 Thank you all for coming tonight. First, I want to thank Nick Hanserson once again on behalf of Champlain College for hosting us. I just wanted to give someone a role that we can move out of the building, if you need to. It's a couple of red rooms to go straight outside the door here, but those are being used to go downstairs, one and same center. It makes it go right here if you need it. One at the end of the hall or one straight up which we haven't really thought so. Allow me to bring in. We probably want to head that way. Yeah, welcome. We won't talk any more and enjoy you. Great, thank you very much. Thank you. OK, I'm Nancy Harkins. I'm going to be facilitating this evening and also on the steering committee tonight. Mills Forney, who's the all tonight. And online from the steering committee, we have Anita Rapone. Do we have Anita? Yes, OK. Because we're a large group, I'm not going to have everybody and we have a packed agenda. I'm going to hold off on having everybody go around and introduce themselves tonight. But what I would ask if anybody has a question or an announcement or any comments, please just identify yourself to the meeting, to the group, and just let us know what word you're from because we know we might have visitors from neighboring wards. I just want to explore a couple of guidelines before we get into announcements. And if anybody didn't get one, agendas are on the end of the table right there. Yeah. In our NPA, we have a commitment to active listening to others, fostering an open minded approach within the group. Respect for the agenda and ensuring a focus on the topic at hand, the expression of personal opinions in a respectful manner, allowing others to voice their comments without interruption and treating all individuals with respect. And with that, I'll just open it up for comments or announcements. Oscar. Well, this is an announcement on the behalf of some folks in the CEDO doing some surveys for the consolidated plan. So I have some paper surveys here and I have some QR codes. Basically, they're looking to get input on how people would want to spend funding for housing and community development priorities, and the plan will direct how the city uses federal funds it receives from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. The plan includes information about Burlington's demographics, housing, economy, strengths, and needs. So they want to hear from residents of Burlington on what you think the greatest challenges in the area. So if you'd like a physical copy, I can have you guys take one. And basically, you can take these stickers and there's instructions that everyone gets six stickers and you can put the six stickers where you think the most for the challenges that you think Burlington faces that are the greatest challenges. You could put six on one item, like affordable housing if you wanted, or spread throughout. And then QR codes as well for anyone who would like. Thank you. I have a question. Thank you. Can you tell us what the purpose this is for and what will be the end of this? Maybe Brian, you know, better. Well, you did a great job describing. It's a consolidated plan as a federal requirement. And they want communities to solicit as much input as possible in terms of defining the priorities to guide how federal funds are allocated for under the community development block grant, which is in the neighborhood of 700 to 800,000 a year, and home funds, which is around 400 to 500,000 a year to support affordable housing. So community development block grant is much broader in terms of what you can use it for. Home is very specific amount of housing. But within housing, there's a menu of things you could use those funds for. So it's really to get that public input. And there's been a lot of consultations, 75 different groups and entities that folks have met with and it continues to do that. And this is just part of that process. We have an announcement on behalf of Claire Wool who's running for her fourth term on the school commission. She couldn't be here tonight for the candidate forum. So she just wanted us to mention that to people. And I will provide her contact information in the meeting follow-up. We're also, we know that this is a very busy election season. So we're gonna try and publish resources to point you to where there are other candidate forums that are being, that are taking place and will be recorded. So if people couldn't be here tonight, you'll still get to hear from them. Any other, yes. Hi there. I'm, can you? Oh yeah, sorry. I'm sorry. You need to go from the person, please. Thanks. Of course. I just wanted to introduce myself. I'm Emma Mulvaney Stanek. I'm running for mayor here in Burlington. I live over in Ward three. And I just want to introduce myself. I know you all don't have capacity to do mayoral forums, but there's a lot coming up. There's been two already. And there's two next week on Tuesday, the Chamber of Commerce is hosting one. And then on Wednesday, there's one hosted by Seven Days at Contoy's Auditorium. It's not a plug for my website necessarily, but we have all the debates listed and how to either get tickets to, some are ticketed, some are live streams, some are taped, but you can go to emmaformayor.com and get all that information there. Okay, thank you so much. Thank you. Any other announcements? Okay, great. Then our first guest tonight is Greg Kepler Wood, the Ward six clerk. He's going to talk to us about town meaning debt. Thank you. Oh, that's me. Yeah, I'd like to acknowledge two of our three elected inspectors of election to my left versus Becky Le Fassure, Le Boucher, Le Boucher, I'm sorry. And I'm taking French, I should know how to. And Jane Smith and Alan Mattson, who you probably know is not in town nor is the convener of this NPA meeting. They're both out of town together because they're married. Okay. So I did post something in the four front porch forum neighborhoods that our ward six covers last week. And a lot of what I'm going to say is in that posting, but I'm going to repeat most of it just in case. And there might be extra things that were not in there. First of all, there are three elections in 2024. Last year there was one March, the town meeting day in March. This year there are three. And I'm going to speak very quickly going back to front. November 5th is the general election. There are going to be two ballots. One, obviously the presidential campaign will be voted on. And then the second is the statewide offices, the general assembly, which is the house in the Senate, county officials and so on. Then moving to August 13th is the primary where we will have the primary votes for statewide offices, the general assembly and any county offices and others. And also any independent presidential candidates will be on the ballot if there are any. And I'm not sure if that's going to be a separate ballot or it probably will be. I'm not sure how that's going to be handled. But this is a year of two ballots, I'll tell you. And then of course, coming up on March 5th is town meeting. And there too, we'll have two ballots. One is the presidential primary and our city and word candidates and et cetera. So let's take the town meeting because I'm sure that's in most people's minds right now. Firstly, all the ballots, all registered voters are going to receive a ballot sent to them by the 14th of this month. And if you want a presidential ballot, you may do so by either getting one from City Hall. No, I think this is how it's being done. You go to the following website, mvp.vermont.gov. And I did it myself and I've already voted. I made a copy of the ballot and I forgot to bring it. And but you of course need to send for that sooner than later or else it won't be tallied. And then the presidential ballot and the city ballot will be available at Edmonds. And incidentally, because there was some redistricting, we did lose and gain some voters in parts of the adjacent to words. And the Edmonds is now in Ward 8, however, the city council voted to keep the Ward 6 poll there, polling place there. So there's no change with that. Registration, if you have not registered to vote, you may do so at City Hall and you can also go to that same website that mvp.vermont.gov website and register there as well. We do have same day registration. We'll have someone staffing a table at Edmonds to register same day. That's so you may do that in the state of Vermont. And we have this year all legal Burlington residents. That was also passed. That means that if you have, if you're a full-time resident in Burlington and are not a citizen, you will be able to vote in local elections only in Burlington elections, not the presidential, obviously, and the qualifications are, you're either a green card holder, a resident with an eligible work permit or a deferred action for childhood arrivals, DACA recipient. And there will be a easy way for anyone in those categories to be able to register that same day. We'll have that, you'll go to the registration table that we'll have staffed. And it's pretty quick. I should also point out that this year, the city has engaged a service that will translate how many languages did they say? 100? 48. No, is it 48? 48 different languages. So anyone who has just come here from anyone of 48 different language areas may, we will be able to somehow, this is a new thing, we'll be able to help them navigate the ballots. Also new this year, as you know, is ranked choice voting. And this is just for the city on the city ballot. And it will be for council members, the Merrill race, not the justice of the piece we found out. How many are there? Justices counted? 15, 15, that's right. There's no ranked choice voting, for instance. If that were to be changed to the next one. So that what that means for just very quickly is if there's no clear winner over 50% in the first round of votes, you'll be able to vote for first, second, third choice. Then it goes to a second round. If there is a clear winner, we will be printing out a tape that evening and all the new services will be picking it up. And it'll be fairly clear if it's a 50% or over who has won that particular race. If it's not clear, we have to deliver the tape and the tabulators and that will be done in the clerk's office later. So the winners of those races, because it's done electronic with a computer will not be known immediately. Workers, is there a question? Yeah. So when it's not known right away, what's the tabulation process? The tabulator is a, it's a computerized process. And it's instantaneous, but it can't happen until the tabulator. The actual machines are delivered with the chips with all the results delivered to City Hall. And then they run them through, they were programmed and they'll run them through and it'll, the iterations will occur. How's the math work? Yes, please. Well, if there's four candidates, none of them have received 50% or more. The lowest voting getter, vote getter gets kicked off and then the calculation happens again. And if no one still has 50% or more, the lowest person gets dropped off. And then they look at the last two. Somebody has to win 50% or more of those last two. So it's an iterative process that's done electronically. But the votes come from the second place votes of that first candidate who has dropped out get applied to the remaining candidates and that continues until it breaks. So I just want to make sure that. That's right. And there is a website that will explain everything. No, no, no, no. That's not our details. That's always a way for students every day. The way I've heard described is that your vote survives your candidate. That's a good way to put it. It's a good way of, if you're an initial. Keep counting. Your vote survives and goes on to the next candidate. You might have selected them. So if your first choice doesn't make it to the next round, your vote still does and your vote will always be counted in every round. If that's, unless you're unless you only, you're only one of your candidates was on left and that gets dropped off. So. And you vote that's your own out. Sorry. Okay. I believe the state or is it the city has a website that will explain it as well. I could be mistaken, but I believe the city has as much as, okay. So then last topic of mine is workers. The workers at an election do get paid. Everyone gets paid. You don't have to be paid. I mean, you can say, no, I don't want the money and that happens a lot, but these are called assistant election