 to order. One quick thing the agenda and someone please remind me you need to adopt the agenda but tonight in Washington our president-elect at 530 was planning to hold a vigil because unfortunately we passed a grim milestone of 400,000 Americans who have died because of COVID and we can't be in Washington but I know that there were many faith communities in Burlington who are planning to commemorate this and I just thought it was worth us taking a moment of silence before we dive into our business to remember those people so let's take that moment out. Thank you. I also just want to thank the council for your generosity and flexibility with finances and all of your support in our COVID response over this past year. Okay now we're gonna move on to the agenda as planned. So is there a motion to amend or adopt the agenda? Yes Councillor Paul. So make a motion to adopt the agenda as presented. Excellent is there a second? President Tracy. All in favor please say aye. Aye. Excellent. President Tracy could you let us know if there are any people signed up for comment for board of finance? Sure so let me just check the sheet. I'm not seeing anyone specifically for this. It looks like everyone is signed up to speak to items that are on the agenda for the main council meeting. Let me just also check do one more thing. I'll check the inbox just in case. Thank you for doing that. If there's any members of the public you can reach us at publicforumatburlingtonvt.gov and while President Tracy keeps looking for that is there a motion on the consent agenda? So I just want to say I didn't see anything. There was nothing in there either in the inbox or on the form. So thank you for confirming. Yes Councillor Pine. I would move to approve the consent agenda and take the actions indicated. Excellent is there a second to that? Second. Thank you Councillor Paul. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Great. Okay that brings us to the FY 22 update. I'm going to share my screen. I made you the host Jordan. Could you make me the host back? Sorry. Certainly. Just give me one second. How do I do that? Well actually I'll do this. There we go. Yeah you could just enable screen sharing if I can. Sorry. You should be able to share your screen now I think. Thank you. Okay everyone's got that. Okay so I really can't believe it's already time to start talking about the FY 22 budget but it is. So as you can see I have labeled this a ballpark first update and also put all the disclaimers in. I think probably all the CAOs want to put disclaimers in but we also are still operating under COVID so as you will notice as we go through this I'm giving you all of my assumptions because those are the things that may change as we go along and I want to be transparent with you about what those are so that if you have input we discuss that as we go along. The first place we'll start is with revenue and as you might remember from the quarter one update that I gave you we have the big five and the big five represents 69% of all revenue that the city collects and that's here 50% is property taxes. We did not I did not budget any significant changes here and one big factor is we're not yet accounting for the reappraisal. I think within a few weeks we'll be able to do that and working closely with John Vickery and the assessors team and I expect that will yield an increase in property taxes but that is not reflected here. The same is for pilot payment in lieu of taxes and our fee for services so these are payments that are made basically instead of property taxes is how you can think about it. Pilot is paid by funds such as water, wastewater, stormwater, BED traffic. Fee for service is paid by organizations such as Fletcher Allen, UVM, Champlain College. Those are not exhaustive lists just to give you an idea. The other two revenues that are included in this big five are gross receipts and local option tax. They are a much smaller percentage of the 69% but of course they are an important bellwether of the local economy so we take them very seriously. We made these FY22 targets really based on what we learned about the pandemic in 21 and based on what we expect. For gross receipts we are keeping the FY22 level at FY21's budgeted level. That is because, yeah, Karen. I apologize, Catherine. Would you prefer that we wait? I mean I'm happy to wait. No, no, it's okay. Go for it. I just wanted to ask because I perhaps I'm not understanding this correctly. I haven't been through a reappraisal. My understanding is that reappraisals are revenue-neutral. So if they're revenue-neutral then I'm not really sure why it says not yet accounting for it. Well, there would be no accounting for it because by definition they're just reappraising. They're not increasing the overall property tax bottom line. They're just reassessing and spreading out the cost in a different way. So I think I feel like that's a little bit misleading. That is probably a good point and I don't want to give anybody false hope there. So I'm happy to adjust that. Look, you know, obviously there are going to be some people that will be, you know, happier than others with the reappraisal. But the overall city does not win or lose in terms of increased revenue or decreased revenue. The other thing also is I think it's important to also understand with the pilot and fee-for-service, you know, we haven't really spent a lot of time on that. I think that it probably would be good to at some point talk about who, you know, what are the organizations that are represented there. It's not just the ones that you've mentioned but others. And I'm not sure that they were, I don't know that they were adjusted for inflation in FY21. Some of them were eliminated. Some of them were reduced significantly. Some of them were reduced by very small amounts. And so and there were some that were actually increased by much more than the rate of inflation. So I think at some point, and obviously we don't need to do it tonight, but at some point we probably should at least have a discussion about that. Like, for example, with pilot, I mean, I don't remember off the top of my head with the university. Is the agreement for pilot linked to inflation or is there a set schedule for increases? So again, I realize this is all ballpark but just wanted to put that out there. So thank you. I agree that I think a deeper dive into pilot and fee for service before we get to the end of the budgeting process would be helpful. As questions have come up and some of you have asked them of me, us, you know, we have a variety of agreements in a variety of stages of being renegotiated. And so you're right. I think this language is a bit imprecise because I think it would be better and I will have this reflected in the final. It's more that it's just been there are no major adjustments. It has been, we didn't cut anything out and we didn't double anything, you know, it has been just whatever the agreements allow for that is what we have continued to do. Great. Thank you. Yes, Councilor Pine. I was going to mention the revenue neutrality. That's actually I think by charter. So that's a definite on the property re-appraisal. So the other issue, which I think we should include in this list, and maybe it's buried in that fee, but it's obviously a fee, are the franchise fees I think are something to call out and just, you know, it's a stable source, but I think it's we're going to list those big revenues. I think it's a pretty sizable number that we should keep in mind. That's exactly right. Those fee for service, the franchise fees are in there, but I am happy to call them out. On gross receipts and local option tax, we are choosing at least at this point of our initial budgeting. We are estimating gross receipts to be kept at the FY 21 level because they are, while the first two quarters have met expectations, as you may recall, we increased our expectations for gross receipts, quarter one, two, three, and four. And given what we know now about the virus with restaurants shuttering for the winter, it seems unlikely we will meet those aggressive third quarter targets or probably the fourth quarter. So we thought it was more realistic to keep this where it was. However, with local option tax, those payments have remained strong. You may have heard about this in the news referred to as the Amazon effect, because there are people staying home buying things on websites. Those taxes are automatically collected by the state of Vermont, and then the 1% is remitted back to the city of Burlington. So we have increased that level back to the FY 20 level. Additional revenue assumptions, you will recall there's a 20% of the revenue that comes from these six departments. And again, based on what we have learned so far in FY 21, here are estimates. DPW is right on track. So we project keeping the FY 22 level at FY 21. We project a modest bounce back for Parks, Rec, and Waterfront with the reopening of the campground and hopefully more action on the waterfront. So this estimate is sort of a midway point between FY 20 and FY 21. Permitting and inspections as you heard in quarter one is having trouble meeting their budget. So we made that more conservative. The fire department is on track. So we move them up. BPD has no changes. But of course, parking enforcement is where their revenue comes from, and that will be moving to DPW. So soon they'll be out of this group. And BCA we're keeping at a rather conservative level since most of their revenue, much of it comes from donations. Then we have the expense assumptions. And for staffing levels, we are keeping those levels at current levels, including our COLA and step increases. We are bumping temporary and seasonal staff back up. I say back up to FY 20 levels that will look a little different in different departments. And I discussed that with department heads, but this is sort of the easiest way to reference it, meaning as you know, in places like Parks and DPW, they took major hits. That money is currently added back in my ballpark budget. But operational budgets are held to the more constricted FY 21 budgets think very little money left for travel and training, for instance. And the new firefighter positions are included. I feel like I've been talking forever. So where do we land? Given all of that stuff, we project a $6 million deficit, which would be offset by implementing the taxes that were approved by the voters last March. The public safety tax would be about $1.2 million. And the housing trust tax would be about $200,000. That's a dedicated tax, so that doesn't take money off the bottom line for us. So $6 million minus $1.2 gives us a deficit projected of $4.8 million for FY 22, assuming we made no additional expense cuts or revenue increases. That is not what we would like to do. So here is my plan to help deliver a balanced budget. As I mentioned, we will not be asking for any additional tax increases because we recognize the voters are going through an extremely difficult time. We will be reviewing conservative revenue projections and revising them as appropriate. I will be back before you in a couple of weeks with a quarter two analysis of the budget. And we will see at that point if it makes sense, if things are looking better, we may decide that we want to increase those revenue projections. We will of course continue working closely with the federal and state governments to secure financial assistance. And I hope you all were as excited as I was to hear in President-elect Biden's speech that he's promising money for municipalities. So hopefully that comes through. We are not projecting layoffs or any other employee actions at this time while we maintain strict limits on our discretionary spending. And then of course we will be creative. Things like fund 150, our healthcare fund at this point is running really below where we expected. So when I say we would assess their impact on the general fund at this point, we would be able to contribute money towards that deficit. But we've got, you know, six months or a little less of the general of the fiscal year left. As a last resort, we would use the unassigned fund balance. And even if God forbid we had to use all of it from the unassigned fund balance, given we still have 8.6 million in there, as you heard from our auditor, we would still be within our policy. But that is certainly not our plan. These are the next steps. We're in the middle of gathering a lot of detailed information from the department heads. Thank you, department heads. We're listening for meeting the deadlines. We will be presenting, I'm sure, as I did last year, updates to you as we go and then formal presentations of budgets in mid-May. If I have not bored you to sleep, I take additional questions or comments. President Tracy. Thank you very much. I really appreciate this presentation and just having a forecast of what we're looking at going forward. Just curious about, you know, if that federal stimulus doesn't end up coming through for states and for cities and states, how do you see the balance taking place? Like, is the idea to go to the unassigned fund balance in order to avoid layoffs or would you go to layoffs before going to the unassigned fund balance? I'm sure that's a question that the mayor would like to weigh in on, but it is my understanding from him that we would go to the unassigned fund balance first. Mayor, are you here? I think you're here. I am here. Great. So, sorry, I missed the end of the master's question there. I apologize. President Tracy. No, no, it's okay. So what I was asking mayors is if we can, what your prior, like what the order would be if, for instance, we didn't get federal assistance, would the idea be to go to layoffs before using unassigned fund balance or unassigned fund balance before, before pursuing? Okay. Yeah, sorry. Thank you very quickly. No, what Catherine and I are saying here is that we are anticipating bring forward our proposal that does not involve, that we will have a budget that may need to continue the austerity kind of non-personnel restrictions on kind of discretionary spending. I think we may be facing another very lean budget year in 22, the way we had in 21. I'm encouraged that we again will be able to avoid personnel actions like furloughs or layoffs the way we have in FY21 and we would have to do that if nothing else changes would require significant use of fund balance. Again, fortunately, we have sufficient fund balance that we could do that again and still remain within our targets. If things deteriorated further from there so that we go beyond the assumption that Catherine just laid out of needing to use approximately $4.5 million, $4.8 million or so of fund balance, that would, if there was some further deterioration then we'd have to look at that together again. But what we are saying in this presentation is our plan now is not to raise taxes, is to bring forward, is to hopefully, and I am given what recent developments at the federal level between the Biden presidency, his clear indication that he intends to bring a relief package for state and local governments plus the fact that there are now, there doesn't appear to be the Republican ability to block that action as we have seen for more than six months now. I'm really hopeful that there will be some revenue replacement and we will do better than what has just been shown here. If somehow we don't, the plan would be to come forward again with a budget that uses significantly the rainy day fund that exists. Okay, thank you. And then two other questions that I had were just in terms of services and cutbacks. So this is basically just maintaining the same cuts to services, not contemplating any further service cuts, right? So we're looking at like similar cuts to some of like the parks programming that kind of stuff that went through the last budget. Is that correct? But no further service cuts? That's correct. It's sort of built on a it is built on a model of maintaining where we're at. That's right, President Tracy, no further cuts. Okay, and then the last thing I just had a question on was capital spending and how, if there will be any implications for our capital budgets, because I don't know that we touched on that in this presentation. And so just wanting to get a sense of how you see capital investments going forward in the next year. Very perceptive question. Please handle that. Great. So yes, this budget was focused on the operating budget because in large part, because I think it's important for us to have a conversation around this time of year, given the need to put something on the March ballot, if a property tax is anticipated. The capital budget, we are definitely well into the planning for the upcoming years, capital budget, it will be modestly reduced from some of the recent years because we are coming to the, really over the last four years, we've had an unusually high level of capital investment because of the sustainable infrastructure bond and the other, that bond plus the total of $50 million of infrastructure investment that was part of the sustainable infrastructure plan, where in the last, next year will be the last year of that plan. And we, it will be the modestly less spending than the prior four years of it. I do think that we will need to start talking about another, the next round, and we sort of reference this a little bit when Councillor Jang asked the question about bond capacity last meeting. I do anticipate there will be a need for another capital bond soon to continue that level, the level of investment that I think we've all been happy with over the last four years, and we do have capacity within the debt policy for another bond. That's one of the reasons why I suggested, I think in November 21, November of this year, a special election is something we should talk about both for the, we're talking about the police discipline charter change, possibly for capital bonding and possibly for TIF bonding as well. So if there's not a further extension of the TIF deadline as a result of COVID. So there, I mean, I hope I've answered your question, President Tracy. So there will be sort of because of that reason, there will be somewhat less. We are, as you know, it's really hard to, the dollars between operating and capital are really not fungible, and we did not cut back on the capital side. This year we had these dedicated resources in the FY21 budget that we have invested. We see that as being, I think it's really important that we keep making those investments if we can for economic reasons as well, it has a sort of broader impact on the economy. I think we're going to propose investing the dedicated resources that we have in FY22 as well. They just will be a little bit less, somewhat less than they've been in the last few years. Okay, great. Thank you very much. I appreciate that answer. Great. Councilor Pine, did you have a hand up there? Yeah, I know we discussed this last year, Mayor, and I just want to ask if you could, I know it's a little bit of a distraction, but I want to at least have you address whether or not, you know, we always want to preserve the unassigned fund balance, I think, as much as possible. And so I'll raise that issue again of the municipal liquidity fund as at least something to look at. They did change some of the regulations around that. A governor can actually designate the most populous city, even if it doesn't meet the population threshold. So that was something they changed, and the rates are so incredibly low. I think it's worth looking at, just whether there's a benefit to spreading out payments when we anticipate things improving rather than using our rainy day fund. So it's just a question of, do you use your cash that you've saved, or do you borrow at incredibly low rates knowing that you're going to see your revenues bounce back up, hopefully? But that's just a question I'd like to look at if you could. Thank you, Councillor Pine. And I, we looked at this for the FY 21 budget as you recall, and the challenge, so there is some borrowing that we can't, you know, that we did do and continues to be in place to help out property taxpayers again, you know, if people want to have payment plans, they want to delay their payment, work something out with us, we have those tax anticipation, substantial tax anticipation notes in place to assist with that, with that effort. And we have had some people come forward and request, you know, we have worked that out with a small number of taxpayers, but it remains something that we can do. In terms of the challenge, I think I understand your point about like, is there, could we, could we somehow fund services at a higher level or reinstate some of this discretionary spending and, and pay for that over time through borrowing? The challenge with that is, is that we could, what it would take to do that would be going, that is indebtedness that would require going to the voters for approval. And that is, you know, not something that, up to this point, we've, you know, so it really would be shifting some of these costs, these, these operating costs into the, into the future, which is a practice we've generally tried to, tried to avoid and which we would have to convince the voters that of the wisdom of doing it. And at this point, so it does take that. We didn't, we don't, we, we looked at it pretty hard last summer and could not find any, there's no other kind of way around that requirement in the, in the charter that indebtedness be a decision of the voters. That's my memory of our exploration of the last summer. Is anything I forgot to say, Catherine or Rich, I mean, we looked at the emergency powers. They, they do allow for some, you can borrow on a very short-term basis for essentially up to a year or I think a little bit more than a year using kind of emergency authority, but then you have to, at the end of that year, you have to go to the voters and pay it off. So I didn't feel like any of those, while I was, I know that some institutions have been doing exactly what you're suggesting, I thought it was a reasonable strategy to consider. It did seem like the way in which municipalities are constrained on indebtedness made, didn't make it a very appealing option. Did you have anything, Rich or Catherine? That's a good summary, Mayor. Gotta agree. One thing that the city is looking at is we're looking at our existing debt and we're looking at potentially doing a little refi refinancing at a lower rate that may provide some relief. So I've been in contact with the Muni Bank late last week and, you know, we're going to run the numbers and if it looks promising that we can do a refi without extending the length of the debt that we pay less, you know, we will, we'll take advantage of that. We're, again, we're very early in the stages of, of that review. So no promises. I could, Rich, just ask you, you just threw in there not re-extending the repayment period, the tenor. What is that prevented because that does require going back to the voters and sort of re-issuing that through voter approval? Is that why? No, it's not a requirement. It's just our policy that we do our very best not to try to extend existing debt. We try to keep the, you know, amortization consistent to what it was and just walk in at a better rate. Again, we will look at all options at this point. It's really about the rates and what we can walk into period. Thank you. So I think what would be helpful before we close off this discussion and we probably should relatively soon to get to other matters is just if they're, it would be helpful to get a reactions from my colleagues on the board as to this, this general approach. Does this, and I understand you're just sorting through this tonight for the first time, but I think we, I appreciate that Catherine's been able to kind of articulate the kind of broad outlines of what our strategy will be. Obviously, lots of important detail from here, but it would be helpful to know if anyone has major concerns about the kind of high level assumptions that we're planning to build the budget around here, that would, if you think we have it wrong in terms of the kind of willingness to use fund balance if necessary. If you, I guess it would be hard, but not too late to shift gears if the board thought we were crazy to not be coming forward with a property tax increase. That's something I would hear. It would be hard for me to get behind that given what's going on, but there still is the opportunity to correct there if people think that's not the right assumption. So any kind of high level feedback you can give if you think we're on the right track here would be helpful. Councillor Pine. At the high level, I would just say that the reductions that were made last year in seasonal and temporary workers, I think did have an impact on the ability to deliver some services, and I'd just like us to be honest with ourselves and with our constituents about that. And I think I can't even enumerate them all, but I just know that specifically the departments that rely heavily on that type of labor were really constrained in what they could do. I'm aware of both parks and public works were constrained. And I think it's just important for us to point that out as we consider this as the city's in the business of providing services to the taxpayers. And I think we have to be mindful of the fact that when we are going to have to cut back on services, we just have to, I think, be pretty upfront about it and not gloss over it. Yeah, fair point, Councillor Pine. And actually, so I appreciate you raising all the aspects of that. I do think even in a kind of bad case scenario here, I do think we will have operations at the campground and in the marina and on the waterfront that really were essentially suspended this year that even if vaccination plan is slow, I just can't imagine us being at the same low level of activity again. So I think that will almost certainly result in this significant additional seasonal, that was where some of the big cutbacks were in those operations. I think that will change. And I'm with you that it's a very high priority to be able to restore. You're absolutely right. I mean, we certainly didn't try to gloss over it. But there definitely were some service curtailments around in certain areas that you're exactly right. We're largely attributable to the seasonal staff, some of the maintenance around cemeteries in particular, and there are some other kind of, so I agree. To agree, we have to have cuts in those areas again. We should be really clear about them. And I think we'll have greater experience about what the impacts are after this last season that we've been through. And hopefully we're not going to get there. If we can make restorations in the budget, those would be high priority areas for me as well. Thank you, Mayor. So I mean, I think you asked about the overall general about the direction. And I maybe have this question. And it is about the stimulus package from the federal government. Last time when we talk about it, it seems we're talking about two different items. One is to maybe support municipalities around COVID relief. And the other one is about infrastructure. So are we going to get both of them at the same time? And would they come at the same time or separately? And when should we expect them? That's the first question. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Yeah, that's right. Those two areas, I would even actually call out a third area that we have not, which is revenue replacement. So up until now, we have done well, as we talked about in recent meetings, getting reimbursement for COVID expenses. So we, which is good, because we were very aggressive about the actions that we took. We took a lot of, we incurred something like more than $3 million of COVID related expenses over the course of the, through the end of the year. And we were able to secure reimbursement for something over $2 million of that from more than that for $2 million from one source alone. And then we got some other sources from other federal government. So we are able to get a lot of reimbursement. That is one thing the federal government has done is to be, and through the state actions, pretty, they haven't, we've been successful at getting most of those expenses reimbursed. What they have refused to do up until now because of the Republican objections is do what, you know, what many met, what our federal delegation very much wanted to do and fought for, which was to provide revenue replacement for cities like us that have lost a lot of revenue because of the economic activity, the way that the federal government provided revenue replacement for, you know, all sorts of industries, including ones that, you know, just are the cruise line industry and airline industry, sort of, you know, these other parts of the economy that, you know, I would argue are not more important than the work that we do here in local government. And so that has been a major frustration. I am hopeful, very hopeful, that that will now change because of the Democratic control of Congress as well as this president. I think it is very likely that there will be near-term bill that will finally provide some revenue replacement. And that would go straight to the bottom line. That would not just be covering new expenses we've incurred related to the emergency, that would actually allow us to restore the parts of the budget that we've had to cut back on here. So that would be really exciting. Then the third area is, like you're saying, Councillor Jang, is infrastructure, which is being considered, and sorry, to be specific here, I believe in the first weeks of the Biden administration, they will come forward with another COVID relief package. So that will be one bill. And then it's a separate matter. I also think that they are going to come forward with what President Biden, President-elect Biden talked about is a $2 trillion infrastructure package as a separate bill, but also a near-term bill that has a stimulating effect on the economy as we try to dig out of this recession. So I think we're talking something in the neighborhood of an additional $4 trillion of proposals at least, right? I think there's a million-dollar proposal that happened in the final weeks of the Trump administration, sorry, $900 billion proposal that hasn't been digested yet. Then there's an almost $2 billion additional COVID relief package that Biden will be bringing forward very soon. And then there's another $2 trillion of infrastructure investment that is being proposed. And I can say with some pretty direct knowledge that the Biden administration sees municipalities as partners sort of boots on the ground, if you will, in getting these resources out and leading the country out of this incredibly challenging moment we're in. So I am very hopeful that the financial picture, for all the conversation we just had about how this could be a really tough year, there is a different possibility here that feels much realer now given recent political events than previously. Okay, thank you. So I didn't know there is a third element, but thank you for explaining beautifully. Now, I think Rich, what he talked about in terms of refinancing, I think it's a great idea that we need to pursue. It's amazing. And I was just now wondering if this board or the council can have in general an update about the city's debt in general, not only the debt policy, but the city's debt in general. Maybe in writing, I don't know if it's appropriate to put it publicly. I don't know. But it's just a request. Now, I think using the unassigned fund balance, I would want to go that way instead of increasing taxes to fund the city's municipal core services. So in general, that's where I am. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else like to speak at this point? If not, we will close out this item and move on with the agenda. Sorry, I don't have myself fully organized here. Katherine, do you want to call out the next agenda item? Yes, of course. We are moving on to item 5.01, authorization to approve an engineering design bidding coordination and construction contract for the airfield hotspot mitigation project. And go for it, Mayor, before I get all carried away. Okay. Welcome, Nick and Shelby, and Larry, the whole airport team here. How would the board like to proceed? Are we ready for a motion? Councillor Pine. I would move to approve and recommend the city council authorize the director of aviation to execute a contract with CTA for up to $317,761.16, plus an additional contingency amount of $37,664.17, totaling up to $365,425.33 for the preparation of design and construction bidding documents related to services for the hotspot mitigation project subject to final review and approval by the city attorney's office. That's the first part of that, and the second part is to approve and recommend the city council approve a budget amendment to the fiscal year 2021 for the International Airport budget for the hotspot mitigation project by increasing the accounts as set forth above. Excellent. Councillor Powell. Oh, sorry. Second from Councillor Powell. And any further discussion? Okay. Councillor Powell. You're on mute, Councillor Powell. My apologies. I think it would be, I mean, this is a significant item. I think it would be good if for the benefit of the public, if there could be a brief overview of this project so that we all understand the project. Very good, Nick. Would you like to give the overview there? Yeah, absolutely. So annually, just a little backstory, annually, we're consistently, continuously looking at safety improvements out on the airfield for aircraft operations. So annually, we partner with the FAA air traffic control division, as well as airlines, general aviation partners, our heritage aviation leadership, as well as many other users of the airport to identify specific hotspots or areas that have generally come up in the past over the last year on particular issues or confusion with pilots. So that's essentially what the hotspot reasoning is. We have three identified hotspots at the airport and most airports have multiple hotspots that they, it's not necessarily a bad thing. It's just a thing that we constantly need to monitor. And it also advises pilots to look specifically in these geographic areas. What we'd like to do is hire CHA to help mitigate some of the effects of these hotspots, some of the confusion around some of these intersections. CHA is going to help provide the design services and bring us all the way through bidding, as well as construction services for those specific amounts. Most of the work here entails additional lighting or signs that are out on the airfield that you may see when you're when you're taxiing in an aircraft, as well as some additional paint markings or removal of pavement that is just a little bit too much in a particular area, causing some concern and some confusion. So this not only helps us mitigate those hotspots, but it also helps us prioritize funding with the FAAs so that we can move this forward in our grant process. We will be back in a few months requesting grant authorization as well as a construction contract authorization once those bids are received. Very good, Nick. Thank you. Any further questions on the resolution? Okay. Seeing none, we will go to a vote on the motion. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? The motion carries unanimously and that brings us to airport item number two, request to approve acceptance of a grant with the FAA and design inspection construction related contracts for the terminal and the integration project. Another important service improvement that has long-term implications for the airport and why don't you give a overview? I think you have some visuals on this, Nick, that you might want to share with the public. Hey, Mayor, Gene Richards here. Hi, Gene. Hi. I just want to give you a quick overview here. This project we have been trying to get the money for a little over about 10 years and it has been very challenging and so it is something that we were able to procure and the majority of it is from the FAA. Not only is it a wonderful, efficient asset to the airport and Nick will go over that but our time has come and we are very, very lucky to have received this. So I just want to give everybody on the team kudos but also City Council know this is a real win-win for our city and for the airport. Thank you, Gene. Why don't you go ahead, Nick, with just a quick overview. Do you have the ability to share the visuals too? Just make sure that people know what we are looking at. I have the interior visuals. I can share the exteriors from some of the conversations that we've had, if you wish. We are not quite there on the exterior design but I can share whatever you wish. Going off of what Gene said, this is a long time coming. The entire team has worked tremendously hard. In fact, about two years ago we came to this board as well as the Council to request authorization just to get this work started, to get things moving along through some of our congressional delegation support, specifically Senator Leahy. We are able to receive a whole other set of funding sources from the Federal Aviation Administration that was completely new over the past couple of years called supplemental grant funding. That grant funding was specifically appropriated to the Burlington airport at $10 million initially. Over the last year or so we've worked increasingly harder to justify to the FAA additional bid alternatives which you see in this memo so that we can right size this facility for the Burlington airport. Regardless of the COVID changes to the airport, including the decreased number of passengers, we still look at this from a long-term standpoint of projected growth for passengers. Allowing them to go through a security checkpoint at the appropriate timing as well as the efficiencies to get to and from some of our concourse areas. This specific building would consolidate the two security checkpoints that we have as well as allow greater efficiencies from a TSA perspective, greater efficiencies from an energy efficiency perspective for this particular project, as well as of course greater efficiencies from a passenger perspective coming from the ticket counters to their perspective gates. The building itself is a two-floor building. The first floor would be a five-lane security checkpoint moving up to a second floor which would essentially be a hold room space or future hold room space for passengers to wait for their aircraft as well as a hallway to the north concourse. This has been ongoing in our master plan and we're extremely excited to start this, what we're calling phase one, of just rearranging the terminal a little bit to allow for all of those efficiencies that I talked about as well as add energy efficiencies throughout the upcoming years. Hey Nick, can you show an image of the outside if you're not? And I also, well as Nick is pulling that up, I just want to let you all know that David White was very instrumental in helping us get a better design and as well as the mayor, you know, we started off in a different direction with some consultants and they were heading up. We're doing some fine tuning on the one that Nick will be showing you here shortly but it's a brand new presence, you know, for the entry of our airport and well really there's a lot of landscaping that's a buffer in between the building and the driveway which will really make it look quite beautiful when you enter the Burlington International Airport. Any luck Nick? I'm just bringing it up right now. Sorry for the delay, it's worth waiting for, it's quite beautiful. Is that working? Can everybody see that? Yes. So just a little bit into the initiation of the project. I'll quickly go through some of these slides. Overall the idea is to change the layout of the terminal to add greater efficiencies as I mentioned. One thing I didn't mention was the efficiencies for aircraft parking which is very much limited because of the size of the aircraft coming into the airport today. So this sets us up for a mid to long term change to the airport. This is a little bit of the concept for landscape drawings as Gene mentioned as well as on the south side of the terminal building with the entrance side to the airport, a new landscape pattern as well as the additional space right here. If you remember I think we presented this to you about a year, year and a half ago with the exterior concept of the building which the idea at the time was a covered bridge concept. Through the evolution of the design and the facade and the conversations that Gene was mentioning we are looking at a slightly different build out which is a little bit like this one right here which we're still defining a little bit moving forward with not only some of the modern features as you can see the interior covered bridge type of design on the inside with those metal posts, some vertical and horizontal separations throughout the airport and some facade there changes all tying into the the atmosphere of what the original terminal looks like as we expand further to the south. And keep in mind as you look at this this is a very an outline further or closer to the building versus as you enter the airport so you're going to see a lot of landscaping before you actually see this this particular side. Nice. Okay, then I'm going to catch up on it. You didn't see in the communications that the FAA pays 90% of the cost but I couldn't figure out where the other 10% is coming from. Yeah so like Gene said and you saw 90% is federal funded through that supplemental grant funding through our partnerships with the airlines we're able upfront some of the cost with our original design or the concept designs and then as we process our passenger facility charge program which Marie and Larry and Shelby and the entire team are working on right now the additional 10% would be funded through passenger facility charges. For example as you purchase a ticket there's a fee that the FAA and the airline authorizes collected by the airline and then returns back to the airport. You're reducing the need for a certain number of TSA staff to be present in this building so that will actually lower the operating cost that gets passed on to the airlines as well is that right? Well the staff in costs or the operating costs of the actual TSA agents aren't picked up by the airport at all even today so those are staffed and budgeted through the Department of Homeland Security. In fact some of the electrical and janitorial costs are passed to that TSA agent as well so we can recover those costs ourselves specifically the electrical loads on the system and then the building itself of course is financed through these grant programs and passenger facility charges and the TSA agents would be moving there as well as moving existing equipment that they currently have at the airport as well as existing staff quantities over to this new facility. It's about a 30% reduction and you know so we'll be using less TSA officers but we'll be increasing the efficiency and the turnaround time of going through TSA between the new TSA machines and the new setup. There'll be a much better experience for the flying public and it'll just be a lot less confusing as well. You'll have one place to go to and it'll be a lot easier just to process and to get through it. Does the FAA like that enough to give you a little bit of that savings that you're reducing TSA costs by 30%? They don't and I brought that up before we have not received that but they've been very generous to us. I mean this whole package is extremely generous and I feel very grateful to be able to bring this to you all tonight. This is a gift in many many ways from both TSA and from the folks in Washington. In fact about two two and a half years ago we were even eligible from a small hub airport perspective. We were not eligible for this type of facility or grant funding so there's been a lot of work across the board that has allowed us to move forward with this. Counselor Pine one other thing that the TSA did do is that is it a million dollars Nick for the new baggage upgrade they're sending our way or something? Is that right? So we've actually we continue to be very aggressive seeking money and improvements for the airport that's another one. So the partnerships are very good and go back and forth and they don't actually recognize it dollar for dollar but they recognize I think another way. Okay further further discussion. Counselor Jen. Thank you this is more for like a comment and just wanted to thank Richard and Tim for always thinking outside the box and getting things done without increasing fees or making sure that you know you receive all the fun part of your budget. I think this is not the first time this is many many many times you have shown leadership and way of doing things differently and getting it done. Yes but most of the time what I do not hear from your presentation is how the commission your commission has approved this was it anonymous are they 100% in support? Yeah that's the first question. Sure yet they they are we brought this to them the same time frame that we brought this to you not only two years ago but as recently as what was I think it was last week yeah so they they approved it unanimously as well bringing it to the board of finance in the city council and we'll be with you tonight on city council later on and they've they've had tremendous amount of support both in the meetings as well as offline with this project. Yeah and thank you and recently I mean it's new to me it seems there are some conversation about the airport is not responding to the city's effort around climate change and now we having now a new building and just wanted to stay here that I am completely in support of making our airport modern this building that's exactly how it looks like but what are the elements of responding to climate change or the material used around our efforts in combating climate change for the specific building? Sure we will this entire building every nook and cranny as we go through it will be looked at opportunities to conserve and save energies as well as making provisions for the future for solar and battery bank backup. We also are constantly upgrading the airport with LED lighting with we recently put a down payment on two electric vehicles we are doing everything that we can as well as as I've told I think some of you and I think you received a tour that we work with beta technologies and you know improving you know what might be someday you know electric aircraft so we I think we do a lot you know for an airport our size we every opportunity we have to turn it over and to do better in efficiencies we go to the highest level yeah thank you and keep up the good work and yeah let us know if we can support you in any other way thank you thank you so much President Tracy thanks and I appreciate Councillor Jang's question about sustainability I had similar questions about that I really appreciate director Richards you taking some time to just walk through some of this with me yesterday I think the you know I share the concern about the the emissions from the airport and just wanted to ask about this question of expansion and is this project related to any future expansion of the airport and then also I'm just wanting to understand the accessibility aspects of this you know we have one terminal that is at great is at grade from when you enter and then you have the other terminal where you have to take either an escalator or an elevator up and wondering if there's going to be an added accessibility benefit there where we won't have to be asking people to use different facilities but that everybody will just basically be able to use the same types of facilities to access both terminals that's what will be happening Councillor Tracy we will when you go through TSA there will be elevators stairs and escalators in front of you and so everybody you'll either go straight ahead or you'll go up and decide you know which direction you need to do to get to what gate we will be discontinuing the escalators stairs that are in the middle of the airport and so there will be a cutback in the older older escalators and stuff we yeah and I think it'll just be I mean you use the airport a lot so you know just being able to go to one TSA checkpoint and not wondering which one