 So we're going to get started. Good evening. Today is Monday, December 11th, 2023. Thank you so much for joining us in person in Contoy's auditorium and also online for the Burlington City Council meeting. The time is 5.06. We're going to begin our evening with item 1.1, which is a motion to adopt our agenda. Councillor Carpenter, if you wouldn't mind reading the motion to adopt the agenda, please. Sure. Thank you. I move to amend and adopt the agenda as follows. Add to the consent agenda 7.22, communication, Selina Kunkel, re-ceasefire resolution. Add to the consent agenda 7.23, communication, Jay Strauss, re-wood Stowe's, Burlington, Vermont. Add to the consent agenda item 7.24, FY2023, annual report, Burlington-Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission. Add to the consent agenda 7.25, communication, Natalie Talbot, re-demand, a ceasefire. Add to the consent agenda 7.26, Ken Wat Leopold, re-Burlington City Council meeting, December 11, 2023. Add to the deliberative agenda item 8.2, resolution, a community statement of solidarity in response to the shooting of November 25th, 2023, Councillor Chavers. And note proposed amendments for item 8.5 per Councillor Borrow. Thank you so much, Councillor Carpenter. Is there a second to that motion? Seconded by Councillor Travers. Is there any discussion on this motion? Councillor Travers. Thank you, President Paul. And sorry for the delay here, is swapping some children on this snow day. I'll write it 5. I did circulate to the council the resolution that's been posted now proposed on 8.2. I do just want to take a moment to state that the reasoning behind that is that I do believe, based on discussions leading up to today, that the vote on the resolution listed under 8.1 is likely to be very close and may in fact fail on a tie. I think because of that is a distinct possibility. And if that were to happen, then this council would be left in a position where we are saying nothing with respect to the local tragedy that we suffered with the shooting of November 25th. And I think that would be a lost opportunity. So this is presented as 8.2 as a backstop of sorts. If we are unable to come to a majority one way or another on 8.1, 8.2 would still allow us an opportunity to say something in response to that tragedy. My commitment to this council is that if the resolution under 8.1 passes, that I would move when we reach 8.2 to table that matter indefinitely. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councillor Travers. There's no other comments before we go to a vote. We'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion to amend adopt our agenda, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please say no. That motion passes. So we have our agenda. The second item on our agenda is a communication from CEDO regarding city plays, post apartments and Cambrian rise. As this relates to real estate negotiations, this agenda item contains an expected executive session. Before we go to a motion regarding executive session, I'll go to the administration if there is any update that you wish or are able to provide to the public in open session. Mayor Weinberger, or did you want me to go to the assistant city attorney? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, President Paul. We will be talking about three projects. I don't believe there are any public updates tonight on any of the three. There also is no action tonight on these projects, and there will be both public updates and action in the weeks to come. So that's all that we have for now. Wonderful. Thank you so much. So just seeing Councillor Dorety, do you have it up? We just have two motions to go into executive session. Okay. Thank you so much. Is there a second to that motion? Thank you, Councillor Travers. If there is no discussion on that motion, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That passes unanimously. So with that, we go to the second, the second half of that motion, Councillor Dorety. Thank you so much. In addition to that motion, we would add that the mayor staff, the executives are in addition to the mayor staff going into executive session with us. The executive session would also include CEDAW director Brian Pine, City Attorney Jared Pellerin. I don't know if Catherine Shad is here, but if she is, that would, oh, yes, of course. And as well, we do have consultant David White and Attorney Tim Sampson who will also be joining us. President Paul, I think Samantha Dunn also from CEDAW will be joining us. Right. And Samantha Dunn as well. With that, we need a second to that motion, seconded by Councillor Jang. Seeing no discussion, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed, please say no. That motion passes. And to make life easy for all of the people that are here in Contoy's, we will go downstairs, and we will be back hopefully by 6 p.m. So please make yourselves comfortable, and we will be back joining you in about 45 minutes. Thank you so much for your patience. We are now back in open session. The time is 5.55. The next item on our agenda is item number three, which is the fiscal year 2023 annual report from CCRPC. CCRPC stands for the Chittenden County Regional Planning Commission, and for this item we have with us Charlie Baker, who is the Executive Director of the CCRPC, and as well the Chair of the Planning Commission, the CCRPC Planning Commission, Andy Montrell. We're happy to have you here, and we've allotted 15 minutes for this item, so if you could keep your comments to about five, and then I'll give us enough time for us to have some questions and comments from the Council. And again, thanks so much for being here. Yes. So the report you got in your packet, I'm just going to give you a quick four-minute summary now. Just the first page gives you background on the Regional Planning Commission, how we leverage your local funds to bring in state and federal funds into the region, your representatives on our board and committees. Thank you very much for those volunteers, and Andy especially on our board. The second section gives you about a dozen projects that we're working this year, or last year with the City on. I'm not going to review all those, they're in the report, but there's a little summary for each of those projects. The third section reviews what's in our Transportation Improvement Program, which is also projects that are in the state's capital program. You probably, well you definitely have the longest list in the county. Congratulations for projects that are in the capital program. And then bottom of page four, we have another 10 or so projects that we're working on the city, or working with the city on this fiscal year. I'm happy to take any questions or reactions about how those are going. And then the last section is a whole bunch of things that we do without regard to any specific municipality, including housing, economic development, energy, emergency management, all kind of, a lot of transportation work. So with that I will, that was a quick summary of the report. Happy to take any feedback. This is, we do this with every municipality and really a customer service call to make sure we're providing services to Burlington in the way that you expect. Happy to take any feedback. Great. Thank you. Andy, did you want to add anything? I'm sure. Just, you know, there's always a lot of projects that go on in Burlington. Some of them take an awful lot of time. I know there was one that was completed this past year, the Shelburne Road Rotary, that was discussed at great depth, like 15 or 20 years ago. And it was really nice to see that project come online this year. And, you know, it seems like it's going really well. Traffic seems smooth there, but that's just one of many projects that, again, take many, many years to come to fruition. And so some of the projects that you may be working on now, you know, good projects, but it may not come together for a number of years. So like the Shelburne Rotary, just hold on and it actually gets done after a while. The Shelburne Road Rotary is a good example when I first got onto the City Council. We needed to wait, vote on it right away. And about 12 years later, but we have a beautiful roundabout. That was one of my last actions. Okay. Are there any Councillors who have any questions, comments for our two guests or just about the annual report as well? I guess that's a sign that it's an extremely well-written and very concise annual report. Thank you so much for being... Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead. I just thought I'd make two comments. Thank you for finally getting to plan BTV New North End. And so we... Those of us in the North End appreciate it as you live there. And thank you for the grant on the accessibility in our parks. I guess that's it. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Thank you. We're a little bit ahead of time on public forum. So we'll try to get ourselves through a little bit more of our agenda since it's only 6 p.m. Going on to item number... Item number four is public forum. So we'll go beyond public forum and get ourselves to item number five, which is climate emergency reports. Is there any councilor or the administration who wishes to offer a climate emergency report? And please let's try to keep in mind that items five and six are an opportunity to report and not to opine. If there are any people who... Any counselors or the administration who has a climate emergency report, now would be that time. Seeing none, we'll close that item and go to item number six, which is public health and safety emergency reports. If there is any councilor or the administration who has a public health or safety emergency report, now would be that time. Okay. Councilor Doherty, and we'll... We'll go to you and just... Okay, why don't we... We'll go to Councilor Grant first and then Councilor Doherty. We can't quite hear you, Councilor Grant. Can you hear me now? Yes, we can. Thank you. Thank you. I just wanted to bring to the attention of the public, the community forums that are scheduled for this Thursday evening, the 14. Regrettably, it's the same night as the Ward 2-3 NPA, but I am encouraging old North End residents to attend. It was brought up that there is no Zoom link in the communications, so can we look into that to make sure that we are offering both the 14th and the 19th to be available on Zoom so that people can watch it and then also have it recorded for people who can view it later, who can't actually watch or attend on the actual dates of the forums. The original announcements do have a link, which people can submit questions in advance. There will not be an opportunity for people to ask questions live during the event, so please be mindful of that in terms of cases that the Chittenden County State's attorney is currently working on. It remains close to 3,000, I believe it was 2,800 and something, so a significant case load well above any other state's attorneys, and hopefully some of the information that we can get at the community forums is how people can tell if their cases, if they've been a victim of crime, have actually been submitted to the state's attorney. Thank you. Councillor Grant, just did want to add that CCTV did provide a link for YouTube. The event, the community forums will be live streamed and that was included in the email that was sent out this past Saturday, so if you check your email you should have that and as well as I say it will be live streamed if you can't be here in person. And just to confirm it, CCTV will be recording it as well? Yes, yes. Thank you so much. Can we get links under our calendar as well? As of today, there was nothing listed under the calendar, the city's calendar. Thank you for the suggestion. The answer is yes, we will do that. Thank you. Were there any other public health and safety emergency reports? Okay, seeing none, we'll just go to the end of our agenda. If we can just wrap up the end of the agenda before we get to public forum. The next item would be item number nine, which is committee reports. If there are Councillors who wish to offer a committee report, now would be that time. I do have one as well, but I'll let everyone else go. So first we'll go to Councillor Barlow and then to Councillor Berkman. Thank you, President Powell. The Transportation, Energy and Utilities Committee will be meeting at on Tuesday, December 19th at the Fletcher Free Library and we'll be starting at 4.30 instead of our normal five o'clock start so that we can finish in time to attend the public safety forums that night. Great, thanks so much for being able to accommodate that. Councillor Berkman. The Tax Abatement Committee has an appeal which is been filed and therefore we need to set a meeting. I just wanted to let folks know that we're going to have to do that. So look for me to be reaching out to do that and then what we do is make a recommendation and it comes back to the entire council as the full board of abatement and so we all will be involved in that process. Thank you. Great, thank you so much. We'll go to Councillor... Yes, we'll go to... Thank you, President Powell. The Parks, Arts and Culture Committee will meet this Wednesday, December 13th, which is a deviation from our normal schedule because of the Christmas and New Year's holidays. We will be discussing the final report from the Dog Task Force as well as a report on some data that Parks has worked on with the city planning team to present to the committee based on the involvement of the community in the recreation programs. At our last meeting, we received updates on highlight the New Year's Eve event which is the planning is under way. Headliners have been announced. I have gotten my button for highlight New Year's Eve. In November, they were $12. They've since gone up to $15, which is still a pretty affordable rate for folks to get access to all of the great programming that will be offered on New Year's Eve. If folks cannot afford a button, that is not a barrier. BCA will still provide them. So thank you. Great. Thanks, Councillor McGee. We'll go to Councillor Traverse and then Councillor Jang. Thank you, President Powell. The Ordinance Committee has been meeting jointly with the Planning Commission to review the neighborhood code proposal. We've met six times already to review this proposal, which citywide, if adopted, would expand housing development opportunities across the city. We will be meeting again, again, jointly with the Planning Commission tomorrow at 6.30 and with another meeting tentatively planned for December 19th. Thank you. Thanks so much. We'll now go to Councillor Jang and Councillor Jang. Thank you, Councillor President. The Racial Equity Inclusion and Belonging Committee will be meeting on Tuesday 19 at 5.30. The agenda includes a report from the Vermont New American Advisory Council around gun violence affecting new Americans in the city of Burlington and also the reparation task force that the City Council commissioned about two years ago. Thank you. And are there any other committee updates? We do have a Public Safety Committee meeting that is tomorrow evening at 5.30. We will be talking about the community forums, which again will be on the 14th and 19th of December, right here in Contois. Wonderful opportunity for the community to come together and talk about public safety and hear from a lot of people on this pressing issue. It doesn't appear, so there's any, oh, my apologies, Councillor Grant. Thank you. And if we could mention the next regular Public Safety Committee meeting, because we haven't had one for a while, and I believe the date we set was December 21st. I know it's close to Christmas, but if people could maybe zoom in, that would be awesome. And I just want to give a really quick shout out because Fareed from People's Kitchen has got hot chocolate outside. Thank you. All right, so that'll, that'll conclude our community, our committee reports, and we'll move on to item number 10, City Council General City Affairs. If there's any City Councilors who wish to speak on General City Affairs, and if there isn't, then we will move on to item number 11, which is Council President Updates. Really just wanted to make sure that everyone knew about the community forums this on the 14th as well as on the 19th of December. With that, we will move on to item number 12. Mayor Weinberger usually go at the end of the, end of the evening. Now you have a, now you have the ability to speak to a, to more than just three or four people. Yes. Well, welcome everyone tonight. We will be hearing from you all momentarily. My quick report is that first of all, one of the Council, I know that's something that people are following closely. There is one more meeting of the Opioid Settlement Advisory Committee in the month of December. I remain concerned about the pace and focus of the these funds that the state has available to impact the suffering in the drug crisis that we are currently experiencing and to improve conditions we're seeing on the streets. And I will be continuing to advocate for much more vigorous and urgent action from the state and with action from the legislature early in the session and we'll have further detail on that over the coming weeks. And then secondly, on a lighter note, this Sunday will be approximately, this I might not have this quite right, but something like the 45th annual Parks, Recreation, Waterfront and Palmer Low Holiday Party that will take place at the Hilton and it is always a wonderful event where the Parks Department teams up with our youth centers and make sure that do our best to ensure that no children in this community do not have the opportunity to fully celebrate the holiday season. And counselors who'd like to be involved can be in touch with the mayor's office. It's always a nice event. Thank you. Thank you very, thank you very much, Mayor Weinberger. It's now around 6.15 and since we have a large number of people who wish to speak during public forum, we will we will not run at all risk run the risk of not getting till 6.30. So we will begin public forum now. Before we get to public forum, I'd like to note that we do have a protocol for public forum. And I speak for the full council as we share a strong commitment to a very orderly process and one that honors all voices and respectful discourse. For those that are in con toys that are here with us in con toys, we have a timer system that is on the table that's right in front of me. There are three lights on the timer system. There's a green light that will shine when you begin speaking. There's a second yellow light that will shine when you have 30 seconds left. And then there's a red light that will shine when your time is up. Please complete your sentence when the sound in the light indicate that your time is up so that everyone has the same amount of time. And we can keep the public forum moving. If you are joining us online, there is a timer system that will be set up on zoom. We don't have a light system when your two minutes are up and the clock winds down to zero. Please complete your sentence so that we can move on to hearing from another community member. We have a hybrid system for public forum. So if you wish to speak in person, there are forms to my right in the back corner of the room. Please bring them to the