officers and officials, excuse me, not officers, assistant election officers. And we have, we're working on the workers lists. We have invited a number of what I'll call checklisters, the folks that are at the checklist desk and they've agreed to work six hour shifts instead of the three or four that we've done in the past and go to a special advanced training because of the complexity with a ranked choice, with the presidential ballot, with the local ballot and with all legal resident voting happening at the same time. It's a little complex this year. We'll have two tabulators. So the other positions that we have and in all, I think we're gonna have probably around 40 workers. The other positions I'm going to be sending out, we're gonna be contacting first of all, the people who have worked in the previous three elections and also then I'll put the link to an online signup that will go out at last. And any positions that are still available, you can go on there and if you're a registered voter and live in the city of Burlington and are over 18, you may be a worker at a pole. Anywhere in the city, you actually could work in a different ward if you wish. I know ward eight is always in looking for workers. So you may do that as well if you're shut out of ward six working. And so that's all about my comments. Right? You're right on schedule. Thank you very much, Greg. Okay, thank you, Greg. Next on the agenda, we have our state representatives online and they are actually double booked. They're taking time away from another meeting. They're supposed to be in in Montpelier to join us. Do we have our representatives? Gabrielle? Yep. Hi, Barbara. Yeah, Barbara and I are here together. We're in a stairwell but we're trying to find a quiet place. I'm gonna turn our video off for that reason and we're gonna share my phone. Terrific, that's great. Thank you. Okay, but here we are. We are here. Thanks for having us. Yes, thanks for being here. So you have the floor. So I'm going first. I'm Representative Barbara Rachelson, one of the two representatives that represents Chittenden 14. And since we're each on different committees, we were gonna give you very quick high level updates on what we've been working on in our committee. So I'm on House Judiciary and we have had a great deal of testimony from merchants in Burlington, the police chief, the mayor, as well as folks from Rutland, Brattleboro, Bennington who are experiencing similar issues related to retail theft and auto theft. And so we're working on legislation to try to address these issues. And one of the things that we're trying to do is to find legislation that will actually make a difference. So we've taken testimony, we're taking a lot of testimony and there definitely is a glitch in our auto theft laws. So we will be trying to address that. And sorry, there's someone giving speeches in the next room. And basically the issue with auto theft is people legally can squat or be in someone's car without breaking the law. So that's one of the laws we're trying to change. In terms of retail theft, we know the best deterrent is swift, predictable punishment and the backlog in our courts is making that situation impossible and making it so people are waiting two years for a court date. So one of the issues that we're trying to address is the court backlog and how to get cases heard more swiftly. We're also looking at restorative justice, ways for people to make amends for the theft that they've done. And we will continue in our committee to work on this until we have something that we think will actually make a difference. But I know loud and clear that people are concerned about public safety and retail theft and auto theft in particular and breaking into cars. So I'm gonna stop there because I know there's so much going on that each of us are trying to work within the time constraints. Great, thank you. Okay, hi, it's Representative Stone again. Sorry, we're in a stairwell. So I'm gonna try to find a quiet place and walk to the base of them. I serve as clerk of the House Committee on Education. I know that there's a lot of stuff going on right now about the increase in taxes and questions about what's to come with that. That actually goes through Ways and Means Committee and what I can tell you now is that there's a lot of stuff in flux. If you had asked me last week I could have given you different answers than what I could potentially give you now. So what I'm gonna say in regards to what's going on with taxes, education taxes, I'm intentionally not gonna step into that now because it's A, not in my committee and B, there's a lot of stuff in flux right now with the Budget Adjustment Act that's currently sitting in the Senate. So instead I'm going to tell you some uplifting news about things that are happening in our committee. One is that we're really taking a deep dive into looking at mental health, particularly in our public schools. We know that that is something that our youth and our children, our students are grappling with and not only them, but it has ripple effects on the teachers, the administration, the community writ large. And so we're taking a lot of testimony, just understanding where the gaps are and where the needs are so we can make comprehensive plans to support our kids in our schools when it comes to addressing mental health. Another thing we're looking at is a committee bill to look at how we fund school construction. There has been a moratorium on school construction in this state since like 2007, which is pretty unacceptable. We're the only state in New England that does not have school construction plan and we in Burlington know that better than most in our state because of the PCB testing that really like brought to light school construction needs in the sense that people are going around testing for PCBs and they're realizing that the school buildings that they're testing in like the roofs are caving in or parts of the building are closed because we haven't addressed school construction in so long. And so I guess it's still relining and all of the awful things that came out of the Burlington High School PCB issue is that it really is forcing our state to look at how we look at school construction. So I'm hopeful about that committee bill. We're taking a lot of really great testimony looking at other states in New England that are similar to us in size like Rhode Island in particular and their school construction plan to model it off of. So I'd say those are the big things that we as a committee have been looking into the past few weeks or mental health in our schools and then getting the school construction, getting school construction like a comprehensive plan put together through a committee bill. So those are my updates for education. Thank you. You're welcome. Nancy, can you let, can you boost, this is Tiff speaking but Gabrielle was gonna speak next and she's not a panelist yet. And I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to skirt off because there's a speech going on and I think they can hear me talking in the stairwell. But if you need anything, please feel free to reach out like via email or phone or whatever. I'm always available just unfortunately not now because I'm in the stairwell. Great, thank you very much. Do we need to give it up, promote Gabrielle Stevens? Okay, go ahead Gabrielle. You should be able to go ahead now. Thank you so much. Right, so I serve in the house environment and energy committee. I'm also co-chair of the climate solutions caucus. And I have to say, this is my fourth year. So second year of my second term, we've never faced as challenging year as the one we face now. I serve in the committee where we are balancing where do we develop, how do we develop? At the same time as we understand why people move to Vermont, why people live here, why they love it, which is based off of conservation and natural resource management. So I feel like every day I'm wrestling with this challenge of how much do we pay for what we care for? And I raise that because we just heard Rep Stone talk about education, talk about our schools, talk about how do we educate our students when we know that we have a lowering population level in terms of students, but yet we all depend on our future doctors, our future nurses, our future educators, our future, everything, right? So it is a tremendous balancing act that I guess I would say to the degree that people listening and joining this session to the degree that you can reach out and communicate with us, the challenges that you're witnessing and experiencing, it is a session like no other. And from 2011 to 2015, I was actually an advocate, so I was also still in the state house. So this is kind of in a way my eighth year. And I mentioned that because I don't know that I've ever been in the state house when it has felt so challenging to talk about a budget, to talk about all the things we care about and how we're gonna pay for them. I know I'm not the only one who has had many constituents email me and say, I don't know how I'm gonna pay for this property tax. I know I'm not the only one who's also had constituents email me and say, we need to figure out something with our schools. We also have to figure out how we're going to grow the economy so that our children might stay in Vermont. And so I recognizing this precarious place that we're in with a new mayoral race, I just ask that we all really respect each other and recognize that we are doing our best and yet it's not good enough. So with that, right now in house environment and energy, we are talking about an updated renewable energy standard. The last time we had a renewable energy standard was in 2015 and we have not updated it since then. Right now what we're talking about is actually trying to increase the standard up to 100% renewable energy. By like 2030, 2032, it depends on where you are in Vermont, which is reflective of the state. We are also talking quite a bit about land use because we all know that housing is a critical issue. We also know that we're seeing more and more floods, more and more challenges for our farmers. If for example, this past May, we had a huge ice storm. So how do we ensure that we are seeing development and encouraging development where we want it and making sure that we try to preserve the areas that we think should be preserved. So for example, wetlands, that sort of thing. I will just say we are currently updating the Vermont General Assembly Climate Solutions Caucus website with our list of priorities. There are several priorities listed. Several of them relate to improving community resilience as it relates to climate change, water quality, land use planning, et cetera. We are also talking about investing in climate friendly transportation. That's an issue which is particularly challenging because only Burlington right now is likely to see transit fees come back in from buses. So rest of Vermont, nope, but here in Burlington, yes. There are a lot of other elements that we are discussing. It's a short, very timeframe window January to May and just very grateful to serve you. Thank you. And I'm sorry if this feels disjointed. It's a challenging session. We are hearing you that it's too much money. It's too many asks. We're also hearing how many asks there are. So with that, I will pass to my districtmate who serves in appropriations, which might be the most challenging committee of all. Hi, everybody. Well, I mean, it's the appropriations committee is kind of like air traffic control. There's so much coming at you at different times. And I, you know, we had the good fortune because we have so many needs. We had the good fortune of having a budget forecast that projected a $29 million surplus at the end of this year. And we committed that $29 million to a few things that are like right on the front burner. You're not supposed to use the budget adjustment which is a mid-year true up of, you know, projected revenues and expenses. It's not supposed to be, you're not supposed to introduce a whole lot of new policy. And I don't think that we did, but we did provide, I think, some very necessary critical relief to communities that were hit by the flood. We added another $10 million in general fund money to help municipalities that have, you know, lost their tax base and face enormous fiscal pressures. And that will help. It's not all that they need, but it is, it at least gives those communities a way forward for the next four or five months