to go to that'll be efficient in another way and just a better experience for people and then having a new modern building down the road the south checkpoint the south area will be removed if we that's our plan is to remove the south one where jet blue is and delta and add on here if we add on if there's additional funding down the road and need that is the direction what we're building right now would be the beginning of additional growth if there was going to be growth so yes that's our plan is to let this be the beginning of future growth if there were going to be future growth it would make sense that that be in that place with you know TSA and everything else so absolutely if there is going to be growth it'll be at this adding on to what we're doing right now okay but you don't think that you think this is a good idea director it's regardless of if you're if you're growing or not oh i hands down just the efficiencies for the customer alone it's it's an amazing opportunity for us to be a less confusing more efficient airport it's putting btv in a much better direction it fits every goal the city has as far as efficiencies and customer service okay all right thank you for that i appreciate it yeah from my perspective it certainly creates well while valuable in the moment in of itself it also certainly does create a clear plan for future future growth that flows from from this design and builds as nix said into the medium and long term plans if the trends the last couple decades continue and we do have the opportunity to continue to incrementally grow the grow employment as has certainly marked the nineties and the up until the great recession and that has begun again after a long period of being flat has begun again in the last you know prior to the pandemic the the year or two before so from my perspective it's an important short term and long term project thanks mayor certainly appreciate that i just want to say i do well i do support this this particular endeavor i don't support that that above and beyond sort of continued expansion for climate reasons but i do think for efficiency reasons that were stated today that this will have a net benefit just in terms of the city and moving people through so that's that's sort of my position on this but appreciate the explanations and all the information thank you thank you councillor paul thank you uh thank you mayor on uh unless there's other comments i would go to a motion if that's okay that'd be great if you make the motion okay i'd like to make a motion to approve and recommend that the city council authorize the director of aviation to execute program grant with the federal aviation administration and accept up to fourteen million four hundred and ninety eight thousand four hundred and eighty dollars and seventy cents plus an additional contingency amount of two million one hundred and forty seven thousand seven hundred and seven cute dollars and eleven cents which represents fifteen percent of the of the former of the former amount earlier amount totaling up to sixteen million six hundred and forty six thousand two hundred and fifty two dollars and eighty one cents which could be issued in multiple grants for the term terminal integration project subject to the final review and approval of the city attorney's office in addition i would move to approve and recommend that the city council authorize the director of aviation to execute a contract with jacob's engineering group for up to one million three hundred and three hundred and seventy five thousand six hundred and twenty two dollars plus an attend an additional contingency amount of two hundred and six thousand three hundred and forty three dollars and thirty cents totaling one million five hundred and eighty one thousand nine hundred and sixty five dollars and thirty cents for the design assistance and construction inspection related services for the terminal integration project subject to the final review and approval of the city attorney's office and lastly i would move to approve and recommend that the council authorize the director of aviation to execute a contract with construction for up to nineteen million ninety one thousand three hundred and three dollars plus an additional contingency amount of two million one hundred and thirteen thousand six hundred and ninety five dollars and forty five cents totaling sixteen million two hundred and four thousand nine hundred and ninety eight dollars and forty five cents for the design and construction services for the terminal integration project subject to the final review and approval of the city attorney's office thank you councillor pock second by councillor jang um further discussion okay um seeing none let's go to vote all those in favor of the motion uh please say aye aye are there any opposed the motion carries unanimously and we um have covered all of the deliberative excuse me parts of the agenda there is a communication um uh responding to councillor jang's uh recent questions about the debt load projections that uh i just want to make sure everyone saw we have responded to that um uh we have a few if there's a desire for sometimes we talk about our communications sometimes not um there's no uh it doesn't look like there's interest in talking about it now but um there you have those projections and if that there is an interest that then i think we are through the agenda and if there's no objections i will adjourn the board of finance uh at six fifty two p.m thanks everybody thank you thank you all thank you appreciate it president tracy do we stay the same link yeah yep thanks for that clarification councillor jang yeah we'll stay on the same link so if folks want to just take a quick break before council you can turn off your volume your um cameras and your um audio members of the public we will be starting our city council meeting at seven so we'll get be back with you shortly you can just stay on this um on this same link and we'll get started with that we'll start with some non-deliberative elements of our agenda and then move into public forum closer to seven thirty um if you're interested in signing up for public forum you can do so by going to burlingtonbt.gov slash city council slash public forum um and that'll take you to a forum um there is another uh element of our meeting today tonight um that will be um public hearings um related to the four charter changes that are um to be placed on the uh that are going to be on the march ballot and so um if you're interested in speaking on those items i would suggest doing so in the context the public hearings which will happen after public forum so that's just a clarification but just wanted to give people that heads up um and we'll see you in about seven or so minutes um just get that council meeting going please um get back to their computers and turn on their cameras and make sure hey looks like we have pretty much all the counselors on board so we'll go ahead and get things started so um first thing on the agenda um is the pledge so we'll do that right now next item on the agenda is in fact the agenda itself um i'm not seeing um counselor stromburg on counselor hansen could i come to you with a motion on the agenda sure yeah no problem thank you so i'll move to amend and adapt the agenda as follows removed from the consent agenda item 4.11 communication kathryn shad chief administrative officer and rich goodwin director financial operations regarding updated debt load projections per cao shad board of finance only add to the consent agenda item 4.14 communication robert bristow johnson re recommended change to charter amendment regarding rank choice voting with the motion to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file note draft cafr for agenda item 5.05 resolution finalization and availability of annual city audit for fy 20 board of finance per dfo goodwin note proposed amendments for agenda item 5.06 resolution ballot question authorizing retail cannabis sales while addressing systemic racism and other equity concerns revised counselors hansen stromburg pine tracy carpenter per counselor hansen note revised version of agenda item 5.07 resolution march 2nd 2021 annual city meeting ballot question advising decrease in authorized number of police officers only to 84 counselor jang per counselor jang note added material titled bpd staffing recommendations for bpc for this agenda item per city council president tracy per bpc note proposed amendment for this agenda item per counselors high tower and hansen remove this agenda item from the agenda and place it on the january 25th 2021 city council deliberative agenda per counselor jang thank you counselor hansen is there a second to our to the motion on the agenda seconded by counselor jang any discussion okay hearing none let's go to a vote all those in favor of the agenda please say aye hi hi any opposed hearing none that passes unanimously which brings us back into the agenda the next item on the agenda is public forum but we're certainly early for for that with the time certain being at 730 and so i don't want to get folks who may not be on yet so what i'm going to do is skip over that we'll come back to that at 730 and go to the climate emergency reports which is item number three on our agenda are there any counselors who would like to offer a climate emergency report counselor hansen is that a hand yeah i was just going to say i hope that uh when we get to the airport items that um director um gene richards can talk about some of the work that they've been doing over there around the climate emergency i think there's some really exciting things happening at the airport and so hopefully we get to hear a little bit about that maybe as part of the airport related items tonight okay thanks for that any further climate emergency updates okay this is this is not specifically about an update but it's more of a question and the question is in relation of the salt being used by the city of whirlington and i received some request from some community members about the some dangers it might present to their pets just dogs or cats right and i was just wondering if the city or the administration can look into all the you know uh environmental friendly or make a presentation about what type of salt being used to south city streets during winter and i also do remember that there was a resolution from adam roof a couple years ago but i could not recall and was just wondering if we can bring back this conversation at the council level maybe at our next meeting for a quick presentation in that matter okay thanks for that question councillor jane we don't really we don't have this set up as an item for for question and answer so um i can certainly take that under advisement the 25th meeting is looking quite quite packed so it may have to be another meeting another future meeting but um certainly understand the request um anyone else on climate emergency reports okay seeing none we'll go ahead and close that item and move through i don't want to have us take a vote on on any deliberative items so either our consent our consent agenda or items uh the deliberative so i'm going to go um to the items at the end of the meeting now um which begin with item number six our committee reports are there any committee chairs interested in providing a report councillor pine yeah the city council community development neighborhood revitalization committee so that's called the cdnr is meeting tomorrow at five three and the focus of our meeting is to revisit some of the issues that have been referred to us in the past we'll say how far long ago um but they are um they include looking at the issue of what we as a city do around seniors supporting our seniors and what we could be doing more uh to to provide more support to people as they age in place in burlington and uh that's the that's the main focus of our meeting tomorrow we've invited some of the providers from senior or serving organizations and uh hope that uh we have a attendance from from anyone on the council and anyone from the public who's interested at five thirty thank you okay thank you councillor pine uh councillor paul i believe i saw your hand uh thank you uh president tracy there's going to be a park sartan culture committee meeting next tuesday january 26th that by 30 we're going to be talking about um uh the parks and rec on some not only not only spring plans but also some very exciting winter plans that they have underway and we're going to hear a presentation on a grant that they received um to do with accessibility at oak ledge it's a really exciting grant and we'll make on the oak ledge park one of two parks in new england that are accessible for everyone on so it's a it's a it's an exciting program that was just just they just received um and uh we'll get caught up on the library as well as bca um again it's the 26th at five thirty it'll be posted on the city website um if it hasn't been it will be later today or the or tomorrow and the zoom link will be available thanks thank you councillor paul are there uh councillor hightower go ahead thanks um so the joint committee of the public safety and committee and the police commission um just i think got our fully excited contract for the first contract on the um kind of more general visioning of public safety in the city of burlington and we also um have approved and checked recommendations for the second contract um which should be hopefully coming to the council next week so glad that we're finally i know that um everyone that the council approved the first contract a month ago so um apologize that's been um a little bit of slow going because we had some administrative contracting issues but i'm glad that that's moving forward thank you for that um councillor jane go ahead yes um so the racial equity inclusion and belonging committee was supposed to meet today every third tuesday of every month but because of MLK we had to move it to next month and even next month it seemed on the 16th we have a city council meeting so that meeting is now scheduled to take place at 5 30 on wednesday the 17th ashanda and everything should be online for people who are interested thank you great thank you for that as well um any other committee chairs interested uh councillor uh mason did you have something go ahead yes thank you president tracy just to report to the full council and the public the joint committee consisting of the planning commission in this uh city council ordinance committee continue meeting and discussions relating to short term rentals um i would say we are nearing the end or at least that is my belief um in the next meeting or two i see councilor hightower smiling um she probably like me it has been a long process but i think we are finally at the point where decisions will have to be made and something will be reported back i would expect a work session with the full council um to sort of as an intro to many of the issues that it has been grappling with uh followed by a vote thank you thank you for that councillor mason councillor hanson the um license and local control subcommittee is going to be meeting this wednesday at 4 30 and our agenda is up on board docs if people want to view that excellent thank you for that are there any further committee reports this is great we got a lot of them sometimes we have like none and now we have quite a few i really appreciate that and especially helpful when we have them at the front of the meeting so people can get a chance to hear about what they are what what's going on with our different committees where so much important work takes place um we'll now transition into um city council general city affairs did anyone have anything that they'd like to speak to in terms of general city affairs okay councillor paul thanks um just wanted to let people know uh that the next food distribution event that has been taking place at champlain elementary is this uh saturday on the 23rd of january at noon um and also wanted to thank so much all of the city councillors who have posted this um put this out on social media posted this on front porch forum and have been terrific about spreading the word um we did have an enormous response in december we're anticipating more of the same in january and we have um we have committed to dates in february march and april february 27th march 27th and april 24th all beginning at noon and they're all on saturdays um thanks so much for anyone in the public anyone to need is welcome to come thanks appreciate that and your work on that um councillor pine go ahead just want to share with the council and with members of the public that uh councillor carpenter and i will be um on a live call-in show with channel 17 we had to move the date around the time around for a while but i think it's settled on tomorrow at two in the afternoon and the purpose of the call-in show is they would like uh councillors to come and speak about ballot questions and they reached out and asked i think both of us if we would do that so that's the purpose of the call uh i'm sorry of the show and anybody who has questions or concerns would like to call in please feel free to do that thank you thank you councillor pine councillor jane go ahead yes um just wanted to take the time to recognize and also appreciate the work of mr patrick brown during covid we all thought that mlk celebration would be happening as part of his organization but he pulled it together and had one of the most amazing anti-racist worker in the whole nation uh team wise who has done an incredible job uh do uh addressing subramarco to birdingtonians and i believe he's still in town just wanted to say thank you patrick brown and the the link should be on on the channel 17 website as well for those who want to watch it it's very powerful thank you great any further comments on general city fairs go ahead councillor mason thank you president fracy just yet another reminder to the public of the as well as a compliment to the state and the city for the availability of covid testing um because of out of state travel i had the opportunity to literally sign up get a test within 10 minutes um you know bca uh and the state are operating a very quick efficient system it was very simple to do um encourage the public as we continue to be vigilant to avail themselves of this easy opportunity to continue to get tested so thank you yeah very very important and helpful thank you um any further comments on general city affairs okay well now oh councillor pine go ahead you can go again i i actually i didn't plan this well but i should have probably done a little more preparation um i just want to acknowledge the tragic the fatal fire that happened um on maple street um sorry king street um 199 king street and just acknowledge that uh our our community has lots of very old buildings and um when um code enforcement you know carries out its mandate and the fire department has its mandate and um it's just super critical that everybody does their part as well i i don't we don't know all the details but what we do know is that um two people died in that fire and um you know working smoke detectors um are critical we just constantly have to remind smoke detectors save lives and everyone has a responsibility to you know pay attention to that both property owners and and building occupants as well but it's just incredibly tragic and um our fire department did an amazing job responding but by the time they got there it was too late thank you thank you councillor pine for that is there are there further comments on general city affairs councillor shaman thank you president tracy um to councillor pines point in addition to losing two people in a fire we shortly thereafter lost lost two people um to substance use and i think if you would see it as appropriate i i would ask that um you consider having a moment of silence for the four lives that have been lost in approximately one week yes absolutely thank you for that councillor shannon very much appreciate it any further comments on general city affairs okay that brings us down to our next item which is um city council president council updates um we have like i said before at the beginning of the meeting and we have a little bit of an interesting structure tonight um in terms of having um public forum per norm per usual at seven thirty but then we do also have public hearings um this is part of the charter change process and so if you're interested in speaking specifically to the charter changes i would encourage folks to um hold off on speaking in the public forum um and speaking in the public hearings themselves we will also be having another round of public hearings at our next council meeting so if you know others who were not able to make it to this council meeting who would like to speak to those four charter changes and we'll have a brief explanation just of what um those changes are um prior to to the commentary um or to the public hearings i'm sorry um but just wanted to alert folks to that um this evening so um and it's in fact important that if you are making comments that you want entered into the record um for use in potentially changing those charter changes that you do so in the context of public hearings and not in public forum because that's um what's required as part of that process um another thing that i also just wanted to draw folks attention to is that school board is finalizing their budget um this evening and so we will be hearing from the schools on at our next meeting um prior to that meeting um with an update on their budget so we'll be seeing that as part of our our next council meeting as well um still working on finalizing the other elements of our agenda so that's my update i will um now turn it over to mayor Weinberger for the mayor's general city affairs thank you president tracy good evening everyone nice to see everybody um i wanted to stop for comments um uh the day after martin luther king jr national holiday and um also to touch on recent developments local developments with respect to uh covid-19 so um first of all as uh as was noted by uh councilor jang um patrick brown once again um pulled off an outstanding event was uh and hosted in a very covet safe way in a huge space over at st joseph's cathedral had the opportunity to be there with just a handful of other people on the huge space there was uh a privilege to get to hear um and wise speak uh been some years since he'd been here in berlington and uh he really uh had some incisive remarks about um what it's going to take to ensure that in this moment uh we truly make progress on racial justice that uh he he it is as was noted a great speech that really lays out many of the arguments that need to be made to show a broad number of americans and pro-entonians the benefits of finally delivering on our ideals of racial justice and racial equality um the next day uh our partner at echo also pulled off um a significant um celebration of the holiday as they have done for many years now um and there's a full set of of events um including a panel that involved uh experts from uh many numerous parts of the country talking about the idea of municipal reparations for slavery teisha green participated uh to share what berlington is doing on that risk front which is one of the cutting edge efforts uh in in this in this area there are very few municipalities who have undertaken anything like this and um there was also in addition to the events there was a great uh activity kit art kit that the flesher free library teamed up with echo and others to help distribute and uh it was um really a successful at bringing the community together um despite the isolated times we're in and um i do want to thank the council for um playing a significant role uh supporting the the the the investment that the city makes uh each year sponsoring these two two events um that have really allowed these events to uh expand and and meet more be more and more significant events over the years um on covid 19 um tonight is today is is the 10 month anniversary of the uh first covid 19 death here in vermont there have been over 160 more deaths since it is uh um a further sobering reminder that we must keep our vigilance up and that we