 CEDO and the CCTV folks as always for giving access to our meetings. We really try to be accessible through this hybrid format that we started during COVID and will continue into the future. CEDO and so this is a Zoom webinar for those of you who are participating virtually. I think we all know how to do Zoom but for those who aren't familiar with the webinar format, if you want to speak you can use the raise hand function and then I'll recognize you or Andy will recognize you and then you can unmute your microphone and start your video. I'm going to explain shortly how we would ask you to introduce yourself although I've done a terrible job of that so I will do that shortly. Here's our agenda for tonight. We're going to start with these introductions then go straight into public forum get a school budget review and then we're going to go have a sort of open discussion of some of the March ballot items giving you a little bit of an explanation of what those are and you know hoping just to talk about what they what they are going to be. So for public forum and I would say just in general as we're talking tonight we ask you that you identify yourself your residency and your affiliation. So I'm Billy Clark. I'm a member of the Ward 5 NPA steering committee. I live in the Five Sisters neighborhood on Locust Terrace and I'm speaking solely on my own behalf right now or potentially on behalf of the steering committee. For public forum yeah we would ask that you consider the time limits and we will let you know if you're starting to go too well. So that's getting ahead to our town meeting today ballot item so I will toss it on over to public forum. Again if you want to participate online you can use the raise hand function and for those in the room just raise your hand and Andy will or one of the other folks in there will recognize you. Maybe if you could stop the screen share for until we get to the ballot that's great. So Ilona had her hand up a long time ago so you get to go first. Oh wow thank you. So Ilona Blanchard I live on South Champlain Street in Ward 5 and I actually had my hand up because I couldn't hear anything and I wasn't sure you were aware because I couldn't find a chat function. I apologize for not being there it sounds like you have wonderful food and just I've been in a lot of meetings over the past two weeks at night so I'm sorry but I look forward to joining you guys in the future since I started with these meetings during the COVID epic Zoom extravaganza. So I actually wanted to speak because Nancy reminded me I've been very remiss you appointed me to the CDBG board and I have not provided my report and so I wanted to do that. So for those of you that are not familiar with it CDBG is Community Development Block Grants and Burlington is an entitlement community that means that annually the Housing and Urban Development Department of the federal government gives money to Burlington each year and it's a regular allocation. Generally the program is oversubscribed and the advisory committee has been set up. It's actually a model I think in the country or as part of the head program for CDBG allocations and the advisory committee provides recommendations in terms of the funding allocation generally basically to pare down what may be granted to the asks and makes that recommendation to the mayor. So I just wanted to go through the three types of funding that the city received last year in 2022 the applications and hopefully do it in five minutes and complete essentially what happened last year. So my appointment was for two years and so it's generally for several meetings at the beginning of the year and so 2022 is complete and I am happy to serve to continue my appointment through 2023. I would note that I believe that it's very possible I will be voted out of Ward 5. I'm not sure how that happened but here we go. So we'll see what happens in March. I assume that I would be allowed to continue the appointment though or through the I believe it's generally the last allocation decision is taken in April at their April meeting. So the three categories were public service, COVID and development. Public service was the most oversubscribed so there was 115,000 and 150,000 worth of asks and so the committee was actually barely worked well together and I think came at the allocations from the same perspective. There was a very rigorous process to evaluate the applications and so with the exception of one all of them were allocated 100% and all of the applications I would say were extremely or for extremely good causes. So a new place received 28,247, ECHO received 15,000, CVOEO received 15,000 for volunteer tax assistance and ECHO was for an early learning program that's actually outside of their building so it goes out into neighborhoods, into neighborhood community spaces. Lund was for early childhood education program 27,000, resource youth build which was a really interesting program because it did education, weatherization for low income really hit a lot of the purposes of the community development block grants which are around addressing the causes and eradicating the roots of poverty and that was for 30,000 and then the development allocations went to Mercy Connections for a small business equity project which is essentially helping small businesses from lesser served community so BIPOC and women to become more to become better small business people and similarly CVOEO was a micro business development program so Mercy Connections was 65,000, CVOEO was for 57,000 and then CHT received 228,000 for the Veterans Service Center which is downtown and so that overall the allocation request was 350,000 I'm sorry the allocation available was 350,000 and the ask was 52,522,000 excuse me and the way that was resolved is that the Veterans Center is a multi-year project and so they were allocated less than they asked for but enough for the year and then the COVID requests were all funded 100% there was enough funding so it was 35,000 for expanding housing first services in Chittenden County and that's a pathways program and then 59,000 for steps to end domestic violence so I think if anyone has any questions I'm happy to answer them or if you have anything I assume it's okay to continue my appointment if I get voted out but there we are. Ilana thank you for serving on that committee and when are the applications due this year? I believe they're due in January I'm not sure exactly when they're due but I was looking at last year's applications and they were all signed in January but I can get that information to you. Great thanks anybody else for public forum here in the room? Hi my name is Lucia Campriolo I am a ward 5 resident I live down on the corner of Pine and Flyman just down the street a couple blocks away I am going to speak later on in the agenda but I did want to flag for folks that some of you might know that I work at an organization called Let's Grow Kids which is a nonprofit leading a campaign to solve Vermont's child care crisis and we are in the legislative session of our lives at Let's Grow Kids there is some really big legislation upcoming we're expecting a child care comprehensive child care bill to drop next week we're really excited to see what's in it I'm sure it won't have everything but it'll be great and there are a lot of folks in Montpelier working really hard on putting some some legislation together and identifying some funding sources to fund that legislation so if anyone is interested in ever learning more my name is again Lucia Campriolo I'm really easy to find at my organization it's just Lucia at Let'sGrowKids.org and even easier Let'sGrowKids.org all spelled out is a great place to look for more information but we have a ton of volunteer opportunities lots of ways that folks can advocate whether you're an individual an organization kind of from whatever walk of life we are really interested in hearing from you so I just wanted to name that and look forward to seeing you on the campaign trail Andy do you see a hand up online if there's no I see yeah mind you go with that okay great Lena if you want to introduce yourself or Lena hello Lena they them I live on maple and pine just savoring what made me my last couple of months in board five before I become a resident board three and I just wanted to speak briefly tonight in support of the ballot item for town meeting day for a resident control board of the police this is really common sense stuff you wouldn't let a medical professional without oversight operate on you you wouldn't let a lawyer who wasn't adherent to the standards of the bar you know litigate your case the police to require meaningful oversight and I think all of us who are here at the npa care about democracy and know that when people are involved in government and governance everyone is better off so just wanted to voice my enthusiastic support both for that and for prop zero two ways to make burlington more accessible and safe and wonderful for all of the people who live here thank you thank you Lena I actually have something I wanted to share as well Sam can you post that screen share I wanted to have a picture coming up on the screen share I wanted to just I meant to do this last month actually but I wanted to briefly honor the memory of this guy Bruce Seifer Bruce's Bruce died on November 29th and he was a neighbor and a friend and and he was a really significant person in the history of the recent relatively recent history of Burlington he started working for the city in the heady difficult days of the early 80s under Bernie Sanders when Bernie was a newly elected mayor and and took over ultimately took over the economic development as developed economic development director for CEDO and he was a progressive Bruce was and I mean that in a large p and small p way he was passionate about supporting local businesses artists artisans he with instrumental and helping establish and support among many other things the downtown city market the south end arts and business association art hop Vermont businesses for social responsibility and a bunch of other things that we sort of take for granted now but did not exist prior to to Bruce's Bruce's work along with other people his goal was to support the economic viability of Burlington while always keeping his eye on inclusion job opportunities equity and justice after he left city government Bruce continued working and writing the book that he co-authored called sustainable communities has been read and used as a resource in cities across the United States and Canada even as he struggled with multiple health challenges Bruce stayed in close touch with his family in a wide circle of friends many of some of them were here tonight you may have seen him in recent years walking around the five sisters with one friend or another trailing his oxygen tank and talking talking talking because that's what Bruce did best he is and will continue to be missed by many of us in ward five in Burlington and around the world thanks public forum anybody else I see Alana online with her hand up and Joan Joan has her hand up here okay Alana I'll pass it over to you or sorry yeah sorry I just I just wanted to answer your question so the applications for the CDBG grants were due today um so generally I think they're due in January and there is a notice that's posted on the city website thank you um thank you thank I really wanted to thank you Andy for those comments and just um reiterate that you know what an important person Bruce was um for the city of Burlington for the way our economic development happened here and to let you all know that Bruce was actually weighing in on various things um with his city councillors really right to the very end giving us you know sharing with us his input on things like the proposed development here in the south end and yeah he was he was always engaged and passionate and it's a it's a real loss I will miss his voice whether I agreed with it sometimes and not others but it was a really important voice in our community and left and left a big footprint here so thank you Andy thank you Jim anybody else for public forum Chris I'm Chris Haysley yeah okay we can Chris Haysley for more it's two and three NPA I'll be speaking on one of the ballot items a little bit later I just want to let you all know that our most recent NPA a week ago we passed two resolutions one calling on the city to designate the uh Chauvin Road Rotary as the Tony Reddington Memorial Roundabout and also passed a resolution in support of Big Heavy World the local nonprofits uh proposal uh collaborative proposal to uh read and state youth music and programming and memorial auditorium uh when the time comes so I just wanted to share that with you all I think some of you here know Tony and I know he was a tireless advocate for traffic safety and of course roundabouts I only know him a short time but I considered him a friend and mentor and I learned a lot from him in the short time and I hope that I can be more like him moving forward thank you we've been joking that that in addition to naming at the Tony Reddington Roundabout that any further roundabouts in Burlington should just be called Reddingtons give the roundabout part yeah there you go anybody else for public form online nope well let's move on then um I think we're going to school budget right lucha and jeff are here and um you have 20 minutes um hi everyone again I'm lucha campriela I'm your ward five school board commissioner and with me my colleague and friend jeff wick uh south district commissioner and vice chair of the board um who serves several terms now which is great so um we have 20 minutes I probably have five or 10 minutes worth of content but I think we're most eager in spending time