until, you know, FEMA's very slow. So that's one thing, you know, on the issue of housing, I, the governor's proposal in the budget adjustment would have ended emergency housing for all but a few hundred people as of April 1st. And there are 1,100 households that are currently temporarily housed in motels. The house extended the temporary housing through the end of June and put a cap on the rate that motels could charge per room, which makes the money go further. I think it addresses some of the price gouging that, and I'm just gonna be partisan about this, but the governor allowed to have happened and didn't try to challenge. That opens the door, I think, to conversations with motel owners about perhaps transferring them over to more permanent temporary housing that would perhaps even involve the kind of SRO, you know, kitchens, et cetera. They'd have to be rehabbed, but I think from what I have heard, there are a number of motels that have already contacted the governor's office or Department of Children and Families to talk about the future of this. We invested nine million in affordable housing. It is not close to what we needed to, and we need to invest, but it was what the budget would bear at midpoint this year, and we invested in eviction protections to help people who are housed stay in their housing. We also invested in food assistance to the food bank and meals on meals, and then made a really bold, I think, I was very proud of our committee and our chair, especially for jumping on the fact that in testimony, several committees have heard that in fact, there is an obligated ARPA funding to the tune of perhaps $300 million, which has to be committed by the end of December of next year, of this year. And I don't know that that number is a hard number, but there, for example, ARPA money now can be used to pay for natural disasters. It can pay for housing. There are ways in which if we can identify the money that is sitting in different departmental budgets that hasn't been yet obligated, there's plenty that's been obligated but not spent because maybe they're longer-term projects, but I'm talking about unobligated money. We, in the budget adjustment, directed the administration to provide us on a monthly basis a report on what is unobligated. We also put in a kind of waterfall provision that would spend the first 60 million of that money committing it to housing and to flood relief. And so that's a good chunk of money, that's helpful. I agree. I think this, when Gabrielle and I ran, it was right when COVID hit and everybody, we thought we were gonna walk into just an incredibly difficult financial picture. And in fact, we didn't. We had a lot of federal relief money and that has cushioned us for the last several years and we've been able to make some really critical investments that successive administrations haven't been able or willing to make in broadband, in climate mitigation, in housing. But this year's gonna be really, FY25 is gonna be really hard. And I am an optimist and I have, we have a chair of the Appropriations Committee who I think is as creative as they get about finding money. She's also pretty fiercely determined to find money. I think that we're gonna need your advocacy, I think, both in terms of passing the budget adjustment, which I am hearing the Senate is radically changing. And insisting upon keeping vulnerable Vermonters in mind. And I don't have any suggestions for that right now, but I think that your voices are gonna be really important in this session. And Gabrielle and I will post in front porch forum as will Mary Catherine and Barbara about ways in which you could get involved, watch testimony, participate in public hearings, et cetera. So, yeah, it's really hard. Well, it is hard. And yet, I think we have, there are a lot of good people in the building who are working very hard. So, but we need all of you as well. And we're sorry, we're sorry we can't wave our magic wand. I had a friend, rather a parent of my six-year-old's friend say, well, you're a politician, do something. Wow, I never thought I'd be so disappointed at how little I feel like I can do as one out of 180. And yet I can do a lot. I am not saying I cannot do things, but it is a large machine that is our state government and it takes many, many pieces to move things. And there are many viewpoints that add up to the final equation of what everyone thinks is right. So, thanks for listening. Well, thank you. Thank you all for being with us tonight. We can answer any questions people have. I mean, we can try. There are, I'm stuck in my committee all day. I don't even get to go to the floor most of the time, but we can try to answer any questions. Money add, money add. House appropriations works for free on Mondays, for free. Okay. That's, at any rate, I'm very grateful to the city of Burlington, especially Brian Pine who has worked closely with me to better understand the housing needs of Burlington and how the various committees that deal with housing, whether it's emergency housing for homeless folks or affordable housing, what our committees can do to improve the situation in Burlington specifically. Any questions or representatives in the room? Or comments. Or do we have any questions online or comments? I know you both have to get back to another meeting. I'm not, I'm not seeing any hands raised. I just want to say thank you for doing a tough job. Tough, tough. Sure. Oh no, that's very kind. But, and I'm sorry that we were kind of a downer but we wanted, I think that what Gabrielle and I've talked about, I'm trying to figure out how to engage people in making their needs known beyond just writing us. So anyway, thank you. For incredible, it's an incredible honor to serve. It's also an incredible, challenge to see all the challenges. And frankly, Vermont is doing great compared to so many states. And that is such a phenomenal hope. There are so many ways that we work across the aisle and we understand that we're actually all rowing in the same direction. So thanks for your participation and for showing up. Well, thanks for leaving us on a positive note. But finally, okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Our next speaker is Brian Pine from CEDA. Do we have Samantha? Samantha Dunn was not able to be here. So I'm covering it for both of us. Okay, great. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anybody. I think so make sure FOSCA has the slides. If I was supposed to bring them, I'll just talk because they didn't bring any slides. So I'm Brian Pine. I serve as the director of the city's community and economic development office. I just have to share that when I was a student at UVM, I was my first year at UVM. And I started to get interested in civic affairs. And it was Robin Lloyd who came to my door when I lived in Slade Hall, because she was running as a citizens party candidate for the school board in 1982, I think. And I was inspired to be, that's something I would like to be a little bit more like that. So thanks for being here tonight. Well, thank you. Yeah. And we were in Ward 6. That was the first place I voted ever. Yeah. Yeah. So thanks, Robin. So the gateway block, that name bothers some people. It's just a placeholder really. It's a name to kind of connote what memorial and the entire block heading into town. If you're coming down the hill, it's just as a gateway to the city. It's not the only gateway people have pointed out, but it is certainly an entrance point that has a lot of importance. And obviously we'll get into some of the history here. So why don't we start the slides? So I should start at a high level. Obviously identify what we refer to when we talk about this area of the gateway block. So it does include everything in this block bounded by Maine on the south, Union on the east, college on the west, I'm sorry, on the north, and Winooski Avenue on the west. It doesn't mean that everything will be changed or developed or knocked down and rebuilt, but it does mean that it's looked at as kind of a comprehensive approach rather than just how do we deal with one particular parcel or one property here. And so I would say that the overall intent is to look at the challenges facing the city with respect to memorial itself, but also the opportunities with the adjacent properties and the shaded pink or purple area there is a privately held property that is owned by a group or a couple of people, Dan Morrissey from Brighton Morrissey who I think his grandfather, maybe his great grandfather, was part of the company that built Memorial and City Hall, which I thought was pretty fascinating piece of history, but Dan and Jeff Nick are the owners of what you think of is if you knew about the Midtown motel, it sat there and there's a duplex that is a building that faces Main Street that is next to that. So just to the west, if you see all the cars, that is the municipal parking lot, which I wasn't here until the 1981, but until the 70s that was the county jail and the home of the sheriff. And so Sheriff McLaughlin, whose father was also the sheriff, grew up in the house that was where those cars are parked now. The Central Fire Station is an incredibly iconic prop building. It's a very important structure as well as the Fletcher Free Library, which the old portion is called the Carnegie portion of the building because the Carnegie family sponsored creation of libraries all over the country. The church there that is the College Street Congregational Church is certainly a significant structure. And what this idea of redeveloping or repurposing some of this property is to look at issues of can we not have parking, for instance, be the primary driving visual feature and land use like it is now as you see and instead combine some properties, demise or get rid of some property boundaries and bring some green space between, for instance, the library and the church because both of them have lots of child care and children's needs and there's a lot of potential there for some synergy that would result in green space with parking being moved to a location that is more central to this block and there will be certainly an opportunity to look at that as part of this process. So next slide. Again, just another view to give a little perspective and really to appreciate the fact that this is a really core central part of our downtown. We'll go on to the next one. So some history and some background. This obviously isn't exhaustive at all, but this is just an attempt to go back about 30 years or so with respect to what has been attempted at Memorial a city councilor who served for over 30 years said to me that recently, the reason why Memorial has had so much deferred maintenance you can ask all the last six mayors of Burlington because it really was on the watch of every mayor really going back to Forty Paquette because it has been a challenging city resource and asset to maintain and the city has largely patched holes here where they can. And if you will plugged up the failing mortar and attempting to put some caulk and some paint where perhaps more significant repairs were called for, but the money just was never allocated. So that's kind of a confession as a city person just to say that largely the building was allowed to deteriorate over the last four, five, six decades. And we had some opportunities to get voter support. And in the 1990s 94 there was a bond vote was actually for a million dollars, which sounds pretty minor, but 30 years ago a million dollars would have gotten enough to make some substantial repairs to the building that were that boat that bond vote failed. And in 2016 after a number of opportunities that fell through the property was shuttered due to code code issues were really reached a point where it was just not safe. There was a process that I was not at CEDA at the time. I was working privately not involved in this effort. I did participate in one of the public meetings, but there was a public process to look at what is the community really value and what would the community want to see if we can repurpose and sort of find a way to bring in some perhaps public and private capital, but some way to revitalize the building and save it. And we'll talk a little about what some of those priorities were in a few minutes. 