remain in a in a high-risk period uh just uh has happened since this meeting began even with the announcement that uh governor scott and dr levine will be going into quarantine out of abundance of caution since there was a covid positive individual at one of their recent briefings our thoughts are with with the families who have lost loved ones over the last 10 months as well as with uh governor scott and dr levine and we certainly um uh wish uh hope that this proves to just be an abundance of caution and we wish them the best in the days ahead we are stepping up our efforts here in berlington continuing to step up our efforts to remain vigilant from the municipal perspective during these critical months before there's widespread deployment of the vaccine we have increased the amount of testing happening at that pine street location that councillor mason mentioned and when we first opened that there were 250 tests a day happening that there now there are more than 450 tests a day are happening and we are in constant contact with uh with the state and um garnet that is running that facility to see if that can be uh increased even further because there is very high utilization of those testing capacities um there are other there are numerous other testing locations around berlington monoski and chitney county um the city web page and the state web page remain a good source for people looking to access testing resources we've added to the city's wastewater testing protocols just in the last week the ability to test variants of the for the new variant of covid 19 in the wastewater we have now we announced this on friday we've done another test since that to this point we happily have not found significant levels of the new variant yet in the berlington wastewater something we're going to continue to monitor two times a week and we are in conversations with the colleges about the return of students that has happened two other times during this pandemic successfully and safely um the conditions are are harder uh this time than in the prior efforts and planning is um been stepping up appropriately and we will have representatives of uvm and champlain college on my um covid briefing this friday to share um what they are doing this time what some of the additional measures that are being implemented to ensure that this transition can take place successfully as well um quickly uh with the next week is the beginning of a big um new phase of the vaccination effort and i want to make sure that council is fully aware of this as well as the public starting next week the is when the community vaccinations are going to are going to happen for the first time and so up until now it's just been health care workers and residents of long-term care facilities uh starting next week um the oldest for monitors are going to be eligible uh for vaccination um we have been in close contact with the state about those plans for months uh those that planning is intensified in in recent weeks and um it has been a real focus and priority of mind to ensure that when this community testing begins there is fair distribution um of the uh of the very limited still vaccine supply around the state based on the size of the target population um another priority of mind is that there be walkable sites that are available from the start that 15 percent of burlingtonians do not own a car there needs to be either walkable sites or a plan to get people to drive in sites uh as soon as this rolls out and finally um there needs to be outstanding communication education training with our BIPOC communities um from uh from the very beginning of this community uh rollout phase and based on our conversations from so far i'm hopeful that these goals are all going to be met we're going to stay focused on it finally just end on a positive note um with respect to the the the the virus um there is hope that we are seeing a the first sustained leveling off even reductions of new infections nationally since july and some indication in the Vermont data that that the we may be making it through this latest that the the spike that really began in um early november uh and there is you know looking farther afield countries that are a little farther along than us on the vaccination uh are seeing um deaths start to drop significantly given the disproportionate mortality risk of of older vermonters um i think there's really reason to hope that we'll see a real slowing of the neighbors and loved ones that we lose to this um as soon as we get a little bit further along in this uh in this vaccine rollout so with that that's my update and i think that got gets us to the gets us to the public uh public forum uh our president tracy back to you yeah thank you i appreciate that mayor um that gets us your rate that does get us right to the uh to almost to 7 30 so um we're gonna head into the public forum um in just a second here let me get that up if we could get the um the timer going um i am gonna shift things around a little bit this time in terms of how we do um the ordering of public forum based on the city council or the city attorney's guidance um so city attorney let me know in time limited forums that um the progressive stack we should not do the progressive stacking in a time limited forum so just going to be going with the um the them as though as they came in i still will be prioritizing burlington residents um because that um was not something that the city attorney had ejected to as part of our prior processor had raised a concern about um and then the other piece is just making sure um that the city attorney also explained was just having a um needing to keep people closer to the two minute time limit so wanting to make sure that we keep folks that folks keep to that um you can go a sentence or two over but please don't go more than that i will have to start saying you know please wrap up and not trying to be disrespectful i just am trying to follow the city attorney's guidance here on this matter and so if you could just please um keep your thought your comments to right at or very close to two minutes um so that that doesn't become a thing i'd really very much appreciate it um this evening um and in terms of the um the the um the the forum itself i would also just reiterate that i see a couple folks um who signed up for item 5.01 which are the public hearings having to do with the um having to do with the the the charter changes and so like i said before please put your comments um in those public hearings um that will be helpful i will i see some folks have said that they also are interested in commenting on other items so i will you can speak in both um if you had um different things um to speak to outside of the charter changes um in general public forum so i will just check in with you to um see um for folks who are interested in that um and yeah we will um go to um the public forum at this point the first speaker on public forum is William Evans to be followed by William Keaton, Lola Fortunoff, Nell Carpenter, Michelle O'Donnell, Zoe Kenninger and Danielle Shaw so that gives you a little bit of an idea of who who all is on um i see William Evans so William i'm going to enable your microphone William it looks like you're muted on your end okay i'm trying to find my charger can you slide me about 10 down the list okay yeah if you if you're trying to if you're having a technical difficulty i will i can come back to you um okay we'll come to William Keaton next will i've enabled your microphone okay awesome um i'm gonna keep it brief because i just heard um this was taken off the agenda but i'm just speaking to kind of raise my concern and the concern of other people about raising the cap on police officers from 74 to 84 because uh i believe this is kind of this has a precedent for you know backpedaling on the racial justice resolution that was passed in june um i know there's a lot of like you know words in the letter the police question wrote that this doesn't violate the resolution but i feel it does because the resolution is very clear that just kind of throwing more cops at crime is not the solution and i mean i think we have to ask ourselves like you know do we really want you know 247 you know police surveillance in villainton because i know you know john mirad makes all sorts of excuses bpd makes all sorts of excuses and throws all sorts of a you know kind of fake you know data at us but yeah i mean do we really want cops responding to crime at 247 and i mean we have to ask them what crimes are they really you know responding to like you know you know robberies or like mental health crises but yeah so i'm just concerned about it i hope that you know you figure out a solution does not involve uh backpedaling on the resolution because the city really hasn't made very much progress on that i feel and thanks that's all i have to say see my time okay i thank you for that i see um i've located lila fortune off so lila i'm going to come to you um nel carpenter i knew noted that you had sent in your statement so following lila will be michelle o'donnell i'm gonna come to lila now enabled your mic you should be able to speak hi can you hear me yep go ahead hi thanks for letting me speak i'm also i signed up um to talk about agenda item 5.07 and i i do acknowledge that it's been moved into home next week um i was uh listening to the police commission meeting um last week um when the commission was deliberating and talking with um some folks from the police department including chief mirad about the staffing and um what is the appropriate number to have for police officers in burlington um and i know that the commission recommended to you all that the cap be raised to 82 and i hope that you all took the time to listen to that meeting um it was very long but um i think the narrative that was being portrayed by the folk by kyle dodson by the people who work for the police was um just fear mongering honestly um and it was very um wild to watch them ignore data from stephanie seguino um and just sort of propose random numbers without thinking about seemingly um what the city actually needs um we are well above even with the 30 reduction from the the racial justice resolution over the summer the 30 reduction in the budget and therefore in staffing we're still well above um the average ratio of citizens to officers um and so 84 82 seems like just trying to push for more officers for more officers sake i'm not sure why councillor jing proposed 84 officers when the commission recommended 82 um i disagree with this and i think it needs to be much more looked at much more closely i do agree with the idea of putting this issue to the voters on the ballot but i think it needs much more careful um discussion thank you all right i um one thing i wanted to mention to folks is just that um the way to sign up is to go to burlington vt dot gov slash city council slash public forum and that'll take you to the sign up form so i just wanted to announce that um we had was not able to locate a couple of uh of folks um michelle o'donnell or zoey kenninger or um so i can look for them in just a second but i was able to find danielle scha so daniel i'm going to come to you um to be followed by robert bristow johnson so danielle i've enabled your microphone thanks president tracy my name is danielle i'm award two resident and i've lived in burlington for the past six years um and i just wanted to log on to city council meeting tonight the day after um after mlk day to let city government know and to let city counselors know that we see you being complicit in whitewashing dr king's legacy and what he stands for and if you feel comfortable you know letting your work around racial justice consists of of attending public events and and posting about it on social media um praising dr king while you know two weeks before your vetoing um changes to how we we structure our police department to to bring about greater racial justice in our community that's real like that's gross that's gross and it's trash and it's performative and we see you um i'm at the point where i don't believe everyone on city council is operating in good faith on this topic i think there's a lot of talk and not a lot of action i'm really happy to be proved wrong so i hope i'm not logging on to city council meetings in january of 2022 saying the same stuff to the same people so if you believe in what dr king stood for he was a radical and your actions around this topic should be radical too thank you thank you and i have robert bristow johnson to be followed by charlie messing robert i've enabled your microphone um i noticed that you did sign up to speak to the charter changes so i just wanted to check in and see if there were other things that you were wishing to speak to but also no no just the charter change and if that's happening at a later hour i'll come back then yep that's going to be um one of our first items on deliberative so i can come back to you for that item i have no other agenda okay great i will um come back to you at that point um charlie messing i do see that you were interested in speaking to the charter changes but that you also had a comment on another item so just wanted to recognize you um and enable your microphone hi everybody um can you hear me yeah i can hear you charlie go ahead some people don't move their heads i can't tell well i shouldn't spend the whole two minutes saying why i've been gone so long um uh the police it's really uh oh boy i i hope everybody comes to an agreement the best practice uh just cause i believe in just cause eviction i don't think it should be hard i mean if if there is a reason somebody should leave then that's good if there isn't then there isn't um i can yeah citizens can't run the police oh boy i don't know how many people they have out there but can they do the graffiti i don't know but uh perhaps it's the police's job to get rid of the graffiti if so uh they could use some more people um um hey there's a siren uh i just wanted to say uh why does it take 14 months to hire a new police from uh the clc has sent all the candidates a questionnaire i uh in on behalf of the clc send fill in after that uh send in your questionnaire we will help you thank you very much i'll let somebody else talk now nice to see you all thank you charlie and i was able to locate zoe kenninger so i'm gonna go to you zoe i'm able to hear your microphone there hi um my name is zoe kenninger i'm a resident of ward four i'm white and i use they them pronouns um i was really i was originally going to speak on the uh agenda item 5.07 but since that's been moved i just want to speak in general my concern about the pamphlet that was sent out to burlington residents last week from the burlington police officers association um this pamphlet contained many things um that were stated were portrayed as fact but are not the complete fact that contradict what chief murad said in his original presentation to the city council and to the police commission earlier this month it cites um studies from the nineties which is over 30 is 30 years ago now that's much that's outdated um and i'm just concerned about the fact that the the police department is spending money time and resources sending these this information this false information out to the burlington public and to burlington tonian especially when they are currently talking about how they're understaffed about how they don't have the resources to do what they have to do and um yeah i'm just concerned about this i was upset to receive this in the mail and i think that i'm concerned about the fact that citizens are being given information that is not true and having it presented as fact thank you thank you our next speaker is steven margolan to be followed by joseph smith steven i've enabled your microphone can you hear me yes i can go ahead great um much like those of speaking before me i originally signed up tonight to talk about agenda item 5.07 i see that it has been moved which means we just get to have the same conversation next week i hope you're looking forward to it because i am but i want to take the time tonight to sort of talk about what policing means uh to the city and what decreasing the number of police means uh policing means responding to the needs of the community and so that when we have officers on responsive call that doesn't mean we don't have any officers between three a.m. and seven thirty a.m. it means there are two officers at the station waiting to respond to your call when something happens that is the purpose of police and that is why they exist and why we have the 911 system having police officers out and actively patrolling is an unnecessary risk because it endangers the lives of our BIPOC community members uh the reports published by uh vt digger show that burlington police have disproportionately targeted BIPOC members of our community and it's unfair and the fact that they're out on the streets looking for this in the middle of the night is just uncalled for and deeply disturbing to the goodwill of the people so when you're looking about raising the number of police ask yourself who you're actually benefiting because it's certainly not the people thank you black lives matter and i yield the rest of my time thank you our next speaker is joseph smith to be followed by christie delphia joseph i've enabled your microphone hi um i am a section eight resident and i'd like to share a few of the issues in my building um so the landlord has been notified of all of these many times in writing um and also visits the building without a mask i might add um at least once a week the uh skipping head because the time limit um there's more than i'm not adding but uh the washing machines are just filled with stagnant water um and are not safe to use rick both personally maintains those so he has seen them himself um the door to the building locks but can easily be pulled over or pulled pulled open without any real strength so it's not a secure building like it's supposed to be uh it took seven days for my toilet to get fixed so i was without a toilet for that whole time there was mold that seemed to be black mold in the building so per the advice of vermont legal aid i requested the results of a health inspection for the landlord and was denied um the heat runs all year long including in the summer so my neighbor who is on a c-pad machine ended up having blood in his mask because c-pad machines do not function past a certain temperature and despite this the landlord insists on only having um her own maintenance staff install ac's so that she can save on insurance uh my neighbor is diabetic and relies entirely on her oven to cook things safely for her um this has been broken for at least two years probably much longer but the most egregious i think is the elevator the elevator was down for days at a time and this is a wheelchair accessible building many of my neighbors rely on it to get safely in and out of their houses um we had two fires that required evacuation this last um this last year if those had happened when the elevator was down people could have died but when the landlord finally responded after days she said i don't work weekends um to this day there is still not inspection paper for the elevator in the elevator um lives are on the line thank you thank you appreciate it and if um folks feel like they have additional information to share with the council beyond what they were able to share in the two minutes i just encourage people to email the full council and the way the easiest way you can do that is to just write city council at burlington vt.gov um that's just an easy way to get a message to the entire city council just wanted to clarify that um we our next speaker um is christy delphia to be followed by jessica leport um christie i'm going to enable your microphone thank you max and i as well i'm here to point out my absolute disgust for code enforcement you all have seen my numerous emails about the conditions in our apartment afforded us by bisonette so most egregious and which is actually breaking state a lot is the fact that meth was cooked in this building and the residue of it still affects us to this day we deal constantly with second hand cigarette smoke coming into our apartment my mother 75 with c o p d this should not be happening no one will stop it and i want to speak to the king street fire yes unfortunately it was a tenant that was smoking that started it but the overall conditions of that building were absolutely deplorable our code enforcement are now called dpi department of permitting and inspections drops the ball on tenants on a daily basis and now lives have been lost this needs to stop they need to be held accountable and they need to hold the landlords of this city accountable you can change all the ordinances you want but if code enforcement does not force these landlords to keep their buildings up to code there isn't a single code change in this city that is going to help tenants you've got the force bill ward at his office to hold these landlords accountable and hold up to the code of ordinances itself thank you thank you um our next speaker i was not able to locate jess um la port and so i'm going to go back to william emmins um who had been on earlier but was having a technical issue second will be followed by milo grant we'll go ahead okay you can hear me yes go ahead all right first and foremost rest in peace dr king whose life was stolen but not his education teachings burlington is a wonderful place for the promising future whose taxpayers are like Aladdin singing in the hourglass of the basement to be locked the other second class citizens of all races who are actually financing the lives presented to them the 2014 diversity and equity strategic plan was undermined by the 2015 arrival of the chief that the mayor brought in who specialized promoting and racial profiling writing essays using examples such as trooper rigans which is the end word spelled backwards glorifying a white separatist named jarrah taylor who states so-called facts that individual blacks are 50 times more likely to commit crimes against whites alone and 250 times more dangerous in groups that's basically quoted from the text combantel pro patrolling and surveilling when they brought it to burlington they denied his existence in 2017 june i witnessed an assault during jazz fest where the victim was profiled and charged as a defendant i started researching systematic elite white corruption in burlington throughout that trial to its dismissal with one daily manipulatable tabloid burlingtonians are easy to sway into white supremacy without even knowing it about a year later i earned a full single parents uh scholarships champion college writing to senator sanders and other activists about corruption in burlington when i started to notice that a muslim refugee family on my that i was friends with uh was being surveilled combantel pro this was a month after 10 year old children from that family told me they were being followed and filmed in the park and their mother told me about problems brought on by child services then i wrote about how reported racism on the bus that i rolled with my son and those children the problem was actually bus monitors being cut out of the budget by the same leadership that was using racism to avoid spending money to fix a simple problem that was covering up white drug convictions and phony lawsuits filed against me by crooked child service agents who's also solicited stories by burlington employees and a few police officers using white supremacists in my neighborhood to make up stories that i was uttering the n word to myself while simultaneously writing about profiling and civil rights violations as if that was even possible these people earned jobs and were commended in burlington positions for these actions using a school psychologist to follow my son and i was off duty time that fabricate stories using champlain elementary incoming principal to fabricate stories that i physically threatened his staff within days of his hire which couldn't be true because he didn't file a police report which must be the protocol i wrote about how they were framing people cover of the news as gang