answering your questions so I will get right to it I'm going to share three things and jeff will chime in and redirect if I misspeak I'm sure um three things I'm going to share the total budget and the tax impact of that total figure the guidance that the school board provides to the superintendent at the onset of the budget process and then a little bit of detail on the budget process itself um I'll wrap up with just a PSA on the website that you can find this content living on on the district's website and also just note that the final two pager is forthcoming so um otherwise it's just a lot of materials there so I'll start with the budget figure itself some of you may have seen some of the headlines on this topic um you all will be invited to support a figure of 104 million dollars on or 104 million 144,584 dollars on town meeting day for burlington school district's budget that budget figure carries a tax impact of four percent um so that's a property tax rate increase of 4.03 percent 2.75 of which is directly related to the bond that the city successfully passed in November so I'm just going to say those numbers again it's 104 million dollars is the budget the proposed budget the four percent tax increase is the impact you'll all experience 2.75 of which or two-thirds of which is directly a result of the high school bond so I want to talk a little bit about the guidance that the board provided to the district and I think that will help explain sort of where this number why this number is what it is so at the beginning of this the budget process which begins often in the fall we have the opportunity to provide some guidance to the superintendent which he then brings back and uses in developing the budget with his leadership team the guidance we provided this year includes five specific points all of which are tied to some um economic factors that are very present in the school district and in our state's education environment right now we firstly acknowledge that we want to recognize that our staffing levels have to be responsive responsive to enrollment changes another way of saying that is that we tie our teachers and the numbers of teachers and staff to the students in the building um that we wanted to limit budget growth because we are experiencing increases in wages which we're really excited about for the first time in a number of years we've passed three-year contracts um with significant wage increases above where they typically are and that's really important because our teachers and our staff are the most important people in the buildings who are indicators of quality so we're pleased we were able to do that um as well as significant healthcare increases to the tune of 12 percent so pretty significant funding increases which industries across the all industries are experiencing and certainly schools are experiencing across the country we also we're acknowledging the pending BTC uh BHS BTC costs as well as some other cost factors like our federal COVID relief funding ending um after this budget year and the next budget year so just want to kind of color in the cost environment that we're working in um we also wanted to of course build a budget that supported the strategic plan objectives of the school district which includes continuing to offer robust programmatic offerings and also be really thoughtful about the multi-year impact of any of these changes so that we're minimizing annual um disruptions so hopefully that provides a sense of sort of the board's role from the beginning of the conversation and the type of guidance that we provide the district um so what that means in implementation is that the district uses is in its second year using an equitable budgeting model which um is comprised of three primary components to the budget so if you think about the largest cost in the budget it's it's people and we talked about um tying the number of people uh supporting our students to the number of students Burlington school district has experienced a trend in declining enrollment and so while this trend has been ongoing since 2015 or so um we haven't made changes to those staffing levels in the last couple of years because we've been in a global pandemic and didn't want to add additional pressures into an environment that was really quite chaotic um this year we feel like we're in a place where we've really got to make those changes so we are um realigning our total staff and teachers uh to the number of students in our district which means that we are making some reductions uh reducing the FTE count by 10 adding a couple of FTEs so the net reduction is just under seven FTEs so seven FTEs across the district those are positions not human beings we are really optimistic that um the attrition will account for a lot of those changes and that folks whose jobs might not be available any longer will have a role within the district in another position potentially in another school but in another position um we're really hopeful about that and there's been a trend of attrition in the last handful of years that support that thinking um so yeah the majority of the budget is comprised on that enrollment data uh the next section of the budget is the non-personnel items which largely ties to the enrollment so you've got your ink and your books and your paper and the stuff you need to run a building or run a school um and then you've got what we refer to as our rise allocation which is an equity allocation that each school receives that allocation is based on different factors total number of students but weighted specifically based on the demographic characteristics of each school building so those um allocations range between $90,000 and I think the high school tops out at just over $400,000 so um they're a little bit lower in the elementary schools and then they increase because the student population increases but they really do kind of bring forward a weighted rate for students that funding it's about 2.1 million dollars of the budget and that funding is um allocated to each school and then principals have the opportunity to make decisions on how to use that funding in collaboration with parent advisory groups um so those are the major components of the budget I wonder Jeff what you might add to that before we open up for questions there's so much more we could say and also I don't want to just talk and you know want to make sure folks have time yeah great job what what high points did I miss you hit the high points I want to say one or two more things which is um you know the good news is I think we've got very strong financial management skills uh the school district I'm just wrapping up my sixth year as a school commissioner and we just wrapped up I believe there's been a modest I've been there I'm not making a demonstration and our CFO but uh I'm always very pleased when spending in my budget is there anything else you didn't say did you mention the three-year contracts I did but we're going to talk a little bit now we're very very happy about um I'm the board's chief negotiator with the you know the various unions we have and I've been doing this for a number of years now and each year it's been difficult to get more than a one-year contract given certain factors so we've been constantly bargaining but finally we have reached a three-year contracts with both the teachers and the para educators unions which will give us all a little little time to breathe and I think they were very fair contracts both directions you know clearly with inflation being what it was maybe still what it is uh although it seems to be tamping down a bit um that's that's a portion of the reason you're seeing some some higher wage increases we're not unique um we we're in line with our local neighbors school districts so we're doing our best I think in general to keep keep the tax impact each year somewhere in the well I mean I know the I know I want to bring it up but the reassessments just the whole different animal we won't bring that up but um generally speaking like in three to five you know percent budget increase so keeping overall cost to a sort of a step increase like that again so I don't think I have anything to add and we'd love to have your questions if you have any questions for our school commissioners I have a question I mean this was a this was very broad I have questions about like specific programs I guess I'm curious um does the school district fund the after school program or is that totally separate uh you mean is it part of our budget yeah that's a really good question I'm gonna I'm gonna speculate unless you know the answer that directly or indirectly it's part of our budget okay the truth is part of the 104 million um is funded by other sources for example the superintendent has a slide deck that he's been showing us and others for a couple of months now and that's available on board docs at the school board's website and um there's a particular slide that says of the 104 million of the budget uh 23 million I'm using round numbers rounding up to the nearest million 23 million is from other sources federal grants under funding so I'm not clear as to what extent we might get outside funding um from other sources for the after school program but I do know we run it we have a personnel who runs it okay I guess I actually both my questions are maybe more child care related um but tangential to the school district um because the after school program has been rocky this year um as you know Lucia um at least at Champlain where there's been days missed there's not a lot of staff I know there's kindergartners who just there wasn't a spot for them there's don't have after school care um and so just curious about if the school district has a plan for filling that in and then I'd also love to hear more about the preschool program that BSD runs and whether there's plans for expansion currently the the pre-k classrooms only have four days a week you know which isn't like really enough preschool for most people um and so I would love to know more about sort of like whether in the budget there's expansion there or if they're going to go away I don't know how much the preschool programs are like here to stay so yeah so I would say on the after school piece um and more broadly as far as staffing goes we're hosting a job there gosh what day is it it's the 19th so we might have had one earlier this week and we have one upcoming um but there are open positions throughout the district um and as you expressed definitely the after school staffing has been well we've been relying on a lot of college students and so when college students enjoy their breaks which are important breaks um it means that we're short staffed especially in the weeks back um but we do have intentions of continuing to recruit talent into the district and have a couple of upcoming upcoming job fairs to do that I think we also announced today and I didn't I haven't even had a chance to be there but um some information about retention bonuses and other efforts to support incoming students or in sorry incoming um teachers and um um so I I can look a little bit into that for sure um as far as preschool expansion goes I think what I would say with a little bit more of my left row kids had on but also the district well I first since I'm here to talk about at school board measure what I will say is that the district is extremely committed to school education and um I think it has been I mean the program is running in six schools right five schools right now six schools right now um and I think has been a successful program so far and there is every intention to continue that program um as far as expansion that's a great question I Jeff you might have a better sense of this but my sense is that um if we have the physical space available to expand that's something we can consider and that um I'm not sure that we have additional spaces in our schools um to do that but to your point on hours part of the let's group hits hat on part of the legislation that we're looking toward is to fulfill sort of funding so that um everyone zero to five needs care will have access to that care which would include a significant infusion of state investment which goes a long way toward creating more spaces whether in the schools or in community settings or home care settings um and so I think some of what the constraints are are around funding um in this moment and the desire is to provide uh the desire is for children to have a leave wherever they are regardless of the group um and yes it's hard to have four days that and you know earlier then who worked at other questions for lucha and jeff i just have one question about the monsanto uh let you know lawsuit and how that might be impacting current planning now it's impacting the current planning could you explain what that is well this is about uh you can't demolish the buildings at bhs because it's evidence in the lawsuit filed I guess by employees of the burlington school district um who've claimed that they've been impacted by the PCBs and um monsanto is saying that the buildings themselves are evidence that have to be used in a trial and I'm just wondering what that's doing to the school district's planning I know you're temporarily at the macy's building so yeah well I to my knowledge uh I think this is monsanto has asked us to delay the demolition of bhs at this point and that's sort of an open piece in the in the litigation but to my knowledge I don't think they've asked for more than sometime in march and then we had asked initially for you know right now basically to start so I think the it's it's in court right now as to where that'll land somewhere between right now and mid-march is my understanding I'm not not incredibly well versed in this but