2021 there was a $10 million section or portion of the city's bond vote that went to the voters in 2021 that that failed. And so the following year in 2022 the voters did approve $1 million as part of an overall bond to make a number of investments and one of those was a million for memorial stabilization and much of that work has actually been done already to secure the structure to stabilize it so that it doesn't deteriorate any further. As we all know that in 2022 things that the high school changed from a rehab project of about 70 million to more than doubling of that for the demolition and building of an entirely new high school. That $165 million bond for the high school while incredibly important and critical it just meant that the city had hide up its bonding capacity. You only have so much ability to borrow until the basically the credit rating agencies start to downgrade your credit rating and when they do that you pay a much higher interest rate and so the taxpayers would essentially pay more to borrow money than they would now. So the idea is stay within your credit limit so that you don't see that happen and that's what that high school bond represents largely is using up the credit, so it's credit limit. Maybe it's five years from now, maybe it's seven years but it's not going to be any sooner than five or seven is what the chief administrative officer who looks at this tells us. An RFP was put out in 2022 to redevelop to get proposals to redevelop kind of like a public private partnership. A couple of proposals came in. One was a fairly small housing proposal with about 40 or 50 housing units from a out of state company and the other was an in-state group that wanted to do a immersive arts experience which maybe somebody here's been to one. I actually can't describe it because I've never been to one. You have been to one? Yeah. So that was this project. It was called Babarusa and it was really exciting. They got a little ways into it and determined they could not. They couldn't make it work. They couldn't pull it off financially. So then we started talking. You can go to the next slide. You start talking to that adjacent property owner to see what they had in mind for the parcel and I'll come to that in just a minute. This feels largely redundant, I think, but let me just see. Oh, so my name's here. Back in the early 90s, the city did propose a joint public safety building. So that was police and fire. It was proposed for the corner lot, which is the parking lot. That needed two thirds voter approval and it got mid 50% range. So it didn't pass. So that was scrapped in the 2013, 2014 period. The YMCA looked at Memorial as a potential location for the Y to move with the balance of the block being sort of private, but student purpose built student housing is what they called it. And that project never proceeded for several reasons. I think largely they saw the challenges of dealing with Memorial as a little beyond their capacity. Subsequently, they found the property, which was known previously as the Ethan Allen Club that is now where the YMCA sits on College Street. And the community hub concept that came out of the public process in 2018 had a number of public purpose priorities that were identified. I could think of them without the slide, but we'll get to the slide in a minute. So I'll rely on that slide, actually, rather than try and remember them. And the high school looked at the parking lot and Memorial as a location for the high school and determined it made more sense to build the high school, new high school where it is now. I already mentioned this thing, which is the immersive art. So we can go to the next slide. These are slides from plan BTV. And these are not in any way. These are like just illustrations. These are concepts, if you will. These aren't plans to build this, per se. And I actually have to get myself oriented to see where, I guess, oh yeah, Memorial is in the sort of bottom, center part of the slide, if you will, the large brick structure. If you could go to the next slide, FOSCA. So plan BTV was a process which many of you know and maybe participated in, really attempted to lay out large, high level goals for growth and development and land use. And it was involved, you know, well over a thousand, perhaps a couple thousand residents. It was extremely, it went on for many, many months. And it was really, I think, a pretty broad inclusive process that looked at these, a number of opportunities and looked at how do we direct growth to preserve Burlington as we know it and as we hope it will be, but also recognizing we need to also develop our economy, make sure we have a mix of housing types, provide jobs so that young people can stay here after they get out of high school or come back after they maybe go to college and move away for a while. This slide actually shows the old midtown. So there's a, there's no longer here, but historic structure that has a very storied past if we could get into that sometime. But the buildings, the photos, sorry, you can go back. The illustrations on the right are just that. Those are illustrations of that corner and what possibly could be built there. And so the zoning today does allow for a much higher level of development. I'm actually not positive that the slide in the bottom right is a building that would be permitted under zoning today, but it's certainly a much more dense urban structure that would be allowed there now. Please go to the next slide. So what now and where we are today is really trying to get the, Memorial really represents a huge asset for the community, but right now because of its deteriorated condition, it's a real liability and a real risk in terms of the structure itself is really at risk of continuing to decay and literally parts of it were falling off until we took some stabilization measures and those are temporary. Those are interim measures. Those won't last for very long. So we've got kind of a, the clock is ticking on Memorial. So we have challenges. Capital activities really have more to do with what's happening with the reconstruction of Main Street and the opportunity that that may present for Burlington in terms of Great Streets and the public infrastructure that will be upgraded on Main Street that is starting actually on Monday this coming week. There's a desire to activate underutilized property. So from a downtown perspective, any surface parking lot is viewed as not a great use of limited downtown property when we do need housing. We do need to expand our housing supply as well as job opportunities and a tax base that needs to grow. And so underutilized properties downtown are those key properties creating a public benefit both in terms of taking Memorial out of the city's responsibility but bringing in public purpose uses, if you will, which we'll talk about in a minute is part of the goal. And of course the ongoing housing challenges both goes with me. So these were the identified priorities when Memorial was still very much, you know, an active going concern, if you will. It had been shuttered two years prior, but in 2018 this process was undertaken, which came up with, you know, sort of community goals and wishes for what Memorial will be, has been and can be. So these are, these continue to be, you know, in many ways reminders of what the community's priorities are for Memorial or what comes of that property if Memorial is ultimately is not able to be saved, which we don't know that at all. We just, you know, need to be prepared for what comes. So obviously a welcoming entrance to our downtown is key. We have a need for mixed income housing, the whole range of income levels. We have the Memorial, the memorials in the building, which are large plaques that do serve as a acknowledgement and appreciation for the veterans of World War I from Burlington, who gave their lives in that war. And those plaques obviously is a real commitment to preserving and hopefully keeping them in place if possible. So that's, I think, largely a goal, including, you know, hopefully as much public space for public uses as you possibly can. Obviously there's going to be some need for parking. We think, you know, in the near future, the parking will continue to be a driver, but not like it was in previous periods. And over time it will probably be less so. So there's got to be some adaptability and flexibility of what's developed to acknowledge that over time, as we become hopefully less single occupancy dependent, the property can evolve. Growing the Grand List in Burlington is always critical, takes hopefully a little relief for the rest of people who struggle perhaps to pay their property taxes. That's part of obviously the benefit there and long-term economic benefit for our community by redeveloping a property. Barriers facing the city and facing private developers as well as public is the ravine sewer, which is being, that's the project that begins on Monday, is the ravine sewer relocation project. That will be pretty fascinating to hopefully we'll get to see some of it. I'm not sure how much we'll actually see, but it's 25 to 30 feet down. They've already done a drilling test and went through the roof of a brick structure that is the ravine and it was at 27 feet down. So it's pretty far down. And one of the biggest challenges is that property that I showed earlier on the map that was purple or pink, being that it's privately owned, it makes it really challenging to kind of do something comprehensive between the two properties, because this property sits right between Memorial and the parking lot. And so that's been a challenge. Obviously the bond limit issue is a significant challenge and renovating that building is becoming extremely difficult financially for the city. So major renovations are not, you know, not likely for the city at this point. Let's go. So yeah, the sewer is being relocated. What we see here is an opportunity to bring some private investment to address the deterioration of Memorial and to bring a mix of housing types and a mix of uses, hopefully, that will both be public purpose, meaning public space, civic space, and that continues to be a priority. Critically needed housing for a range of housing, for a range of household incomes. Obviously growth of the grand list helps the city with its needs to balance its budget and the school district to balance its budget without having to go to taxpayers repeatedly for tax increases. And of course the redevelopment as envisioned in plan BTV to support a healthy thriving downtown in Fusca will go. I think we're getting to the end here. Is that it? That's the last slide. There is one. Oh, okay. I just want to mention the folks who have what we call site control, which is a term used in real estate. Doesn't mean they own the property, but that purple property is under the control of Eric Farrell and Joe Larkin. Eric's developments in Burlington have included the Cambrian Rise, the former St. Joseph's and orphanage in the Burlington College property, Thayer School, which is the old DMV. If you know it as DMV out on North Avenue, that was out of Eric's projects. And the Larkins have developed a number of different types of largely hot. They do a lot of hospitality, but they've also done housing. They're building a new mix of hotel housing where the holiday in is just if you go into South Burlington just over the interstate, that's a Larkin project for the holiday and used to stand. These are experienced developers that have a track record. They have the ability to pull off a project of this scope. They're very committed. We don't yet know if they're going to determine that they can in fact do this, but we thought it was worth having a period of due diligence, giving them the opportunity to look at this. So right now they're doing that process, which is largely financial, but it's going to include some geotechnical to see how do you build, what can you build, what can you fit, what makes sense. And actually they're really looking at Memorial as a building. Can we save all or some of Memorial as well as part of our project? Having that vision or those values that preserving and adaptive reusing Memorial was really something that is really attractive from the city's perspective to see if we can't do that. Here we are at the LOI, the letter of intent, which is really a non-binding way of saying we're going to agree to look at this together, but it doesn't mean we're going to guarantee that anything is going to proceed. So it's not a commitment to a project per se. It's just a commitment to go through a series of assessments over time together and cooperating. And we're doing that right now as we speak. We've been meeting regularly