table that is right next to actually they're on the table and the clerk will collect them and bring them to me. If you wish to speak via zoom, you can go to Burlington VT.gov forward slash city council forward slash public forum. And when you do, there will be a form that will come up. Please complete the form and try to complete it completely. Your answers will come into a spreadsheet that I have on my computer in front of me and I will call on you in the order in which you submitted a form. It has been our practice that Burlington residents will have first priority to speak. We will go to Burlington residents that are in con toys who have submitted a form in person and then we'll go to Burlington residents online and then back to non Burlington residents joining us in person and we will complete the public forum with our online non Burlington residents. As all of you can see, we have a large number of people who wish to speak during public forum. Please, if you wish to speak, try not to repeat the same things that have already been said. When your name is called if you wish to yield your time to others who have already spoken and have already expressed your thoughts, you can certainly, you can certainly do that. You'll be recognized and you can just say that your thoughts have already been expressed by others. We do see you and we will note that your support for the sentiment of others has already been expressed. During public forum, we do not clap. Regardless of what people say, we do not clap. If you want to show your expression of solidarity from those that have spoken, you can simply go like this and we will see you. During public forum, please use respectful language. I want to remind everyone that is here with us this evening that there are families in our community who watch our council meetings with their children. It's their connection to civic engagement. Please try to remember that there are children that are watching this meeting and please refrain from using profanity. Our protocol is in place to remind everyone in this room that is joining us in person that disruptions will not be tolerated. We're a governmental body and we're representing the city of Burlington. We have business to conduct and we will do this in a calm and deliberative way. Please face me. This is exactly what I'm talking about and I and I will have very little tolerance for any more people who speak out of turn. Please face me and direct your comments to me as the chair. Do not personalize your comments. Do not talk about anyone else at this table nor to the audience that is gathered and do not personalize anything that you are speaking to any person or any or anyone else at this table or anyone else that's in this audience. This rule will be enforced. Again, we want to hear what you have to say and we will listen much more intently if you speak respectfully. With that, we will go to those people who are joining us who are Burlington residents who are joining us in person. The first speaker is Ashley Smith to be followed by Hyam Ladish. Either one. They should be on if you just look at the green light in front of you. Does it go on when I speak? Yes. Okay. And you just make sure that is the green light on the microphone right in front of you. Yeah. Can you hear me? Yes, I can. Thank you. Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. It has killed 18,000 people, wounded 50,000, driven 1.8 million people from their homes. It has blown up schools, churches, mosques, hospitals, universities and libraries. Faced with such war crimes, you must pass the ceasefire resolution. Israel is committing genocide. It is using October 7th as an alibi to carry out pre-existing plans for ethnic cleansing. On September 22nd at the UN, Netanyahu held up a map of the Middle East without Palestine anywhere on the map. Faced with such genocidal aims, you must pass the ceasefire resolution. Israel is committing genocide. Its leaders openly declare their genocidal intent. It is Defense Secretary called Palestinians human animals. The IDF spokesperson declared their emphasis is on damage, not accuracy. Faced with such genocidal rhetoric, you must pass the ceasefire resolution. Israel is committing genocide. Human rights lawyer Craig Mochiber resigned from the UN calling Israel's war a textbook case of genocide. Faced with such expert judgment, you must pass the ceasefire resolution. Israel is committing genocide. That's why 80% of Democrats and 66% of people support a ceasefire. Faced with such overwhelming public opinion, you must pass the ceasefire resolution. Israel is committing genocide. That's why the vast majority of the world's people and the world's governments support a ceasefire. That's why the UN had to use its veto power to bypass and negate the will of the vast majority of humanity. Faced with world opinion, you must pass the ceasefire resolution. Israel is committing genocide. Its war is spawning anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia, and hate crimes. Right here in Burlington, a racist shot three Palestinian students. Faced with such bigotry and hate crimes, you must pass the ceasefire resolution. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Haim Lodish to be followed by Valerie Lodish. Good evening. Good evening. Can you hear me? My name is Haim Lodish. I'm a Burlington resident as of 2002. I teach the high school and this is wrong on many levels. I don't have the time in two minutes to properly educate and condense 3,000 years of Jewish history and presence in the land of Judea. At this time, we must focus on collaboration and unity within our community in condemning the horrific shootings. It is contradictory to bring a resolution that on one hand aims to bring us together but then brings in a very divisive issue and excludes a large majority of the Jewish community that supports Israel and its right to defend itself against Hamas. I appreciate the council's efforts to tackle Burlington's significant challenge with issues like crime, homelessness, and drug trafficking, and believe striving to bring our community together in the wake of the shootings is a productive effort. This attack on Israel is a distraction from the work that needs doing. The resolution shows inaccurate facts and tremendous bias and one-sidedness in a complex issue halfway around the world. The Jewish community is dealing with unprecedented levels of anti-Semitism in our Burlington schools. Jewish students are faced with facing unprecedented acts of anti-Semitism. Just a few days ago, a synagogue in Albany, New York was shot while at its religious school was in session. Our synagogues have had to install crash barriers, bulletproof glass film, expensive security systems, and hire armed guards for services and events. According to the FBI, over 60 percent of religious hate crimes in America are against Jews and are only 2 percent of the population. This proposal will only feed that anti-Semitism make our community less safe and there's a correlation between anti-Semitic incidents and combination of Israel. Anti-Zionism is indeed anti-Semitism. If you don't think Israel has a right to exist, that's anti-Semitic. It is offensive and insensitive in a resolution condemning hate-filled violence to then question the massacre of the October 7th by Hamas and fail to condemn it. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Valerie Lodish to be followed by Greg Needle. Hello. Instead of being at home with my children tonight celebrating the fifth night of Hanukkah, I'm here. I'm here to bring attention to how divisive and harmful the current 8.1 resolution is. Tonight supporters of the 8.1 resolution rallied outside of City Hall. A quick Google search of the song's play tonight at the rally showed me that lyrics praise martyrdom, stated Zionism is not compatible with Judaism and called for a global intifada. How is that a call for peace? How is that going to help our community here in Burlington, Vermont? Resolutions like 8.1 are designed to be divisive and cause harm to the roughly 90 percent of American Jews who stand with Israel. I asked the City Council to instead use resolution 8.2, a resolution that both condemns the hateful crime against three young Palestinian men that occurred in Burlington on 1125 and further calls for unity rather than divisiveness to help our community heal. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Greg Needle to be followed by Leah Sewell. Thank you council. I'm Greg Needle, resident of ward one. I'm here tonight to provide or encourage your support of resolution 8.2 a community sent statement in solidarity in response to the shooting on November 25th. I'm here to support Councillor Traver's resolution 8.2 as it addresses the horror and atrocities that we all feel from the shootings on November 25th and it's unwavering community support for the victims and the families. As well, this resolution addresses the heightened needs for public safety in the city as well as promotes a unified community with unbiased language. We can't get past the hate if we can't get past language that promotes hate. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Leah Sewell to be followed by Sarah Sauner. Good evening. Good evening. Hello. My name is Leah and I come here today to support the resolution calling for a ceasefire to Israel's collective punishment of Gaza, which clearly amounts to genocide. It is our duty as people who are bearing witness to this genocide to do everything we can to end it. Over 17,000 people have been murdered, 10,000 children and at least 47 entire families completely wiped off the civil registry. We are already too late. There is no time but now to call for a permanent ceasefire. And calling for a ceasefire is not enough. We must demand an end to the illegal occupation of Palestine by Israel and just like we divested from South African apartheid and that divestment led to the end of apartheid in South Africa, we must divest from Israel until the end of Israeli apartheid. I also stand here in support of the three young Palestinian men who experienced a hate crime in our city. There is a culture of white supremacy in Vermont that is often intentionally ignored and minimized by white people. White supremacy continues to marginalize, brutalize and oppress people of color in Burlington and in Vermont and this culture nurtures Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. This culture of white supremacy that we have here is the same culture that gave the permission for someone to shoot these three young Palestinian men. These three young men would not have been shot here if Israel backed fully by the US were not shooting Palestinians over there. I want to make it clear as so many Palestinians have used their final moments on this earth to make clear to us that calling for a ceasefire and working to end the genocide and occupation of Palestinians is inherently connected to the work of making our communities safer. If the Burlington City Council is dedicated to making our communities safer for everyone then the only way forward is to support this resolution for a ceasefire as the first step in demanding freedom, dignity and liberation for all Palestinians. Thank you. Our next speaker is Sarah Sarnoff to be followed by Austin Allen. My apologies if I've gotten that wrong. Hello, I'm speaking from my standpoint as an out of woman when I implore you to support the ceasefire resolution and see it as a necessary step towards peace. A few days ago I saw an art exhibition called A Child's View of Gaza and it are drawings of their life there. Their perceptions, fears and worldviews scribbled on a page in an attempt to cope with the trauma from years of siege, rationed food and water, dehumanizing checkpoints and senseless killing of their loved ones. In a medium of crayons the children drew scenes of IDF soldiers opening fire on a village, blood splattering the pavement, dead babies and carnage everywhere. This is how a Palestinian child sees the world. This is the way their schemas are being formed subject to chronic and acute trauma day in and day out repeatedly. As an educator I have to care deeply about children and I know that true love and care cannot have a limit. I don't know if anyone here has children but imagine if you would be okay with describing the death of anyone close to you as collateral damage. As we know children are not political figures. They have no agenda other than to share their experiences and so knowing that your decision can make a difference in choosing not to accept a ceasefire, an action of peace is willful ignorance and is absolutely unacceptable. When we continue to fund a government that creates trauma for children and families that in their words care nothing about accuracy and everything about damage and that uphold segregationist apartheid systems that we claim were against, we become hypocrites, we become liars and we become killers. You cannot claim to be a progressive thinker, you cannot claim to care about equity or civil rights, you cannot claim to care about democracy and then draw the line at Palestine. Do the educated thing and do the right thing, divest from Israeli investments and vote yes on a ceasefire. It's your time to be leaders. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Austin Allen to be followed by Maggie Chadwell. Good evening. Hi, my name is Austin. I'm a local agricultural worker. I'm not somebody who usually speaks publicly. Others tonight will speak more eloquently than me. Others more knowledgebly and others more impassioned. But what is happening in Palestine and Israel is horrific. There's a growing atmosphere of hatred, mistrust and violence that our fellow Middle Eastern Arab, Muslim and Palestinian community members are experiencing now. Right now, a vote to pass this resolution 8.1 is a start to show we can support our community. While I believe that future resolutions should go further to condemn apartheid, it's important to pass the resolution as it stands now. If you truly want to quote honor the strengths and contributions of Arab, Muslim and Jewish individuals and communities within our borders, within our broader community and quote aspire to be a welcoming community where all people can feel safe regardless of how they look, what language they speak, and where they come from, pass this resolution 8.1. Our city cannot stay silent. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much. So our next speaker is Maggie Chadwell to be followed by Kimberly Chadwell and Taylor O'Connor. Good evening. Good evening. In the face of the genocide unfolding in Gaza, I know a lot of us are asking where is humanity? I have found it in the majority of the people surrounding us here. I have found it in the beautiful leadership of the Palestinian and Jewish community in Burlington who are navigating their collective grief to lead us in the struggle for Palestinian liberation because we know that regardless of religion, race, sexuality, ethnicity, our liberation is deeply and intimately linked despite media and government trying to convince us otherwise. No one is safe or free until everyone is safe and free. I have found very little humanity in your leadership. I am pleading for this council to approve the resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire in Israel and Palestine. This is a chance for you to prove your humanity, to prove that you don't stand with the continuation of unconscionable violence inflicted on civilians. All people deserve to live freely peacefully with dignity and justice. That isn't a complicated statement. We are seeing in Palestine that those basic human rights are being denied in the most horrific, unimaginable ways and they've been denied for 75 years and we are seeing this in our community. Our Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab neighbors are under attack. Hasin Heisham and Kinan who were shot just blocks from here is the result of our local and national leadership's lack of humanity. Lack of humanity and complacency and genocide. Please be led by your humanity to pass this resolution and do not stop there. This resolution is empty if not followed by action to implement further demands like supporting the referendum to make Burlington an apartheid-free city like enforcing BDS against Israel and ending all U.S. military aid to Israel, which includes grounding the F-35s that this council recently voted to have in our community for another 50 years. Tonight Burlington has an opportunity to set a precedent. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Kimberly Chadwell to be followed by Taylor O'Connor and David Missal. Good evening. The people of Palestine have experienced displacement and suffering for decades. A once thriving country where Jewish and Palestinian peoples coexisted in harmony prior to their forced excision. Palestine was chosen as a territory to gift to the beleaguered Jewish population in 1948. After numerous countries, including the U.S., were unwilling to offer land to create the proposed state. Palestinians were given no vote in this matter as Britain had been awarded rule over the territory from 1917 and claimed it was unoccupied. Palestinians lived and thrived there. Yet seemingly overnight in a violent mass trauma, the world tried to erase their existence. The children who were displaced during the Nakba are now again forced to flee as elders, as they, their children, and grandchildren are chased by bombs and an army that has shown no respect for human life or dignity. If you include people still missing under the rebel, dead beyond a certainty aside from a body that may never be recovered, there have been at least 25,000 killed and thousands more suffering from life-altering injuries should they outlive this bombardment. But it is never too late to speak when there are still lives that can be spared. A child whose world does not have to be blown apart, perhaps a college student who doesn't need to lose the use of his legs because of the way he spoke and dressed. It is time to own the fact that how things have been done does not need to rule how things will be, to do away with the conquer or be conquered mindset. If we are guided at all by the desire to leave the world better than we found it, or more selfishly, we want this time in history to be a testament to our moral character rather than a monument to our moral failings, then we must speak up now. A start is by voting for the resolution calling for a permanent ceasefire and embracing the proposed ballot measure put forth by constituents to declare Burlington an anti-apartheid city which will offer its support and solidarity to all oppressed people. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Taylor O'Connor to be followed by David Macell and Abby Macell. Hello. My name is Taylor O'Connor. I apologize if I get emotional. I might cry. I am an early educator in Burlington. I teach children the difference between right and wrong and how to do the right thing every day and it's lately over the past two months seemed to be a much easier job to do for children than it is for my elected officials. I've spent multiple hours on the phone with each Vermont elected official and in the time that I have spent hours on the phone every day leaving voicemails speaking with representatives nothing has been done to assist the children of Gaza other than a tweet here and there. Additionally nothing concrete has been done to support the three men who were attacked on my walking commute home from a preschool to my home that happened and nothing has been done by my elected officials. I have put in more unpaid labor than my elected officials have done to assist in preventing tax dollars from harming children. What have my students done to deserve safety under this roaring sound of an F-35 while they sleep that Palestinian children have not done? I ask it again. What difference does it make if my children are American or if they are Palestinian? No child deserves to be crushed under the weight of their own ceiling and they certainly do not deserve it funded by U.S. manufactured U.S. funded weaponry. It is unacceptable. I have gone way off script but I don't know what more there is to say. The world knows the truth and each person who is not doing everything they can to help as everybody in this room appears to be doing for the most part is complicit in these horrors and history will remember them and will not forgive them. Thank you Burlington. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is David Macell and David if you could just make sure that you speak into the microphone there's there are people that are listening and are having a little bit of a tough time hearing all of us that are hearing con toys. Thank you. Good evening. Thank you Karen. Good evening. My name is David Macell. I'm award six resident. I have taught history at the University of Vermont since 1997. Three of my grandparents were Jewish, two perished in the Holocaust in a pit. I am horrified by the shooting of young Palestinians on Burlington's streets. I am horrified by the disproportionate and unrestrained bombing ongoing in Gaza including with my tax dollars and in the name of the Jewish people and Jewish safety. I am horrified and I am ashamed of Israel's two tiered system of citizenship in the occupied West Bank as well as Arab citizens of Israel facing hardships and discrimination daily across across historic Palestine. My feelings of horror are not anti-semitism. They are expressions of empathy. They are expressions of common humanity. As a Jew, as a child of a survivor, I support a ceasefire and I support your resolution. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Abby Macell to be followed by followed by someone with very small handwriting. Very small. I believe it's Annette Lang. Hopefully someone who has very small handwriting will know. Abby, welcome. My name is Abby Macell and for my testimony in support of the ceasefire resolution, I would like to read an excerpt from an essay written by Hishem Awartani after he was shot on North Prospect Street in our city. Quote, it is of no importance that the person who shot me was not Israeli because the hate that made this possible was made in Israel. It dehumanized Palestinians on an industrial scale and was sent to the U.S. in neat little airway packages. This hate is what makes the ongoing genocide in Gaza acceptable. A Palestinian is not human. When he walks through the prison style rotating door gets randomly selected for a search in Jerusalem or a standing behind the bulletproof glass having his passport checked, he is no longer human. The pain of the Palestinian is not understood because to them we simply cannot feel pain. The words of Hishem Awartani end quote. This resolution and a ceasefire is the bare minimum. It's not enough to say that anti-Palestinian hate has no place in Burlington because we allow it here. We allow it to be here through unquestioned material support of Israel's injustices, through cowering under the threat that merely calling for an end to a genocide in Gaza will be labeled anti-Semitic or divisive. I encourage Burlington residents to interrogate how our city, our workplaces, our labor unions, our schools invest in Israel's ongoing expulsion, military occupation, imprisonment, and killing of Palestinians. Please come out and support at the referendum for apartheid-free Burlington this upcoming town meeting day. Thank you. Our next speaker I believe it's Amelie Lee. I'm sorry my apologies. Annabelle Lee? Yes. Good evening. I speak to you now as a resident of Burlington but I did not grow up here. My family is from Philadelphia and my grandmother actually graduated high school with Israeli Prime Minister and dictator Benjamin Netanyahu. She has always used one word to describe him, angry, and that is why all of Netanyahu's and Israel's actions are motivated by anger, hunger for power, and the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, not for the safety of Jewish people. If you think this resolution is anti-Semitic you are greatly misguided. The safety of Jewish people is not dependent on a settler colonial state but on the fight to end all forms of oppression and discrimination, which is what this bill is calling for, an end of oppression and discrimination. The colonial ideology of Zionism has plagued our society for far too long and it is because of this connection and because of my Jewish values that I stand up here telling you to call for a ceasefire, to call to end the blockade, end aid to Israel, and end to the genocide of Palestinian people. We stand united in the fight against oppression and genocide. Free Palestine. Thank you. Our next speaker is Wafik Fawor to be followed by Mazhar Qarashi and Logan Roots. Good evening. Good evening. And Salamu Alaikum. My name is Wafik Fawor and I am a member of Vermoner for Justice in Palestine. I am a Muslim. I am an Arab and I am a Palestinian taxpayer in the city of Burlington. The resolution some of the city council members are proposing is the least we can do as residents and citizens to make our voices heard in the midst of Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and occupied Palestinian West Bank. So far 20,000 people have been killed over 7,000 children, 6,000 women and thousands more buried under the rubble. Two years ago, a resolution calling for Palestinian equal rights, the end of apartheid, and recognition of our first amendment right to engage in boycott, divestment, and sanction was tabled on the grounds that it is was anti-Semitic. That label helped to create an atmosphere of hate towards Muslim Arabs and Palestinians in particular and contributed to our current climate of hate, fear that led to the shooting of the three Palestinian youth two weeks ago. I urge all the members of council to vote for this resolution to prevent more incident of violent against Muslims and Jews alike. The city of Burlington and state of Vermont bravely to stand against apartheid in South Africa as well as other struggles around the world. This resolution is a test for the city council members and Burlington citizen to do the right thing against a brutal genocide which is being embraced by the US federal government and funded by our tax dollars. Silent about a crime is a crime. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Mazhar Karashi to be followed by Logan Roots and Adam Franz. Mazhar Karashi, Mazhar, Q-U-R-A-I-S-H-I. I'm sorry what? Okay. All right. Thank you so much for letting me know. Our next speaker is Logan Roots to be followed by Adam Franz. I'm a resident of Ward 2. I've lived here for several years and I'm going to read through this council an excerpt from the independent that lays out exactly what you're taking a stance on here tonight. And this is graphic but the fact that we had to be here tonight proves that it's necessary for you to hear. A badly burned toddler screaming for the mother he doesn't know is dead and screaming because the doctors do not have enough painkillers to relieve his suffering. An eight-year-old boy whose brain is exposed as bombing damaged parts of his skull. A teenage girl her eyes surgically removed because every bone in her face is smashed. A three-year-old double amputee whose severed limbs are laid out in a pink box beside him and in the background is the stench of rotting flesh as maggots creep out of untreated wounds. This is the daily reality in Gaza hospitals. Each one of you was elected knowing how this dysfunctional political system works, knowing that you'll have to regularly compromise your principles to preserve your careers. And now there is a live stream genocide going on before your eyes. Ask yourselves what is your political capital worth if you're not willing to spend some of it on the most basic human stance. This resolution is a bare minimum first step for this body to begin rectifying the role that you have played in fostering the racist environment that led to the shooting through your refusal to stand with our Palestinian community through your capitulation to racist for political points and failure to use your power and platform in this supposedly progressive city to do a single meaningful thing to fight against this imperialist war. You have a clear choice right here right now either write your name on a piece of paper and stand against this genocide or make yourselves obsolete and write yourself out of history. And since political pressure seems to be the only language that some of you seem to know, I speak for everyone here today when I say we will not forget how you vote today. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Adam France to be followed by Michelle. Second chick, I believe. Good evening. Good evening. I anticipated hearing before I came today a number of the excuses tonight in opposition to the motion. The most insidious of these excuses is anti Semitism, the notion that the real threat to our safety as Jews is the movement for Palestinian liberation rather than the white nationalists that whip up hatred against Palestinians. There is nothing anti Semitic about calling for an end to Israel's genocide against the people of Gaza and our safety will never come from a highly militarized apartheid state. The council should reject tonight this excuse as the farce that it is. The next is that Burlington has no place taking up international issues, especially when they're divisive. Burlington has a proud history of taking stands on national and international issues. During the 1980s when our senators sat in that chair right there, this council passed numerous resolutions in solidarity with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, opposing President Reagan's austerity program and opposing nuclear proliferation. Burlington should continue this legacy by opposing the genocide in Gaza and calling for a ceasefire. This is not a perfect resolution and does not have everything that I would want from the city council in it. The first time I spoke at one of these meetings was in 2021 in favor of the resolution supporting BDS against Israel. I heard the same excuses then as now against the political solution to end apartheid and colonialism for many of the same people. Unfortunately we saw the consequences of blocking a political settlement this October and I hope that in the future this body can take additional steps to support the international movement against Israeli apartheid and for the liberation of Palestine. This resolution however is an important step forward and I urge the city council to adopt it tonight as written so that we can move on to free Palestine and free people around the world. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Michelle Sigalczyk and to be followed by Romio Herman. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Michelle Sigalczyk. I'm a resident of Ward 6. I'm also a teacher at Burlington High School. I've taught some of your kids and I'm grateful to be here with you as you're seriously considering resolution 8.1 calling for a ceasefire. I implore you to vote in favor of the resolution. Our young people are looking to our example. I will say as we've heard attempts to call this resolution anti-Semitic I'm Jewish and a descendant of Holocaust survivors. I'm horrified at our inability to publicly call for a ceasefire which I see as a bare minimum step and at our willingness to allow for this murderous campaign to be carried out in the name of Jewish safety. By not speaking with simple moral clarity we're making ourselves stand by that violence. How many more deaths have to happen before we can just state the bare minimum calling for a ceasefire? Nearly 20,000 already gone. Many of them children. Pretending that this is a muddy issue allows for the killing to continue. I beg of you to realize that as city counselors you have a rare chance to say something that matters and can help turn the tide of our elected officials nationwide. It may feel like as city counselors there are many things that are out of your control including this conflict but calling for a ceasefire is one thing that is in your power. If you do vote against this resolution please know that you're not doing it on behalf of Jewish Lives. Please know that your vote will be recorded in history books and remembered by all of us here and throughout Burlington. Thank you so much. Thank you. Our next speaker is Romeo von Herman to be followed by Sarah Brooks and Colin Parton. Good evening. Good evening Madam President. It's good to see you again. Good evening Mr. Mayor, city counselors, city administrative team. Quickly I want to express my sincere gratitude to each and every one who participated last night Democratic caucus. City's engagement in democratic process is what makes our city vibrant and resilient. Together we shape the path forward and our commitment to participating in democracy is a testament to the strength of our shared values. That being said I'm very compelled to address a matter of concern after getting acquaintance with the city council meeting delivered item agenda 8.1 to the Israeli special operation happening rather responding to the August terror attack in Israel. This delivered item agenda I speak of today's proposed resolution that is under consideration today here at the city council. One that extends on international affairs particularly anti-Israel position. While my heart goes to the families and friends and colleagues of the three young Palestinians that were shot a few weeks ago and respect the importance of addressing global issues I believe that our focus must remain on matters that directly impact our city. I also want to remind our city elected leaders and appointed leaders that our city is in no position to demand anything from the Jewish state of Israel through this resolution or any executive order. That being said I just want to show my support for item 8.2 that Councilor Travers presented. Thank you again and have a wonderful night. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Sarah Brooks to be followed by Colin Parton and Will Keaton. Good evening. Hello. Should I go? Yes, please do. Before you do let's all just be respectful of each other. You're standing next to someone that doesn't agree with you. Please keep your thoughts to yourself. Go ahead. Thank you. It feels as though history is repeating itself. In 2021 in September we were in the same room since then our movement the Palestinian movement has grown and support for Palestinians has multiplied and will continue to do so because the truth is laid bare and we're watching a genocide unfold before our eyes. No ballot box is ever going to get us out of this genocide. The status quo is untenable and we must end capitalism and imperialism and genocide. If there were no Israel America would have to invent one. It represents US military empire and interests in the region. Both Republicans and Democrats support this and support this genocide. Zionism has never been about religion. It's about power and control and appropriation and settler colonialism. Some of the largest Zionist orgs in America are evangelical Christians and even explicitly anti-Semitic. You cannot separate Zionism from imperialism and colonialism. I'll end with a quote from Ami Sasser a martinian revolutionary. He says that no one colonizes innocently and no one colonizes with impunity either that a nation which colonizes that a civilization which justifies colonization and therefore force is already a sick civilization a civilization which is morally diseased which irresistibly progressing from one consequence to another calls for its own punishment. I call for the city council to pass this resolution and call for a ceasefire. I call for Bernie Sanders to call for a ceasefire and to everyone here. Let us continue to struggle against ethnic cleansing and work instead to build a world that fights for a future for humanity. Thank you. Our next speaker is Colin Parton to be followed by Will Keaton. Good evening. Good evening. There is no justification for a violent occupation of people's land. There only started to be an issue in Palestine when it was clear Zionists were not coming to Palestine to live amongst Palestinians in their homeland but in fact we're aiming to conquer them and push them out by any means necessary. As the South African singer and activist Maryam McKeva said of colonizers there quote we welcomed you we said come sit and you sat down and said okay get out end quote. If you see a man committing a violent crime against an innocent person in the street you don't stop to question if they're a part of an oppressed group you simply stop them. It is irrelevant if people identify themselves with a dream of a homeland for their oppressed group. If that dream comes out the cost of enacting a violent occupation of other people's land you must know that your dream has roots in the worst parts. The parts that are willing to sacrifice other people's lives for your benefit the part that comes from growing up in a society that has always benefited and continues to benefit from the exploitation of people in the global south the people traditionally seen as uncivilized. It's no coincidence that the vast majority of support for Zionism comes from the US and England supporters of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia. There's no justification for a violent occupation of another people's land just none you can't do it. This resolution is the bare minimum but it needs to pass in order to address the urgent need for ceasefire and access to humanitarian aid and it would be a great shame and embarrassment for Burlington if it didn't pass. Thank you guys. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Will Keaton to be followed by Colin Palmer and Paul Fleckenstein. Good evening. When politicians evoke Israel's so-called right self-defense as a reason to ignore a call for a ceasefire and give Israel a green light for their genocide I ask what is Israel actually defending itself from? What does Israel feel threatened by? Schools, hospitals, ambulances, refugee camps, farmers and their olive trees, journalists, poets, mosques, churches, libraries. Evidently Israel does feel threatened by all of these institutions because they represent the living reality of Palestinian self-determination on their land which the state of Israel considers its divine right to colonize its manifest destiny and the unceasing resistance of Palestinians is a threat which is why all these things are deliberately targeted by missiles. To the military state of Israel is the reality of Palestinian self-determination that must be annihilated. I demand the city take a stand against this annihilation, support a ceasefire and to cut off the money and aid that supplies the IDF of its weapons of torture and murder. Words saying Burlington is a place where hate has no place that Palestinians should be safe here would be meaningless and trivial gestures, racist terrorizing attacks will continue and we will have blood on our hands. To the people who say that Israel's only state does not allow to defend itself I ask who are some of the first people that the Nazis killed? Communists and socialists who stood by the Jewish right self-defense. The same liberals today who unseasonally support Israel's right to murder Palestinians would have condemned Jewish people to their murder would have banned them from entering the America and Britain as refugees. So you know I don't know I don't really understand why I'm sitting here arguing about this but seems you all really like to kill babies so I don't really know all right thank you. Our next speaker is Colin Palmer to be followed by Paul Fleckenstein. Which side of history are you on? Photos and videos went viral depicting the IDF humiliating, blindfolding and stripping at least 100 men and children as young as 13. The violence perpetrated by the IDF is nearly identical to the Nazi torture employed during the Holocaust and the war crimes committed in Abu Ghraib prison. While the IDF claims all these men are associated with Hamas, one victim is beloved journalist Dya Al-Khalat who was forced to leave his seven-year-old disabled daughter behind. So far there has been zero conclusive evidence that proves Al-Khalat is a Hamas terrorist yet the Israeli soldier sexually assaulted beaten and detained him with impunity. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demonizes Palestinians as the children of darkness and weaponizes the Hamas strike on October 7th as an excuse to commit genocide against the innocent men women and children and haza funded by our taxpayer dollars. Our taxes, our weapons, our F-35s that we house here in Vermont are being sent to the apartheid state of Israel which has already murdered over 20,000 confirmed deaths over the past two months alone and have yet to prioritize the rescuing of their own hostages. Burlington, Vermont has contributed over 15 million dollars worth of food to Israel yet over a quarter of Burlington residents aren't even above the poverty line. How can we afford to provide aid to a rogue and peerless superpower hellbent on murdering indigenous people when Burlington residents demand higher wages, free health care and end them into a current drug and housing epidemic through effective social services instead of more police funding and crackdowns. The police of Burlington, Vermont and the United States are well organized and have already cost businesses, schools and institutions across the country billions of dollars in losses because we refuse to allow genocide. We demand direct ceasefire unrestricted humanitarian aid to all Palestinians and to call on the city of Burlington to enforce boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel otherwise there will be great consequences for the city and it's already failing economy. Thank you. Thank you. Our next speaker, good evening. I'm Paul Fleckenstein from Burlington and along with a lot of others here I'm from the Vermont Coalition for Palestinian Liberation. With the murderous rampage in Gaza carried out by Israel we have to demand the full context to understand the violence both here and abroad. Think of Burlington. UVM canceled the speaking event with Mohammed El-Kurd an internationally recognized poet, writer and intellectual because he was Palestinian. Vermont officials at the state and city levels congressional delegation representatives have attended pro-Israel rallies which were merely prelude to the genocide that we're seeing carried out in Gaza right now and certain members trying to follow the decorum here, certain members of the Burlington police force not to be named have seemed to make the personal mission to intimidate and threaten Palestinian rights people holding a vigil and protest the Palestine and protest of the genocide in Palestine in November. This is all part of a racist and Islamophobic dehumanization of Palestinians that supports violence here and justifies mass murder in Gaza. Let's be clear that the attack of Israel on Hamas is a pretext it's not about Hamas it is about destroying the Palestinian resistance to ethnic cleansing and apartheid in Palestine carried out by Israel as a colonial state back by US Empire. We need a permanent ceasefire now. We need to stop the occupation and funding for Israel and I'm joining others in supporting the campaign for apartheid free Burlington designation. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Henry Bartuck to be followed by Jack Tiano and Dylan Pilcher. Good evening. Good evening. Hi my name is Henry. I've lived in Vermont all my life and Burlington for many years and I've spent much of my life in the denial that is so common place among white Vermonters. I have enjoyed the safety and self-satisfaction that comes with the like a vague association with progressive with progressive values and while remaining silent about the many injustices and systems of oppression I witness harming my siblings of color in this so-called progressive community and throughout the world. The occupation of the Palestinian land by the state of Israel and the apartheid system enacted there by them has resulted in gross human rights abuses and massive loss of human life. These actions by Israel mount to genocide is through the courage of the Palestinian people who have found the strength to call upon us under the most horrific circumstances that I can no longer ignore my humanity and stay silent. However it is because of my silence and the silence of other white Vermonters both about this genocide and the racism and oppressive values which infect the heart of our community that directly caused the attack on three Palestinian men in the streets of Burlington on November 25th. In the wake of this horrible act and as a member of this community I call upon you all upon Burlington City Council members to support the ceasefire resolution. We must act as a community stand against the collective punishment of the Palestinian people and use our voice as the largest municipality in the state of Vermont to reject oppression in all its forms both within our city and around the world. And if we are truly a community committed to the ideals of justice and the sanctity of all life then you must go on to support the anti-apartheid referendum which will solidify the city of Burlington's commitment to these sacred values. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Jack Tiano to be followed by Dylan Pilcher. Excuse me Council President Paul. Yes. Whatever's going on over here is super distracting from your neighbors and community members that are trying to speak. You too. Hey. Oh you. Yes. Yeah. Over here. I'm talking to you. Please. I'm sorry. Councilor please. Councilor Grant you're out of order. You're out of order. The next speaker is Jack Tiano to be followed by Dylan Pilcher. Jack Tiano. What's up y'all. My name is Dylan Pilcher. I don't think Jack's here right now so I'm just going to go ahead and keep it moving. I unfortunately did not have a speech prepared. I had a couple of notes that were jotted down but I think a lot of the points have been covered already. I just want to give a shout out to my boy Wes over here. He just killed it. He was spitting hot fire. That should go viral on YouTube. But look I just want to say that I'm here to support the resolution that everyone's been talking about and to have an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. I think that what's been happening between Israel and Palestine has been grossly unfair for about 75 years or so and I just want to remind everybody that these are human lives that we're dealing with. I don't know who on the council here supports and who doesn't but I think that this issue is representative of our country and our nation and the zeitgeist of the present moment in general and that we need to and that it translates to can the voice of the people be heard to do something that is right. This is not a question of much of a gray area at all. This is right and wrong. This is genocide. These are real people. These are people's lives who are being lost in the thousands over a million people displaced. I don't have to go over all the numbers right now because I only have 55 seconds and people have already said it. But if you do the research, if you look in depth into what's happening, you'll see very clearly that Israel is an apartheid state which is oppressive and genocidal towards the Palestinian people and also many of its neighbors. So I think that it's important that we stand up for this issue and we show up and we continue to show up and we send a message that the people's voice can be heard and that we can make a difference in the world. And I just want to say thank you so much to everybody who showed up here and shared your voice. I was very impressed by what you had to say and that gave me a better feeling about my generation and the generations before me and coming after in our ability to affect a positive change in the world. Free Palestine, free Gaza, inshallah. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Dalia Debello to be followed by Crystal C. Good evening. Good evening city council members. My name is Dalia. I live in Burlington and I am an immigrant. And tonight when my abuelo calls me and asks me how I kept my dying culture alive in America, I will tell him that I spent it fighting against the brutal eradication of another marginalized community. I will tell him that I used my freedom of speech and stood in front of my elected officials to remind them that roughly 1.3 million Palestinians in Gaza are displaced and dying from Israeli airstrikes, starvation, disease and American funded hatred. I look at you with the disgust of every immigrant that is denied their safety because they are darker than I am. Each and every one of you have been elected by the people of Burlington to serve the people of Burlington and you sit in your positions in silence. As tens of thousands of Palestinians perish funded by your country, you are silent. And what is considered the safest state in the US three Palestinian students were shot and you stay silent? Do you sleep well at night knowing that you can afford your family's Christmas presents with paycheck signed with the blood of children dying in this holy land? Do you feel safe in these privileged positions getting three full meals a day while hunger fights break out amongst starving Gazans? As elected officials, I remind you that your positions are temporary. You are as replaceable as you are cowardly. You represent the people of Burlington and thus have the responsibility to meet these demands. An immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza boycott divestment and sanctions against all Israeli commerce, the end of Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, you provide unrestricted humanitarian aid to Palestinians, free all Palestinian hostages and prisoners and the USA to Israel and the Israeli siege of occupation and apartheid system defend the civil rights of all Palestinians and solidarity activists and support Palestinians rights to self-determination equal rights and right of return. Thank you, free Palestine. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Crystal C to be followed by Nick Ruderman and Leonardo Barber. Hi, everyone. I'm here on behalf of the Vermont Worker Center to voice our support for the ceasefire resolution as a step towards peace. I want to quickly share two of our city's steps towards peace and equality. In 2011, the city of Burlington laid out a plan with the goal of quote, eradicating structural racism and ethnic discrimination. This plan highlighted that quote, the city of Burlington needs to change the way it does business in order to address the root causes of inequality. In global politics, Burlington residents and students at UVM focused on divesting from companies that did business in apartheid South Africa. In 1985, when the UVM board voted not to divest, students and residents alike responded by building a shanty town on the green which stayed up for two months until the university eventually divested. The connection to apartheid South Africa is particularly relevant when you consider that Theodore Herzl, a key figure in the formation of modern Israel, openly sought the advice and support of Cecil Rhodes, the father of apartheid in South Africa. Anyway, these stances and actions seemed radical at the time but they were essential steps towards towards equality in our city and abroad. Today, the same need for divestment and comprehensive change to our business model applies. This time it is needed in order to address the perpetual violence towards Palestinians, violence that our country has supported since Israel's creation and which leads to violent resistance such as the attacks October 7th. We stop this one way by stopping support for Israel's military. As we've done in the past, we must continue to acknowledge how our institutions continue the violence and the way our domestic polity and local attitude towards Arab and anti-Arab sentiment here has led to the recent shooting of three Palestinians in our city. We must continue Burlington history of forward thinking by ending our support for Israeli's military actions. As you heard tonight and over the past months, the city has spoken. The workers have spoken. Members of Burlington's Jewish Arab Christian and many other religious communities or Muslim communities and many others have spoken. Equality will not come from the murder of innocent children. In conclusion, I support this resolution and its calls for a permanent ceasefire in aid to Palestine and I hope that this will be just the first step and another example of our city being on the right side. Thank you. Our next speaker is Nick Ruderman to be followed by Leonardo Barber and Mark Leopold. Good evening. Great. It's pronounced Ruderman. It's a Jewish name. My apologies. I'm super proud to be Jewish. I want people to know that Israel was not built by Jews. It was built by the UN. It's made to make sure that Jews get killed off. It's made by anti-Semitic people and those are the people who are funding it. The New Testament is a race doctrine and these are the people who want Jews and Muslims to kill each other. They have two people. They hate each other. They pick one they hate least and they fund that one to kill off the ones they hate more. We want to make sure we're not sending weapons over there. I don't recommend the Hebrew Bible to anybody. It's not written for everybody. It's written for certain people and it says to turn your swords into plowshares. We're going to disarm, deconstruct all the bombs, get rid of all the guns, all the weapons, turn this world into a paradise which we know is possible. This is not about, this is about supporting Jewish people by defunding Israel. Most Jews do not live in Israel and we don't support it. All the Jews I know are against this whole colonial state set up by the English in 1917 in World War I. They left their colony there and they handed it off to a gang from Russia, the Stern gang, to finish the killing of indigenous people. Jews have always lived there. 30% of the population of Israel was Jewish before 1948. The war didn't start in 1948. It started in 1917 by these trash Christian fucking races. Thank you. Our next speaker is Leonardo Barber to be followed by Mark Leopold. I'm also Jewish. I am a fourth generation Vermonter. I speak on behalf of my entire family when calling on you all to call for a ceasefire. I'd like to echo what many of my fellow people have said about a ceasefire being the least we can do in this ongoing violence and occupation against our fellow people. Everybody has said what we have been calling for for months. We have been in the streets protesting. There's so much violence and murder against children and everybody in Palestine and it needs to end. Thank you. Our next speaker is Mark Leopold to be followed by Rabbi Aaron Filmas. Good evening. Good evening. I was born in Burlington 71 years ago and so far I have lived in our beautiful city for more than 45 of my years. As a Ward 4 resident I vote regularly. Most Wednesdays I engage with Mayor Murrow and some members of this very council and other concerned citizens. The mayor demonstrates dedication to listening to other voices and understanding differing priorities and ideas. The meetings are mostly marked by civility even during real disagreement. Mostly I am impressed with the city council decisions. Most of the time the council is focused on Burlington's real urgent needs and problems. Tonight I am asking my city councilors to demonstrate that proper focus again. The proposed resolution 8.1 is outside the purview of this council. It is hateful and unnecessarily creates division that makes all of us less safe. I condemn hate and violence. I condemn the tragic shootings. It was a senseless act of hate against three young men, Hisham, Kinan and Ali. The 8.2 amended resolution for community unity by Councillor Ben Travers is focused and entirely within the purview of this council. It has the right content for healing. The original 8.2 resolution should be abandoned. The amended 8.2 resolution should be approved. Thank you, councillors, for your hard work. Thank you, Council President Karen Paul for your council leadership. I am grateful for the opportunity to speak tonight. I have 28 more seconds and I'd like to ask for those 28 seconds to be spent in silent prayer for the complete recovery physically, emotionally and mentally of the three young men who were senselessly shot on our streets. Six. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Rabbi Aaron Filmas to be followed by April Fisher and Carmen Darling. Good evening. Good evening. I'm Rabbi Aaron Filmas. I moved to Burlington this summer to serve Ohavecetic synagogue, the largest synagogue in Vermont. My family lives just doors down from the prices who hosted the three young Palestinian American students who were shot in our neighborhood and our synagogue is only blocks from where the horrific act took place. Every day I walk down the street and shudder as I feel the fear and the anger and the sadness for the brutal attack on our neighbors and their family. Our synagogue president and I brought meals and visited the price family whose children attended our preschool. We visited the Islamic Society of Vermont to meet with and offer our support to their leaders. There we talked about Islamophobia and anti-Semitism and how they affect each of our lives and how both are on the rise and how we must come together to fight this hate. I came to Ohavecetic because I believe in the vision for our synagogue as a diverse and welcoming community for all. Despite the fact that we have state of the art security and emergency call systems, bulletproof glass, hired armed guards at our events, many parents are now afraid to drop their children off at our preschool and Hebrew school or attend Shabbat services. Our community needs healing and unity now and this proposed resolution is fracturing Burlington. Spending our time arguing with simplistic ideas about a very complicated conflict that is over 5,000 miles away is a serious distraction from the local issues that are endangering our own lives here in Burlington like rampant theft, addiction, homelessness and gun violence. I urge you not to pass this resolution and instead to consider the alternative one that focuses solely on the tragic event in our neighborhood and how we can and must unite as a city against this kind of violence and hate. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is April Fisher to be followed by Carmen Darling and Antonio Golan. Good evening. I am speaking to you all tonight as an anti-Zionist Jewish woman in support of the ceasefire resolution 8.1. This latest chapter of Israeli genocide claiming the lives of 17,000 Palestinians including over 6,000 children has nothing to do with Jewish values and has everything to do with white supremacy and Western imperialism. The necessity of the ceasefire resolution in this town at this time is highlighted by a quote by shooting victim Hisham Aritani, quote, this hideous crime did not happen in a vacuum. It's important to understand this is part of the larger story. As much as I appreciate and love every single one of you here today, I am but one casualty in this much wider conflict, quote continues, had I been shot in the West Bank where I grew up, the medical services that saved my life here would likely have been withheld by the Israeli army. The soldier who shot me would go home and never be convicted. I understand that the pain is so much more real and immediate because many of you know me, but any attack like this is horrific, be it here or in Palestine. This is why when you say your wishes and light your candles today, your mind should not be focused on me as an individual but me as a proud member of a people being oppressed. So no, this resolution is not out of context. It is entirely connected because as this, as the shooting victim said, this violence that happened here was racist, anti-Palestinian, and the genocide happening in Palestine right now is racist. And in order to condemn the violence here, we have to condemn violence against Palestinians anywhere in the world. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Carmen Darling. If you could just have a seat, just a moment. Let's sit down upstairs, please. Thank you very much. My apologies. Carmen, please go ahead. To the representatives who after two months still refuse to call for a ceasefire, the absolute bare minimum. To the people who claim to represent me in my values, whose salaries I help pay with my hard work. If listening to Palestinians is not enough to move you, if seeing what they have shown us these past months is not enough to move your basic empathy and humanity, maybe you will be moved by the experts and humanitarian organizations who don't hesitate to call Israel an apartheid state that is committing genocide against the people of Palestine. If the experts don't move you, maybe your selfish drive for self-preservation will. With the establishment at your back now, you might feel secure in your careers, but know that you're fighting a losing battle. If you only care about your legacy, have the foresight to see that history will condemn you. You will be remembered as genocide deniers and apartheid apologists. There's still time to listen to Palestinians. I urge you to sign the resolution. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Antonio Golan to be followed by Lena Greenberg and Grace Palmer. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you all take seriously the request to not repeat myself, but I do want to say clearly that I'm here to support the resolution for the ceasefire. I also think it's important to clearly state that Israel is committing a genocide and we have a responsibility to stand against it. Many people have said that this is the bare minimum that we can do. I agree with that, but I would also add that this is not particularly radical or particularly unique. Many cities around the country are passing similar resolutions. Burlington would not be the first, Burlington would not be the last. I'm relatively new to the city of Burlington. I'm originally from New York and have lived around the country in numerous places. I could tell you Burlington is a small city, but it is an important city. People do notice what happens here, and this resolution would send a powerful message to the rest of the country. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Lena Greenberg to be followed by Grace Palmer and Alex Cobb. Good evening. Good governance is not brain surgery, but those who govern can draw guidance from medical practitioners and follow the principle of do no harm. From this safe, warm room it is the least you can do is follow the principle of do no harm. On the table tonight is a resolution to expand the scope of the carbon pollution impact fee. Surprise. This is an easy and painless way to move forward on our climate goals. 11,000 people were washed away in floods in Libya. Those people matter. The people of Palestine matter, and from our safe and warm position, the least we can do is vote like we care about those people. I urge you to vote in support of this resolution. Decarbonizing buildings is a walk in the park compared to watching your livelihood, your friends, your communities get washed away. Along the lines of the least you can do is pass this resolution calling for a ceasefire. Your political careers are simply not as important as the lives of 17,000 murdered Palestinians and the futures of 25,000 recently orphaned children in Palestine. You can do it. It's just not that hard. We are here. We are safe. We have nothing to worry about in the grand scheme of that which threatens our friends and neighbors and global community. Please do your job. Listen to the people who have taken the time to speak to you here. Be brave. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Grace Palmer to be followed by Alex Cobb and Hannah Lawrence. Good evening. Hello. My name is Grace and I'm a resident in Ward 2. I'm here to support the ceasefire resolution because it is intolerable to watch our country provide political, financial and military support to what is undeniably a genocidal campaign by Israel and because Burlington has an opportunity to stand with the clear majority across the country and within this room by passing the ceasefire resolution and calling for an end to the violence. My further sentiments have been expressed and I concede my time. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Alex Cobb to be followed by Hannah Lawrence and Milza Kojarek. Good evening. Hi there. Hi City Councilor. My name is Alex Cobb and I am a resident of Ward 2 and I would like to ask you and all of my City Councilors who will you choose to be tonight? You have the choice. You have the power as my representative to stand with the majority of Americans by calling for a ceasefire. You can choose to be courageous, to be heartful. You can choose to stand for liberation knowing that my liberation, your liberation, is not separate from the liberation of Palestinian people. So please, stand for justice, stand for courage, stand for your heart that cares about humanity here and in Palestine. Pass the resolution 8.1 for a ceasefire and keep going. You can do more. You can do more like end all of the aid to Israel that is going to killing thousands and thousands and thousands of innocent people. You can send aid to those people so they know that you care about their humanity here in our home a few streets away from my apartment and across the ocean. Please choose your power, choose your courage, choose to stand with the movement for freedom of all people. Mine, yours, all of yours, all of the people here. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Hannah Lawrence to be followed by I believe it's Milza Krijarek. My apologies. Good evening. My name is Hannah Lawrence and I'm a resident of Ward 6 here in Burlington. I would like to thank the counselors who proposed the ceasefire resolution and I believe it is your moral responsibility to pass it. By passing this resolution, you're saying white supremacy is not welcome here and that you support oppressed communities who are victims of violence in Vermont and around the world. As the shooting victims themselves have expressed this crime did not happen in a vacuum. You cannot remove the violence that happened against Palestinian Americans here in Burlington from the increased violence our tax dollars are fueling in Gaza. Your institutional silence has dehumanized Palestinians in this room in this city and around the state. You have a voice and power and I implore you to use it to create a safer environment for our Palestinian Arab. Okay. If you could just wait for just a moment. My apologies for interrupting you. If you want to continue or if you'd like to start again, whichever you prefer. Okay, sure. Thank you. Yes, I will continue. Okay. Your institutional silence has dehumanized Palestinians in this room in this city and around the state. You have a voice and power and I implore you to use it to create a safer environment for our Palestinian Arab Muslim and Jewish community members here in Burlington and across Vermont. The Vermont digger recently had an article where a Muslim high school student mentioned that she loves the outdoors and enjoys walks. But after the shooting now says she has to modify her behavior and turn to indoor hobbies. You have allowed our city and state to become a place where children do not feel safe to leave their house. As Burlington is a Democrat led city, it's important to note that recent polling release last week reaffirmed that nearly 80% of Democrats in the US support a permanent ceasefire right now. If you vote against this resolution, you're voting against your constituents. In fact, more than a dozen US city councils have already passed ceasefire resolutions. The world is watching what you do in the wake of the tragic shooting. What side of history do you want to be on? Thank you. Thank you very much. So our next speaker is Milza Karajik. My apologies. Thank you for correcting me. Before I start, may I just ask your question? Are we human beings here? This is not an opportunity for back and forth. I would like I'm here to listen to we're here to listen to you. All right. Well, I would like to urge all of you to please look at me when I speak and to also look at all the speakers because we are all human being, okay, created equal, okay, which is what this country apparently stands for, except when it's about Palestinians. Then it does not stand for that. So while you are typing on your laptops, I've been observing every single one of you. These people came here. They have families. I have two children, two little children at home. The least you can do is look us in the eyes when we speak. I'm not a public speaker. This is in fact my very first speech to a public audience. But what is happening in Gaza right now? I am from Bosnia. I know what genocide looks like. I know what ethnic cleansing attempt to ethnic cleansing looks like. I experienced it in my old skin as a little child. I came to this country to be safe from it. I came to the city of Burlington and I chose to stay here 23 years ago. And never, ever have I felt more ashamed to be a Burlington resident, ever-monter, and a U.S. citizen. Never, ever because of your silence, on the question on Palestine, because you speak up for every single other thing, except when it comes to the Palestinian people. This double standards needs to end. I urge you to vote yes for resolution 8.1 for an immediate ceasefire, which is the bare minimum. Mothers in Gaza have to write the names of their children on their hand in case they die when they find them under the rubbles. If this doesn't move you, if this doesn't wake up the humanity in you, I don't know what will. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Andy Simon to be followed by Catherine Bach. Good evening. Good evening. Everything that I was going to say has been said both on the decarbonization ordinance and on the ceasefire, and more passionately and more eloquently than I would say it. But I do want to say briefly that I don't think that I need to qualify myself as a Jewish for-monter, as someone whose relatives were Holocaust survivors, and I don't need to qualify myself for how long I've lived in Burlington. If I came yesterday, it would be just as valid as somebody who lived all their lives. But I want to tell you that I was shocked that in this meeting there's nothing to say about the climate emergency, that we don't have any reports on that particular subject, because we are facing a climate emergency, and we need to do more than tiny little baby steps. We need to do big things for to decarbonize, and this resolution that is proposed tonight is a very small but important thing, and I urge you to send it to the Transportation Energy and Utilities Committee so that it can be on the March ballot. I also need to tell you that as someone who's about the same age as the State of Israel that anti-Semitism does not equate with anti-Zionism, that is just not true, and I'm very saddened to hear people say that. I'm very saddened that people in this audience whom I know are saddened by hearing a ceasefire call, and hear it as hate speech, it is not hateful, it is just asking to stop the violence in Gaza. Please pass that resolution. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Catherine Bach, to be followed by Shane Carruth. Good evening. Good evening. Thank you for listening to me. I lived on North Prospect, two blocks from where the Palestinian students were shot. If you could just get a little closer to the microphone, thank you so we can hear you. I would like to invite everyone to take a few deep breaths and have a moment of silence for everyone that's been killed in wars. I'll always remember Carruth, a Palestinian man who came to my clinic seeking help for severe back pain. I asked if he minded that I was Jewish. He said, oh, that's good. We're cousins, so you will do your best to help me. We are all hurting and afraid. We're all mourning and angry. Too many lives have been lost. We need a nuanced civil, we need nuanced civil conversations to work out solutions to the complicated historical problems in the Middle East. This can only happen when the killing stops. When we all recognize each other's humanity, wars can only end with negotiation. Hakuni, Sibect, Hamas, and the Israeli government to negotiate when they're both saying they want to annihilate each other and when the rest of the world is taking sides. My question for you today is, can this resolution impact the war or will the dialogue around it harm the Burlington community when we need healing? But you can make a difference on another important issue in our city. You can approve referral of the carbon impact fee resolution to the TUC for further consideration. This could reduce emissions from heating buildings significantly, giving everyone a better chance for a survivable climate future. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Shane Carruth to be followed by Jennifer Forrest. Shane Carruth will go to the next person. That would be Jennifer Forrest to be followed by Steven Margolin. Good evening. Okay. Yes. Okay. I admit I'm a little nervous, so bear with me. I'm a resident of Ward 3. And my name is Jennifer Forrest. And I want to say my white family members came here to this country and stole land from the indigenous Ibeniki people here in Vermont and committed genocide. I'm here to grapple with my own humanity. I'm asking you to sign on to this resolution as a beginning to demand a ceasefire in Gaza and to end Israel's genocide that I am being forced to support with my tax dollars. I cannot go back in time and stop the genocide my ancestors committed, but I can stand before you now to say no to this genocide that is happening to the Palestinian people in Gaza as I speak. Billions of dollars that are going to support this horrific genocide could be used to support humanitarian aid to Gaza, a caring economy here in the US, reparations for BIPOC, people for our own history of enslavement and genocide that our country has never dealt with. Climate justice depends on the liberation of Palestine. My liberation and my freedom depends on the liberation and freedom of the Palestinian people. We are not separate. Our liberation is bound together. Free Palestine. Thank you very much. Stephen Mark Golan, please. Good evening. Hi, Abby Hanukkah. Tonight we're celebrating the fifth night of the holiday of how an oppressive force came into the land of Judea, murdered the people, set up its own religion, and forced them to conform to a global superpower. But you know, don't worry about the Palestine resolution. It's not related. Happy Hanukkah, y'all. So everyone here has shared with you their thoughts and all the facts and the big global things, and I'm just going to keep it local. I'm going to talk about what I know. If you look at the number of people who have died in Gaza, it is greater than the entire student population of Burlington, Vermont. I'm sure those are some numbers that all of you care deeply about or even more local. In 2014, I was at Ohavi Zedek and I cried as they listed all the names of the victims of the Tree of Life synagogue shooting. That's what anti-Semitism looks like. It is not the same thing as anti-Zionism, because if we were to list the names of all those Gazans, you know, greater than the number of student population here, we would be here till next week. For my last little bit, I'd like to share that I have a co-worker. We work remote. It's cool. And we was on a video call one time, and then the plane flew over past. And I could see the color drain from their face. I could see their eyes go wide. And it was in that moment that I remembered my co-worker was born in Lebanon and lived the first 20 years of their life there. And now we can't be on video calls anymore. So if you say this ceasefire resolution has nothing to do with Burlington, then you're very wrong. It's already here. Thank you very much. So to the city council, we have just gotten to 90 minutes of public forum. There are 36 Burlington residents that are joining us in contoys that are in that have submitted a form that we have not yet heard from. There are eight that are joining us by zoom that we have not yet heard from. There are 20 non-Burlington residents that are joining us in contoys who are here to speak. And there are another 10 that are joining us online. So for those of you for those of you aren't familiar with our rules, we do have 90 minutes for public forum. And if we wish to extend that public forum, then we have to do it by a vote. So again, there are there are 45 total Burlington residents that are joining us either in person or online and another 30 non-Burlington residents that are joining us either in person or online. I would accept a motion if there wish to be a motion to extend public forum. If not, we would have public forum ended this time. Did somebody want to make a motion on that? Go ahead. Go ahead, Councillor Barlow. I'll give it a