what that seems to tell me what I understand is we hope that it won't materially impact uh you know barring further surprises or delays that the existing motion on the part of monsanto won't materially impact uh our you know construction plans at least at least too badly so there's nothing that seems terribly off track where our goal as you know is to start the uh school year in August of uh you know late August of 2025 there's possibility that that will get delayed a little bit but we're doing all we can to to keep that on track and I would just add to that that we continue to approve pieces of the project that we can whether it's a contract or or a bid or whatever it may be like we are not not continuing that process while this lawsuit is happening so we're not losing time we have not kind of hit pause there's a lot of work in the background that is ongoing and underway and I think that's the key thing I mean you're right if we can't demolish that sets things back but um my belief in understanding is we're still substantially on track so at this time Joan you had a question uh Andy sorry I was just going to interject one thing on that is that there's a here there's a hearing on Monsanto's motion to preserve evidence on January 23rd in the federal court um on that issue so we should have some more knowledge after that hearing yeah thank you um I just really want to thank Jeff and Lucia for being willing to serve on the school board and hope that everybody appreciates the level of professionalism that they and others bring to the school board completely unpaid and I really think you are the unsung heroes of this community getting us through COVID getting us through needing a new school through having the school condemned and sticking sticking with us and sorting all of that out with a level of responsibility that is unbelievable for a volunteer board and we are so lucky to have you so thank you and I hope you continue to serve for years to come. Oh Joan thank you so much really nice words. Other questions for Lucia and Jeff? I wonder treating the school budget as one of our valid items um I think that one of the questions that people might ask after this meeting or watching it later is um how much are my taxes going to go up? So um you'll see that information when we publish the two-pager when we look at a house value to $370,000 the increase is $207 dollars I believe let me look at we can give it to you dollar terms percentage terms but Lucia did allude to the fact that the the best estimate right now based on the available information from the state is it's my understanding that as a town meeting day none of us ultimately knows yet what the tax impact is because there's one metric that the legislature I guess and the governor together have to kind of finally decide upon so it's very unsettling but based on everything we know right now and there's a letter that comes out from the state on December 1 I think they called it the December 1 letter that it's the governor's office giving guidance on this we estimate it's a 4% increase uh for those who are paying for those who don't get the pre-pay if you get a if you get a pre-pay you're paying based on income they call it then actually according to the estimate it's it's it's virtually steady 0.07 yep seven hundreds of one percent increase on certain level so you know again that's that's an estimate could change could change in our favor could change against us a bit but in the last six years I've been doing this it's been a pretty good proxy for where where things typically end up so that's what you can expect so maybe you can convert that to dollars by understanding what your tax bill is multiply that by 4% and that's your annual increase that we expect thank you other questions no I already had a question so oh okay I was just this reminded me of another like question I had before which was last year in the legislature there was a whole thing about like the people waiting and I was just wondering how that shook out yeah so um it shook out exactly as it shook out and we won't experience the new rate until this time next year so if it's time next year we want to understand how last year's legislative decisions are actually moving into our budget realities is there a sense that it was in Berlin's favor or yes there's a sense that it was in Berlin's favor absolutely and we're optimistic about that impact and I think it's really good to suggest that we will be invest a portion of that impact into our schools and you will look at a portion of that impact as a good student very helpful about that that would be we expect a meaningful impact in a year yeah I was just gonna say I recently had the opportunity you're gonna need a mic in front of you again I would say I recently had the opportunity to attend one of the VHS boys ice hockey games they happened to be playing the defending state champion in Milton and they came away with a win and I you know mentioned that because I know keeping a budget is very hard and typically you know when there are cuts made it's athletics and the arts to go and I just want to commend you guys for including that providing those opportunities I mean academics are important and that's why we sent our kids to school but being able to work together as part of a team is equally important you know as the parent of a kid who played ice hockey growing up you know they say that uncoachable kids are unemployable adults and that hard work will be talent when talent doesn't work hard and I think that those are some some app lessons and I'm glad that we have the opportunity for kids to not only play athletics but to also engage in the arts as well yeah you know the more opportunities and options that we can provide the kids particularly at an earlier age the more likely they're gonna find something that they can latch on to and be successful and that's that's so critical at those ages so thank you I certainly agree with you absolutely if there's nothing else I would like to just shout out the district's website which is the sdbt like Burlington school district Burmont.org and there are a whole bunch of drop downs you could also just search budget but if you look at the district overview there's a giant Q and in that Q is the word budget and if you click on that you'll see a whole bunch of collateral that you can review eventually I would actually just wait another day or two when the two pager is published so we don't have to sit through it all but it's a hugely helpful resource and lastly I would invite you all to support the budget on a time limit though and it's way to pass the more skeptical like uh oh thank you yeah I think Claire will was a little little worried about it too she was out in front of the Myers bagels the day like the weekend before and sort of grabbing anybody that she could find you anyway we're grateful all right immunity the values that public education thank you very much both of you and thanks for everybody's questions we're going to move on to other ballot items if you could either Billy or Sam if you could bring up that that little agenda slide so we could look at the order that we're hoping to know in we have another hour to talk about ballot items we kind of divided it up into six ten segments and you'll see the list when it when it comes up thinking that the last two items on our list were probably um probably doesn't don't need 10 minutes or may need 10 minutes total so the order that we came up with is to talk first about proposition zero then to go into all legal resident voting talk about ranked choice voting police oversight board question redistricting and then sort of combine the carbon pollution impact fee and the ward poll site location changes so we have lots to talk about but so let's start with with proposition zero we have for read menarsia here we have Joan counselor Joan Shannon here I think Ben Travers is going from one meeting to another and is hoping to show up soon doesn't think he can oh he doesn't think he can he's not going to come okay yeah well he had a meeting at 530 at 630 and then coming here at you know he's still in that meeting okay all right well okay great yeah he's listening he's double double uh double tasking all right um uh for read you want to start I did a little slide uh based on your website but um why don't you get a grab a mic so what what I with our 10 minutes that we have for each item what I'm thinking is that we'll um uh have a general discussion with people on wherever you are on it but try to limit your comments so that we can have lots of discussion on each item all right thanks Andy um my name is for read I live on lejmir street I know five sisters I've been in barlington uh for 25 years um and I've been volunteering for this project proposition zero for the last year and a half or so uh basically what we are proposing is that barlington city charter be brought up to be comparable with the municipal charter in all other vermont municipalities which grant voters the ability to put proposals on the ballot and to ask the city council to either adopt the proposal or if they fail to do that to put it out and let the voters decide um I do think that people have the right to participate in the decisions that impact our lives and vermont has a long tradition of town hall meeting where everyone with regular people can influence directly the outcome of collective decisions that are made by governmental institutions so prob zero basically will uh propose to allow advisory question which most people are already familiar with to be put on the ballot and it will also allow referendum which is basically uh to require reconsideration of something that the city council passed that's actually also already in the vermont constitution we're just making it more explicit here the new thing that we are proposing is to allow us the bind date to put binding initiative and that means if you have an idea and you talk to your neighbors and you get enough support you should be able to uh propose it on the ballot and for the whole electorate to decide whether or not that should become law the vermont constitution provides the minimum signature required to put items on the ballot and that's five percent of the eligible voters in the city I do support checks and balances in the government and hope that this will also encourage collaboration with with our neighbors barlington is known as a city that's like really cares about social justice and but also for out of the box thinking and as we face multiple crisis uh environmental the pandemic and uh economic crisis I do believe that our decision-making processes should be adapted and we need to be more inclusive in in our decision-making so I hope you will support proposition zero we don't know what question number it is yet on the ballot but I hope you will vote yes thank you um ferried can you say say how this is different than what's in place now so currently um only advisory questions are allowed so and that requires the approval of the city council we have seen some successful questions be put on the ballot such as the f35 but it wasn't a binding question so then there's no requirement for the city council or the mayor to to implement what the voters wish to be um other times we have had enough signatures to put advisory questions on the ballot but the city council decided not to put it on the ballot because uh our city charter allows them to do that um so this will be uh this is different in that now if you have the required amount of signatures basically you you'll get on the ballot like whatever ideas you think is good and enough with enough support then it will go to the electorate to be decided democratically and just one more question before I open it up um besides the towns that still have town meetings are there other cities in vermont that have adopted this kind of everybody except for barlington i mean there's like 11 cities in in the state right now i've gone through the charter documents of all those cities they have at least some form of initiative um some some towns requires a higher threshold um other towns actually allow even more direct demography uh mechanism like recalls for example um barlington is unique in that it doesn't allow uh binding initiative uh the language that we're taking actually we copied from minouskis which was approved by the legislature in 2015 um so because it's it's it's good we agree with it and also because we know it will pass the legislature because they already did that for minouski thank you other comments about proposition zero i just had a question um i'm not familiar with this at all so i'm i'm quite uninformed um but i'm having this memory of uh propositions referenda being done in california that had an impact that was not progressive in fact it was quite anti-democrat well i don't know if it's anti-democratic but quite discriminatory and i don't know if that would open up that possibility in burlington so i don't know enough about it how can i find more information about this um so we have a website proposition zero dot org uh the world there will be some information there um and also as far as like the california question that we get that a lot um and i would say well first of all the comparison is unfair i think like a city of 50 000 versus a state of power remaining millions that's different scale and people come to us and say you know like what's preventing some rich people to like you know get enough you know support to put questions on the ballot but we already have that i mean they you know we already can put put things through the city council on the ballot and have them pass in fact the mayor has done that with like the mall project i was like a ballot item that and and that he like spent pack money on so for