to discuss that. It lays out these issues, these bullets here. Who's going to be responsible for what's the compensation look like? How does a ground lease work? Because one of the city's priorities is not to sell the property, but instead to hold it and lease it. And does that arrangement work for them? And that's the kind of thing we're looking at right now. That's a way to ensure that the public continues to have a role and a voice in the property, and it doesn't, we don't lose that. There's our timeline. It's aggressive. We are right now in that January or February, I should say. We'll be bringing at least a draft of a development agreement in the coming week to the city council. And so that's where we're at now. This is, I think, a reasonable, slightly aggressive timeframe. But what a development agreement does is it spells out what are the roles and responsibilities? What are sort of the costs and benefits? And what does the developer bear for a cost? What is the city bear? What do we get for it? What do they get for it? So it's all, it's that whole sort of negotiated equation there. I think the next slide might have our website on it, which I want to just point out is there's quite a bit here to take a look at. So at the CEDA website, there's a page for Memorial and Gateway that I would encourage anyone to take a look at. That's it. Yeah. Maggie, do you have a question? Yeah. Thank you for that presentation, Brian. As these developers move to, you know, come to agreement, do they have a pre-designed idea of what they plan to build or do they... Question. Or it's a chicken and egg question. How much do they look at the financial feasibility and then what they want to do or do they have to, like, set out certain ideas, right? I think what we believe is Eric's mostly interested in residential but also in ground floor commercial and what Joe Larkin has mostly indicated is he would like to build is 120 to 150 hotel rooms on the property. So that's what he's most interested in. In addition, they have indicated that the... Well, that their, you know, the idea of public space is something they're completely on board with, but we have to negotiate what that means. How much of it? How does it get used? How much of it is programmed? Did they cover the cost? You know, all of that. So there's a lot still to work out. And as you negotiate those different options and during the development agreement, there's a public process to look at these different types of uses, for example. Yeah, exactly. Like affordable housing and plus, you know, more apartments and then how much would be hotel space, for example, that composition question. I think the question of, are you asking if... How much gets devoted to what use is for the public to decide? Is that what you're asking? The public can weigh in on it. Absolutely. I think that ultimately the city council will ultimately decide in the end. And that will go through, you know, public process. I think they'll present maybe some options and say, these are the three things that we think we can pull off based on our due diligence. So hopefully we'll have some options that work for the public. Otherwise, that's fine. Mary. I thought we had dealt with the community jail property. Many decades ago. And it was declared unsuitable for building. Like underneath is all that. Yeah, absolutely. So we must have gotten over that vertical floor. That's yet to come up again. I think Mary's talking about the parking lot and that is where the ravine sewer goes. And so in addition to the ravine sewer being decommissioned there and being relocated, it would probably require bringing in some new soil to deal with the fact that the fill that's there won't structurally support a building. But we got defeated by that. Whatever it was. But this bond that the main street project is moving the ravine sewer and in doing that and decommissioning it, it allows for that to be addressed. So that's the biggest. Yeah. We have another question. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Did you use the microphone? Yeah. Just because we have people on. I understand. Sure. This is a combination of the questions that I came up in my mind and comment. Question. What are the absentee owners waiting for? They've had that property and it's been abandoned. Absentee owners for a long time. What can the city do to to obtain control over abandoned land, which is an eyesore and has been an eyesore for decades. What's under the parking area? My understanding is that the ravine also was a dumping ground in the past in the 19th century that there are all sorts of things that might be down there. What do we know about that? Does this become a kind of a super fund obstacle? You know, what you find prevents you from doing it. Does this represent a substantive change of focus from plan PTV, which was a pretty much a commercially oriented development plan of the Weinberger era and we're entering a new era one way or the other. So is there a change of focus and perhaps my greatest question is why the whole block? Is this a demand of the developers and, you know, the problem that we see is on the main street side. Nobody's complaining about the library or the church. And so I'm wondering why it's being looked at that way and whether in the course of events other portions of the property might be repurposed because of the turning over the land to essentially private development from what is essentially public space now. I'll try Greg. I'll try and get them all. That's a lot there. Yeah, I do. I think so. Yeah. So I think I address the issue of the ravine, but what we don't know is exactly they've done some soil boring so they literally take a big drill and they drill down as far as they can till they hit something more stable to see what's there. And it is largely junk, but that's part of the due diligence is what's the cost of once the ravine sewer is relocated. What's the cost of essentially stabilizing that to be able to hold a building? They'll figure that out. The geotechnical piece either they will or they'll figure out we can't afford it. So that's to be determined. The purple. That could stop. Well, that could very much. Absolutely. It could. The purple area there, which is the privately held property is as I said earlier, Dan Morrissey, Jeff Nick are the owners, but they've agreed to give an option to Farrell and Larkin, who don't own it. I can't really answer the question. What have they done and why haven't they done anything with it? I honestly think they were kind of waiting for an opportunity. I think that I think that's what they're doing. I think they pretty greatly with the developers are they perhaps? I think there's a relationship, perhaps, but that I know that the midtown when it came down hadn't been operating as a as a motel for quite some time. The building in the yellow building is actually still moving into a new building. I don't think it's going to allow that. So that's a concern. It has people in it. It has. Two businesses downstairs, and I think it has at least one apartment in there. So that's a going concern. And, yeah, so, So we don't really know the answer to why they allowed it. And why the city allowed it. To remain and did nothing. Well, I mean, intervening, Greg, it's private property. So I think you know, well, I'm trying to answer your question. That's what I'm here for. Okay. Go into comment. Yeah. You hear me in the room private developers often use depressing the value of property and allowing things to deteriorate much as they did with the downtown mall and other things and then you get the price the way you want it, you get the city wanting to do something and desperate to do something and then you make your very favorable deal. This sort of sounds like a bit of a bait and switch to me. The opportunity here is to look at the property. You did ask another question about why the whole block. It's really not, I think it's probably best to say that the whole block is being considered more as a way to think of this sort of comprehensively. What can we do for the library? What can the church do in terms of creating some green space between those two properties? Which would therefore benefit the library? The fire station incidentally I should have mentioned is a really important piece had a study in 2018. The department felt that it was important to look at where they said the building doesn't meet their needs. It's not the greatest look. It's actually a pretty bad location if you're operating emergency vehicles because they're backing in and out and it's just really hard to navigate. So they looked at where are the calls sort of the the call center of gravity in Burlington? Where do the calls come from? Where should we go? And they determined that this fire station could merge with the one way down in the south end which has a very low call volume and is really far away from where most of the calls are and they could together merge somewhere in the area of, I'm just saying Curtis Lumber because that's sort of the area. Curtis Lumber, Halbert's down to maybe BED like in that stretch of Pine Street would be the place where they would go. And so that is on the table as a possibility. Nothing is guaranteed in that. So it's just all things are on the table being considered. It's an open, totally open. Let me see what else, Greg. Greg, do we cover it up? Just one person at a time please. A point of clarification, that yellow building, does that have historic preservation consideration? I would imagine it does. Yeah, I would think it would. Those requirements will be part of the process, whatever the review process is. So development review will take care of that. I think we have time for one more question. The presentation was great, so that was very helpful to history. But I do have a question. I've been trying to get a hold of the actual question proposals for the Gateway Block proposal that this letter of intent came about. And I have not been able to get that, so I'm assuming you probably have available that. Because there was a really good one that was done for the readaptive use of Memorial Auditorium, which had proposals and everybody put in their bids, and so you had multiple offers on ways to handle it. Which one is that, Sloane, your hand there? This is the one that was done a couple of years ago. Now, so that you can see the process that took place. Yes. But the one that there isn't one that I can find. There isn't a process. Well, no, no, no, there was a draft of the Gateway Block combined request proposal draft that was in October 19th of 2015. And you were probably involved in that one. I wasn't with the city then. Okay, then I can't find it anymore. The link is no longer live. So I'm going to ask you to see if you can help find that. And I've been trying to get that. Because my concern is that that again, the process, the actual letter of intent says in it, this letter of intent is intended to represent the good faith actions of the parties and thereby binding subject to the full execution of the development agreement on number four, March 29th, 2024. Only if the agreement is signed, though, the development agreement is the binding part. But it's saying, but it is subject to the full execution of the and then it says afterwards, it says the city agrees not to solicit any other interest nor otherwise engage with any other party in connection with the redevelopment of the Gateway Block during the term of this letter of intent. So my question is, this is the draft of the full block for the Memorial auditorium react of reuse and readaptive use was not for the whole block. So in effect, I'm concerned that we have a letter of intent that says we're not going to consider anybody else's project proposals. When in fact, the proposal of the request for proposal that was done nicely for the Memorial auditorium reuse very clearly has and in fact, the draft has a two stage process of going through two stages of submitting materials and proposals and validating whether those people are incapable of doing these projects. So I feel like we're being rushed to sell this off to these two developers without going through the process that was the actual draft request or proposals that was circulated in 2015 and which no longer is that link available. And I've been communicating with the IT person. So maybe what is this one right here? This is the one that was just for Memorial auditorium. Okay, more recent though, right? That was the one and you got and it's if