members to sway public opinion ahead of trial yet i'm finishing up sweeping white convictions under the rug 36 times i've been on the police blotter for doing something as simple as aspiring to be a baseball coach to the taxpayers who paid officer bell dancer 300 thousand dollar severance package and reward please wrap up up my neighbor of color i'm wrapping up now whose leader set up any whistleblower who stands with them using municipal employees to make up stories only to follow those crimes against humanity with apologies for racism which is in and of itself races um v told by please wrap up who appoints white leadership and creates councils to investigate his intentional actions when they employ people to drop anonymous tips on you take down all white murals on church which actually wrap up when they resign from the city but still drive city vehicles with a history of ignoring civil rights when even local police are telling you off the record that they are furious with the way they are being instructed to do their jobs this warrants change i urge you to get out and vote rest these wrap up asking people to please wrap up this is a matter of the guidance that i've received from the city attorney so if you could just please respect the two-minute time limit um this evening i really am just trying to follow the guidance that i've been that legal guidance that i've been receiving from the the city attorney so please just um hold it out and if i'm asking you to please wrap up please actually do so um in this in the context of the forum so our next speaker will be um milo grant um milo i've enabled your microphone um thank you i know that it's been moved but i'd like to go ahead and speak on it um with regards to the police commission last week i find the term fear mongering to be uh very understated um i spent a whole day last week where i was literally physically ill by what went on i wasn't just fear mongering i fear i feel that we were bullied i was the lone no vote i am against raising the cap i do support however uh the non-sworn positions of the community service liaison and a community service officer because i believe that these are positions that we would be looking at anyway as part of the review of the police department and the transformation of the police department um i feel that we would be going back on what was previously discussed and even though certain things are taking longer than expected i feel that it's going to be really important to go through the process i'm also concerned about the misinformation that was put out by the burlington police officers association um but too long to go into that um the bottom line about the narrative of the police commission in terms of the bullying i was really upset about the some of the stances that kyle dobson took i expected better from him i expected his position to be independent instead of instead of doing the things that he did at the meeting um i plan to send an email to everyone to go into more detail but i want you to really think about increasing the cap and and the reasons that are being pushed upon us that aren't really fully true um thank you very much thank you milo i'm going to go to kora smith next and kora's to be followed by robin loyde um anda schian erhard monka p mitashi jeffrey pizotillo and dahlia so i'm going to go to kora smith right now kora i've enabled your microphone hi can you hear me yep go ahead okay my name's kora smith and i'm a resident of ward eight and i'd also signed up to speak about the proposed change in increasing the cap of police officers but i still think this needs to be said so this is to the city council who are considering raising this cap so really and just again you're making your community tell you again why more police is not the answer why police officers yes even burlington police officers use more force against people of color you're really not hearing us how do you think it feels to be called upon again to defend your humanity how do you think it feels to be constantly dismissed about your physical safety i can't imagine what this feels like as a white person but this is what you're all doing to the people of color in your community you've heard the statistics you've heard the countless stories of burlington police brutally attacking residents that you've been elected to serve you've heard us talk at city council meetings at battery park what more is there to understand black people and people of color are in danger every day because of the police and it is absurd that anyone is even considering raising this cap in burlington raising this number means raising the probability of someone getting hurt in your community do we really want that on our conscience we really need to rethink how to ensure a safe community for everyone this means funding mental health services it means funding affordable housing it means funding programs that are going to make our community safer and more just isn't that why you all ran per city council isn't that why you ran for mayor mayor one burger i sure hope that's why you all signed up for this job to protect your community do not vote in support of raising the cap on burlington police officers please listen to your community and protect your community thank you i use my time thank you so i was able to locate jess la port so jess i'm going to come to you next enabled your microphone jess la port have enabled your microphone looks like you're muted on your end hi this is jess can you hear me yep go ahead if you could just reach out there we go okay go ahead just sorry hi um i'm calling in this evening um as i've already heard many other community members who were prepared to speak to um both councilor ding's resolution to propose raising the number of officers but also kind of just the general concept of whether or not burlington needs more police um i'm i have been obviously very vocal about a number of issues in the city and i was really proud as a burlington resident to see the racial justice resolution pass even though there were a lot of compromises that had to be made along the way i felt like the cap on the number of police officers was backed um by the national average of officers and balanced with the number of calls and felt like it was a really concrete way that this city was making a choice to divest from policing and invest in other forms of public safety in other parts of our city and unfortunately we're at a place where even that one thing that really had teeth to make a tangible change that is getting challenged and i am really concerned as a member of the community for the ways that the police officers association has portrayed the issues at hand and really dismayed by the discussion that happened at the police commission last week i'm really thankful for commissioners like commissioner grant for being so proactive and learning about various issues but also bringing to the forefront the power of the police union contract and a lot of these things and being really persistent even when in in the body that she's a part of she hasn't been heard or her perspective hasn't come to the surface and i just asked that there would truly be more opportunities for the public to not only weigh in but to be a part of developing solutions i really would hope that the cap on number of officers would encourage the the department to be more innovative the same way that many departments experiencing budget issues over this year and the pandemic have had to be thank you thank you appreciate it um our next speaker is robin loyd robin i've enabled your microphone robin it looks like you're muted on your end yep i can hear you go ahead okay great so just two points one i'd like to thank the bernie's and parks and rec department for the wonderful work on the bike path south of perkins pier it's the best place to see what geese are visiting us from out of town i think they especially like that spot near the barge canal so thank you for making that happen secondly i want to bring you the good news that as of friday january 22nd nuclear weapons will be illegal internationally at least at present time in 51 nations around the world this treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons legally binds nations from developing testing producing possessing manufacturing transferring stop piling or using or threatening to use nuclear weapons or allowing nuclear weapons to be stationed on their territory so it's a big deal these 51 countries their parliaments have voted on this their lawyers have scrutinized it so this is a very serious treaty that's coming up so big companies like lockheed sandia labs or general dynamics who have nuclear business in any of those countries might be asked to curtail their business or close down here the us has not ratified the treaty but activists like myself across the country will be informing the over 26 companies involved in building these murderous weapons to please stop it and to acknowledge the moral force of the treaty all nuclear weapons including the 3900 in the us stockpile will be declared unlawful by the international community i hope will be coming before you in the next few weeks asking this city council to support the treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons you can go to i can it's i c a n w for more information on this treaty and join us at 9 30 friday morning on the corner of main and church street to celebrate thanks okay your next speaker will be amanda uh schian to be followed by airhard manca so i believe i've located you amanda i'm going to come to you i've enabled your microphone hi can you hear me yes i can go ahead i i i might set it tonight i am i'm going to plead with you to please raise the staffing for the police department to cover proactive policing 24 7 though i believe that we were going to discover and i think you all have done amazing work towards discovering more holistic responses to the human needs behind crime police officers are still going to be part of that response i've heard people remark even tonight what crime happens after midnight i've also heard assurances that calls for many of the most serious crimes will still be answered and i that's true rape calls for rape will be answered calls for homicide will be answered but how are we responding to those situations before they ever become that uh so i i wrote to john sometime ago um my i have personal experience in my family my my grandmother um she had her femoral artery cut open she had her skull cracked open with a gun um i've personally been choked otherwise hurt and dragged an apartment from a hair um and there there was limited opportunity to ask for help um but i want to know that anybody who does ask for help before it becomes that violence has the opportunity to be helped so that when they call for a domestic dispute and it just seems like a verbal altercation there's an opportunity to de-escalate 24 7 we need that 24 7 when someone calls for a suspicious activity call what sort of crime it may be nothing but it also may be that there's an opportunity to settle that before it becomes something more serious and i want everyone to feel safe i've heard that people don't feel safe this year but let's find solutions that we all feel safe and protected 24 7 please work towards that thank you thank you our next speaker will be airhard manka to be followed by pima tashi um airhard enabled your microphone thanks uh chair tracy can you hear me yes go ahead great um so uh for the record i'm airhard manka i live at 60 grove street i've been award one resident since the early 80s and let me just stop you i noticed that you're um wanting to comment to item 5.01 one of the public hearings on the charter changes so i'm going to ask to suggest that if you are interested in speaking to the charter change that you do so at the public hearings just so that your comments are entered into the record under that um if you have something else not related to the charter changes by all means go ahead but just wanted to sure for us to be able to act on anything that you say um related to changes that does have to be in the context of the public hearings uh i appreciate that i did want to uh comment briefly while i had the the floor so to speak on the um uh counselor jeng's um proposal on on the police and and just add if it's appropriate i'd like to briefly speak to that now yeah go ahead absolutely okay great um so i just urge you to uh stick to the original resolution that you passed um you know um when that back back last summer i i really hope that um you know don't backslide on that i think that uh there has been misinformation unfortunately spread by the police union i do believe that given existing resources you should be able to direct the commission should be able to direct the police to provide 24 seven coverage with with the resources that were outlined in your resolution this summer and i agree there should be 24 seven resources by the police and by other other personnel to address mental health crises and other non other issues that can be addressed by folks who are not sworn officers but i do agree that sworn officers should be around 24 seven to to respond and i think that the police have the resources and can make those resources available um i i just please don't uh follow the misinformation that um the police union put out thank you thank you our next speaker is pima tashi to be followed by um jeffrey is a tillo um so pima i've located you and have enabled your microphone hello yes i can hear you hi um my name is pema i am indigenous i am fem and i'm a public educator at the burlington public school district um although i am new to the burlington area i strongly stand by not supporting raising the police cap and that is all i have to say for now thank you and apologize for pronoun mispronouncing your name the next speaker will be jeffrey is a tillo um to be followed by uh dahlia and is the name that i have um so um jeffrey i found you and have enabled your microphone good evening can everybody hear me okay yes i can go ahead thanks thanks uh thank you council uh for deliberating on the important matter uh of retail opt-in uh in vermons emerging adult use cannabis market uh and special thank you to council members henson and carpenter uh and other counselors who led the effort uh recently to hear both sides all sides i should say uh of this uh issue uh in last week's uh monday's working session um my name is jeffrey pizitullo i've been a resident of burlington for over 20 years i'm over here in ward five um and i'm also the executive director of vermont growers association where the trade association for cannabis professionals in this state uh similar to vermont brewers association um but this evening i'm offering my thoughts uh as a cannabis resident i'm sorry as a burlington resident um this evening um so i'm basically here uh just to offer some support uh to the council on bringing greater equity to act 164 that's vermont's new taxation and regulation bill um i see my time is going pretty quickly um the uh um let's see here yeah i'm just i'm just gonna have to duck out i have i wrote way too much uh i'll just deliver and writing uh over email thank you guys i appreciate it thank you for that and again for folks if you are um interested in sharing additional information with the full city council you can just email us at city council at burlingtonvt.gov and that will go to the full city council i'm i'm going to go to our next speaker um dalia um to be followed by sarah cambell uh hydric or hydric um dalia i've enabled your microphone hi can you hear me yes go ahead cool um hi my name is dalia and i use she her pronouns um i would like to stress my support for just cause as well as the disgust for the general poor enforcement of code violations in burlington buildings and little to no accountability of landlords i'm a white college student living in burlington and i'm a first-year renter and i've already experienced disrespect from my property manager my property manager treats me and my housemates like dumb college students uh to be frank and it's incense insists when anything goes wrong that it is our fault and is generally rude and aggressive towards us i would like to recognize though that i am one of the very lucky and privileged ones as these are very minor grievances um some of these some have experience real fear towards their landlords which is hugely due to the lack of accountability of landlords this needs to stop there needs to be better enforcement of code violations people cannot live in homes where it is unsafe and a risk to their health housing is a human right i yield the rest of my time thank you and if you are interested in speaking again to the the charter changes and specifically the just cause charter change you are able to also do that in the context of the public hearings that we'll be having in just a moment here i'm related to those charter changes which is part of the process so i'm going to go to our next speaker however sarah haydrich or haydrick um sarah i've enabled your microphone thank you my name is sarah and i'm a resident of burlington i would like to say that raising the cap is ignoring the pain and work of the past BIPOC community members should not have to continually advocate for their safety and existence in this community at this point raising the cap is not a matter of safety it's white supremacy we must listen thank you thank you our next speaker is grace palmer grace i've located you and have enabled and enabling your microphone thank you um my name is grace i am a new resident of burlington but a long time brahmanta i stand in solidarity with all who work to pass the racial justice resolution and firmly oppose raising the cap on officers heightened policing ensures not community well-being but as sarah said the maintenance of white supremacy and systems of oppression thank you thank you um i was not able to locate um why it loose um let me go to shane caruth shane i've enabled your microphone shane caruth looks like you're muted on your end shane hi can you hear me yes i can go ahead yeah i just wanted to reemphasize the whole uh code enforcement thing that christy was talking about earlier people like charles winkelman have been doing some good deep digging in the whole swarm ward deal in burlington area yeah code enforcement isn't enforcing the codes and the tragedy really isn't a tragedy that terrible fire and 199 king street that killed all those people so i'd really like to suggest that some pressure be applied to the landlords the mayor and various people to actually enforce the codes and create better living conditions so there's no terrible fire accidents like this again thanks thank you so that was our final speaker for the evening i was not and let me just check one more time to see if i can find michelle nobody could not locate michelle and again there were some folks who did have comments on the the charter changes and i'll come back to to those folks again um as part of that um the charter change public hearings that will happen just a moment um i mean get back into the agenda this brings us to um our item number four which is the consent agenda may i please have a motion on the consent agenda councillor stromberg move to adopt the consent agenda as amended and take the actions indicated thank you is there a second seconded by councillor pine any discussion okay hearing none um we will um go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the consent agenda and taking the actions as indicated please say aye aye aye any opposed hearing none that passes unanimously and that brings us um into our deliberative agenda um which um item number one is the um are the public hearings regarding the charter changes for town meeting day um before we open the public hearing um i'm gonna um ask attorney blackwood to just briefly explain um the each of the individual charter changes just so that you have a sense of what what it is that you're able to comment on and and this is part of our process um where if folks do enter comments into the record we are able to um still make changes to those based on those comments um in the record so if you are interested in speaking to those i'm gonna go back to the folks who had signed up for those items um in the public forum but um we can also use um the raise hand function just to make sure that i'm able to get to folks who are interested in speaking just to these charter change items um so but before that i'll turn it over to attorney blackwood to give us a brief explanation of what it is that um we will potentially be seeing on the ballot this this town meeting day thank you there are questions i will go through them in the order that they are showing up on the warning the first one is to adopt ranked choice voting for the election of city counselors this is limited to election of city counselors elections of the mayor and school commissioners will continue to have a runoff election but for uh if no candidate um receives um a sufficient amount of a number of votes but for city counselors there will be a the use of ranked choice voting if this measure is adopted that ranked choice voting will means that if a candidate receives a majority over 50 on the first round of voting that candidates elected but if no candidate receives at least 50 percent over 50 percent of the vote then the instant runoff retabulation shall be conducted and in each round each voters ballot counts once for whoever the candidate date has ranked highest the lowest ranking uh candidate will be dropped off until only two candidates remain at which time the candidate with who receives more than 50 percent would be chosen um that is the ranked choice voting um again i am trying to quickly summarize and i'm sure there are points i'm leaving out and things that um that um people should make sure you read this on your own as well um the next charter change is to increase the size of the board of airport commissioners currently it has members and this would increase it to seven members that it would add a representative for the city of linuski currently the airport commission has representatives from burlington and one representative from south burlington in order to balance the addition of the linuski commissioner there would also be one more burlington commissioner added so there would would be five commissioners from burlington one from south burlington and one from linuski the next proposal the third question is known as just cause eviction and it is to provide by ordinance protection for residential tenants from evictions without just cause what this does is provides a section in the charter under the powers of the city council that will enable them to enact that city council to enact an ordinance in the future this charter change does provide some requirements for what would be in that ordinance if it is adopted um and it also leaves open that there are other issues that could be added when that ordinance is adopted so if the fines um just cause where just cause shall include but it's not limited to um there are four um areas including a tenants material breach of a written rental agreement including non-payment of rent i won't read all all of them um but those examples are there section b of this says the ordinance shall exclude from just cause the expiration of a rental agreement as sole grounds for termination of a tendency so just because the agreement comes to an end that alone is not grounds for termination of the tendency um the it goes on to name that there are certain properties that are exempt from this such as in-unit rental sublets owner occupied duplexes and um there are several other exemptions again this is um these properties but not limited to the stated properties so other exemptions could be added um and again you should read those exemptions to get a uh understand them pull yourself section c the ordinance shall include provisions that mitigate potential negative impacts on tenants and property owners um including but not limited to requirements of adequate notice and reasonable relocation expenses if a tendency is terminated under the just cause provisions um it also says that that those provisions must should provide for a reasonable