us our concern is more like to provide a balance to that that kind of power um and i i i have faith in burlington i think it's a point there's not nothing stopping somebody from putting something that's really discriminatory but it can't but it can't violate the vermont constitution so it's not like minority rights are ever going to be uh voted on here uh because we still have to follow the vermont constitution and also i don't think burlington is the kind of town that will allow something like that to to pass and and we have we're confident that if somehow a bunch of fascists like try to put about that we will out organize them because that's not who burlington is i heard go ahead hi uh i have a couple brief questions can you all hear me yes okay good ferried can you uh just because i don't really know tell us what five percent means in terms of real numbers in burlington today it's uh 1800 something it's like almost 900 signatures um 1900 you mean almost 1900 signatures right so okay so for any uh ballot item for any um advisory or or actually binding initiative to go forward there has to be basically 2000 people who who sign that ballot yes right okay yeah so we submitted 2400 signatures uh because some of them are going to be invalid so we we we make sure we have room for an error yeah so i was wondering about that what the number looks like for binding initiatives thank you so the other question that i have is i know there's been some rhetoric some comment about how prop zero would undermine our present city council and governance structure so can you speak to that can you tell us how it will or won't undermine our representative structures um sure i mean uh so we're talking about direct democracy mechanism um and i think you know whether or not our what we have is a representative democracy is open for debate i don't think city council actually represents who burlington are in terms of their background um and we have a mayor who most people did not vote for so i don't know if it's representative or democratic but um so direct democracy is the foundation of all democracy i do i think you know even the representative elected directly we i think this will actually strengthen um representative democracy and um in that people people will be empowered to um to have decisions on on the major major decision they have to they should be empowered to to be to participate in making of the decisions that impact our lives um burlington is known as a very innovative city um in fact the nta was the first of its kind in the country same thing with the land trust and i think lately we have kind of lost our mojo in terms of grassroots decision making um and we intend to bring it back um where the government is going to be totally off the people and by the people and for the people thank you can i jump in on that person uh hi my my name is tyler uh i've been helping gathering gather signatures for for two of these charter changes as well um just to add on to that um getting 2000 signatures or around there is quite difficult um so you know in terms of you know how it might undermine the process it's not uh something that it's just easy for anyone to get something right on the ballot it takes a ton of time and organizing an effort um and yeah i think the other yeah so i've been spending like two years of my time and lots of neighbors to to work on getting one of these items on the ballot um and the other thing i would just add to that is to kind of flip the question and ask how has not having a process like this sort of undermined uh the kind of town hall style democracy that vermont has been built on and that burlington is sort of lacking um and its its current form by not having a way for citizens to directly propose um changes to to ordinance and that kind of thing yeah and all our volunteers are our people who live in burlington i do think there is a concern about like paid volunteers like okay they're not volunteers if they're paid like signature gatherers like we've seen in the other state but that we're kind of hoping the city council could draft something that will actually uh formalize like what the process looked like we're we're very open to work with the city clerk or and the city council to figure out like what that's the petition the collector should what requirements they should satisfy um i believe we new skis actually have this in the works as well so we could look at what they've done in terms of ensuring that it's not some outsider out of town interest that's influencing our election and we have one last comment on on proposition zero and then we'll move on any or anybody else jones i have a question that's here um i mean i i think the question that was asked is a is a good question and i do think that it is it's the same process as in california um for me it is right we have a different scale here and i don't know if that protect us protect us or not but we also have a different scale than other communities in in vermont which may make a valid reason for doing something differently here we do have um you know as example by the charter change that's being proposed we do have some citizen access to the ballot already but i wondered who um you had mentioned for read that you can't put something that's unconstitutional on the ballot and i think that there's a fair debate with what's being proposed with the police in terms of you know is this something that will hold up in court and who is the arbiter of whether or not a question is constitutional who prevents a um something that maybe you would think is unconstitutional that it's not something worthy of access to the ballot who would keep it off the ballot um so the language that we're proposing actually allows the city attorney to vet like the the legal aspect of this uh to uh you know to to avoid uh repetitions illegalities unclear uh statements or some you know imprecision and in the phrases that's being that that's used uh as long as the city attorney does not materially uh change the meaning of the proposal um and i also mentioned earlier that um like winewski actually are working this out they have a process that we should be looking at also in adopting off so that before you even go out to collect signatures that it's being discussed with um with lawyers either a city attorney or some other independent law expert so it's not being specified here and we're hoping that the city council could actually propose like something like that um to to formalize the process so like everybody who's gonna be so whatever is being proposed is gonna be okay it's gonna it's gonna be legally sound um and also the process itself is uh we can be sure that it's being done by berlingtonians uh for berlingtonians um i don't know if that answered your question but yeah i mean i think that there's still a concern if you can't change the nature of the question and the nature of the question is unconstitutional i don't see anybody that has the authority in this well the legislature will the legislature will still have to approve whatever it is that we come up with so they they will stop us or they will stop whatever whatever it is so but they can't as this is written yeah they cannot stop a question either i mean a question may not be unconstitutional but there may be many complex legal ramifications within a question and the city attorney does not have the authority to keep a question off of the ballot right or she thanks i think we have to move on uh i there there are many other things to to um uh talk about in this proposition zero but there are also many important other questions so i think we have to move on thank you everyone thank you for read thanks and um and um i i want to move on to all legal resident voting uh we have a slide for that there we go um uh this um jone do you want to prevent it or or should we just um do a general presentation and open it up um look i wasn't really prepared to present it and it looks like you have prepared a lovely presentation okay but i'll say that i think this was unanimously supported at the city council okay yeah it has gotten a lot of support from the from the city signs and website and um this is a a proposal that um says that all people 18 years of age or older on the day of the election who are legally in the united states live in burlington and intend to make this their home would become eligible to register to vote um which is not the case now uh so examples of uh legal residents include green card holders residents with eligible work permits um dreamers deferred action for childhood arrivals um and legal residents would be able to vote in all the local elections so mayor city council school board uh ward city uh ward election officials and um any ballot items pertaining to the city of burlington and this came up in the words 23 um npa last week uh that i didn't know that legal residents because they'll be able to vote also could run for office so a league uh a legal resident who wasn't a citizen could run for any city office as well if this is passed comments questions i think the um one of the concerns that i've heard is you know people have said well you know somebody could just move here and the next day vote here which actually is true and it's true for people who move here from texas as well and somebody who moves here from montreal may actually um be more familiar and well versed with uh city of burlington politics and issues and thought processes then somebody who moves here from texas so um regardless of of where you come from um you do have the right to vote on the day that you arrive uh if you meet the qualifications for intending to setting up permanent residency here which chris just gave me a bit of a lesson on the other day um and this is only for um local office you would not this does not give anybody who's not a citizen the right to vote for state or federal offices and ballot ballot issues as well comments questions about all legal resident voting all right billy yep i'll go quickly and then i'll pass it over to margaret online um i just wanted to flag that uh this similar provisions have passed in other cities in vermont in montpelier and in winewski both faced lawsuits backed by gop forces national republican party forces uh both those lawsuits were dismissed at trial court level there is an appeal before the vermont spring court right now on the constitutionality of these under vermont law i'm not going to prognosticate but things look pretty good but i did just want to flag if people are concerned about the legality of that there are two decisions one very thoughtful well written decision by judge mellow that addressed why this is that non-citizens are allowed to participate in municipal elections so uh margaret i can pass it over to you if there's no one uh in thank you um i'm curious it's a few years ago now it was a campaign for non-citizen voting that did not pass and i can't remember why it didn't it's my remembrance that the mayor at the time did not that mr. weinberger did not support it uh i'm curious if anybody remembers why it didn't pass sorry um i don't i don't think it faded to the ballot did it well it was in the 2015 it was on the ballot oh yeah yeah didn't have the most 55 45 um 2015 it seems it seems uh i feel encouraged that um there's so much support seems to be so much support for it now i have input by by text from a constituent who who wanted to to raise the issue that it will require two voter checklists because because when you're voting on um i don't think you could you can't go for state rep on this i don't think so where you have a ballot that would have um although those things are usually on our november ballot we do sometimes have local questions on the november ballot such as bond issues and things like that so on that november ballot you would have to have two checklists because some and you would have to have separate the ballots it's actually kind of complicated because when you go to bd i don't know how many different ballots they already have because this there's so many different the wards don't align with the state rep districts so that is definitely going to be a complicating factor then go ahead thanks andy so um ben traver city councilor from ward five i also serve on the charter change committee and so we were considering this matter before the committee uh a number of the questions that have been raised came up including the one that was just raised by jone which was the administration in separate checklists and we actually brought in uh the mayor of wanouski before the uh charter change committee to get their understanding as to uh sort of what the learning curve has been with respect to the administration of this and we're comforted to hear that it's been a relatively easy learning curve there yes we will have to come up with a separate ballot that only has local questions yes there will have to be a separate voter checklist or at least a way of designating um non-citizen voters on the on the checklist but we're comforted with the process in wanouski as well as in talking to the election officials here in burlington before the committee that they would be fully capable of doing that um i think to margaret's question from our perspective uh this is a question that went on the ballot seven years ago it failed before the voters i think that then this was this was untested um there were a lot of questions as to whether or not uh even if it passed it would gain support uh before the legislature and in fact braddleboro did pass a non-citizen voting resolution that was vetoed by the governor uh and not stood up uh in the face of that veto so i think there were a lot of question marks as to whether or not it was something that could happen uh but as billy mentioned and wanouski montpelier