often vote for their personal benefit rather than the fairness to the community. An example is in South Burlington, the rebel name for the high school. Is that something that should be put on a ballot, or do we want to recognize that there are civil rights issues here and there's a concern for the entire community that may not play out in a public vote? I'm sorry, we'll have to leave it there and we'll ask Paco de Frances for a 60-second response on that question as to ballot advisory questions. Should they automatically go on the ballot or do you like the process as it stands now? I mean, I do think the process as it stands now with, you know, having them to go through city council makes sense. Yeah, I think the process is good, but I think we do need to hold our direct city councilors accountable at the ballot box if they are, you know, if you disagree with that, if they're not putting those, you know, I think the voters need to really look at that and say, is my city councilor not putting on these, you know, these ballot items that should be going on or is he or she not? And kind of you take that to the ballot box itself. Okay, Mohamed Jafar, your thoughts on the ballot questions. Should they automatically go on the ballot if they get 3300 signatures? My answer to that is yes, they absolutely should. And my reason for that is very simple. If I'm elected as a city councilor, I'm elected by the people and I'm elected to represent the voices of the people. I don't get to go there like a parent and decide what the decision is. That's not my job as a city councilor. My job is to represent those that are, you know, that are seeing me as their representative. So in my opinion, I think, you know, it undermines the process of democracy in itself, especially that's why we have the item in itself or that's why we have the process for the signatures, for the petitions, whatever it may be. So it is important to understand that if we are going to have, you know, those processes, they shouldn't be such, it shouldn't be a facade. They should be real. And if people get what they, and they meet the prerequisite or the requirements, I think people should get those items automatically on the ballot. Otherwise, why have the process at all? Burlington South District Council candidates, Joan, Shannon, Mohamed, Jafar, and Paco de Francis at one of our Channel 17 candidate forums here. Just taking a look at some of the races again that we are looking to cover here on our event election coverage show starting at 7 p.m. includes election results for that South District Burlington Council race. It's one we're watching closely. Again, we had intimated the Central District, also the North District particularly, as well as the East District for Council as well. And some ballot questions throughout Burlington and our region as well. Absolutely. And we're also looking at Winooski Mayor's race. Winooski will have a new mayor. And Winooski City Council races as well. One is contested and three-year select board or city council seats in three communities, South Burlington, Essex, and Williston. We'll be looking at all of those as well as ballot items, municipal budgets, and school budgets. We're also excited to have executive director for Channel 17, Lauren Glendavidian in Studio B with Barry Silver. We're expecting an exciting night in Studio B with a lot of guests. Lauren Glend. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, Diane. We're so glad to be here tonight at Channel 17 Town Meeting Television. This caps off weeks and weeks of candidate forums that we brought to you live. So if you haven't figured out who to vote for yet, you've got about an hour and 20 minutes to get to the poll. So we hope that we'll do that. I've got Barry Silver with me. Barry, good evening. How are you? Hi, I'm great. I'm still thawing out a little bit from being at the polls this morning. I was out in Winooski and Essex talking to voters and trying to get a sense of what was important to them this town meeting day. And what were you hearing? So, you know, people really take seriously their civic responsibility to vote and to get out and vote. And certainly there was, I would say, barely light traffic when I was out and about this morning. But the people that were there were very passionate about the issues. And Winooski in particular, there's certainly a lot for the voters to weigh in on and to make decisions about a mayor and city counselors and some important ballot initiatives. So people were talking about that. People care about their schools and about the quality of education. Those were some of the themes that we heard for sure. So it was cold. It wasn't as cold as some other town meeting days though, was it? It's true. It was sunny. So when the sun was out, that was great. It wasn't snowing. It wasn't raining. I'm still, as I said, thawing out. I've got my long underwear on. So I'm feeling pretty cozy in here in the studio and looking forward to tonight as the action unfolds and as we start to get results, I'm sure I'll continue to warm up with all that excitement. Well, thanks so much. And stay tuned to Channel 17 at ch.17. And also we'll be airing on WBTV. So we're excited. Back to you, Matt. LG and Barry Silver in Studio B, thank you so much. I know they're going to hold down the fort there very well. And we're excited. When I was at the polls today, I invited Perry Freeman to come in. So we're expecting at least Perry Freeman as well as many other candidates to come in this evening and give us their views on what the race meant for them if there were any new challenges or unexpected things that came up in their campaign. Yeah, and I really appreciate also that folks go door to door. And I feel like that is a great question to ask candidates. You know, what did you hear? And sometimes you hear things that we would not have expected. So I think it's great to get, we get that view of what the voters are thinking. Right at their doorstep. Sure. And also, I mean, it just takes a lot of courage to actually put your name on a ballot to actually have to go door to door to campaign to get people to hear your position and support your position as well as them to just be on a ballot. And then actually to be here for a council debate or a candidate debate if you're camera shy or don't have great public speaking skills, it can be a challenge. Absolutely. Well, Diane, I know you've been closely following Essex as well. Lots of talk there about the