you go on the website. Yeah, that's one that Bob Russo replied to. Sure. Right. I'm not sure about 2015. So they all looked for it because I don't know what you're referring to. Well, I just didn't see it on the right. Well, here's the information that here's the one I draft about the fact that that but is no longer available to the general public. I've been trying to find it. So what happened is that link that was the one I got that document has disappeared as has a moment as has a minutes that referred to you. So you can talk to you to Scott Baker about it too. Because I'm trying to get him to find those documents. Sorry, who? Your IT chief information. Scott Parker. Yeah. Can I make a suggestion? Have you made an official freedom of information request? I have. He suggested that and I this is all been going on in the last few days before this meeting. And yeah, that's writing to Brian to share you that Brian is involved in getting this letter of intent facilitated. So he should have a copy of the RFP and anybody's proposals that were competitive to these two. Yes. I mean, the RFP that Sylvie is referring to is from 2022. And it did result in the proposal from a company based in Chicago, which proposed housing and the Barbarossa proposal. That was the last RFP. This is actually not this is a this is a process because these adjacent property owners essentially approached the city and said, we have a joint project we'd like to pursue. And that's how this process started. That's why the council felt that this was worth at least entertaining because we weren't getting a lot of actual effective market demand for the opportunity. It was people like the idea of doing something memorial, but we weren't getting real bonafide proposals that could be delivered on. So it was, we've got to try something. So this was really an attempt to find a way to preserve memorial as best we could and to see development occur on the parking lot. Will it happen? I don't know if it actually get through this due diligence process. I really can't say that. Right. My biggest concern is that the request for proposal process that was proposed in 2015 and there's a draft of it that was available and circulating was not pursued. And so that means that we are doing it this little sort of second hand way. And the fact that that document is no longer available to the public is a big concern to me. So 2015, we had a great draft proposal for the full block, the full gateway, not just memorial auditorium. So I hope you can find that document. And I feel like we cannot go forward with this project without doing a full request for proposal, not just memorial auditorium, the whole thing. And without doing that, we have not done our own due diligence to follow up with what we were going forward with. And now we're in a big rush to get it done by March 29. I would encourage you to talk to the decision makers who are the city council. You're not the decision makers. Just one, did you have one more, one more question? I'm changing my question comment based on what you were just referencing, Sylvia. So I go back to Brian, you said that the draft of the development agreement would go to city council end of March 24. And I remember very much being involved in what we used to call the big dig. And every time we showed up from the very first of the meetings, every time we showed up, we were told that we were too late. Yes, we were constantly said, you should have been here a year ago. You should have been here at the beginning in the process. And it was three years of you should have been here before. And for me, that's what Sylvia is referring to. We would arrive on March 24, want to put in comments for three proposals, been told, no, no, no, these are the plans. And so I'm very conscious of how the process unfolds and where civic comment comes into the process, because it was so fraught for the downtown mall. That was my comment. Yeah, same idea. And as an ad, and I won't carry on, but I once mapped the ravine. And I suspect there's a lot more problems with the ravine than is being understood at this point in time. Yeah, fortunately, because the Main Street project is starting on Monday, they know a lot more about it than they ever have. They've done some drilling and it found that they went through the roof of the of the verdine already. So they go here all the way. Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah. No, I know where it goes. I know exactly where it goes. Yep, actually goes to the lake all the way. So yeah, yeah. Let's turn that. We're going to see you have to remove it because otherwise you can't build on it because it will cave in. It's only the section from it runs diagonal. It's going to get bypassed at the corner of College Street and Union. So basically where the Y is, I believe, will be run down college to Winooski, will come down Winooski, and then go west on Main Street. So it'll it'll bypass all of that. So it'll. But the ravine still exists. The ravine will stay there. The ravine itself will stay. Exactly. The ravine stays. It's very unstable. It's extremely unstable. I mean, the fact that there was the jail there on top of it was, you know, it was a structure, but it was a fairly insignificant two-story structure. It wasn't a real big structure. So with today's standards of steel and concrete, which is you have to build in an urban setting, it's hard. You can't put a building there. Thank you everybody for your comments and questions. Thank you. Send us more if you have, because we're on our, you know, our website has an opportunity to pose these questions and then we'll take them and respond as best we can. Great. So I'll get you back to this, because you copied it, but. Oh, okay. So we do have our two city council candidates. Do we have any other candidates with us tonight? Okay. Then you want to come up? So right now we're just going to have, we're going to give each candidate five minutes to introduce themselves. So do we have other candidates in the room, 10 points? I don't think so. I don't think so. I looked at the website and I don't think anyone else is here. At least you said. Well, by last name, I'm having a good first name. Yeah. Okay. So thanks everyone for having us here. I was really glad that the steering committee was so receptive to having another candidate for them. Some of you might remember me from last year, but I'll just start from the beginning because this year I'm hoping to run a campaign that's a lot more ambitious given that board six has been redistricted and also that it's going to be an open seat with council president Paul departing. My name is Will Anderson. I know I might look pretty young, but I am 25 and I have a lot of experience. Well, I would say a lot by my life percentage of working in public policy. I've worked for the federal department of agriculture. I worked for a statewide nonprofit deploying community internet networks across Vermont as part of the pandemic response. And I now work in the state administration dealing with a lot of the fiscal policy issues that represented bloomly highlighted earlier in the meeting so well. Why I'm running for city council is primarily because I'm quite concerned with the way that with the direction that our city is going even in the time that I've been living here, which is about three years now and was living in Montpelier before that. And at the root of these problems, you know, looking at the economics of it, I usually see it coming back to affordability issues. Over half of Burlington renters are paying more than a third of their income to rent, which is kind of the universal affordability scale. And about a third of Burlington renters are paying more than half of their income in rent. I'm in the former category and I know how much of a pressure that is. I can only imagine if my job was even more difficult than it was, or if I had a family to support that these pressures would become untenable. And it's not a surprise to me that we have so many people suffering and struggling from addiction and from homelessness when this is the prevalence of unaffordability in our city. So the primary part of my platform is about real progressive housing policy reform. For example, I think that the neighborhood code presented at the last city council meeting is a good first step in the right direction towards becoming what I would call a real city. I think that Vermont needs a real city to be able to provide the services that are required, you know, by citizens of a rural state. You know, we have to have that kind of urban center and we're close. But I think that, you know, keep building transit oriented housing would really be the right way to go. I also think that tax reform is really critical. And there's two sides to this, you know, there's the side that Representative Mulvaney Stanek has talked a lot about, which is introducing an income sensitivity element. But I would actually like to go both with that in a bit of a different direction by implementing a surcharge on the municipal side for non-owner occupied buildings. And I know that sounds maybe a little bit wonky, but basically what I'm saying is let's try to mitigate these really big tax increases that we're going to see for homeowners by trying to shift to some of that burden to people that own properties and rent them out. You know, and there's also potentially a commercial reassessments part of this as well. But really I think we need a multi-part housing policy that, you know, brings different threads together. And if you're thinking about the economics of what I just suggested, you probably noticed that any increased property tax burden that a landlord faces is going to go straight to tenants like me. And that's why I also favor, again, like Representative Mulvaney Stanek has suggested exploring as mayor a rent stabilization measure. And, you know, these have a lot of negative connotations and had a lot of campaigns against them. But I would encourage you to look into the rent stabilization measures that have been implemented in St. Paul, Minnesota, in Boston, Massachusetts, and especially in Portland, Maine, where, you know, the size of that community is a lot more reflective of our own. Rent stabilization together with property tax reform I think could really lead us to a place where we can create more public, more affordable housing, and start driving at the root causes of so many of the concerns that we've brought up. In the short term, however, you know, with regard to public safety, I'm all in favor of growing the police department, you know, back to pre-2020 levels, at the same time increasing the ranks of the CSOs, CSLs, the CARES program, other qualified first responders, and would like to see the police department, you know, filled with a lot of these really hardworking folks as well. I've got a lot more that I'm interested in implementing as a city counselor. It's on my website. I can give you contact information for that. But I don't want to press too far up against my five minutes, and so I'll just leave it at that for now. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks, Will. Thank you for having me, everyone, having both of us. My name is Becca Brown McKnight, and I'm running as a Democrat and obviously, Ward 6. Forgive my notes, I'm still getting used to public appearances, so to speak. But I want to start out by telling you all a little bit about myself, and then share how I'll be approaching our current challenges. So I'm running because I love Burlington. I love living here. I was raised in Vermont and left to go to college and get a master's degree. I have an MBA. And in the 10 years, 10, maybe 15 years that I didn't live in Vermont, I was always trying to figure out how to get back. And now I'm back. I've lived here for almost a decade with my husband and two young kids. I have a five-year-old and a nine-year-old. And I wake up every day feeling so lucky to live here in Burlington in the place that I always wanted to come back to. And so I'm running as a mom, as a businesswoman, and as just a community member who is concerned at the unraveling of our community that we have seen in the past few years. I know our city is exceptional, and we have so much potential, but we're really just not reaching it right now. And we're facing tough challenges, and a lot of them are rooted far outside our city limits. We didn't start these challenges and we're not going to solve them alone, but that doesn't mean that we can't take, you know, that we don't need bold new leadership to solve them. So, you know, I'm new to politics, but just to tell you a little bit about my professional history, I have spent my career in the marketing field and for the past 10 years I've run my own business. I help clients in the sustainability, particularly sustainable agriculture, parenting, and other spaces to grow their business. And I've always loved working with clients who have a mission to help change the world for the better. So I think, you know, having that lens professionally is something I'm definitely going to try to bring to the city council. This week, it's been a busy week on the campaign trail. So I was proud to receive the endorsement of the municipal employees union just on Tuesday of this week. And I'm not saying full acronym because, again, I'm still getting to know the alphabet soup of city acronyms. But these are the folks that are out on the front lines doing the hard work that is needed to keep our city running. And I was really proud to get that endorsement because I think they saw in me a counselor who will really be ready to listen. And then also to act on what is heard, right? You know, just in this room tonight, I think we've seen a lot of an example of the important back and forth that goes into our governance process here. And, you know, the frustration that can happen when that feels rushed or it feels like, oh, we have this opportunity for a public forum, but it's sort of just lip service and nobody's actually going to do anything with our feedback. You know, I don't like that. I want to do something with the feedback. So, you know, I'm a person who's really comfortable pushing for bold changes. I can reach across party lines. But I'm also really practical. You know, I think what the city needs in this moment of tough challenges is not, you know, a dogmatic approach. It's not an activist approach. We need practical leadership that is willing to kind of roll, you know, people who are really willing to roll up our sleeves and get the job done. I'm also somebody who can be comfortable. Is that a time check? No, just heard about up here. Okay. Great. Great. I'm almost done. You know, I also realized that governance in a lot of time, a lot of times you're, and as we heard from our representatives today, I mean, I was getting a little emotional hearing from them. That is a tough job that they're doing down there in Montpelier. And I know that being a city councilor will be a tough job too. And I know that a lot of times you have to make kind of unpopular decisions. You're faced with picking the best of, you know, three or four not so great options that you really wish weren't the options that you had. You wish you had better options. I understand that reality and, you know, feel responsible enough to make those tough choices and to, you know, lead the city forward regardless of our options. I also think we need some people who are excited about small things. You know, not everything needs to be a vast, wide sweeping change, although sometimes, certainly that's very necessary. But I'm excited about little things like more street lights and speed bumps and bike lanes and, you know, things that don't require millions of dollars and an increase in our taxes, but that do really have very real positive impacts on the lives of our citizens. You know, I know in speaking to a lot of folks who have businesses down on church streets, better lighting was like, was a, was a top request. And, you know, I was so glad to hear that because that's doable, right? You know, we can do that in a few months and make people feel safer, along with, of course, many other things that need to be done. And so in terms of the issues specifically, I'm very focused on public safety, affordability, housing and the climate. And so I'll leave it at that for now. I have a lot more detail on all these issues on my website, which is beckerferberlington.com and having to make my contact info available and take questions here. And, but before that, I just want to mention you do have an upcoming forum. Yes, I was going to mention that. Okay. Is it the 12th? Is it the 12th? That's correct. There's going to be a town meeting TV forum with just Becca and myself on February 12th. Monday. Yeah. That's 6 10 p.m. I think is the time. But it'll be on YouTube. Yeah. Yeah, I just want to say I'm here to help Becca out with some of her campaign. And, you know, we're putting together a pretty cool group of people as advisors as well. And my name is Megan Epler Wood. And if anyone would like to stop by, I'm going to have a house party for her on 15 and I would love to build my mailing list out if you want to, you know, come just, I have a notebook here. It's not too high tech, but I'd love to get your address. Okay. Thanks. Bye. Any, any questions for? Yes. Yeah, just a more remark. I first of all, thank you both for running. I mean, it takes, you know, citizens to do it. And, and, you know, we're many of us are parents. I got young kids as well. It's really hard to do it while you have the family as well. I think one of the big challenges the next city council will be dealing with are the budget, the budget process starting in May, with a $9 million shortfall. And so I'd like to just keep it as a word of caution, we can't grow government further. We need to look at, you know, how can we keep it affordable? And I love the idea of, you know, all the ideas brought to the table, but I think we need to be real realistic as well. The only way we're going to get our property tax expenses under control if we control the budget that the city has. And I'll give you just one small number here between 2019 and 2024. The city grew by 70 positions full time equivalents. That is from 426 to 508 that are paid out of the general fund. The general fund during that time grew from $72 million to $101 million. So that was COVID and there was federal money and there are a lot of ARPA money and money is ending. So I think it was a tough task ahead. We can think about all the things we want to do, but the first thing we need to do is also get that budget on the control. And so I want to urge any candidate who runs to really keep that in mind that that's an important task to do. So thank you. By the way, the number of residents during that time through zero. That's a big piece of the problem. The number of added additions again? 70. Same. And my family, we have been talking about that, that we're almost people like that. We've lived here 40 years and I mean, there are way more people in the city government. Well, I think 70 times. They want to thank you for that number. It's all on the city website along the budget. I would urge you to look at all the elements that are in there to read it. Okay. Oh, there's a question. Can you someone online has a question? Ashley? Ashley Adams and then somebody else. Ashley. You're on mute, Ashley. Hi. Thank you. Can you hear me okay now? Yes. Yes. Okay, great. I'm Ashley Adams in Ward six, of course. And I have, I'll try to be brief here. I'm a mom. I'm a business owner. And I'm really upset that our mayor and city council reneged on what I consider their fiduciary duty to residents when they signed off on the $42 million steam pipe from McNeil to the hospital, really locking us into dirty energy for decades. And meanwhile, McNeil is the largest stationary source of carbon pollution in the state. And it operates and most people don't know this. It operates at an enormous loss. And 2023, it lost over $4.7 million. Nobody talks about this. No one has been able to tell us where $665,000 a year will come from to pay for the steam pipe. I'm here to support Will for a variety of reasons, including his expertise in economics and finance. But I'd like to ask both candidates if you can tell us about your specific plans to address the climate emergency and how your background and your skillset will inform your position and your approach to projects like the district energy boondoggle and the McNeil plant, which we know climate scientists told us last June must be shut down. And I'm sorry that was long winded. Yeah. Excuse me. I don't think we're going to have time. We're already running behind our schedule. I don't think we're going to have time to let the candidates really fairly respond to a question. And what does that mean? I mean, I'd be happy to be brief. We could also do one minute each if that's okay with you. Maybe one. I think there's otherwise it sounds like there is going to be that forum. Right. And that would be if you could make sure that that is in the next forum as well. Yeah. Right. But if you want to take a minute each, that's fine. Yeah, sure. So thank you for that question, Ashley. It's nice to hear from another mom and business owner as well. So yeah, I watched the McNeil process unfold, frankly, with trepidation. I had a lot of the same concerns that you raise. I am a candidate who I really would like to see Burlington be more aggressive on climate action than we have been in the past. And I found the discussion around McNeil to be, I mean, I did my best to try to understand the details. It was tough to find the information to really get into those details, even looking at the many presentations that were done. As far as I know, I mean, I know, well, I guess I'm not going to get into the weeds too much on that other than to say, I support giving it another look and finding some answers to the questions that you raised here. As far as my professional experience in dealing with the world of climate change, I have focused my business around serving clients in the sustainable business industry for the past 20 years. And when I started doing that, everybody said you can't make a living doing that. Sustainable businesses don't make any money. And I have seen in my work with clients and in my professional life, I've seen that proven wrong over and over again. I believe that climate solution can be complementary to a strong economy and can actually lead to a lot of economic opportunity for Burlington if we do it right. And so I think that that's the viewpoint that I would bring to the council. Thank you. I'll be brief. I agree. I think we need to shut down McNeil. If I'm elected to the city council is set about trying to devise the alternative for the hospital, for the city to get that energy so that we can turn it off. Probably the key part of that is making sure the electric department is on board. They've been really supportive of keeping McNeil on. And while I get that, we need the energy. There's alternate ways we can get it. We can get it through solar. We can get it through wind. We can get it by exploring ways to renovate, to change the way the hospital is laid out so that they don't need as much heat. These kind of solutions are the ones that I'm going to pursue so that we can shut down the plant as soon as we can. Thank you. Thank you. Do we have another hand raised online? All right. Well, great. Thank you to both our candidates. Thank you, everyone. Really appreciate it. And in the follow up, the meeting follow up will be sending out information about the upcoming forums, links to the upcoming forum. Would you like me to come by at some point at the end of this weekend? So the last topic on our agenda is NPA business. I'm going to shift us around a little bit because we're tight on time. One key item that we really need to take action on tonight, I'd like to take a vote. We need to identify a representative from Ward 6 or the Citywide Community Development Block Grant Advisory Committee. If you're not familiar with this, this is block grants that are issued to city projects, small community grassroots projects throughout Burlington. There's a representative from each ward that reviews the proposals and works with CEDO to identify who should get these funds. They're small funds, I think, they're $2,500. Pasca? Sorry. Don't worry. So it's federal money. It's about $700,000 in total. And basically, the advisory board would work together to rate applications from different organizations who applied for funding for different projects. And the idea is that they're going to target low income needs within the city. So if you... They're small. I think it depends on the project. We'll decide how much funding to allocate or whether to allocate funding. So before the end of the year, we solicited for volunteers for this position. Dale Azaria, who's on the steering committee volunteer, we had no other volunteers for the position. And