have done this now we have that behind us um i also think that 2023 as compared to 2015 is is very different the minds of folks with respect to the importance of participating in democracy and elections um so i think the dynamics are much different we'll be fully supporting this just the last thing that i'll mention andy is that um there is an excellent website that's on the city's website that's burlington vt.gov slash all legal resident voting that was put together by cito and jillian neton in that in that office in particular um information on on all resident voting has been translated into uh six different languages on that website and it really provides a lot of uh answers to folks questions so we'd encourage people to check out that website if they have any additional questions on this matter then a quick question then when you looked at wanouski don't don't they elect do they have wards or districts or do they just have at large um counselors i couldn't find my mute button there um i believe they they have all i believe it's at large that that is an added complication um i think for for us because having so many legislative districts here and having so many overlaying wards um that's a real difference between us and a city that elects their local because this is specific to the local elections so if your local elections are large it's a lot less complicated than having eight wards and within that many legislative districts within each ward lushan does anyone know how many legal residents are here who are unable to vote who is not able to participate right now sam it's it's around five point five percent i believe so it's like around 2000 okay normally online heard question oh sorry uh the question is how many people are impacted by this currently today so how many people are excluded from the helping to um help city council around five point five percent so a lot of people would get affected by that sorry just online i should mention that there seems to be some problem with the audio quality with that mic i don't know if other people online had issues with that too ah that mic itself yes it's terrible yeah that mic has been having issues and that that was one of the worst moments of it but i mean the whole school budget presentation was no no no we got most of it there it just got a little bit worse now i i had my hand up while i'm already talking i'll just say very quickly that um the yes it failed in 2015 the this came back before the city council in 2020 where it was then referred to committee so if the city council did not put it on the ballot in 2020 it was referred to committee and now it's come back up so that's that's the history of of previous efforts in berkeley on this all right thank you i think we have to move on to rank choice voting thank you everybody for your comments about about this issue um rank choice voting is also a thorny issue that has had lots of pros and cons to it um though i do remember that um so we do have rank choice voting for city council at this point um and it just was used for the first time i believe in the east district or could have been used in the east district it was it was yeah because there were three candidates in the east district so it was by rank choice voting right so it didn't come into the um in terms of from the voters perspective it was used from the elimination perspective it there was no elimination process because there was a winner in the first round um but rank do you want me to sure go ahead on through it um so we uh we put a question on the ballot i'm not sure what i think 2020 we put the question on the ballot um should we have rank choice voting for city council races and uh that was approved by the voters it went to the legislature there was a pandemic they didn't get to it in 2021 they approved us for rank choice voting and so the first um use of it was in the ward one special election where there were three candidates um rank choice voting doesn't come into play unless a candidate gets less than 50 of the vote um if a candidate gets less of than 50 of the vote it goes into a runoff round so you are able to pick your second choice in advance on the ballot you don't have to come back and vote again in that runoff election you can you can um by making a second choice your second choice only comes into play if your first choice has been eliminated your vote will count for your first choice candidate for as long as your first choice candidate is in the the top running and hasn't been eliminated um so uh we will see our ballots will look a little bit different this march um this this question that's on the ballot this time is adding the mayor's race to that which we have had in the past um I have always supported rank choice voting um I also supported putting it on the ballot because I don't think people should be stuck with a voting system that they don't have confidence in even if I think it's a better voting system so uh this is something that is elemental to democracy um it also added the school board to this which is something that I didn't agree with because there is some concern that when you have too many choices to rank that you get voter fatigue that at a certain point you're just like tired of ranking choices so I wasn't ready to go that far um in this round we're just trying it on on the city council now we're going to add the mayor I would have rather kept the um school commissioners out of it we also didn't get input from the school commissioners on how they felt about that but all in all um I've been a long supporter of rank choice voting Chris so I just want to speak a little bit about this I think it's good that we're moving the stretch and I want to get a little academic here for a moment and delve into the weeds with respect to the methodology here that has described on the screen and also here by councillor shan and whereby and if say for example a three candidate race the lowest candidate third place candidate would be eliminated and those uh votes would be redistributed to the other two to determine the winter there is actually another methodology called the condor say method it is uh I would liken it to what like a round robin hockey tournament if you would where it's whoever wins the most head-to-head uh competitions here and it's interesting because in the last time that this city had chosen a um mayor under this uh proposal the hair what's called the hair method I think it was a race between a democrat and progressive in the republican the republican came in third place so the republicans the votes people voted for the republican in the first candidate their votes were distributed to the other two candidates and ultimately was the progressive candidate who came out on top after those votes had been distributed now under the condor say method what they would have done is they would have said okay who won the most head-to-head contest you'd look how did the democrat perform against the progressive how did the democrat perform against the republican how did the you know it rank it out each way um and work through all the different scenarios and under that methodology it turned out that the democrat on the first round of balloting had more first place votes than the progressive and had more first place choice than the uh republican so the methodology comes into play um this is the method the city has chosen uh as well I believe this the state is currently looking at at um how they would potentially implement this at the statewide level um this is not my area of expertise uh but it is an area of expertise of a good friend of mine Robert Bristow Johnson um who you may know from the redistricting conversation uh Robert recently had a paper published on this um so if you have questions he can be reached at rbj at audio imagination.com I'm sure he would be happy to engage with you on the discussion but just wanted to kind of put it out there that there are a couple of different ways to approach ranked choice voting um and this is the one that we've chosen for here in Brompton. Other comments? Yeah question just wondering uh this is what we had before and then it was repealed um and then when it was reintroduced it was just for city councilor what was the reason like the mayor wasn't included in that the position for mayor is like it was included in the uh in the ones we already approved. The mayor was not included in what we voted on in 2020. Right this is the particular reason because before that it was all because mayor and city council before it was repealed mayor and city council were under the system right? No it was only the mayor. It was only the mayor previously yeah. So it's not the reason why like the mayor was not included in like the first round that we voted uh earlier? Yeah it was agreed to test it on city council and then there was kind of a long delay in getting that test and I actually brought forward um so that we wouldn't forego another mayor's race without it. I actually came forward and said I'd like to bring ranked choice voting back for the mayor's position. Thank you. Other comments? Questions? It would be really helpful to have this kind of diagram so that you had because it's very difficult to understand honestly that there is on um at where um where I grabbed this off of on the city's website there's a there's kind of a acute little um uh uh role play of of uh of ranked choice voting with strawberry chocolate and vanilla so if you go to that I'm not sure what where it is on the city website but if you just look look for ranked choice voting you'll find it and they give you sort of like a um run run through a scenario of uh of how it works. Thank you. I just looked up um I hate to correct you Chris but um just for the record uh it was Andy Montrell who came in third place in that race and it was Kurt Wright who had the number one who was the number one vote-getter in that race. Then Bob kissed the Republican. Republican was first, progressive was second, the Democrat was third. I would uh thank you for the correction. I would refer you to Mr. Bristow-Johnson's academic paper on that. This is this is what I'm looking at just so you can see. I try I trust you. My point is but your point is the larger point was is that there is more than one method in this particular case had the condorsate method been used it would have been a different outcome. So I do apologize that I've got my candidates and parties mixed up but I think the the underlying comment that there's more of the one way to approach it uh still stand. Other comments. Thank you for the correction. Because it would have meant that the third place candidate would have won under that method and that's the I think that that's an important point. There are many different voting methods that could be considered other than the one we have other than rank choice voting and the condor say is I don't know if that's implemented anywhere. Well one of the things I noticed though in the difference between rank choice voting for mayor for instance and uh and the current system is that um under rank choice voting ultimately you would need to have 50% and now you can become mayor with 40% plus one right. Is that correct? And that's been the case with city councillors as well. Sorry. I really did. One more comment or question about rank choice voting. Oh sorry. Is there any research about rank choice voting increasing participation generally either by candidates or voters themselves? Um I am not sure about that I can't remember that that's information I think I had at one point and I can't remember now. When we reviewed this in the Charter Change Committee we did look at things like that but that was several Charter Change Committees ago when I was on it. The concern that I saw was as you go down the ballot people stopped filling out the ballot and so there was less participation as you went down the ballot in some instances I'm not saying that this is necessarily valid but they were seeing this in some cases where it had applied where as you go down the ballot people were less inclined to complete their ballot when they had too many choices. I think that Mr. Bristow Johnson maybe speaking to this very item at the upcoming council meeting so if you've got the time I encourage you to tune in to listen. It's much more well versed than I am. And is the method still up for debate? Does this decide the method or is it? It is rank choice voting that is on the ballot so we're not going to be debating condor say or although I think that Mr. Bristow Johnson's point is that if we don't adopt this we're not necessarily stuck with the existing system there are other options for us and for example we could simply have the first pass a post system that we have now and create a 50 threshold instead of a 40 threshold that we have now. For president you don't even have to get to 40%. You can elect somebody for president with 34% of the vote. It's just strictly plurality and so as you have more participant you have more candidates you can see how you would get lower and lower percentages potentially reaching a plurality. To your question I believe as council Shannon said this is a methodology that the city has adoption I believe it's still being debated if and how it would be implemented at the state level. All right thank you everyone on rank choice voting there's so many things to talk about but let's go on to the police oversight board proposition and Tyler you're here to talk about it you want to give us a run through? Yeah absolutely. Well hi everyone yeah my name is Tyler Pastorek I'm a resident of Ward 8. I work in conservation and land management in town. I've been working with my neighbors for over two years to bring sensible police oversight to our community. So yeah public safety is a