probationary period after initial occupancy and that limit unreasonable rent increases to prevent de facto evictions or non-renewals um this is not to be construed to limit rents beyond the purpose of preventing individual evictions so it is not intended to be a broad rent control authorization um the ordinance shall define what is reasonable and adequate notice in defining just cause and to require that landlords provide notice to tenants of those requirements the fourth and final charter change that's being proposed is to regulate thermal is is again adding to the powers of the city council the ability to regulate thermal energy systems in residential and commercial buildings and included in that would be the ability to assess a carbon impact or alternative compliance payment for the purpose of reducing greenhouse gas emissions throughout the city however no assessment of a carbon impact or alternative compliance payment shall be imposed unless there is another vote by a majority of the voters in favor of including that assessment so that is a summary of the four questions thank you very much for that attorney blackwood really appreciate it if folks are interested in looking at the um the questions themselves they are posted under the public hearing item um that is on board doc so you can take a look at those um questions as written i'm but those are some great explanations of just what it is that we're discussing so i'll now go to the public hearing aspect of this we're going to open up all public hearings on all four so if you wanted to speak to one or more of those charter changes but really we're looking for comment specific only to those charter changes this evening i'm going to go initially as i said back to those folks who identified that as the item the item that they wanted to speak to in public forum and then if others are interested in speaking you may use the raise hand function in zoom and i'll come to you as well for that so i'm going to go back to robert bristow johnson who had signed up to speak to this item um robert i've enabled your microphone go ahead okay greetings um so i'm not expecting uh that uh my recommended adjustment to the language to the rank choice voting um question is going to be adopted but i wanted to submit it it's item 4 0.14 in the consent agenda wanted to submit it for formal reasons so that can't be said that it wasn't offered and that wasn't specific language um in the uh uh in the item itself in the uh question itself it claims that the um method will elect the majority candidate will keep eliminating candidates until there's a majority um 4064 voters marked their ballots that mandy montroll was better than bob kiss 3476 voters marked their ballot that kiss was better than montroll um that hardly sounds like a majority to me it's a minority it's not even a plurality it's a minority um it does not deliver on the promise but it can deliver on the promise if you adjust the language to do that uh so the question is going to be uh whether burlington people uh burlington voters have a memory um the signs will come up uh rcv 2021 equals irv 2009 or the signs could go up rcv 2021 does not equal irv 2009 and you have to choose what you're going to be telling the voters um some of you had talked to bob hooper who is our representative on the government ops committee and uh he said pretty clearly that there's not a good chance of this even getting out a committee because there are other vermont legislators that do remember burlington 2009 and do remember when they as the legislature repealed irv in 2010 after the uh 2010 uh uh referendum on that and so if you want to get this thing through the legislature you're going to want to be able to tell the legislature that what you're offering is not exactly the same method that was repealed in 2009 but as it is it is exactly the same method that was repealed in 2009 you should learn some nomenclature this method is more accurately called hair rcv named after a 19th century person named hair it should be modified to be converse compliant converse is an 18th century mathematician so both both methods are old um one last thing um leaving the mayor's race off of this was a mistake i think it was a trojan horse to try to convince people that it's not so bad and i remember hearing this 10 years ago when irv failed 10 years ago reading in seven days oh the voting machines didn't blow up nothing blew up nothing is fine all this irv happy talk when it failed to elect the right the correct candidate that's not going to cut it the tough race is the mayor's race because that is the most likely race to have three or more persons that's when ranked choice voting is needed is when there are three or more but the problem is the acid test is when the three candidates are all plausible winners when they're when they all could possibly when when it's a close three-way race that's the acid test and that is where hair rcv fails but condor say rcv will not so that is what i wanted to say i recommend that you change the language i gave you some language to look at if you don't i think it's going to fail in on the ballot if it doesn't fail on the ballot it's almost certainly going to fail in the legislature i'm done thank you i was not able to locate charlie messing who had also indicated that they wanted to speak on this i'm going to go to airhard who was wanting to speak to this to the just cause so airhard i will enable your microphone thanks again chair tracy can you hear me okay yep go ahead great so again for the record airhard maga i'm of course support all of the charter changes um long-time resident of berlington ward 160 grove street and have worked closely with um members of the cdnr committee on just cause i really appreciate the council's support 10 to 2 for putting it on the ballot as we know it provides protections for uh renters against what i think we can commonly call unjust evictions if a renter is paying their rent dividing by the lease they should have the same security of 10 year that a homeowner has they deserve that it is positive for community stability it's a positive for family stabilities we have approximately 60 percent of berlington residents or renters i think it's high time that we provide those folks who are abiding by the lease and pay the rent don't destroy the property the same kinds of security of tenure that that homeowners have really appreciate the hard work that cdnr did on on this which is where all of the compromises that were forged were made it's very i think very carefully crafted really applaud the the work that that council councilman pine councilwoman carpenter and high tower did on this and also attorney blackwood's help was was really instrumental i urge you not to make any changes to the language again it was very carefully crafted and carefully put together and and i also urge folks who are listening not to respond or not to believe some of the fear mongering that i know we've already heard and we'll continue to hear some of the disinformation that will be spread around thank you for your good work and support this going forth on the ballot the way it's thanks thank you all right i see no one else in the the public forum queue but i do see a couple folks using the raise hand function i'm going to go to p johnson unable to your microphone uh originally when i heard the just cause evictions ordinance uh being proposed there were several elements of it that were not alarming but raised a lot of questions for me and i reached out to my counselors regarding these uh questions and confusions and i'm really happy to hear the wording of the ordinance now i feel like my questions were addressed very thoroughly and i felt like i was listened to as a landlord uh i feel like just that is a step in the right direction and the ordinance hopefully if it is written will also go through the same deliberative process that will listen to both tenants and landlords uh and thank you for a hard work on it thanks thank you i see bob has their hand raised so bob i've enabled your microphone bob it looks like you're muted on your end here we go you can hear me now yes go ahead so um my name is bob my wife annie and i are owners of a condo in burlington um we live primarily uh in the adirondacks but we sometimes rent it out right now it's empty my question is if we decide to rent it again will we be able to use it if the tenant decides they don't want to leave i mean does this ordinance give them sort of kind of uh ownership of the apartment if they decide that they they just want to stay there and we don't have any use of it anymore so um this is not a question and answer for them so well i just want to raise that then okay all right because um you know i mean we're not professional landlords we bought the apartment uh thinking that as we get older uh since we live in a very rural area in the adirondacks now we might want to live in a city more but um it will become uh problematic if we have a tenant that just does not want to leave when we want to take over the apartment so i just want to put that comment out there um i know i mean i agree with a lot of the provisions there i agree that tenants need protections but i feel that people like us need some kind of protection also okay thank you for that um our the next person i see um is christ with their handrails is christie delphia so christie i'm going to enable your microphone hello folks me again we have gone through this process for just cause evictions through the cdnr this is now going to we are now in a campaign for this i urge everyone that's listening on this call including all the landlords that may still be here because of the context of this part of the meeting right now please go to justcausebtv.org and get the information that you need everybody is still a little confused about exactly what this is for and they deserve all the information they can get if you go to that website you can you can get all the answers to your questions and something else just one last thing if you're still confused and you don't support it don't work for it you know that's that's fine all the existing tenant landlord law is still there this does not change any of those laws those are still in existence all the protections that landlords have they still have this just adds more protections for tenants that's all this is so it's just causebtv.org and you can get your answers there thank you thank you christie um i'm not seeing anyone else with their hand raised if you are interested in speaking to any of the charter changes you can use the raise hand function at the bottom of the zoom to um for me to identify you okay once twice three times okay i'm going to go ahead and close the public hearings on the charter changes again folks if you had heard of people who are wanting to comment on those but who are unable to make it this evening we will have another round of public hearings that are next meeting before the finalization of the short form language on the ballot so you can also comment at at those meetings as well next week on the 25th so next Monday so now that we've closed those public hearings we'll move on to our next item on the agenda which is a communication from Megan O'Rourke channel director for town meeting tv or channel 17 about their with an update as well as a budget request so i see Megan you've turned on your camera thank you so much for joining us this evening and for all the coverage that you and your team at um at channel 17 provide um bringing us to to the rest of the city and making accessible so much of the the proceedings here um not necessarily at city hall now but just helping us to to get that word out to the public so really just want to appreciate that work and also um just thank you for being here to share your update so turn it over to you all right thanks um can you hear me yes i can um so hopefully you've seen the communication there from us and i'll walk you through this communication just a little bit to familiarize you um should i share my screen or do you have that in front of you you should be able to do that should you so wish um it's it's up to you whatever you would prefer i'll i'll leave it to you usually it's yeah so first thanks all for having us here tonight and entertaining our request the basic gist of which is that we're asking for level funding the city of rollington makes a contribution to cctv and town meeting television cctv started recording city council meetings back in the early 1980s and um i think nat air one of our founding members sat in the spot that you most recently would have seen occupied by aden light i feel pretty certain for something like 15 or maybe even 20 years those um that is that that meeting coverage was born out of strong belief that community media again you're you're coming through a little soft if you could maybe speak up or get closer to your mic i'll try getting closer to my mic i have a quiet voice so um in 1990 cctv launched with communities the government access channel burlington is a member of that trust caron paul is your appointed representative from the city of burlington there's trustees who are from the member communities of burlington asics as extension when you ski willis-ton south burlington bolchester all share parts of our resource that we shepherd for you in the recording of community meetings events public publicly created programs in our studio which is now our zoom studio internships teaching opportunities summer camps these are all part and parcel of the work that town meeting television does it's paid for primarily through a percentage of cable subscriber revenue that is paid both to comcast and burlington telecom that money covers for the city of burlington six meetings a month that is a like just a small portion of what we actually do which is why the city of burlington contributes an additional 20 000 dollars to cctv for contracting of meetings coverage and we are asking as you see in this document for a continuation of 24 000 from the city to television to continue it will say that in fyi 20 our fyi 20 which is september to october we covered well over 200 meetings and events of course covid and remote coverage made that easier in a certain way although our field producers are still hard at work in late has been with you and this will us tonight covering this meeting and coverage means that we log on we live title live stream you post-produce we air on television and we archive those meetings and since then the 2000s we've been archiving all these meetings for all of our communities you'll hear me refer to us as town meeting tv and i know a lot of folks still refer to us sometimes as cctv and often as channel 17 in may of this year comcast moved us moved town meeting television to channel 10 87 so if anyone has comcast i imagine many folks in the city burlington burlington telecom those who have comcast will no longer find us on channel 17 we'll find us on channel 10 87 if you find us it's a little bit frustrating as folks have lost us and it's been hard to communicate that um but this also facilitated name change so we are we've dropped the channel 17 and we're just going by town in addition to the meeting coverage you'll see here listed election programming community-based programming media education and we are also with many of our communities in outlying towns beginning hybrid meeting planner it's very encouraging to hear um other communities or the communities that we're working with feeling excited about increased participation that remote meetings has allowed you all i'm sure have experienced that as well um we would like to see this continue this is a long held wish that we could bring people into meetings who are not able to actually show up in person when we first started doing live meeting coverage from the city of Burlington Burlington to television in the mid-2000s that was something that um you know it's it's one thing to have a one-way direction but to be able to have folks participate in a remote method is a dream that unfortunately we are experiencing through this is one of those collateral benefits from the pandemic so the gist of our being here tonight is again the request for level funding this is both again 24 000 contributions to television i'm going to pause there and stop sharing the screen and if there are any questions wonderful well thank you so much for that update and again for your work and i just wanted to open the floor up and see if counselors had any questions for megan any questions counselors okay seeing none i just want to thank you again for being here and again for sharing this update with us about not only the work that's happening but also the request regarding funding for town meeting television let's be clear that's the name is that's a helpful helpful clarification so appreciate that any other things you'd like to share with the council no thank you all for your continued support and i will say well i actually will say that we've really appreciated the Jordan Riddell's incredible and Olivia's incredible communication with us on what we have keeping us up to date and thank you yeah it's certainly second bat i appreciate the help that i've received as council president just as i go between between both of you and it's just a a lot of work to get these meetings to to to come off like this and to get them out into the public so just again can't thank you and town meeting television enough for getting this getting this work done and getting that the message out to the public thanks okay so we will close down that item and move into item 5.03 which is the item to request a approved acceptance of a grant with the fAA and design inspection construction related contracts for the terminal integration project or TIP i'm going to go to councilor paul for a motion on this thanks president tracy i'm happy to make that motion it's a long motion i'm happy to make that i i'm happy to discuss the you know discuss the grant i think there are people here from the airport i don't know if you'd like to give them the opportunity to discuss this or how you'd like to proceed i'm happy to make the motion but since we have people that are here perhaps you want to go to them first if you could just please make the motion and then we can get a second and then i'll turn it over to them okay um all right um so uh this is regarding on a terminal integration project and uh i would move to authorize the director of aviation to execute an airport improvement program grant with the federal aviation administration and accept up to 14 million 498 thousand 480 dollars and 70 cents plus an an additional contingency amount of two million 147 thousand 772 dollars and 11 cents totaling up to 16 million 646 thousand 252 dollars and 81 cents which could be issued in multiple grants for the terminal integration project subject to the final review and approval of the city attorney's office additionally i would move further to authorize the director of aviation to execute a contract with jacob's engineering group for up to 1 million 375 622 plus an additional contingency amount of 206 thousand 343 dollars and 30 cents totaling up to 1 million 581 thousand 965 dollars and 30 cents for the design assistance and construction inspection related services for the terminal integration project again subject to the final review and approval by the city attorney's office and last i would move to authorize the director of aviation to execute a contract with engelberg construction for up to 14 million 91 303 dollars plus an additional contingency amount of up to 2 million 113 thousand 695 dollars and 45 cents totaling up to six 16 million 204 thousand 998 dollars and 45 cents for the design and construction services for the terminal integration project again subject to the final review and approval by the city attorney's office i would so move thank you very much for making that long and detailed motion um counselor paul is there a second to the motion seconded by counselor jing i appreciate that um you didn't want the floor back so i'm gonna i'm happy to have the floor back but i just wanted to be respectful of the people that are that may very well be here to speak to it yeah i know we have director richards on the phone so maybe i'll go to director richards next enabled your microphone director richards so you should be able to speak good evening um thank you for having us here this evening we're very excited for the opportunity to be able to have this project and to have received the money from the f a a this is a tremendous uh opportunity um for the airport for the city and the region to have this new asset and the funding for it it's uh not that often that you get this type of a gift that is so meaningful you know to an organization like ours so um i just um i'm here to answer any questions i have uh deputy director nick longer on the line with us as well that will also uh you know answer any question we uh um have are still in the middle of uh designing this uh facility and so we will be incorporating um you know many green features in it um it will be just efficient all by itself that you'll only have one entry area that you'll have to go to instead of wondering where you're going to go to um and you know it's always been a big problem for travelers wondering which gate to go to and uh or which uh tsa to go to and this will end that and uh it'll really be a beginning for a better i would say in more efficient airport thank you for that deputy director longo did you have anything to add thank you uh council president jc no i think jean summed it up uh very well and we had a discussion at the board of finance meeting as well earlier tonight but i think we're exceptionally lucky it is very um in fact two three years ago we were not even eligible to receive this federal funding but working through our congressional delegation we were able to access this this funding so that we can move forward with the building we also like jean mentioned are very early in the stages of this particular design we have many months ahead of us to finish the design and to work with engel berth our our partner on the project to get this ball rolling in incorporate that infrastructure that jean was talking about the green infrastructure um but again i'm happy to answer any questions or move further into the details okay great thank you for that i'm going to just go i see you're raising your hand mayor i just wanted to check in with councilor paul did you have anything that you wanted to add before i go to the mayor councilor paul uh yeah i mean i'm happy to speak to i just wanted to just make sure that people did understand that this is a project that has been um uh you know nick and jean really didn't speak to this but i just want to acknowledge that um this is a project that has been probably about a decade if not close to it in the making in terms of modernizing the airport so that you no longer have the two um uh two tsa checkpoints and also so that people know the the cost of the project the funds are 90 percent a federal grant on 10 percent are coming from airline arrangements and the passenger facility charges that we get when people fly and i and and also i just wanted to also mention that um while 90 percent of this um could effectively be called you know free money to some degree it's not really free because lots of airports want this money and this is the direct result of our congressional delegation particularly senator lehi um and also the just tremendous effort by the airport staff um by jean by nick by a dedicated team of many people at the airport and uh um you know what jean and also what nick had said about the fact that you know there will be opportunities for not only modernizing but using green technology uh to the best of our ability in bringing this forward um i just i just think people should understand this is this is an amazing project um and hope that it will get the unanimous support of this council it got the unanimous support of the board of finance and i hope it will um at the council thanks thank you counselor paul i'll go to mayor weinberger thanks president tracy uh i just um wanted to briefly uh share my enthusiasm regarding this project and put it in in context