try. I would move to suspend our rules and to continue public forum to hear from Burlington residents here in contoys. Is there a seconded by Councillor Shannon? Is there any discussion on that motion? Councillor Hightower, yes. I would like to amend that motion to hear from others but giving them a one-minute public forum instead of two minutes. That I will tell you just because I feel that I have to. As council president, I have heard significant complaints from people who have been very opposed to a one-minute allowing people to speak for one minute. I'll just add that at that time. If I could get the floor back after a second. I'm sorry, what? I said if I could get the floor back after a second. We need a second. That would be an amendment to the motion. Is there a second to the motion to allow a one-minute? Yes. Councillor McGee, Councillor Hightower. Yeah, and I'd just like to justify this by saying like we said there's a 90-minute public forum. The first movement was to just hear from folks from Burlington who are in person. I think giving folks one minute as opposed to no minutes is hopefully something that folks can appreciate so that we can hear from everyone and that they've got time to reduce their comments as we hear from the rest of the folks from Burlington who are in the room. Thank you. Okay, so go ahead, Councillor Bergman. Well, I've been pretty consistent for the long time that I've been here that I don't support shutting off public comment and I cannot support a one-minute limit on those who are, I just can't support that at all for whatever the division is and therefore I will vote against the amendment and then I guess we'll see depending on what happens to seek a, and to amend the original to effectuate what I'm looking for. Thank you. Okay, thank you, Councillor Bergman. Again, we're just talking about the amendment to one minute. Councillor Grant. Thank you. I think especially with regards to a topic as important as this or any topic where people come prepared to speak for public forum, they're told they have two minutes through no fault of their own. They don't know where they fall or how many people are going to speak in advance. So a lot of people come and they come prepared for their two minutes and I don't agree that we should shorten that. I don't, I think there's an issue of fairness. Thank you. Okay, thank you so much, Councillor Grant. If there's no one else who wishes to speak to the amendment, remember this is all we're voting on right now. We're just voting on whether to amend the amendment to shorten the amount of time from one, from two minutes to one minute. And sorry, that's just for folks who are not in Burlington and not in Contoise. Not from Burlington, not in Contoise. Okay, so the motion on the floor before that amendment was to have, was to have public forum for Burlington residents that are joining a, to finish, to finish the, to finish the number of Burlington residents that are joining us in Contoise. Correct? Correct. And now you want to amend that. Do have it be what? To have that still be true, but then to give everyone else, so people who are online and or Burlington, non Burlington residents who are in Contoise, a chance to at least speak for a minute. Okay. All right. Does everyone understand what we're voting on? Okay. Lori, why don't we, why don't we do this by role? Again, this is a, a yes would be to allow those people that are joining us online, whether they are Burlington or non Burlington residents, as well as non Burlington residents that are joining us in Contoise to speak for one minute. Councillor Barlow. No. Councillor Bergman. No. Councillor Carpenter. No. Councillor Jang. No. Councillor Doherty. Councillor Grant. No. No. Councillor Hightower. Yes. Councillor King. No. Councillor McGee. No. Councillor Shannon. No. Councillor Travers. Yes. City Council President Paul. No. Two ayes, ten nays. Okay. So that motion fail, that amendment fails. We're back to the original resolution, the original motion, which is to go to the 30, approximately 37 people that are joining us in Contoise who are Burlington residents. Councillor, Councillor Travers, and then we'll go to Councillor Bergman. Just in the interest of time, President Paul, I will be voting in favor of this motion with your mentioning that there's 45 Burlington residents both here and online. If all of those folks take their full two minutes, it's another hour and a half of public forum taking us, you know, well past the 9 p.m. hour. My hope is that if we vote in favor of this motion that the folks here to speak may perhaps be mindful of not taking up to their full two minutes because when we do reach that point, I would like to move to further extend public forum to allow additional folks to speak. But at this point in time, I think with 45 additional folks here up to two minutes, I think this is the appropriate motion now and then we'll see where we're at when the Burlington residents are done speaking. Thank you. Okay. Thank you so much. Before we go to Councillor Bergman, just want to clarify, your motion is to continue public forum for Burlington residents that are joining us in con toys only. That's correct. Okay. Thank you. Councillor Bergman. Consistent with my position before, I would move to amend that to eliminate the restriction on public comment and to allow all people who have signed up for public comment be they in the auditorium or online or in Burlingtonians or non-Burlingtonians to speak for the two minutes that we provide for public comment. Okay. Councillor Bergman, is there a second to that motion? Yes. Seconded by Councillor McGee. Let's try if we can in the interest of time. If there isn't anyone who wishes to speak to that motion, the amendment to the motion will go to a vote. I would like to speak to that. Oh, okay. I'm my apologies. Go ahead, Councillor Barlow. I just want to be mindful that we have a rather media agenda tonight and the long, even though we want to hear from the public, we've heard from a lot of the public and with my motion we'll hear from a significant additional slice of the public. We still have to get to the council's business tonight. And so that's why I moved to try to balance those two things and hear from another slice of folks while also allowing us enough time to complete our agenda tonight. Thank you so much. Councillor Bergman. I appreciate that. I'm an old man who gets tired real early and still in yet it is a fundamental aspect of democracy that we hear folks and this is what democracy looks like. So I would hope that we would pass this and allow the people to speak. Thank you, Councillor Bergman. Councillor Grant and then we'll go to a vote. So I get tired too but people voted for me to listen to them and that's important to me and I think there's a lot of times where as a city and sometimes as a council, we don't do the best job of listening to people. Thank you. Thank you very much. With that we'll go to a vote. Now remember this is on the amendment to extend public forum effectively to extend public forum until everyone who either as a Burlington or non-Burlington resident joining us online or in person has the ability to speak. That's correct, Councillor Bergman? Those who have signed up. Those who have signed up. Yes, of course. Laurie, if you could call the roll please. Councillor Barlow? No. Councillor Bergman? Yes. Councillor Carpenter? No. Councillor Jang? Yes. Councillor Doherty? No. Councillor Grant? Yes. Councillor Hightower? Yes. Councillor King? No. Councillor McGee? Yes. Councillor Shannon? No. Councillor Travers? Yes. City Council President Paul? No. Six sides, six nays. The motion fails. So we are back to the original motion which would be to extend public forum for Burlington residents that are joining us online. We do have joining us in person, my apologies. Not that I'm trying to encourage it. We do have our rules to allow for three amendments. Okay. So why don't we go to a roll call vote on extending public forum for Burlington residents that are joining us in person in con toys? Councillor Barlow? Yes. Councillor Bergman? Yeah. Councillor Carpenter? Yes. Councillor Jang? Yes. Councillor Doherty? Yes. Councillor Grant? No. Councillor Hightower? Yes. Councillor King? Yes. Councillor McGee? Yes. Councillor Shannon? Yes. Councillor Travers? Yes. City Council President Paul? Yes. 11 ayes, 1 nays. That motion passes. So we're going to continue with public forum. It is now 8 o'clock. The next speaker is Damien Taylor to be followed by Rory Cronin and Emma Redden. Damien Taylor will continue with Rory Cronin and Emma Redden to be followed by George Howard and Zane Baker. Good evening. Hi. Thank you for being here tonight. Happy fifth night of Hanukkah for those of you who celebrate Hanukkah. I don't think this is about Jews or Palestinians and it's not about who cares about anti-Semitism or who cares about anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim violence. This is about the liberation and safety of all people which is completely impossible under apartheid. It's impossible under siege. It's impossible under genocide. I'm a white Jewish person and my Jewishness deeply guides my belief in the liberation and sovereignty and safety of Palestinian people and I'm not a self-hating Jew. I'm not anti-Semitic because I believe in the right to life for Palestinians. I resent the idea that we have no business talking about Gaza. Our money is literally funding genocide in Gaza. What is happening in Gaza led directly to the attempted murder of three Palestinian people a couple blocks from my apartment and I really challenged this idea that we are not responsible for things that happen far away from us. I don't know why proximity is a requirement for caring about genocide. As Jews we know deeply what happens when people far away don't care about genocide. I feel deep grief at the lie that opposing genocide is anti-Jewish. Genocide is not a Jewish value. White Christians have massacred Jews for thousands of years and then white Jews use that to justify massacring Palestinians for the last eight decades. It's racist to frame Jewish security as antithetical to Palestinian liberation when Israel has colonized and stolen and killed for decades. None of us safe. No one is safe under apartheid. Zionists have so much money but we have so many people. We are the majority. I feel devastated that the council isn't yet unequivocal against genocide and apartheid and if any of you tonight end up voting for genocide and apartheid don't blame that violence on anything other than your own investment in that genocide and apartheid. Please vote to support ceasefire and apartheid free Burlington. Thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is George Howard to be followed by Zane Baker. I apologize. Of course. While I'm glad this resolution is before you I'm disappointed that it took until three Palestinian people were shot in our city. I urge you to pass this resolution despite the following shortcomings. Lines 22 and 23 acknowledges that Palestinian people are living under foreign military occupation yet nowhere does it call for an end to the occupation. Nor does it name the occupiers Israel. The next line starts the timeline at October 7th. This this regards the 75 past years of violence by said occupation which escalated throughout the first nine months of this year. Nowhere does this resolution acknowledge that occupied peoples have a right to self defense. The statements beginning on lines 26 and 29 frame Israel's actions since October 7th as in response to Alexa flood. Disregarding statements made before then and since the members of Israel's government for the complete annihilation of Palestinians. Their latest attempt we are singing in real time. Nowhere does this resolution name Israel's actions as genocide which undeniably is. To the point beginning on line 41 it is important to distinguish that anti Zionism does not equate to anti-Semitism contrary to the resolution passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Line 58 and 59 joins with Senator Welch and calling for a ceasefire though his call was for indefinite ceasefire and this point should have included that qualifier. This resolution fails to name the occupation's violence in the West Bank and doesn't take accountability for the contributions by this council by Morad who is in fact praise an UVM for the cult adding to the culture of anti-Palestinian hatred. Line 56 should have called for an end to all U.S. aid to Israel. It's important it's understood by the rest of the world that this is our war by proxy and we call for it to end. Thank you so much. Our next speaker is Zane Baker to be followed by Allison Adams. A George Howard. Okay. There was an Emma Redden. Yes. Yeah of course. Sure. My name's Damian Taylor. I'm with the party for socialism and liberation. Thank you for hearing me. The crisis in Palestine is a moral crisis and we demand immediate action. We insist that the city council votes to pass the ceasefire resolution the absolute minimum we as Vermonters can do. 24,100 Palestinian lives have been brutally taken and among them 9,400 innocent children over 1.8 million Palestinians are displaced living in unimaginable conditions. These are not mere numbers. They represent unbearable suffering of real people. We must acknowledge the historical patterns of ethnic cleansing and genocide that are being repeated in the horrors unfolding in Palestine today. We have not seen the devastation such actions have wrought in the past and we cannot afford to be silent observers. We demand the city hall council members vote to pass an immediate ceasefire resolution putting an end to the bloodshed that continues unabated. We insist on the immediate termination of all USA to Israel as we cannot bear the weight of complicity any longer. This is not a time for half measures. This is a time for unwavering resolve. We will not rest until justice is served. We won't stop and we won't let you forget. History will remember our actions and we must ask ourselves will we be remembered as those who fight for the oppressed, who demand peace or will be remembered as silent accomplices to this brutality. I implore you members of the city hall council to be bold and unwavering in your actions. Vote for immediate ceasefire now. Choose the path for peace. Choose life. Choose humanity. The world is watching and we will hold you accountable for the choices you make today. Thank you. Thank you very much. So the next person was George Howard. Yes, great. Welcome. First, I'd like to say that this matter is not complicated. We are bearing witness in mass to such brazen, vile and sprawling aggression that the Palestinian people that none of us can bear to stay quiet. We the majority of this country who stand firmly against genocide cannot reconcile the political and financial enabling of this ongoing genocide with any shred of hope that our elected officials are still as human as we need them to be. We are prepared to withhold our support for any politician who does not demand immediate ceasefire. We are horrified at the choices of our elected officials, but many of us are not shocked as we've been watching for decades as our own Palestinian, Arabic and Muslim citizens and siblings have been scapegoated, attacked and ostracized from US American society. And I noticed the black lives matter flag flying outside, but we continue to see horrific police violence against our black citizens and siblings with no justice rot despite mass uprising in Vermont and across the nation. We've seen threads of that police violence here in Burlington where police harassed police peaceful protesters at the Christmas tree lighting here on Black Friday. We are appalled by attacks on black and brown lives here and in Palestine. To support this genocide is to maintain a lineage of white supremacy that this city boldly claims to stand against. If you stand against white supremacy, today we need you to say it with your chest. We know that this resolution is insufficient and we demand and expect to see a complete end to the occupation. I don't know you all. I'm from Florida and I hope for better coming here. I'd like to see that today. I hope to find that you can stand with all of us who have come here to show you that we believe deeply in the liberation of Palestine, in their humanity, and we ask that you see the same. Thank you very much. So our next speaker is Zayn Baker to be followed by Allison Adams and C. Green. Good evening. Hello council and assalamu alaikum here today to pledge my support in the ceasefire and I find that although a lot has been said about the atrocities and the horrific attacks against the people of Palestine, the words to describe how to act in life is no more clear to me than in the Quran in 532 where it says that is why we ordained for the children of Israel that whoever takes a life it will be as if they have killed all of humanity and whoever saves a life it will be as if they have saved all of humanity. We must keep this in our hearts as is the teachings so steeped in tradition and so close to the homes of the Palestinian people and we must find a way to end this violence and the first step the most basic step is calling for the ceasefire and supporting the ceasefire. I don't have much to say but the Quran is clear on it so thank you. Thank you very much. Our next speaker is Allison Adams to be followed by C. Green and Trey Cooke. Good evening. Good evening. Hi my name is Allison I live in Ward 2. You've heard tonight about the inexcusably high death toll of civilians being massacred by Israel's ongoing bombardment of Gaza of children buried under rubble being dug out by their parents siblings and friends by hand while they cry for help or worse don't cry for help of hospitals and ambulances intentionally targeted by Israeli forces of Israel's strategic deprivation of the basic necessities of life for everyone living in Gaza. These are emergency crises and we must call for a ceasefire to address them immediately but life is more than just being allowed to breathe eat and drink water all basic necessities currently currently being denied to Palestinians. Tonight I want to talk about Palestinian beauty art and education. I'm a PhD student whose research focuses on the cultural impacts of genocide and colonization. I have witnessed and documented in Hawaii and the mainland United States the catastrophic and lasting impact that the kind of total violence Israel is enacting on Gaza has on indigenous cultural well-being. Attacking cultural heritage and intellectual life is an integral part of genocide destroying what makes people who they are in addition to destroying their physical bodies. Over the past two months alone Israel has killed countless Palestinian civilian artists journalists writers and educators and in violation of the 1954 Hague Convention destroyed thousands-year-old cultural sites across across Gaza. Palestinians must be allowed to live as tonight's resolution demands but that is the bare minimum they deserve to thrive to make art to learn and generate new knowledge. Their cultural artistic and intellectual contributions are needed they are beautiful they are irreplaceable and they make Palestinians who they are. We must pass this ceasefire resolution and we also must recognize that