big topic in our community right now and rightfully so we deserve a public safety system that keeps everyone safe and a big part of effective and just systems is accountability and oversight. In 2020 black members of our community led a movement that brought in to focus the fact that our city charter gives the police chief unchecked authority over disciplinary decisions in the police department. This movement focused on some pretty disturbing uses of force with public body cam footage where members of our community sustained life altering injuries or death. Because of the charter the best the city could do at the time was pay one of the officers $300,000 to resign. The mayor himself acknowledged that the charter is a real problem. In 2021 he said that the current charter is problematic and there is urgency to amend it. He further stated that such monopoly of important authority is an aberration in our democratic system and we are likely to face continued disputes over future disciplinary actions until this issue is addressed and he's right. At the time he promised to address these issues with our charter since then racial disparity disparities in policing in our town have persisted but here we are two years later and even the mayor's latest public safety plan has no mention of addressing the fundamental issue with our charter. So this charter change would establish a board of community leaders that in cases of police misconduct would have the authority to initiate investigations and make disciplinary decisions. The board is built on transparency they must have just cause for the decisions they make and they're subject to appeals. It does not remove the chief from disciplinary decisions it just allows community representatives to oversee and step in if they deem the department's process insufficient. We've talked to thousands of our neighbors and have found overwhelming support for this proposal from individuals and local and statewide organizations alike like the ACLU, Vermont and the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement. We as a community put this on the ballot together and we have a rare opportunity to decide for ourselves to make our current policing system incrementally better for all people. So I hope you all join me in voting yes for community oversight and sending a clear message to our elected officials that we deserve public safety systems that will keep everyone safe. Yeah, bring it up for discussion. Tyler can you explain under this proposal how the board would be constituted? Yes, like selection. Who would be on the board who would create the who would appoint those members or elect those members? Yeah so it'd be seven to nine people. The selection process basically so this is kind of part of that paragraph. Annually the city council with mayor presiding will choose a set of seven community-based organizations and then each organization would put a representative to an appointment committee and so then that appointment committee is subject to open meeting law and that kind of thing and then the appointment committee so it would be representatives from those seven community-based organizations plus the REIB director, one city councillor and yeah and then that appointment committee would directly appoint people to the board. Joan? Yeah I want to point out that there's more criteria to that than and I appreciate that Tyler was just trying to summarize but I think that this is important because I kind of have a question about like who are these organizations that are envisioned because you have to check an awful lot of boxes in order to be selected as one of the organizations. It's not limited to nonprofits, it could include BTB cop watch or other organizations that are not necessarily formally or legally organized and it says the seven community-based organizations have an interest in civil rights, immigrant rights, disability rights, mental health, racial equity and social justice and that also have an interest in the safety of the city and criminal justice reform. Three organizations to the extent possible should be Black led or majority Black membership so I'm wondering who are the organizations in our community today? Seven different organizations that fit this criteria, who might they be? Sure yeah and I just want to clarify I mean that it's a it's a pretty broad net to be casting in terms of civil rights, immigrant rights, disability rights, mental health, racial equity, social justice, interest in the safety of the city and criminal justice reform, community-based organizations so yeah I mean I don't feel like it would be representative for me to pick out you know what comes to mind for that but I think that's a pretty broad net of organizations within our community. Well all of them all of them have to have an interest in in safety of the city and criminal justice reform and having an interest in criminal justice reform is that alone is a pretty limiting factor in the organizations that could be chosen. This is not a democratically selected board and it's also not selected by democratically elected people. It's it's quite removed from that. Can I ask a question? Can I just clarify that most like boards within the city have or appointed like that you know the police commission is appointed and so yeah I think actually the the selection process here where you're having city council and the mayor choose community-based organizations who then appoint you know you could argue is is more democratic than a lot of the boards that that we have now. I think it's a step removed from the democratically elect yes right now you're democratically elected representatives appoint our commissioners who are who do not for the most part have binding authority. The binding we used to have a commission form of government we took the power away from the commissions because they were not democratically elected and we went with the strong mayor strong council form of government that we have today keeping the commissions in place but primarily on an advisory role with some exceptions such as like our development review board would be an exception to that. I also have a question which is this before okay sorry can we see if anybody else wants to make a comment yeah okay Terry. Thanks for bringing this question up by the way my my thoughts on this I was concerned to see that no one with law enforcement experience would be considered as a candidate as I understood the ballot and I have a lot of concern about that because I just think that it's a way of casting law enforcement and you know in a very negative view by saying oh we can't have anybody like that on this this body because they do bring a level of training and experience and a point of view that I think is important. The other thing that I think is that it might my point of view is that it would be easier and maybe as effective to have the mayor being an oversight of the of the police chief having authority to make decisions you know overruling the police chief if necessary this seems like a very large and cumbersome process to do it and the mayor is an elected person who could be held accountable for not you know having a police force that was all of the things that we want which is to respect civil rights human rights and you know really be in favor of social justice so I guess that's where I'm coming from is something more practical and something that could be very responsive to the voters. Before we go back here can we have Margaret's comment and then come back to Tyler and Joan. Margaret. Thank you. Couple things one is I could name seven organizations more interested in criminal justice issues and community based in a moment. There are many in the city so I don't think we would have a problem finding organizations to meet criteria I think that's just not really so. I think it's important to remember that we have a situation and I'm going to go ahead and say this we have a situation in our city right now where many of our citizens don't trust our police force and our police force has done things like told people that they're not funded which is untrue and not come out to very very frightening situations. I have a good I have good friends and family who believe as a result of the treatment that they receive that they have to figure out a plan to protect themselves and they all now own guns. I think we have a very difficult situation in our city. I think we're making huge mistakes in not acknowledging that whether we're the mayor or the city council or whoever I think we should get honest about the fact that we paid somebody out $300,000 was that what it was to go away because he knocked somebody out on camera downtown in an unreal really unsolicited way. So I think we have a big problem in Burlington. I often wonder if we shouldn't have like a you know who is it that comes in the Department of Justice and does a study. I don't think it's a small problem and I don't and I other cities have struggled with this problem but I think we're kidding ourselves if we think that's not true. This proposal I think just like in some ways the Prop zero proposal is a proposal that will will require smart well educated people to sit down and really consider how to make it happen in a way that's safe and representative and democratic. It's certainly a very democratic process being proposed in that our city councilors and our mayor who we elect will be involved in the appointment of the board. I'm not sure how that gets to be not democratic. So I just have a lot of problems with the polemics around this conversation and I think we have to start by acknowledging that we don't have a small problem. We have a big problem. In fact my friend who said that is a hardworking working class person who's lived in Burlington and Vermont all her life with her all her life Vermont family and that's how the police treated them. So I just think we need to pay attention when we have dispatchers telling somebody that sees a car running the wrong way on the bike path that no police can come because they're unfunded. We have a problem that's a problem. So I'm done. It's not really a question. Thank you. Andy can I ask a kind of process question. I think that you've given an opportunity for somebody to kind of pitch the pros of this and I would like to have an opportunity to kind of go through it and raise some some issues with. Okay within our time frame. Go ahead. Thank you. So this creates a new department in the city as well as a paid board of seemingly nine members I think seven appointed by the organizations plus the REIB director who would be paid otherwise and a city counselor all of whom would be paid for their time. The department has an investigative office and it would require legal expertise. I have not heard what the expectation for the cost of this new department in the city is and the new department in the city unlike any other department in the city doesn't seem by what I am reading here to have any oversight from either the city council or the mayor. Also you raised an excellent point about not having anybody who's been in law enforcement involved but it actually says no member shall have ever been employed by a law enforcement agency. That would include social workers employed by a law enforcement agency. The state's attorneys or attorney general's office would be considered law enforcement agencies. If you worked in administration of a law enforcement agency if you were employed mopping the floors it would include employment in a law enforcement agency. Those are the words in this ordinance. Also while there is a right to appeal by the employee who is being disciplined that right to appeal is only to the superior court. This would take away their legally bargained rights for grievance and arbitration which is a general thing that most I think all unions have. It takes away that right. As far as there being many boards my question was who are they. I think we should be talking about who would be eligible to do this. This is just to give you an idea when we're talking about Proposition Zero and putting things on the ballot that would be binding. I have spent many years on serving on our ordinance committee and our charter change committee and going through word by word things like this because I don't know if this is like seven or eight pages. What you will see on the ballot is a short paragraph. I think that if we are asking the public to vote on things like this the public should be expected to go through them with the fine tooth comb that I and my colleagues and city staff go through this with because there is a lot in here. I don't think that it meets the standards for fair employment practices. I think that there are concerns that if discipline were meted out by this group it wouldn't be held up in court because we heard that from our city attorney. The chief has the right to discipline even under this. The chief still has a right to take somebody off the streets who he may deem to be unsafe and while we may all have a vision of a very liberal board we cannot be assured that in the future. That board has the right to put that officer back on the street that this police chief took off the off the street because they have the right to change the discipline that is meted out by the police chief. There's a lot to be flushed out here and it's not all in that you don't know that when you read the title of this ordinance. You know I have a yeah yeah I appreciate the opportunity. I guess to address a couple quick things. One in terms of the the payment and funding on the board it it states that payment is just by the compensated further time by the livable wage standard and so this is just at the board takes up cases at their discretion and so it would be you know and I just read