so we need to... The steering committee would like to nominate Dale, but we'd like to get approval from a quorum of the attendees for the meeting. Dale's not here. Unfortunately, Dale is on vacation. Dale is not here tonight. Dale can be here. Long previously planned, but Dale is a long, long-serving member of the steering committee, I believe an attorney as well. And this kind of work is... It's volunteer. It does involve reviewing proposals and being really thoughtful about it. And from our perspective, Dale will certainly do that. And also, she was the only one willing to volunteer for the job. So we'll appreciate that. And with that in mind, maybe we can do a... We raise hands for folks who would agree with the nomination. Okay. The ayes have it. Okay. Great. Thank you. Also, we are calling for... We have a couple of openings on the steering committee. We previously announced that Nelson Martel stepped down a couple months ago. And Euter Reagan also just stepped down because they both had other commitments. So we are, again, soliciting four volunteers. We already have one volunteer. Romeo has volunteered to join the steering committee. If you don't need to commit now, but if you are interested, you want to talk to one of us, please let us know. We'd like to vote on the nominations at the next meeting. And we have new bylaws. We're not going to talk about these right now. We're also going to see... I know that that would not be a winning strategy. We have copies. We are going to talk about them and vote on them at the next meeting. So you can look forward to that. But in the meantime, we'll be distributing a copy, a link to the proposed bylaws. And we're going to be highlighting some of the changes. Basically, this is being driven to comply with a citywide commitment to operate all the NPAs in a welcoming, respectful, and non-discriminatory way. CEDO has given us sample bylaws to use that add important language on non-discrimination. And basically, our steering committee has reviewed the sample bylaws, and we propose to adopt them with just some minor changes. And we want to add a statement of purpose, which was part of our current bylaws. And we're going to delete a requirement that everyone attending the meeting signed in, because we don't do that currently. We think it would be difficult to enforce with people coming in and out of the meeting and people online. And we're also going to delete a requirement for detailed minutes. We will continue to take minutes, but because the meeting is reported, they will not always be detailed minutes. So take time to review these two o'clock in the morning if you're having trouble nodding off. And we'll also, we'll send out a link in the meeting follow-up for anybody who's not here today. Yes. This being consistently changed for all the other board NPAs? The FOSCA may want to speak to that, but the other wards were given the same sample bylaws, and some of the components are going to be consistent across the board. Yes. So this is driven by a city council resolution that was passed October 23rd. And so different entities of the city basically have been tasked with helping the NPAs update their policies, specifically about non-discrimination statements, inclusivity, conflict of interest, and having like a grievance or complaint process basically. And so these are kind of some sample bylaws that were put together, they're reviewed by the city attorney's office. And so all the NPAs currently have different bylaws and some of them are more extensive than others, we're having updated more recently. Basically the city attorney's office will look over whatever bylaw changes the NPAs want to create basically and ensure that they follow city policy. That was my next question because I'm not sure, but I think as hard and awful as minutes are, they may be acquired by law. We will have minutes. We will always say we will have minutes. This is going to be a transcript basically. Oh, well, a transcript should take place. Yeah. There will always be minutes. And the meeting is always recorded. I'm sorry. There will be minutes, but they're not going to be, they may not be cut. Well, if it doesn't zoom, it automatically generates that. That's a good point. It's on YouTube, you can probably get a transcript that way. Because they're a great art system, right? Right. Advice. So these are the ones where we have corrections or changes. No, they are not. They're not. That's the sample bylaws. So we'll send out the one with our... No, with our slight changes. I know one of the wards has their own set of bylaws that they've had for a long time, but they're keeping with that and they're adjusting what the city wants to theirs, as opposed to the other way around. Right, right. Sure. On the steering committee now, I'm Nancy Harkins. I'm Bill Spline. We have Anita Rapone online. Sorry, Anita. Yes, hi. And we have the Elisario, who's on vacation. And then the last thing that we also want your input for either you can email us or we're going to talk about this next time. Each NPA has $2,500 from the city that we can use for purposes of fostering community engagement, basically, and to really help fulfill the objectives for which the NPAs were formed. What we have done typically in the past is we've used that money for meals at refreshments, at needings. Last year, all of the NPAs got together and developed a little zine, which we have electronically. We have posters about promoting the NPAs. So there's different projects, but this year we wanted to ask the community for ideas on how we could spend that money. So think about that. We could do a project within the NPA. We could do an event to bring the community together. It's really to help the NPA make the community more engaged. I assume that out of that money, Channel 17 gets paid? No. It's kind of complicated. I think it's a formula which the Comcast saved. I'm an expert in this area, so I have to know the details here. Is that the answer? I'm sorry. Is that the answer? Just a thought. I know from one NPA where they do a community dinner and they cook together and stuff. I know from one NPA where they actually cook together and make a dinner to have access to a space to do that. And it just seems to be a way of food always gets people together and shared ears. Right. So we also want to find out what the other NPAs are doing besides that idea, just to get other ideas of what we could do. So yeah, something like that. We want something that's not always a meeting, not the same format that we always come together. Is this your new permanent meeting space? As long as they'll have us, yeah. Yes. How come you left the other one? They weren't able to accommodate us. The Greek Orthodox Church, we've been on the menu for a really long time and they're just working for an opportunity and not to be a spoil sport, but when redistricting text hold, I'm not sure what the date is. Champlain's not in Ward 6 anymore. Oh, Tom, next. The nickel that you have in it. There's no restriction on where it's going. No, I don't think so. I think Summit Street, Juniper is the crossover. Check it out. I mean, I'm on the wrong side of Main Street. And I'm not in Ward 6 anymore. When does that start? All right. Charlie, yes. Okay. Before we move on, excuse me, everyone. I'd just like to make a few comments about spending of the money. So we've got $2,500. And for instance, wards two and three, we do fund our monthly community dinner. We help to fund the Ramble, which is a ward wide citywide entertainment on one date this coming summer. We've helped to get money for planting flowers and trees and landscaping. We've given money for people who give away food. So like at Palmyroy Park on every Friday afternoon, someone gives away vegetables from the intervail. So we do use it for all kinds of different things, including this here. Now, the second reason I'm saying this is because your time is running out. So all your money's got to be spent by the last day of May because the fiscal year ends on the 1st of July. And you've got to get whoever gets the money, you have to get all their receipts in sometime before the 1st or 2nd or 3rd week of June, you see? So whoever gets the money, whoever applies for it, they've got to spend all their money. In the future, you get your money on basically month of July, July 1st, July something. So in the future, you might want to consider doing the same process, but starting the process like in October or September or something like that. So again, you've got a deadline and there's lots of things you can use the money for. So you can talk to CEDO and they'll help you decide whether you can do that or not. But you are coming up on it on deadline. So I'm not sure. I don't think you're paying for your space here. So you don't have to set aside like $100 a month to do that. So Ward 1 has to spend $95 a month for their meeting space. So their $2,500 doesn't go as far. All right. But okay, that's all I wanted to say unless somebody has a question. No, thank you. But that's good. Good to know what the other people are doing. Does the money that's allocated Ward 6 have to be spent in Ward 6? No. No. Okay. So technically it's just to help your NPA function. And one of the things that helps it to function is the people in your neighborhood are better fed and they're better entertained and they're more favorable towards like you could do a barbecue. Like on May 1st, you could do a community barbecue. And so the NPAs would pay for the food and the drink and maybe a banjo player or something like that. You see, and that would bring your community together. Or we could build a brick oven in South Park that could be used by the community. And we could do that by end of June. And the brick oven could be used to make pizzas when we have volunteers to make pizzas. Okay. You should talk to CEDA about the specifics. Okay. I'm not going to... Well, we'll collect these ideas and we will bet them with CEDA out and then we'll vote on the ideas. So who's voting on the ideas? The Ward 6 community members will vote on the ideas. Okay. What's the role of CEDA in approving the process today? Because it's federal money and so they have to decide. So technically, CEDA decides, but they've never really rejected anything that we've offered. So... That's a whole lot of room. So Ward 6... I cannot answer that question. What's this one? I'm not sure. No, I think that... But the rules are a lot. There is a map of the new Ward boundaries online. I can't give you the website, the URL right now, but it is there. It's closed. It's here. Yeah. Well, online in detail. And your address is also... Your own address. Look up your own address and we'll tell you more about your address. Okay. I did misspeak. I did this... I misspoke. So the money now comes out of the general budget of the city. It used to be federal money. So there is one thing you can't use it for. You can't hire me to do something for you. You can't hire me to be your staff person. You can't hire me to do various things. Okay. So the money isn't intended for individuals. So whenever you do... When someone requests money to do something specific and get paid to do that, you need to check with CEDO to make sure it's within their parameters. Yeah, it is city money. Okay. So, Fasca. Yeah, I just wanted to add quickly to what Charlie said. But basically, CEDO will just ensure that you're spending the money to further the mission of the NPA. It's pretty general. It's not like we're going to say, no, you can't do this if that's what you want to do. But yeah, it just has to basically further the missions of the NPA, whatever your missions are. All right. Great. Thank you, Fasca and Charlie for clarification. So... I have a quick question. Oops. Do we have a process for how we're going to enter all the ideas like you mentioned? I think we can propose ideas. Yeah. I mean, I would suggest you can email us or you can bring your ideas to the next meeting. We'll just have a list and we'll vet them with CEDO and we'll approve them. We'll vote on the one that we have. We'll do a Google form or something. Yeah, we'll... Yeah, okay. Oh, wait. Oh, there it is. Do you want to let me see what people need? Yeah, you want to drop them. If anybody has the survey, you want to just drop it on the end table by the door and we can pick them up for Fasca. Thanks, everybody, for your participation and discussion tonight. Thanks for moderating. We're adjourned. We have a... I know, yeah. I would like to just use...