town merger and it seems that it seems to be a foregone conclusion that it will happen. Well, I don't know if I'd go that far from what I heard. I know that they called it alignment at this point, apparently. But yeah, I think in the future, I mean, certainly they say they've done sort of the low hanging fruit, if you will, in terms of bringing departments together. And the current budget looks at co-locating the recreation department, but not consolidating, co-locating at this point. So there's still quite a bit of work to be done. But apparently Essex did pass their budget last night. There's a 2% increase. So it's about $28 a year for the average house. And I know we're going to learn more about that. And they also have a select board race as well. Well, and we also understand that a key component of that Essex town meeting budget vote was an actual increase of $100,000 for road repairs and other amenities that need to be fixed. And we'll find out about that in this next video report. So I want to tonight want to send a message to our administration and the beauty of a town meeting is we can get up and discuss these things and make a point. We can all write a letter or so and, you know, whatever. So I'm going to make a motion that we, sounds like a lot, but I want to make a motion that we increase the budget by $100,000. And your market, I know they can spend anywhere they want once we increase the budget. But I think they've always been good in the past about putting it into the item that I want. And I want to see some more resurfacing. With that extra $100,000, maybe we can do 10 roads, which would only take three years instead of five to get the most serious roads fixed. And my math comes up that that's a, like a point, a 6%, 8% increase to the budget. So out of your pocket, it's going to cost you less than $28 to do this. I want to ask what effect you believe that the possible addition of the proposed amount of funds could have this year is coming here? Any money that you put to preventative is a lot better spent than $110 or $130 to reconstruct. So the money which we are not advocating for, which is coming from the floor, is we would put it into the roads that need the most maintenance, that will do the best good to keep us from having to spend the heavy dollars reconstructing. Our select board members and our town administrators have put a lot of thought into prioritizing and asking for our money for the projects that they think need to be done this year. I can think of a lot of things in our community that could benefit from an influx of $100,000. If somebody said, what would you give $100,000 for? I might think of something to do with the opioid abuse crisis. I think there's a lot of things that we could throw money at if we just think of it tonight. So my inclination would be to go with the budget that was presented to us, but that's just my comment on this amendment. Thank you. Who else would like to speak to the amendment? Just for reference, my wife and I are living on one income well below the median income, and I detest taxes. However, we live on West Street, and major potholes have developed recently that every time any large vehicle drives by, the whole house shakes. And so I can absolutely see the value in preventative maintenance, just as I do preventative maintenance on my vehicle so I don't have to pay $85 an hour at a shop. I also see the benefit in preventative maintenance for our roads. And doing some quick math with that extra $100,000 the gentleman has proposed, if the road required complete reconstruction, that $100,000 could only do 751 feet of roadway. If we prevented that at $19 a foot, that would do only 17 feet short of one mile of roadway. That's 5,263 feet. Hopefully, I would rather see that my car doesn't fall apart and I have to pay $85 an hour to do something that I cannot do myself because I didn't want to pay $20 extra in taxes to take care of this problem. Thank you very much. Results of the vote, those in favor of the amendment were 138. Those against the amendment were 96. The amendment has passed. Everyone said their piece. So let's vote on it. So I'm going to restate the article as amended before we vote. Shall the town adopt a budget for the fiscal year July 1, 2019 to June 30, 2020 as recommended by the select board and amended in the amount of 14,830,649 dollars. So an aye is in favor of that budget and nay is against. All those in favor of article 2 as amended signify by saying aye. Opposed nay. The ayes have it. Article 2 passes. Well, it's really interesting to see the Australian ballot there in Essex, but it's great to see such a turnout there. Pretty much they always have a good turnout for their town meetings budget there. Well, coming up tonight a reminder if you want complete election results, you can go to our web page ch17.tv and find out the latest up to the minute results for town meeting 2019. Diane? Yes, we are going to look at the north district in Burlington, yes? Okay, I thought we were going to go ahead and look at our election module. I apologize that I'm supposed to be on that one. So these results are at ch17.tv and we're going to show, here they are, they're coming up and we get to look at, these are all the city council races in Burlington and the school board in Burlington. All the articles, the ballot items and you'll be able to see these and we will be reading them to you also throughout the evening as the information comes in. So these are our charter changes, downtown improvement district, the did unfortunately. It's called. Eliminate the business personal property tax and the single use plastics which is an advisory item. Right, yep. And following that we have more coming up, we promise. Essex, here we go, Essex results. Okay, well that was just to give you a little flavor of what we're going to have later. Yeah, and just a reminder if you can't be with us but you want to get the complete election results go to our web page ch17.tv and we'll have up to the minute results for you there. And we're also streaming on there too. That's right, we're streaming there. And again, if you want to join us if you're heading out in your car radio you can tune in to 99.3 WBTV. Well, Diane taking a look at the North District City Council candidates had a lot to say about safety on North Avenue. I would love to have a really intelligent, well articulated answer for this question and frankly I don't. My understanding is that there is a process