an article today from the statewide like an oversight committee and they said they don't often take up cases and it's not a lot of the time they're spending on it. So this is the compensation is mostly to ensure that the time that they do spend on cases they're getting compensated for but it's not expected to be a large expense to address the concerns about not anyone from current or former law enforcement. Yeah I appreciate those concerns and one of the big functions of the board is that it would help to build community trust where it is lacking particularly among folks that have been historically marginalized by the police system. If the board could be made of current or former police officers it would likely significantly undermine that trust. Imagine if some of the officers folks were protesting about could make it onto the board. Furthermore the the board is meant to give the rest of the community a real seat at the table. Current and former officers already have mechanisms for providing input via the the police union or the the current department and I think that part of the concern with this question is that members of the board wouldn't have complete enough understanding to do their job. For one they're going to be picking up investigations that started with the department and have to work closely with the chief and officers to understand the case and also listed under powers and duties is that they must attend and complete sufficient training to perform their duties so they're not going into this blind. And then yeah just a final thing and I don't want to send the wrong message here but if it passes a city vote still goes to the state legislature where they are able to basically make whatever changes they decide at the state level with this proposal. And so I think that a really important bottom line here is that the mayor stated two years ago that this is a serious problem and nothing has happened on it and this is our opportunity to send a clear message to city and state officials that oversight is a critical issue that we need to address now and yeah this is a really rare opportunity to do that and I don't have faith that that will happen if we don't take action. So it's very clear that there's much more to say about it. Okay Charlie but before we go into it before we and we do have to stop because we're going to talk about redistricting as well but where can can people go for more information? Yeah thank you people for policeaccountability.com or if you google Burlington police accountability it's like the first result so. And Joan where can people go for for instance online for the argument that you've been developing? I'm sorry this is not something that's come through the city council so there is no record of an argument specifically against this or for it in terms of the city council because it hasn't been vetted through the city council. So I think that you actually have to read it and you have to read all of it and you have to read what the existing policy is and know that in terms of training I have probably been through over a hundred hours of learning about the processes, directives and training of our police department and I would not be qualified to meet out discipline in this way. It's it's extraordinarily complex so I don't know if there's somebody will organize an effort to oppose this but I I have not. I don't have a website. I'm happy to talk to anybody who wants to talk about this just as it's also on the city it's also on board docs because we had a public hearing on Tuesday about it we're also having a public hearing on it the 23rd and so in that process this is mourned on the in the city city council agenda. Great thank you thank you both and thank you all and Charlie has the last word. Okay so about 15 or 17 years ago I applied to become a member of the police commission and at that time I testified to the city council that the greatest problem that the police commission had is that it didn't have anybody on the police commission who knew anything about the police department or police services or police culture. Okay and now we have a new proposal that says we're not even going to allow these people on the board and so you so my point at that time 15 17 years ago was the fact that the commission was completely dependent on whatever the police department told them during commission meetings and they had no one on the board who could ask intelligent questions or whatever and so that was in my opinion the greatest failure the greatest need for the police commission was to actually have someone on the commission who understood the police department and that culture and so I'll just leave it at that. Right I'm afraid we're going to have to stop we are. I do want to clarify in a point and point in this one Andy and that is that this doesn't just preclude police officers from serving. I really do agree. It's been employed by a law enforcement agency in any capacity is precluded from serving. Thank you gentlemen. I think we're going to go on to redistricting otherwise we're not going to have any time at all. Yeah I think we're out of three minutes so I'd like a little page from the city council playbook and move to suspend the rules for the purposes of continuing the ballot discussion but I think there's a few more after redistricting as well so in fact we get a second from so many bits here. Well I don't even know if I can take it. So yeah so I don't know if somebody who lives here wants to do that but if you need to do that put your by-law in state but a little longer I think that we can we can unilaterally extend the discussion so I think that we can unilaterally also move the last two ballot items to February but let's talk about redistricting. Okay let's start with redistricting. So you know one of the things that I want to mention about redistricting is a lot of different people who waited on this. I did a lot of work on it and one of the people who did a lot of work on this was in here in the room and that's Nancy Stetson who it besides her role on the FDA is the city's mapping specialist that I think wrote what drew like a couple dozen maps in conjunction with Magintech to really move this process forward and to move that mic instrumental and helping to facilitate some of the dialogues here so I think that that effort I wanted to recognize that so but as far as redistricting goes we've heard a lot about process tonight from the gentleman on my right the gentleman on my left. I learned to read and also to boost tonight so if I can get this right you know and and they talked a lot about process and I'm gonna I'm gonna jump on that train for business and while we can certainly talk about which map is better than this one or that one for me it's really not about the maps per se and where we draw the lines it's really about the the public process surrounding redistricting and I've been active in this dating back to probably June or late summer of 2021 you know and it kind of came out of what happened you know 10 years prior in 2014 that's just something I've had an interest in and the city had at the time had the Public Works Commission with last night the uh they had committed an ad hoc committee on redistricting that you know convened a number of public meetings and everything and there was a a lot an opportunity for people to weigh in on really what they valued and when it comes to redistricting there's kind of two parts to it there's the statutory criteria um rich you know really what's driving it is the whole concept of one person one vote a desire to create you know equal popular awards of political districts of equal population in a manner that is compact and contiguous and then over late over the top the statutory requirements are what I would return you know kind of community values things like maintaining neighborhoods uh using natural boundaries and things of that nature uh trying to keep like things together um and out of the public process kind of we had a there was a final report and the final report there's kind of three things that came out of three emerging things for which there was a large amount of consensus and that was to address uh ward eight uh as it is currently configured um there was we heard a number of testimony about the low turnout participation things of that nature um the second theme was to eliminate the district model which we currently have and then the third theme was along the lines of the community values which was to kind of preserve neighborhoods um and keep them together as best as possible uh there was also some comments about uh re-establishing the downtown ward uh I was one of the people that spoke in favor of that and also about uh unifying the king maple neighborhood uh here and for those of you are familiar king maple neighborhood is currently split between uh ward three uh and ward five the dividing line is currently king street the king maple neighborhood is uh for my largest community of color has a number of new Americans um there and you know really a desire to kind of make that neighborhood whole and give them a voice to kind of one district or another rather than to have them divided so for me uh it really comes down to you know how did we the map that came out of the council how did that you know weigh in or kind of compare with what we heard from the public in terms of the process and what people said values and when you put it up against that criteria I feel that it kind of comes up short I think you know their argument can be made that ward eight was reconfigured but I think the biggest concern from many many folks is that we still have the district model when we look at what happened going back to 2014 the city's population hadn't grown at that time at that time there was seven wards with 14 counselors so one would think that as population grows representation may grow uh alongside it so that we can keep you know the same number of people uh that are represented by the single counselor uh that didn't happen to the contrary the size of the council was actually reduced the city lost representation of reporting to 12 the cities continue to grow and we heard also a fair amount of uh critique or rather feedback if you will about wanting to return to a model where uh folks had two counselors per ward um so I think that kind of it might be really narrowed down to like a six seven or eight ward option you know corresponding 12 14 or 16 uh as it were you know if you do the math and I think one thing we need to recognize that the more wards you have the smaller the population in each ward so if you have a six ward model you can do the math on that the total population in each individual ward in the six ward model would be larger than the total population in an eight ward model which kind of brings us back in full circle as to why the heck are we here in the first place well the reason for that is is the census and under the current eight ward system we had outsized growth in the eastern part of the city uh in ward one largely I think driven by some of the new development and uh known as I think Bayberry Commons the former SDR and so really to address the issue with the point of it is one person on both is to try to come up with a system with equalized populations and so taking all those factors into consideration what can it came out of the public process and looking at the map that kind of came out of the council I think that I missed the boat on a number of things and I think for many folks myself included the fact the biggest thing was people wanted to move back to a model with you know eliminate the districts and go with a model with two councillors and that didn't happen and you know the the few folks that I think that have really been opposed to that are some of the folks on the council and I just feel that you know from in terms of democracy and the workload and all the challenges here in the city that we have the more representation that we have the more people we have to help share the burden and the workload you know would be the way to go so that's my analysis on it I'm gonna like I said I'm not gonna make any comments on the map so much itself but I think from a process perspective but we could have and probably should have done a little bit better thank you Chris anybody want to weigh in on or give us a little information on how we arrive how the council arrived at this map that will be on the ballot it ain't over yeah and the next slide has a is zoomed in if you advance the next slide the next slide is okay you can see what happens to work Nancy I fear you would you like to say anything so the first thing that should be noted is that Nancy is a saint I if it was only a dozen two dozen maps I think it was probably many more than that and it's all a lot of work and at our public hearing on Tuesday night well actually the night that we adopted this map that you see before you now a new map was introduced and it was not possible to consider that map because we we didn't have Nancy nobody could produce a map that tells us you know exactly whether or not we've met the legal requirements with this map officially what what it looks like we couldn't have any of those things and this was the night we needed to vote on a map and warn it for public hearing so we did be voted on this map this map like every single other map we have considered is flawed um and you can uh you know it's just a matter of deciding which flaws you prefer in every map and and uh everything Chris says is accurate uh redistricting is is just an ugly and difficult process um I think our legislature maybe does it well because they do it all behind closed doors nobody knows what it's going to be nobody's asked what it's going to be and then we get informed that Burlington has