is only a small first step toward assuring full human flourishing for Palestinians. Thank you. Thank you very much. So our next speaker is C. Green to be followed by Trey Cook and Sue Yugetti. My apologies if I mispronounce that. Welcome. Go ahead. Sorry. Thank you. My name is C but I will be reading a statement for a Palestinian resident of Burlington who is not able to be here today. Hello. My name is Nur El Nubulsi and I live in Ward 2. My family is originally from Haifa a Palestinian city until 1948 and my grandfather was 15 when he his siblings and parents were forced out of their home at gunpoint by Israeli forces never to return. Just take a second to imagine your child returning from Burlington high school one day and telling them to pack their things because their home is not because your home is no longer yours. My father actually grew up in West Bay root Lebanon in the 1970s and 80s where he vividly remembers his neighborhoods being carpet being carpet bombed by Israeli fighter pilots day after day week after week year after year for my family and countless others the Israeli government has represented inter intergenerational trauma at an unimaginable scale that I have never been able to speak about without fear. In Vermont I actually never felt unsafe for being an Arab a Muslim and maybe even a Palestinian and then the shooting of three Palestinian young men wearing kufias and speaking Arabic occurred and all of the collective punishment hate rhetoric and cycle of violence came home to greet us in my own cozy Burlington neighborhood but I'm past anger because I have to be because we all have to be the violence must stop much like the participants of the civil rights movement who face similar forms of repression and intimidation our community is realizing that few things are more important than being on the right side of history members of city council if you stand behind the resolution for an immediate ceasefire you will be able to look back until your children and eventually your grandchildren that you did everything you could to prevent the slaughter of more innocent civilians and what was an increase ever increasingly cleared to be a genocidal thank you thank you very much so our next speaker is tre cook to be followed by it's either s or or sue you getty my apologies if it's that's not correct anything hello sorry I'm going to abide by Karen's request to not restate comments that have already been put because a lot of great points have been brought up tonight a lot of great historical precedent a lot of great testimony and a lot of very informative statistics many of these are numbers that we actually brought to a few of you two years ago that was a couple of weeks after I started going to school at UVM and I remember that meeting ending with several of you responding and saying that you had to do more research you needed a bit more time to look things over and I understand you know I'm young I'm learning a lot of stuff right now you're grown adults professionals political leaders I'd hope you could make time to learn about these things but I get it but in those two years I want to see what you guys have looked into and what you have done one of those things was voting to continue the F-35 lease to continue contributing to the military project there are people here that are saying that this has nothing to do with Burlington it does there is material support there is uh the support of all the ideological stuff that's going on that creates an environment where people feel comfortable committing hate crimes you are leaders who can intervene here to make it a better place two years ago we were told this would be too divisive too radical too much it's not the right time when is the right time how many more people need to die how much more research do you need to do I don't understand how we can be looking at the same facts and you come to such a different conclusion how you can feel empowered to invite more Zionist leaders to come here and spread this hate something needs to be done even if it is divisive like it's been brought up this is a city that currently has a majority in the democratic party but I believe that that party was proud of being on the right side of a divisive issue in the 60s standing up to an apartheid state that set hierarchies of race against people do the right thing thank you so much our next speaker is Sue you get the um uh to be followed by a surrogate stimp stimpiner my apologies it's hard to read I hope I have that sort of right my name is Sue Getty I'm speaking here as a Colombian who was born in a country at war that has experienced crossfire bombings who thought her sister died next to a car bomb I am here speaking as a child of war and I'm telling you from what I'm seeing here some people actually understand what it's like to fear for your life to hug your loved ones while you're hearing explosions happening next to your house and the rest of you think of humans as numbers because you don't actually want to take the time to see the atrocities that we're paying with our tax dollars atrocities if you take 20 seconds out of your time to go online and actually see the amputee babies the people whose limbs are blue under the rubble the children who are crying without parents if you actually take the time out of your busy days to see what's happening and stop seeing all of those people as just numbers for actual real human beings we wouldn't have to be here I yield my time thank you so much our next speaker is Sergei Stempener to be followed by D Graham and Peter Likowski okay thank you so much D Graham to be followed by Peter Likowski and Theo good welcome can you hear me yes my name is D I'm a Ward 3 resident I'm a healthcare worker at a clinic here in town a lot of the numbers and things I was going to say already have already been said so I'll just say a couple more things to the council and the mayor as you vote tonight please think of the tens of thousands of Palestinians murdered the thousands of children's murdered as many have said before me and hopefully you're aware of the numbers as well and not just numbers but the actual human beings think of the thousands more who are actively dying of starvation thirst lack of medical care all due to the Israeli state ask yourself what is the military objective of blocking food water and medical supplies think about the total annihilation of northern Gaza how it won't be habitable for years to come and how annihilation is rapidly moving south think about the children who were shot and killed in their parents arms as they tracked the allegedly safe passage to the safe south think about how these parents were forced at gunpoint to leave their children's lifeless bodies on the side of the road and how the Israeli soldiers threatened to kill the rest of their family if they as much looked back think about the premature babies at the Al Nasser hospital and not the babies that they all sheep a hospital the ones that never had a chance of getting out whose bodies were found dead and decomposing in their beds because their families and medical staff were forced out of the hospital think about the Palestinians in Gaza we occupied west bank and all throughout the diaspora think about obviously the three Palestinian students who were shot here in our city just up the road last Friday December 8th and a 13 to 1 vote um shamefully the United States vetoes demand veto demands for a ceasefire in Gaza the United States has always and continues to be responsible in the genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine we absolutely cannot turn away from Palestine there's absolutely no more time for hand ringing dragging our feet or claiming this situation is just so nuanced and complicated there's nothing to debate these heinous acts are completely indefensible this is literally the bare minimum i plead you to vote in support of item 8.1 thank you so much our next speaker is peter likowski to be followed by Theo and farine paris good evening on december 8th the united states i mean the united nation security council voted last the most recent of a series of votes on on a ceasefire resolution in this case the united states was completely isolated there were 14 there's 15 members of the council the united states voted no the veto our vassal our our satellite united kingdom voted to abstain they didn't even vote no and here's a list of the countries from think about these all around the world albania brazil ecuador gabon gana japan malta mozambique switzerland united arab republics our emirates these these countries all that why did they all vote against the united states and for a ceasefire for one thing they don't dare go home to or go back to their countries and face the fact that the peter uprisings or demonstrations as huge concern all around the world about what's going on and everyone knows that the united states is behind it and could stop it and that it's the main roadblock to it and people are looking to us and there's and they read in the newspaper and on the internet about all the different grassroots organizing all the kinds of things just like this that are going around going on all around the country all the city councils that have passed resolutions all the demonstrations with with thousands and thousands of people city after city and people and we know that people around the world know that we have a not exactly the most perfect democracy and that not always does their government listen to people but there's an election coming up and they have hope they have hope that things like this will finally get heard especially in an election year thank you so much our next speaker is theo to be followed by farine paris and charlotte danett danett can you hear me yes zionism has not and will not keep jewish people safe the safety will be won through solidarity that said just minutes ago quote now therefore be it resolved by the city council of the city of bellingham washington that the city of bellingham supports the proposed us congress resolution hr 786 and joins other cities in the united states that have already done so in urging the current administration of the united states to immediately call for and facilitate deescalation of this conflict including an immediate ceasefire to urgently end the current violence a release of all hostages and prisoners and promptly send and facilitate the entry of humanitarian assistance in the gaza and all other affected areas of this armed conflict end quote uh this pass unanimously can you hear me this pass unanimously and you should pass 8.1 unanimously too um a little motivation what if it was your children grasping for air under the rubble the f-35 the thunderous sound of us led imperialism the f-35 the bone rattling sound of wall street war street wal-mart bezos black rock billionaires land theft and landlords the f-35 the symbol of meaningless jobs are common impoverishment our common oppressor the f-35 the obsolete plane that costs too much and struggles to fly a fitting symbol of us led imperialism in relative decline msnbc brought to you by the f-35 the new york times brought to you by lockheed martin npr brought to you by blood for oil 66 of the working class wants a ceasefire service workers office workers health care workers education workers construction workers we want a ceasefire ceasefire we do not want our wealth that we produce stolen and obliterated on endless imperial wars of aggression and on proxy wars arms race brinksmanship and client states we want our wealth that we produce to be spent on housing health care and social services thank you thank you very much our next speaker is farine paris to be followed by charlotte denett and uh joanne joanne justaff ancestors give me the words the peace the calm to speak with clarity confidence and power good evening council president i feel in the year of 2003 i have interacted with you more at this microphone than in just human interaction in the city so much has been said in solidarity with our palestinian community i stand here today with my identities as a black person and as a daughter of immigrants that is speaking up for me in this moment black lives matter seize power now those words sound familiar i know what it feels like because you want people to desperately care about something that is keeping you up at night on august 14th this room looked similar around themes except it was filled with black people asking for justice for black women who have been targeted in this community by agents of the city i need to echo that this system of council is not working processes of two minutes you being able to vote on who speaks all of those systems are part of white supremacy culture it's why nothing is moving forward there is no action i can come here before you with tears and to tell you that we are so deeply in fear as an educator of higher ed for over 20 years those students came home for respite they came home for a break and i know years ago when former director green spoke up in support of palestinian community she was advised be careful you will be seen as anti-semitic this is why those three students got shot it's in the water it's what we breathe we need to dismantle it now thank you uh the next speaker is charlotte uh to be followed by joanne uh just staff just that i believe good evening yeah if you just just to make sure you're either one but just make sure that the green light right below you is on no not that green light the green light on the microphone can we start again yes of course i'm an attorney investigative journalist and an author i'm from ward seven uh i was born in bay root uh lebanon i'm the daughter of america's first master spy in the middle east and i'm here in support of the resolution for ceasefire i'd like to give another reason for why we shouldn't be fighting each other the biggest culprits in the middle east conflict are the giant oil companies that have profited off the misery of the peoples in the region for a century and engage and divide and rule tactics this is a hidden history not dealt with by the media and the only reason i discovered it was by investigating the mysterious death of my father daniel denett who in march 1947 was head of counterintelligence in the middle east for the central intelligence group media precursor of the cia he'd be rolling in his grave right now if he knew that his country was complicit in genocide and that it was supplying further arms to support the genocide uh in 1943 he told an audience god help us if we send troops to the middle east six months later he was writing that his job was to protect the oil at all costs that oil was saudi oil one of the greatest finds ever which would catapult the u.s into a major world power that meme continues to this day we must protect the oil at all costs uh his last mission i'm going to run out of time his last mission before his plane crash in march 47 was to saudi arabia to determine the route of the trans arabian pipeline and where it would terminate hypha palestine or lebanon the new york times wrote protection of that investment and the military and economic security that it represents inevitably will become one of the prime justives of american foreign policy and what it's been protecting is the trans arabian pipeline that's what israel has been protecting that's why you have all these billions of dollars please study history follow the pipelines thank you my book thank you very much thank you very much our next speaker is joanne just just that uh to be followed by karen kote kody and jack hanson joanne left okay so we'll go on to karen karen it's either kote or kody we can continue on to jack hanson to be followed by uh erik uh gersham gershman thank you uh my name is jack hanson i live in ward eight and served with some of you on the council not too long ago i'm moved by all the speakers that i've heard tonight you know showing up taking time out of their lives to speak for for peace for human dignity for justice for a ceasefire for an end to the violence and i and i join that and i encourage you all to join that tonight and take this opportunity to support the resolution for a ceasefire and i also want to speak out for climate action tonight um in terms of councillor bergman's uh resolution to continue the city's progress on decarbonizing buildings this is a direct continuation of the work that you all have been doing and i don't think i've heard folks say oh well we just we just passed an ordinance we just did something and in my mind we don't have time to pause we have to continue upon to build upon that work and strengthen it and even those that supported the the ordinance that passed and rejected amendments to it admitted that there were flaws in it that directly came out of the ballot language because the ballot language last year pigeonholed us into a scenario where we had to make policy choices that we actually didn't want to make and i think we all agreed on that through the process so i think now's the time to learn from that to go back to the voters get a broader scope of authority rather than pigeonholing ourselves and and specifically to do this in a timely manner and not kick the can down the road another eight months we are in an emergency we need to treat it like that the city declared an emergency during the coven emergency it would have been unthinkable to just kick something eight months out which is what's being proposed on his amendment tonight so i encourage you to reject that amendment and allow the voters to weigh in and allow the city to move forward and craft a stronger policy thank you thank you very much our next speaker is erik gershman to be followed by uh david kerman good evening uh feels good to sit down thank you to the council for hanging out so long i guess it'll be uh leftovers huh um i am opposed to the resolution i'm opposed to 8.1 i'm opposed to 8.2 um i'm a entrepreneur in vermont i've lived here 30 years i employed over 100 people i'm just finding the issue to be divisive and unnecessary um as a jewish person it just hurts i mean you're all invited to come to temple sign i and join us for shabbat and i hope you will but you'll have to get by the police and that's just weird in vermont i mean how did that happen and that's kind of what's happening and as a jewish person you know if you want to feel marginalized is that okay word to use folks it feels very marginalized to me and i i just don't think we need it and i really encourage you to to table this i mean we just watched uh sag as an example you know the screen actors guild and you know there was a lot of controversy over how they felt about this very issue we're talking about tonight and they decided you know we're not not going to comment on it we're going to stay out of this i just encourage the council to maybe take that position i'd like to read one quote a ceasefire would only perpetuate the cycle of violence in the war torn region a full ceasefire this is what it feels like to be jewish here yeah a full ceasefire that leaves hamas and power would be a mistake who wrote that the person that everybody in this room i think voted for in the last election hillary clinton a full ceasefire that leaves hamas in power would be a mistake i would just like to urge you to to table it and and to move on you know to other issues i do have