the the airport has been one of the chitin and county success stories of the last 40 years you know when i was grown up here in brahmad in the 70s people didn't come to berlington from other parts of the state the way they do now there wasn't there wasn't a lot uh to come here for uh back in the 70s and early 80s uh you certainly weren't going to come here to travel out of our our airport and that has really changed over time with many positive factors happening in the city but one of them certainly has been the berlington international airport which has become a place where approaching a million people get on and off the plane every year and that it grew very dramatically in the in the 90s and in the early parts of the 2000s we had a challenging decade coming out of the great recession we started to see that growth continuing again and a really important thing to understand about this proposal is that not only improves the uh airport today and makes the experience of traveling through the airport better now uh not today but when it's built uh months from now um it will it is being designed and integrated in such a way that it will make future expansion of the airport um it is built with a future in mind and it is built to continue these very positive trends of the last few decades and continue to play a role in the flourishing of this part of vermont and the ability of more and more people to make a living here and raise the standard of living here in vermont so i wholeheartedly endorse this and hope the council will be fully supporting it uh to make the airport the better for today and into the future thank you mayor um i don't have any any other counselors in the queue was anyone looking to speak to this or did anyone have questions okay none are we ready to go to a vote okay uh all those in favor please say aye hi be opposed hearing none that passes unanimously brings us on to our next item which is also an airport related item it's an mou with some of our surrounding communities i'm going to go back to councillor paul for a motion on that item councillor paul uh thanks thanks president tracy so uh i would uh wave the reading and authorize the mayor to execute the mou on this is an mou uh regarding the airport among the cities of burlington south burlington and the city of onuski okay we have a motion is there a second seconded by councillor high tower councillor paul you have the floor um yeah i i'm i'm happy to speak to this um but i also um i know that this is the culmination of a lot of work on the on the part of the administration and uh mayor weinberger prefers to speak to this i'm i'm fine with that if he wants to okay i understood thank you for making the motion um mayor weinberger did you have a anything to add on this um thank you councillor paul thank you president tracy um i um no i think i'll wait and see in the debate if there's anything uh they need to weigh in before the end i i think i'll wait until later president tracy okay understood any councillors wishing to to speak to this item councillor paul go ahead thank you thank you um i i just wanted to make sure that people did understand you know the the connection between this and the charter change on you know there have been there's been a history of you know a challenged relationship between the air the the city of burlington that is the owner of the burlington international airport and the cities that are most impacted by the airport and um the leaders of uh both the mayor mayor lot mayor weinberger and the chair of the south burlington city council helen really have been working on really for the past two years to get us to the point of the mo u on you know i think we've gotten to the point where uh we're we are working on common goals um people are listening to one another we're getting beyond uh the issues that are beyond our control and working on the things that are within our control things that we can do to support our neighbors who are impacted by the airport and i think um the uh helen happens to be on the airport commission mayor lot was at the last two airport commission meetings and i think it's fair to say that the city of wanooski and the city of south burlington's relationship um at least on the part of their city councils um with the airport with the city of burlington has never well i shouldn't say never been better but it's it's it's very good and the mo u lays out all sorts of responsibilities for each city but i think one of the things that is most important to highlight is that there is the shared responsibility centering around our city our cities actively participating in the airport's process around sound mitigation including finding solutions so that our all of our communities don't have to find funds out of our general funds on for the local match that we would have on sound mitigation projects and so far we've been very successful in doing that um in the mo u one of the one of the obligations of the city of burlington is that at our next annual meeting meeting town meeting day that we would pursue an amendment to our charter to add a voting seat for the city of wanooski on the airport commission and for wanooski it's to provide a representative to serve on that commission so um that's part of what's in the mo u um last monday the city of wanooski signed the mo u their their council agreed to execute the agreement and as we speak on the city of south burlington is holding their council meeting this evening and is doing the same thing that we're doing this evening so hoping that this will receive our strong unanimous support thank you thank you for that thorough explanation counselor all right there counselor jane go ahead thank you president tracy you can hear me right let's go ahead perfect all right so i mean i think there are these elements of um home buy out program in here and it seems as if the federal government or i aip will be will be helping basically the municipality is to buy them um but when once we buy them there are two options it seems one is demolition and the other one is to maybe upgrade and you know make them into hotel or whatever it can be but i wanted to know basically about the taxes being paid because those um properties are now owned by the airport will wanooski and also south burlington participate in paying those taxes to the city of south burlington or how does it work exactly that that's basically the aspect of a home buying program okay um is someone from the deputy director longo or director richards are you able to answer that question uh yeah deputy director longo will um be very proficient in this program excellent co-head deputy director longo thank you uh as far as the home purchase program the previous program which we're now moving away from and only upgrading or sound insulating the program or the houses now prior to this we the airport had settled with the city of south burlington on a 280 thousand dollar per acre assessed value of those parcels uh so that's what we previously agreed to uh since then because we're rolling into the sound insulation program we have not yet discussed the the tax property taxes on those particular properties but the essence of the program is to purchase them improve them and then resell them on the open market there would be a time frame that of course the airport or the city would own those parcels and then roll them back in we have asked the city to consider some property tax alleviation during that particular time okay i think my yeah thank you i think my question was specific if um uh windows here south burlington would be participating in paying those taxes to the state they don't and uh it's an obligation that we have to do and really what we're hoping for counselor is that um shortly um you know we will rezone the land and it can become active again on their uh patch rules so that um you know it can be active in airport use or in community use uh in its current state it isn't able to do anything really other than be a park and that is really not what we're there for but uh the discussions have started and uh you know i would expect in the next uh you know year or two we'll be coming to you you know with some sort of an agreement with south burlington to move forward uh with that but uh it'll probably take several years but uh currently uh its current tax situation is because of the method that the airport and the city took you know which was demolition and i believe we have an obligation to pay the price the cities will not pay it and nor is it their responsibilities we signed into it it's very similar to what counselor paul said and you know when we we pay for everything and they wouldn't do it because they're not signed on for it um and the uh airport is an enterprise zone and we will uh have future benefits uh from that land as well we hope and so it's kind of an investment for the future does that answer your question kind of um but i think maybe um what you're talking about in the next couple two three years you'll be coming back with a better explanation but i think okay um thank you now the other question that i have about this is um when we talk about the airport there are maybe two aspects of it one is a day-to-day operation of the airport airplanes coming in airplane leaving airplane companies in the airport you know just just that but at the same time the airport also is contemplating all the opportunities or amenities that are not maybe really linked to the airport such as the hotel hotel um that will be built maybe in the future now with that also would these two municipalities be involved in the operation of those other amenities that are not specifically linked to the airport do you understand the question um yeah they are involved because what they do is they reap the rewards from the taxes that they produce um so that's their involvement okay okay all right thank you no further questions and i just want to comment that i think it's a great idea to have winewski joined this team and it seemed as if for years they've been trying to to to get to this point and thank you for your team and also me and for uh bringing this issue to the stage i mean full support of it thank you thank you sir that um i see mayor Weinberger go ahead um thank you president tracy um i did just want to speak to the councillor jane's question as well and just make sure um that there was no confusion from councillor jane or others um the uh it is true historically that the federal money had been used to purchase homes and demolish homes um as is right in the beginning of the therefore clause here just want to be crystal clear the whole purpose of our current efforts is to stop these demolition programs there it is possible there may be a rare demolition or two going forward from here uh because there remain certain properties that are very close to the airport that have not yet been removed but uh the the nature of the new sound uh the new federal program is to move away from that home purchase and demolition into a sound insulation program and that is what the three cities are committing to try to bring about um in in large part in this mou and we have of course had success uh in getting at least two years of upcoming pilot funding from vgs to make sure that that is done without any any impact on local taxes the the general funds of the three municipalities will not provide the local match so uh marjean it is true that it and this mou is about the going forward properties there really wouldn't be anything um that would be appropriate to bring south brolin tin or wanouski into with these these historic properties um beyond that i do just want to generally voice my uh strong support for this and hope that the council um will uh endorse the mou it is a function of uh years of collaborative efforts to attempt to improve relations among municipalities and uh i think it will it will lead to further um collaboration and uh progress if uh if it isn't acted by all three municipalities thank you mayor are there further comments from counselors okay seeing none we'll go to a vote all those in favor of adopting the mou please say aye hi hi any opposed hearing none that passes unanimously brings us to our next item which is finalization of the inavailability of the annual city audit for fy 20 we go to counselor pine for a motion on that uh since it's short uh council president i would just i'll read this into the record if i could i would move uh that the council approve as follows whereas article 69 a subsection three of the brolin tin city charter requires that the annual audit of the city's financial record shall be finalized at least 30 days for the annual meeting or as the city council may by resolution prescribe and whereas 30 days before the annual meeting would require that the audit for the fiscal year ending june 30 2020 also known as fiscal year 20 audit to be completed by january 31 2021 and whereas the although the audit of all other departments including the city's general fund is or will be completed by january 31 it is unclear whether or not the brolin tin school district's audit will be finalized by then and whereas once the school district audit is completed it must be submitted to the city's auditors and the auditors must consider the overall financial situation before finalizing the audit and whereas it is unclear if those steps will be completed by january 31 and whereas a copy of a draft summary and a draft management letter will be included in the city's printed annual report with copies of the final audit management letter to be available at public locations polling places and published online as soon as they are available now therefore be resolved that the full annual audit of the city's financial record and final management letter shall be finalized and available to the public by february 16 2020 a nice move okay we have a motion on the resolution uh seconded by counselor paul um did you want to the floor back counselor pine just in in case that was not quite clear because it was a lot there it's essentially that we are giving the public notice that there will be a sort of a draft summary and management letter that will be in the printed report and the final letters will be available at the polling places in any other public locations as soon as those are available and it's essentially we are a little bit behind schedule as well really all we're doing here is giving ourselves a little more time okay thank you for that are there further comments from counselors okay um counselor jane go ahead yeah one question and i think it is specific to the outreach i think it is clear that the letter of the audit will be included in the general um city's you know financial book that we receive in in in voting votes i just want to ask the administration how much copies were um distributed how much copies were printed and how much copies were taken by the community and if there is also an opportunity to send it to people in their mailboxes it's just a question a general question that i want to ask okay i will go to ceo shad um for that question ceo are you able to give us like any any idea of how many people have gotten these pick these up unfortunately i am not being new to this role but i am betting that someone in the ct office is so um if one of my colleagues is not available on this call i'm happy to provide that information to you tomorrow counselor jane um we may also need to collaborate with the mayor's office because they help with the printing and i also um hear what you're saying uh that we may want to do something and instead of mailboxes i believe we are thinking of something more electronic this year but i see the mayor is also on and may want to weigh in yeah maybe did you have something dad um yes my understanding is that um i believe this is for last year we ordered 1900 and distributed them at polling places and then they were available year round in the clerk's office um and so if i understand counselor jane's um question uh let me confirm i i've got a the the point is we will have less people going to the polls this year um substantially and so less will be picked up uh there and so will there be a given that um pandemic situation is there another way to to to help get these out and i i think uh i see nodding so i think i've got the question right i think it's a fair question and we can uh report back to you um i'm thinking on that as we get a little closer to town meeting day thank you okay thank you for that explanation counselor jane you still on the floor thank you that that wasn't great any other comments from counselors okay hearing none we'll go to a vote on this um all those in favor please say aye all right hi any opposed none that passes unanimously which brings us to the last item on our agenda which is a resolution um ballot question authorizing retail cannabis sales while addressing systemic racism and other equity concerns counselor hanson may please have a motion on this item yeah and i i might look to you in the um the city attorney because there's the underlying resolution and then there's an amendment that i'd like to propose but i don't i'm not sure that we actually have yet introduced the underlying amendment or the underlying resolution at our previous meeting so i'd like to just do them together if that's okay yep so you're introducing the resolution as as you're as amended as amended in terms of yeah there's there's an amendment posted that would um strike the resolve clauses from the underlying resolution and replace them with a new set of resolve clauses so i'd like to move the resolution with that amendment okay all right so are folks clear on what counselor hanson is moving here and i don't know if the city attorney can clarify would we okay or president tracy what is there yeah go ahead well just whether or not we would vote separately on the amendment or if this is just the the motion to begin with three blackwood can counselor hanson are you okay with counselor hanson and reducing it like this um yeah because i think you postponed it before you introduced it with the last meeting so okay it hasn't been introduced yet so i think he's introducing the revised version at this meeting okay great okay great thanks excellent thank you for that counselor hanson has made it has made a motion is there a second to the motion on the resolution seconded by counselor high tower counselor hanson you have the floor great um so counselor carpenter and i have been working on this for a while now and have really um done a deep dive into the issue um and hopefully other counselors have had the opportunity to to dive into it as well um i think that we've come out of that process with a really strong local policy around regulating cannabis um and creating a retail market um this amended version um has all players entering the burlington market at the same time it also creates a framework to build strong equity measures at the local level and it allows the city to advocate for stronger racial equity um at the state level where there's still ongoing work around um act 164 and around retail cannabis um we had a really great panel last week that many of you attended and had a number of folks who approached this issue from from different angles i've also been able to connect with many of those panelists and others and just really appreciate the time that folks have taken to engage on this and help catch the council up to speed um and after last week's panel counselor carpenter and i had a follow-up conversation with the city attorney as well as rei b director green um and from there develop this new policy uh or this new version of the policy which i think is a lot stronger and i really hope that the council will support it um and from there i'll let um well i see councillor mason going so we'll hear from him but i'm sure councillor carpenter can add more as well okay great thank you councillor hanson councillor mason thank you president crazy i just um i i've recused myself from this stating last week why i just i'm going to silence my mic and jump off because this is our last agenda item but wanted to explain why so with that thank you appreciate that clarification um we'll please note uh councillor mason's recusal on this item um are there others wishing to speak to the item councillor shannon to be followed by councillor carpenter go ahead councillor shannon thank you president tracy um i had um first a question uh for attorney blackwood if you would allow her to respond and that is my understanding is that the legislature specifically required municipalities to put a question on the ballot in order to allow retail sales of uh of cannabis and i wondered if we had the authority from the legislature to put this question on the ballot which is um we heard in the work session this question is actually different from what was envisioned when they created this requirement um my understanding is that by creating the requirement the the question would be binding when it's put on um the ballot but we're asking a different question here and so i'm wondering if we ask a different question if that is still binding and if it's responsive to the question we're required to ask and i didn't know she she has given thought to that and if she wants time to think about that i i have another question actually um probably for councillor hanson or may certainly somebody other it's it's more of a policy question um if she wanted more time on that okay let's attorney blackwood are you able to to speak to councillor shannon's question yes so the legislation as it's um currently stands doesn't tell us exactly what question we can ask it just says the towns have to vote uh to determine whether you're going to allow retail business integrated licenses or both so we spent a lot of time discussing whether to try to um have two questions to put a question on the ballot about retail and integrated licenses um but that requires kind of explaining a lot about integrated licenses or it's a confusing question on the ballot and so the recommendation at the from a number of the legislators and folks involved were that the question should be about retail sales because it's really they indicated the legislature's intent was to have founds weigh in on the retail sales portion of integrated licenses the integrated licenses are essentially the current medical marijuana dispensary the organizations that and in sort of the background of all this is that these entities in order to operate as medical dispensaries were required to be vertically integrated that is they had to address everything from growing to distributing to sales and that was a requirement now they're saying no that's all going to get broken up as we move to to um um uh more broader retail not limited to medical marijuana so so though they were they said we're going to allow those entities because they've have a huge investment in this to go first many of the folks working on this and counselors Hanson and carpenter can talk more to this feels strongly that that isn't appropriate that retail sales for everybody ought to start at the same time there isn't anything in the law that says we can't we could we could wait the the community could wait and vote on retail sales we could hold a special election in September or October or November or January of next year it doesn't say when you're going to vote so I think that's a good question and I think that's a good question it doesn't say when you're going to vote so if it's hard for me to be to say we can't say all retail sales are going to we were for retail sales but not until October because we could wait and hold this vote then and and be do effectively the same thing so my that was my rationale in saying that I thought this what that the question has written is is legitimate the October of 2022 date being the date on which retail licenses would be in being issued integrated licenses are going to be being issued in April so the question for all of you just is this idea that Burlington would say even though integrated licensees get their licenses they're not going to be able to do retail sales in Burlington until October of 2022 five months later so that's the that's the issue but my sense is that there's nothing about this now I will