been divided in two and so yeah um they don't we don't get a vote on that unlike unlike this so on Tuesday night a new map that the same map that had been proposed previously that we did not have an opportunity considered was brought forward in in the public hearing the purpose of the public hearing on on charter changes such as this is so that the public has an opportunity to weigh in um and that we have an opportunity to make chance make changes that are responsive to public comment we cannot make changes that we want to make just because we the council want to make changes at that point but when something is brought forward by the public as this was we're allowed to consider changes so we asked at that meeting if we could have an official uh map drawn for our meeting on Monday the 23rd um for consideration of another map that has very significant changes to this map um basically the downtown ward which you see as word three here um it would be called word eight it would um make the king mable neighborhood whole um it would include less it would be bounded by pearl street at the north side so it wouldn't go into the old north end as it does now and it would climb up main street and take some of the dorms one of the great challenges we have in this city is the 25 percent of the city is students and we in terms of representation um we have to count the students even if they are not eligible to vote and if they're not eligible to vote because they're here temporarily or because they're registered to vote in massachusetts or new jersey or pennsylvania um despite that they are part of the count in each and every ward and consequently we currently have a ward where you can get elected with very few votes and that city counselor who serves backed by a very tiny percentage of the city gets a same vote as a counselor from the new north end or the south end who is elected by maybe two or three times as many votes and so to have counselors that have hopefully in my view more support from more voters um not just the the count of bodies which in a count college town is kind of a different thing um divvying up the dorms in particular because the dorms are freshmen and sophomores they're not even going to stay there they have to move um so we've been trying to figure out different ways to um kind of kind of share the dorms among different wards the concept when we created our current ward 8 is let's have a student ward well we've done that for a few years now and we found it's very hard to even get the volunteers we need for school board to serve at the polls to do the inspector of elections so we need a more stable population and also as chris pointed out when we have 8 wards these wards are very small and they get thrown out of um compliance with the need to have equal numbers because those numbers are small they're thrown out of compliance um with small you know not very big yeah a few hundred people is the only deviation we have ward to ward and so when you have a large development that goes in or a new dorm built um the whole thing is thrown out of whack if we had larger wards that that wouldn't be so true um i would be in favor of having some at large representation on the council but that was not favored i don't think it was favored in your committee i don't know well i wasn't on the committee okay um but it wasn't favored on the council and as far as having two um everybody had everybody in the city currently has two representatives one from their ward one from their district i agree with chris and as far as i don't really like the system either it's only better than the alternative as i said everything is a trade-off and as somebody who has served on the council for a long time has tried to recruit people to run for council for decades it's hard to recruit people it's hard to get people to serve and 16 counselors is unwieldy when i remember way back with peter covel him saying you know when i go to mayor's conferences people will be you know talking about having to serve with a board of nine counselors and everybody's pitying them and then i walk in and say i got 14 um which is that that's not the way communities are typically run there are optimal month there are optimal numbers for decision-making bodies and it's a smaller number most of our communities in vermont have boards of five people sometimes seven so going up to 16 as somebody who's doing the work at the table uh chris is right there are a lot of us doing the work at the table now and prior to now we see that as problematic can i ask a clarifying question to to both of you who have been waiting in the weeds in the weeds for a long time um so um the map that is currently proposed or has most recently been proposed is not a final map it's not a finalized map is that is that correct um i hate to say this in front of nancy but that is a possibility it could be the final map but it could be changed there's an opportunity to change what we presented as the final map so on monday at monday city council meeting there will be a final redistricting proposal put forward or that is most likely we were told that we have until the 31st is the last day in terms of getting something printed for the ballot so that's our last practical day i think the council has a strong desire to make the decision on the 23rd i don't think we can put this off um you know until the very last hour that it has to get printed okay we're going to go for three more minutes chris did you have another comment i was just going to say um initially one of the arguments that i think we've heard to councillor shannon's point was the you know in the previous cycle there was an effort i think to kind of put all of the college students together in one word the word eight which in political terms is called packing uh and then this time early on we heard from and i think really just from different parts of the city i desired to quote distribute the student population equally across multiple wars and initially i you know i thought yeah this wasn't a pretty good idea uh but then you know it occurred to me one day i kind of had this epiphany so well what if we replace the words college students with black voters let's distribute black voters across multiple wars or let's distribute latino voters across multiple votes i'm like you know that doesn't really sound so good so for me personally it just kind of came down to people live where they live uh and they have a right to participate in the process so long as they meet the statutory requirements to hold the franchise um and you know in so far as this goes regardless of what map we get i think it's fair to say that if the final proposal uh does retain that the district model it would not surprise me uh in the least bit if we saw a valid question next year uh that attempted to restore uh the two counselor per ward model just i think that i would like to respond to the comparison with the dividing black voters being the same as dividing students um students who live in dorms are unique in that they are they have to move they they are only there temporarily um by definition and so and they are counted as part of the census uh and they're not going to be there for they they won't even be they won't even be in the same dorm next year they're going to be living where they are living for for eight months that is not the same thing to say we're dividing a black neighborhood that would be very different in concept i think uh i think counselor shannon right in that does understand that analogy but i think for me it comes down to it's you know when we talk about college students we're essentially talking about younger folks and i think it's for me it's wanted to make sure that they have a right to participate in looking at uh the current enrollment trends in uvm and while i think it's true that the voters in dorm a probably won't be there at dorm a the following year uh there will be another group of students to come in and perhaps an even larger group of students to come into that same area the following year and that's and that is something we are going to struggle with as a city uh development trends we have a couple areas in the city uh for example in ward one we have uvm proposing um some new dorms there and you know we're already kind of pushing the limits of the population and aid ward model there so you know that could become a flashpoint you know down the line similarly we've got the cambrian rise development up in the new north side so uh as population changes the one vote one person one vote thing remains constant and that's really what's driving this and so um you know we're going to have to continue to face some of these difficult questions you know pretty much every 10 years um and i think the key to getting a good solution is to just getting folks to come out and getting them engaged in the process and um while i don't necessarily agree with the math that came out i do appreciate the work that councillor shannon and the rest of the council has done they too have had a number of different meetings uh over the past several months and attempt to really work this out and they've kept them very cordial and really tried to work uh you know to come to something in consensus that really balances the competing interests of some of the the different neighborhoods so i think you know wanted to recognize that although again still not a big fan of the district model and that's kind of the the make or break point for me i'll just say again that um you know it's different it's not just engaging students they cannot serve in the roles that we need people to serve and there are thousands of students on campus the size of award you tell me 5500 uh 5,593 in an eight-word model 5,593 is the is the average for award and when you're looking at thousands of students on campus this has a really big impact in the and op-campus students too are not as transient or definitively transient as the dorms but still more more transient than your average black neighborhood um uh and you know we just we we've seen the those who have been stepping up to the plate in ward 8 have really been telling us this doesn't work we don't have the people that we need and they have to bring in people from other wards because they do not have the volunteers to run their polls all right we're gonna have to stop uh thank you very much for everybody that hung in there for this extra long meeting um oh ben stands up and um ben's hand is up and i will give ben the last word on this and then we're going to close i want to remind people that the next ward 5 npa meeting is february 16th always the third thursday in the month i'm sure we will be continuing these discussions at that meeting and um i really appreciate everybody's participation ben well uh thanks handy i'll try not to um drag it on too long i do want to say you know in joining the council last april one of the first things that i dove into was uh redistricting and and found it to be an incredibly complicating complicated process that's taken a significant amount of time uh both from nancy as folks had mentioned really appreciate the input from chris and other community members uh as well as obviously my other colleagues on the council um i think folks have spoken to some of the issues i don't think any map we're able to come up with is is going to be perfect um if i had to sort of read the tea leaves heading into our council meeting next monday i don't think we're going to end up with a map that's significantly different than that you had posted on the screen i can tell you and this is in response to uh some of the q and a that you that you see in the zoom um that there's a number of us who are continuing to work on some tweaks to the map that you had up including uh to further address um the issues with respect to uh the maple king neighborhood um i know many people would be keen on ensuring that that neighborhood stays uh within a single ward so i would again if i had to sort of read the tea leaves here i anticipate that there may be some tweaks to the map on monday to respond specifically uh to that situation so to answer the question from someone's in chat someone in the chat there are folks who are um working hard on that issue and andy i may actually be able to save you some time in your next meeting because uh one of the other charter change questions that you were going to talk about is one that quite simply um would allow if voters supported um for a polling place to be outside of the ward so right now uh eight wards every ward has to have its own polling place but think for a moment about um the new high school that's going to be built up in wards four and seven for example uh that that charter change question would allow uh for a single polling place for both wards four and seven to be located at the high school or a single polling place in wards four wards six and eight to be located at edmunds middle school so those two questions sort of go hand in hand um and i just thought that i would briefly address that as well thank you thank you ben thank you everyone um uh terry is passing around uh the remainder of the snacks and i would remind people that if they come on february 16th and thank you uh hareed for bringing the samosas and the dumplings those were so good and all of you online missed it february 16th come down to dpw at 645 pine street at 6 30 and we will have more snacks thank you everyone good night one final announcement um i just in came in uh i think it's the 23rd of february the flin theater will be uh promoting a conversation on community policing they will have a couple of uh folks who are involved in that discussion from the obama administration so reach out to the flin if you want more information about that thanks chris thanks everyone