already underway. The city already has a number of plans for lighting and sidewalks and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da and so as a representative government I'm going to trust that they're moving in the right direction. Excuse me, Franklin Polino, your response. Thank you. So I would support the five lighted crosswalks like they have on Pine Street. And those need to happen as soon as possible. We shouldn't wait until the federal funds come in to play. We need bus pullouts so the buses can move out of the way and they can stop and drop off their passengers easily and safely. We also need an ambulance service. We need an ambulance service that's going to be on the ballot in 2020 but we need it as soon as possible. And we also need safer sidewalks for our senior citizens. It's unacceptable that the Heinerberg senior citizens cannot take a leisurely walk around the building. Very good. Kenan Christensen, a 60-second response, please. I wholeheartedly agree we need those lighted crosswalks. We were promised them two years ago and we still don't have them. That's unacceptable. In addition to the lighted crosswalks, we need to make sure that we have the chirping devices on the crosswalks because we have a number of blind neighbors who cannot cross the street because they don't have the ability to know when the lights have changed because we don't have the chirping devices. In addition, I agree that the sort of armadillo bike barriers along with the large plastic barriers are ineffective and we need to find a different solution. It's a waste of tax dollars to install them because they were already been taken out by plows. We need to find a better solution and I think that we can do that by exploring, you know, better installments of a more permanent solution that includes green space. In addition, I think that we need to increase crosswalks near the bus stations because we have a number of people who are getting off the bus and don't have a crosswalk to cross that, resulting in folks darting across the street and we need to fix that. And finally, we need to increase lighting along North Avenue. North District City Council candidates Keenan Christensen, Franklin Polino and Erica Bundy Reddick who has now dropped out of the race, as we understand. She has and she's thrown her support behind Franklin Polino, the Democrat. So that was just recently, so she's still on the ballot, but she has dropped out of the race so it's just between Franklin Polino and Keenan Christensen at this point. Quite an exciting race there in the North District. First, Dave Hartnett receiving the Democratic nomination, then him bowing out, Keenan Christensen wanting the Democratic nomination and going to Franklin Polino, Keenan running as an independent. With the progressive support. Right, exactly. Yes, exactly. And you know, can the Pragues get ahead in the New North End and traditionally a conservative district so that we're really keeping an eye on that. And we're certainly looking at the Central District here as well because right now Jane Nodell was a progressive. If she wins, she'll go to the City Council as an independent which means that the progressives would potentially lose a candidate unless other progressive candidates are going to win in the North District, the East District and in the South District. So potential a shake up, but it may be very similar in the end. So that's what we're going to keep an eye on tonight. And again, we're very closely watching Winooski. There will be a new mayor at the end of this evening. Long time mayor Seth Leonard stepping down. Do we know what's next for Seth? We don't. We know he took a job that he was not able to be in a political position. So we know that. But I wouldn't be surprised if we don't hear from him in the future at some point. Absolutely, I think so. Wonderful. And lots of ballot questions in Winooski as well that we're following. We're watching very closely in South Burlington for ballot questions regarding local options tax there as well as the surtax on rentals. That's right. Rental cars. Rental cars in the whole city of South Burlington, not just at the airport. Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see how all those items go. And also, you know, moving their sales tax to 2%, highest in the state. So that'll be really interesting to see if people go for that. Yeah, and just a little bit more on that referendum again. Once the voters pass it, it'll go to the legislature. The legislature will have to approve it. And then if the city wants to appropriate money for a special project, that will then would go to the voters to approve. Yeah, and those are capital items. So it's the performing arts center potentially. Possibly a pedestrian, a bike bridge over the interstate was one of the ones that was listed, yeah. So yeah, so I think there's a lot of options there for them. Great. So we're watching Williston as well contested select board race as well as ballot initiatives there. I know there's a change to bring three fire trucks down to two. One of them is actually a quint. This is something you're very excited about. Hey, it's a big red truck. You know, every boy loves a big red truck. Of course. So that's just some of the things that we're watching. Also, as we again, we take a look at our voter results page at ch17.tv. Again, you take a look there up to the minute results in real time on our webpage. Yes, and of course we don't have them because the polls are still open until seven o'clock. So we will not have anything on there, nor will we guess who might win at this point because we want folks to go out and vote certainly. So we will be bringing you that module and you can check it yourself on our website as well. Great. And a reminder too, if you're heading out any time this evening after seven o'clock, you can take us along with you on your car radio or your smartphone or tablet just dialing in 99.3 Burlington's Community Powered FM Station WBTV. And thank them so much for being part of this. This is the first season for that. We're really excited to have them on board as a simulcast co-sponsor for us this evening. Well, Diane, it's a really exciting night that we're looking forward to bringing all our viewers here this evening. Election results begin right here starting at 7 p.m. Great. I'm Matt Kelly for all of us here at Channel 17, Town Meeting Television. Diane Meyerhoff and I, we thank you for watching. We'll see you at 7 p.m.