say that and I I did let councillors Hanson and and carpenter know today that that legislation was introduced last week in the legislature that lays out a question that the legislature is going to determine whether that the legislature could say municipalities must ask this question on the ballot it is different from our question I think it's my guess is it's not going to pass either because it has some problems as written but it's possible the legislature will pass something but I don't see how that could be in time for us to vote in in March of this year and the legislature didn't tell us we couldn't vote in March of this year okay thank you um I think I think that it I appreciate the work of councillors um Hanson and carpenter to get this on the ballot because I think it's very helpful to anybody who is in this business to know what's coming whatever that may be I think that um I am glad that we're that you have made this effort to bring this forward and I've had some conversations with people that I keep getting accused of being opposed of what you're trying opposed to what you're trying to do when in fact I think I'm very supportive of the idea that we try to benefit BIPOC through whatever benefits we're getting out of cannabis sales and I am completely on board with that concept I am really unclear though about how this accomplishes the goal I appreciate what attorney Blackwood just explained because this is so confusing um I persist participated in the work session I ask questions and I still find this confusing I think I do finally understand this but in that understanding I um not I think that an error was you know from my perspective of trying to benefit uh BIPOC through um these efforts I think that the legislature made an error that we're trying to correct by having this staggered startup for the integrate allowing the integrated businesses to start earlier and then holding the competition at bay honestly doesn't seem fair to me um so I appreciate our efforts to correct that but in that effort I'm really worried that there are some unintended consequences because if we do that as a state I think that's that works but when we do it as a city where the integrated you know the established integrated business can simply go across the city line across Shelburne road across the bridge to Winooski potentially and start up their business in another city and close their business in Burlington I think that disadvantages BIPOC in a number of ways um if we are collecting taxes and we are not collecting those taxes on probably the number one established business that's bringing in the most revenue we're collecting less taxes for our BIPOC residents so um for their benefit so that's one thing then the other thing is the users medical users now won't have that um they won't have marijuana readily available to them in the city so people who don't drive aren't going to be able to access that and I know Councillor Carpenter told me well they can buy it online I know what parents I know tell their kids is this is not something you buy online that's dangerous and we don't know what the you know we're we're people feel safer buying from these Vermont organizations and people want to go to their local retailer so we're kind of disadvantaging users from that perspective um both medical users and we're delaying availability to all adults by pushing this up marijuana would be available to people six months earlier and in an unfair way and I grant you that but it would be available to people six months earlier if we went with the state regulations and I don't understand how we're really benefiting the BIPOC community by having this delay and my understanding is there may be one individual business that could benefit and is that worth the the other consequence of disenfranchising both the the tax base for BIPOC and the users to only potentially benefit one possible start-up business maybe there's more that I don't know about and I am hoping that you might be able to speak to that and help me understand where this benefit is thank you Councillor Shannon were you looking for that from Councillor Carpenter to hear from whomever thinks they have an answer to my questions okay I will go to Councillor Carpenter next and then if others have additional things to add I'll come to you next so go ahead Councillor Carpenter a few things the medical marijuana business will continue as it is now right now in Chittenden County there's only one provider of medical marijuana so you have to go to that one company as I understand it because medical marijuana is through a prescription you can order it just like you can order your prescriptions from the pharmacy to an online thing and the company will deliver it to you if it's if it's prescribed to you so that won't go away as I understand it that's a that's an amenity allowed to the one dispensary that operates in our area so nobody needing medical marijuana will be disadvantaged in this particular process what we proposed is delaying that one particular medical dispensary from opening one retail shop for five months so that everybody who wants to open a retail shop and gets a license from the state can open at the same time and what we heard loud and clear from the like at least six or seven different coalitions um rural Vermont NOFA the Vermont Growers Association the coalition to regulate marijuana there was a couple others they they are distressed with the state law that provides us what they feel is an unfair market advantage um this is a modest proposal to try to level the playing field we had in the earlier resolution and had been encouraged by a number of those constituents to have even a longer wait time but that got complicated quick we felt that just being simple and having everybody sort of start at the same time would be the fair way to do it it is possible the state legislature could change that this next year and we might have to come back and change our start time but we really wanted to try to be fair to all businesses and in particular small businesses and that that's really what the focus is I it will delay the availability of recreational marijuana um to some consumers for five months and I can't speak to whether um a that licensee will choose to open its retail shop in another community and not in Burlington um that would be a business decision that they would have to make but we felt and we heard loud and clear from folks that at least try to make the start date the same for everybody would be the fair thing to do and that's essentially what we're what we're proposing okay thank you council carpenter are there others council Hanson go ahead yeah I appreciate that um so and I would say you know that's I think the benefit of this language around advocating at the state level is that we can continue to advocate for that and we're also potentially setting an example especially going early about this particular aspect of the state policy and so there's the possibility that other neighboring communities would or or the state would consider this this similar aspect and it's really you know the tradeoff in the downside that councillor shannon mentioned is yeah we there's a loss of sales tax revenue for five months on on that one business that we wouldn't enjoy so that's the downside but I think when you look at the other side of it which is that we're really trying to do everything we can to ensure that the benefits of this industry which is likely to be a pretty major industry um are going to the communities that have been deeply harmed by previous cannabis policy and criminalization and you know black communities have been really in many ways decimated by decades of you know terrible cannabis policy and drug policy more broadly and the lopsided enforcement of it and so we want to make sure that now that it becomes legal and now that there's a marketplace we need to do everything we can to make sure that the folks who are you know getting those profits and who are employed in that industry um are the same ones that have been harmed thus far and so this is one component of that is creating a fair market that doesn't allow um early entry from businesses that are not by poc that are not by poc owned um but rather allows by poc um entrepreneurs to get started just the same as everyone else and have that same opportunity to thrive you know from day one in the marketplace and this alone isn't going to get us there which is why we included all these other provisions around training and resources access to capital and and kind of partnering with the state policy and that's also why we're doing it this year to give more lead time to actually make it realistic um for entrepreneurs to to get access and succeed so that's where we ultimately landed on that can i can i just follow up on on the feedback i've heard so um i'm not so much concerned about the tax revenue that might be delayed five months my concern is that we're driving out the industry leader um from our city who will move to a neighborhood neighboring city who's going to be collecting the taxes for the um going to be collecting the taxes for that that would be going to by poc communities and also not taking into account the by poc consumer and other consumers that are we're pushing off the availability to um to any adult consumer for six months so that i feel like that this this narrow focus on some potential is there broad interest in the by poc community in starting up um these businesses maybe that's the piece that i'm missing do we have some evidence that there are multiple by poc entrepreneurs ready and wanting to start up these businesses because i have heard of one at the work session marcus says that he is um registered to start a business he registered in 2019 and he has been the one primarily advocating for this i thought which is fine but is is it just one or are there do we believe that there are multiple by poc businesses that are going to start up if we do it this way okay um council carpenter i'll recognize you go ahead um we don't know um one of the again repeating what council Hanson said one of the reasons we want to start now is in order to make it legal and opt in once if the voters pass this then march fifth we can start working with potential business owners providing technical assistance potentially small grants we can't do that until we actually legitimize it um it could be that we find out there's very few businesses um but what we heard loud and clear i think from the particularly the small growers and i can't answer how many of those business owners um are by poc and are not but they too wanted the opportunity to effectively have a season grow their product and be able to open it in a storefront in burlington and and they want to make sure that they can do that on the same timeline as everybody else the vermont growers association some of them already grow hemp i i can't speak a lot to their business models um but we heard a lot from the i'm just going to call it the agricultural side there's the storefront side but there's the product side um the product side is regulated separately we have no control over the product side but the product growers need a place to sell their product and their their banking on the fact that if everybody gets the same timeline they they can open their storefronts um on a similar timeline one of the things that is somewhat problematic is there is some moving timelines with the state the state many people in the state are unhappy with this staggered timeline thing and that may or may not come up again if it changes although it's messy we could change our timeline first and foremost we want to get the ball rolling so that people can do business planning and we want to the degree possible give as much advantage as we can to small owners and business owners and the two other parts which we haven't really dwelled on is setting up a cannabis control commission which and if you read the language to the extent legally possible really try to facilitate that and we're going to need that whole year and a half for a year anyway to structure that in in in ordinance and then the other piece which um council has in reference is asking us we the city council to take a proactive stance with the state um and effectively lobby to change some of this but I think the way we've written it now is the best that we can do today and um it only affects one owner it does delay the availability for five months but on the parallel we hope that it will allow the small growers who because they can't get their license until the state gives it to them and the state won't give it to them until October of 22 so they could come along in with their storefronts all at the same time and I think to be mindful of a part of this it's you know it's a changing environment and we're being told because the state approved essentially homegrow of I think it's three or four plants however many it is uh the market is more diminished um definitely because of that um so there is a lot of changes and this seemed like a modest proposal to support what we heard from the Vermont community thank you councilor carpenter uh councilor jane um thank you yeah a couple of questions and other thoughts and I think the first one I did ask it when I attended the the work session um that both carpenter and councilor handsome organized I think it was very informative for me now I don't know specifically what is going to the ballot for the voters to vote on what we have in front of us is is too large and was just wondering is it only the shower that that that language that's the only thing going okay now so why did you include the rest for the city council to vote on it at the same time and why shouldn't that be a conversation at the ordinance level why do we want to incorporate both questions at the same time knowing one of them is not going to the voters it's at the direction of the council to to to to make those laws and regulations so I saw councilor handsome you raised his hand first councilor handsome go ahead sure yeah we wanted to make sure that as we move forward around cannabis legalization and retail again that we weren't doing so prior to ensuring racial equity and justice within that given the history of this so that was really critical for us is that we build that right in from the start and not sort of get ahead of it and be scrambling to maybe catch up we want to make sure that that's in there from the beginning and originally the resolution actually had part of that in the ballot question but there was there were legal concerns about straying too far away from sort of what the state has set up with this and so we kept the ballot item simple and specific to the retail licenses and then laid out the other racial equity policies just as resolve causes because you know we have the power to do that as city councils we can we can move on these racial equity components as a council so we could have done a number of ballot advisory questions you know along with that one but I think I think it's understood widely enough around the need for racial equity that we can just move on that as a council and I don't think we should wait around that I think we should ensure that that's in there from the get go okay thank you the other question that I have is specific to the involvement of the racial equity inclusion and belonging office this language in front of us that's not specifically task a specific city department it could be church street marketplace but it's only said in coordination or with the involvement of the racial equity inclusion and belonging office I mean what I'm saying is basically just the administration and the council to me is very vague can the language be more specific you're asking the development of around the focus of racial equity to a specific department now I think you asked some questions that sometimes we pass resolutions but after there is no follow-up but to me this is very general and I don't see any specific department that will look into it in details Attorney Blackwood go ahead yeah yeah why don't I speak to this because I I know a counselor Hanson and Councilor Carpenter probably would have liked to see more more direction in and and I argued against it because I think it's for the administration to first consider what which departments are the departments that should be involved and I think there are multiple departments here and and that it isn't just one department and we want racial equity to be the job of everybody um and and I think the idea of this was to have that final resolve clause saying that um that the administration is going to have to bring back to this council by the the end of the calendar year very specific programs and policies and around the specific points and that that is a lot of direction from you but with the the administration having the authority to figure out which departments are going to best be able to handle or maybe it's even multiple departments that are going to have to contribute to the ultimate program and policies yeah and city attorney this is also a question for you and I think we're talking about retail and sell and uh being able to grow from your perspective is it legal for a city to get into that business can for example the city you know grow retail and sell and have maybe an international market is that is that is that legal no no okay thank you no further questions thanks councillor jane any further comments from councillors on this item councillor carpenter go ahead just um and it's it is a long resolution and councillor jane we took to heart your comment from the previous monday to simple fly the one on the ballot even though we added more resolved because we really wanted it all out at one time and i think further up in the resolution in one of the warehouses we do have a stronger statement about the involvement of the racial equity and belonging office in developing the ordinances and um requirements so we've tried to get it through there and as attorney blackwood said i mean part of the bottom line of it is um you know who keeps track of the money i mean so it has to be an administrative thing but i i believe the resolve causes as we've written them now with a lot of thinking into it really should strongly um bring that in and and we the council should be held to task if that doesn't happen and that's the point of the report back yeah thank you i mean um i kind of shared also some of the concern from councillor councillor jane i you don't have sorry i'll come to you afterwards i'm going to go to to council shannon had her hand up afterwards so i'm going to go to to councillor shannon and then i'll come to you councillor jane thank you thank you president tracy the the um i wondered if councillor hanson thought that um and also perhaps attorney blackwood sees the date as essential in this in in this ballot question and if that's not something that we could make a decision on when we have a little more information because the state is still changing their regulations now what if the state decides that everybody can start selling in may or or july and we have this question on here that says they're going to start in october and then we would have to bring the ballot question back isn't that isn't that something that we if we if we just took that language out beginning in october of 2022 if we took that out then um we could make a regulation by ordinance because we're only required to go to the voters to get permission to do retail sales um we're not required to have this date in there and we could then decide the date at at a later time when we know when we know more and and i'm interested to hear if that might be acceptable actually attorney blackwood are you able to speak to that i don't think we have any authority later to change what the voters have said because if the voters vote and say yes we're going to allow retail and the state says here's your license you can have retail i don't think there's anything in there that gives us the authority to say well no you can't start till later except to the extent that we could do it through a local control commission which i don't think could do it just kind of as a blanket it could be that you could have certain conditions or something like that but we don't know exactly what until the cannabis control board of the state tells us more about what the local control commissions are going to be able to the scope of their authority we don't really know what we're going to be able to do so that that's my concern is i'm not sure you can change the timing once the state issues them a license to operate um except by the exercise of your local control commission and i'm not sure it can just say oh we're not giving any licenses even though the voters have authorized the sales are not going to give any licenses for five months am i understanding correctly that even with this language in here this um date may not be binding because the state supersedes whatever whatever even if the voters say um we're going to start october 2022 if the state licenses early and the voters have given permission to sell then they can start selling well it's possible that the that the legislature could do something that could make this that this date invalid you know they could say you know and and no time you know they could pass a law that says in no town town can authorize a different date than the state for example they could do that i i don't think though that just they're issuing a license when we say when the voters vote saying we believe this beginning of 2022 for the reason that i said that we could they said we could do this at a special election at any point in time so we could wait until october of 2022 to vote okay so my understanding then is that you feel that having this date in the in the ballot question is useful if you're if you're it is useful if your purpose is to have all retail sales start at the same time it seems to me it's useful it's not beyond challenge it doesn't mean that i know absolutely it will go into effect but i'm giving you the rationale for why i think it it may make sense okay and you're saying that if we don't have that date in there we can't at a later date uh say we're not going because we're not the ones giving the licenses we can't then at a later date um decide we're not going to allow anybody to do retail sales until october and make sure that everybody's aligned we won't be able to do that after the fact right right okay i mean i don't know that this will be effective either but i feel like what you're suggesting i don't think there's an argument for it to be effective okay thank you that's all okay uh council jane yeah i was just going to comment quickly that i share some of the concern from councillor shannon in terms of we might lose uh people with licenses to go outside but at the same time i think this is new to both the state the city all municipalities we need to pass something and then adapt as things since we have the option to regulate via uh ordinances yeah i just wanted to make that comment thank you i'll support this thank you was anyone else looking to speak to the resolution okay seeing none let's go to a vote although um let's have the city clerk please call the roll councillor carpenter hi councillor jane yes councillor freeman yes councillor hanton yes yes councillor hightower yes councillor paul yes councillor palino yes councillor pine yes councillor shannon yes councillor strongberg yes city councillor president tracy yes 11 eyes one retusal okay so that passes unanimously that is our final item on our agenda so president tracy yep um i just wanted to confirm that we adopted our consent agenda because if we did i missed that yes we did okay yep thank you for that i appreciate that but yes we did so um and we've done all the other items at the end of the agenda so um and i the last item 5.07 was postponed until next week per councillor jane so we'll take that up on the 25th um is there a motion to adjourn so moved moved by councillor jane is there a second seconded by councillor hanson any discussion hearing none all those in favor please say aye hi can you oppose is that an opposed or okay no okay so we are adjourned at 10 p.m see you next week councillors