one legal question that i would like to ask the mayor is that okay it's a yes or no you you can you can certainly ask the question okay i want to know back and forth okay i think my time is up mask you can ask the question but this is not an opportunity for a back and forth okay i understand was there a federal charge against a hate crime that occurred on november 25th was that a federal hate crime was it designated a federal hate crime i believe it was not folks it was a crime of violence hey hey thank you for your time thank you so much we're going to stop public forum if there is any more disruption the next speaker is david kerman to be followed by andrex shanbeck good evening thank you council paul i live in burlington resolution 8.1 is plainly well intentioned about three quarters of the resolution reflects a heartfelt unifying an inclusive statement about our city its values in its commitment to diversity it highlights to me how we can all unite arabs whether arabs christians muslims jews or non-believers in the face of the horrible shooting of three palestinian american students i'm personally proud to belong to a local synagogue who's rabbi visited one of the shooting victims while he was in the hospital a synagogue also circulated a link that enables members of our congregation to provide direct financial support to the shooting victims however i oppose 8.1 because 25 percent of it is one sided invigorously disputed for instance harsh and strident opinions about the middle east conflict are presented as objective fact because emotions regarding the middle east conflict are leading to enormous tensions in anguish both here in burlington and elsewhere a political resolution containing inflammatory language is not productive more importantly adopting political positions on controversial international disputes in my opinion is beyond the scope of what our local burlington community should do in order to heal and bring all our people together after this tragic shooting therefore i strongly support the unifying alternative resolution proposed by consular travers thank you thank you very much so our next speaker is andrew schoenbach to be followed by joe kane good evening good evening um i'm speaking on behalf of the isaas 61 foundation of 150 cherry street here in burlington uh my family um some members of my family did survive the holocaust uh my older brother was gassed by the germans in 1943 as were my grandparents my mother was a slave we we think of slavery as a problem in this country my mother um not that long ago indeed was a slave um in any case um i'm sensitive as a result of this to the holy show obviously of antisemitism and many here tonight have spoken saying that this has nothing to do the views expressed here have nothing to do with antisemitism that may well be the case but i would simply ask a question why is it that i don't do not remember a similar outpouring of sentiment very recently when over 300 000 civilians women and children were slaughtered including by the use of poison gas by the Assad regime in syria this is a question that needs to be answered why are we speaking up so impassioned in this situation and there was largely silence of that in any case i condemn the shootings that did take place of innocent palestinian men i condemn any hate and violence in burlington i thank and applaud law enforcement notwithstanding this i would urge you to vote no on the resolution now being considered in its present form my problem is that this document links an irrelevant and divisive international issue to a very relevant local matter on which there is certainly near complete unanimity among the population of burlington thank you very much our next speaker is joe kane to be to be followed by nick persampieri good evening good evening i support the resolution and want to remind everyone that in march this body unanimously passed a resolution condemning transphobia and implemented concrete measures thank you for doing that once the citizens of burlington take the apartheid free community pledge in march i would like to see a parallel resolution condemning zionism in this community zionists held public events in this city leading up to the triple shooting last month the transphobes don't get to demonstrate in public zionism is a settler colonial project that has since its inception called all of historic palestine including gaza part of an ethno-nationalist state that didn't exist when our grandparents were born and a state that they were so focused on creating that they actively prevented the us and uk from taking jewish refugees reading the resolution you wouldn't even know zionism exists the only violations of international law i see clearly referenced in this resolution are the military occupation and collective punishment no reference to what internet to amnesty international and human rights watch call the apartheid legal system that set the stage for this genocide the word genocide isn't used neither is the phrase settler colonial the colonialism nor is there reference to the separation wall that the un international court of justice ruled violates international law or to the ethnic cleansing of about 750 000 of the 900 000 indigenous palestinians between 1948 and 1955 that shaped gaza into the 70 percent refugee community that it was on 10 7 10 7 happened because of zionism in the same way that not turners rebellion happened because of slavery and the war saw ghetto uprising happened because of nazism after you vote on this resolution tonight i implore the members of this body to think about a sensible next step because as you've heard tonight the citizens of berlington view this as a start one idea to take is to take up an anti zionism measure parallel to what you did for transphobia thank you thank you very much our next speaker is on nick persampieri to be followed by bertha fisher and alisa alisa chen good evening thank you nick persampieri ward three i urge you to approve the ceasefire resolution but i'm going to spend my time this evening talking about another phenomenon that's killing many around the world and is having its greatest impact on the disadvantaged and that is climate change and i ask you to take a small step towards improving the city's climate policy by passed by approving uh counciller bergman's proposed resolution on november 30th you passed an ordinance that imposes a fee on fossil fuel thermal energy systems in the ordinance committee proceedings leading up to that vote a number of you recognize that what we really want to be encouraging are electrification geothermal and solar systems which are low or no carbon and that we don't want to be encouraging renewable systems and fuels which have significant greenhouse gas emissions including advanced wood heating renewable gas and liquid biofuels the proposed ordinance would put before voters a question which if approved would allow you to improve the ordinance by imposing a fee on any type of thermal energy system that emits greenhouse gases i urge you to do so we don't need an eight to nine month study we know that to fix the ordinance we need the fee to apply to all fuels or systems that emit greenhouse gases if you want to study additional measures you may do so but let's go ahead with the vote thank you thank you so much our next speaker is britain fisher fisher to be followed by alisa chen welcome good evening i'm speaking tonight to ask that you support ceasefire ceasefire resolution 8.1 and apartheid and apartheid free burlington as a jewish for monta and burlington resident whose family immigrated to the u.s fleeing anti-semitic violence in europe i wish to raise my voice and say never again for anyone it feels painful to have the legacy and reality of anti-semitic violence in the west and europe be used as a justification for the maintenance of the apartheid israeli state and a continued escalation of violence against palestinians not holding israel accountable for their ongoing ethnic cleansing and genocide only increases violence on all sides the conflation of anti zionism and anti-semitism actually prevents us from holding white nationalists and other deeply anti-semitic groups accountable for their hateful speech and actions we must separate a critique of the state of israel from anti-semitism which is hate and discrimination towards jewish people for being jewish you have heard a lot of testimony tonight and i urge you not to check out to engage your heart and your guts to demonstrate leadership for other cities one of the speakers tonight called the shooting of three palestinian youth the tragic event in our neighborhood as a way to call to turn the focus inward i want to ask how can we condemn the attempted murder of palestinians in our city while we fund it abroad our neighborhoods are connected to all the neighborhoods around the world as another speaker noted proximity should not be a criterion for denouncing genocide i wish to say unequivocally that a ceasefire in gaza is beyond due the level of violence death displacement and civilian destruction is heartbreaking and disturbing to call for a ceasefire is to recognize that all our humanity is bound together and that we have an opportunity and responsibility to be on the right side of history to call for a ceasefire is the very least we can do in the face of a 75-year violent occupation funded and supported by the u.s. military thank you so much our next speaker is elisa chen to be followed by toddler kroy my name is elisa chen and i'm a brunington resident from the very beginning israel has been a violent colonial project the russian jewish zionist vladimir jebotinsky who later founded the ergun a jewish paramilitary group in palestine wrote in a 1925 essay that zionism is a colonization adventure and therefore it stands or falls by the question of arms force is it important to speak kibru yes but unfortunately it is even more important to be able to shoot or else i am through with playing colonizing as a jewish person i say that this violent settler colonial project is not keeping me safe and is not keeping anyone safe my grandpa's family experienced violent pogroms in what is currently ukraine it is actually through this experience and jewish values of justice that i root of much of my personal and my family's decommitment to justice a commitment to collective liberation for all people a dream of a world where all people including jewish and palestinian people are safe and have their needs met to know that my tax dollars are being used to fund this violent genocide in palestine is personally devastating not in my name calling for a ceasefire is not divisive calling to ask the senseless killing of women children and civilians to end is not divisive it is nonviolent and it is pro-human life calling to end apartheid is not divisive nor anti-semitic it is taking a stand for a world where everyone has access and equal rights to education housing and health care calling for bts is not anti-semitic it is taking effective local action and solidarity with the press people please pass the ceasefire resolution free palestine none of us are safe until all of us are safe none of us are free until all of us are free thank you very much our next speaker is child lacroix to be followed by uh mohamma art some some more i'm i couldn't get the rest of that just to the se y my apologies i'm a little sad how uh divided everybody is on this planet and um how pigeonholed everybody is in their conversations and uh social media and our division and our politicians are uh responsible for dividing us and keeping us for real conversations growing up i had a really good friend named oroe and he was from rizrael and he was a refuse snick and that and yahoo killed him and he killed the two state solution in the nineties and made heroes out of the people who did it and uh i'm glad to see so many people have now woken up that anti zionism is not anti semitism and let me give you a history lesson i started occupy wall street and we were inspired by the anti net and yahoo protests in israel 12 13 years ago that were going on that was one of the big inspirations for starting occupy wall street and today i'm watching everybody use our tactics it's amazing how you take them on but yet you still persecute me let me remind you these people are persecuting me for speaking out for police reform for starting occupy wall street these people are persecuting me and they're going to persecute you too you watch everybody knows it's happening and let me remind you that the people who are hostages are just as much victims as the palestinians and they were the best jews they were the ones trying to take net and yahoo out of power and if you need to look into this more and you need to remember them as well because i've heard very few people even the people defending the the the jewish assault on the palestinians have forgotten them and remember this environmentally right now at cop we are all being treated like we're palestinians thank you very much our next speaker is just white people doing it our next speaker is mohaned might you'll help me out with the rest of the rest of your last name please thank you in the grand scheme of things that probably doesn't matter but it does it's mohaned sam great thank you i'm a concerned resident um thank you chair council and all the friends here in solidarity with palestine i'm a palestinian from gaza born and raised in the ds borough i'm a medical doctor and i'm a father to a new father to a three-week old baby girl my wife texted me just half an hour ago that her long-term high school friend nura was killed with her husband and daughter leaving a little boy behind what is happening in gaza is absolutely devastating and beyond any description to me as a palestinian doctor father and human being we are demanding a ceasefire a ceasefire is the absolute minimum and everything else would truly be beyond beyond would truly be the failure of humanity i got another 62 seconds to speak it's a great feeling to know how much time you have left the palestinians in gaza don't have any time left we must act now thank you thank you very much our next speaker is uh feride monasha to be followed by bill ojin and uh christopher erin falker good evening feride when ben and jerry divested from israel it was front page news in every newspaper there so what we talk about here even if it's symbolic it matters and we should be talking about it because it's our tax money unlike a sod's killing uh this is not being done in our name with our tax money um i i volunteer for the people's kitchen uh we are a mature aid group with uh volunteers from uh all religious background and no religion i know and i can affirm that jews muslims christian um atheists and everybody could exist and thrive together if we treat each other with love and have at the base of our relationship equality and dignity um i want to thank all the our jewish siblings in the in this movement for social justice they have been very inspirational to me um i could also appreciate the connection that uh jewish people have with israel as a muslim i also have very special connection to mecca and because of that i also support overthrowing the corrupt saudi regime as a responsibility to my faith i want to wish happy hanukkah to uh everyone who are celebrating it and free ballast time thank you very much so our next speaker is bill ojin to be followed by christopher erin falker and sharon uh sharon bayhar salam aleikum and shalom i admire your um patients all of you hamas are noble freedom fighters israel is an illegitimate colonial entity i held on to those beliefs all my life could be summed up by um judith butler hamas and hezbollah are social movements that are progressive and are part of the global left two months ago hamas forced me to reevaluate what could prompt the good guys to such unspeakable savagery from hamas's charter in their words the day of judgment will not come until muslims fight jews and kill them the founder of the muslim brotherhood which formed the basis of hamas said these are his words it is the nature of islam to dominate to impose its law on all nations and to extend its power to the entire planet they have a to-do list and annihilating israel is merely number one on their to-do list israel must protect its people a ceasefire now would end just the way the last one did israel israel's enemies told us in very frank terms what their intentions are the resolution question is not the right one i ask you to vote no thank you if you wish to support what somebody is saying you're more than welcome to if you want to sit and for disagree please don't do that the next speaker is christopher erin felker to be followed by sharon bayhar good evening it's um i appreciate you all being here tonight i appreciate that you have dedicated the time and set us at the time forward to allow public forum to go to its natural conclusion that being said i am extremely disheartened and and disappointed that once again we're sitting here facing a rather divisive resolution unnecessarily divisive resolution it has it is absolutely a tragedy what happened here in our city with these three young men being shot in what appears to be a random act of violence that being said the deeply troubling ideological language that is in resolution eight point zero eight point one is troubling divisive and unnecessary i ask this council to please vote no on eight point one and then as an alternatively to please consider supporting counselor traverses resolution in eight point two which addresses the issues here in our city without having to take a step beyond what's within the city council's purview and start tackling global political issues unnecessarily which only serves to do one thing bring more division to this city because israel doesn't care what your opinion is on them but the people in this city do and your actions have consequences and they're really disappointing with eight seconds left i'd like to just say any increase in taxes negatively impacts our housing so if you care about affordability in this town quit raising taxes thank you very much ours our next speaker is sharon bayhardt to be followed by elia hujunic and jeff shulman good evening i'm compelled to speak tonight i didn't know that there was this the alternative resolution but when i i've read this again and again and again and again and it looks like it feels to me like it's two resolutions and that they're clunkily put together and the first piece of it is so beautiful it made me cry it's powerful it's it's clear it states exactly what we as a city need to stand for and then there's a whole bunch of war as we're as we're as when we get into the middle east conflict and it feels like they're just thrown in and a first draft not a final draft and by putting the so my my hope is that you consider two separate resolutions a resolution making a clear statement about the city of burlington and what we stand for a year and if we want to make a ceasefire resolution we really carefully word this in a way that feels less more inclusive nowhere is there mention we don't stand for terrorism we demand that hamas release the hostages we don't stand for terrorism and i think that i think that and also some of the other words wording here is my apologies go ahead it's written in a really really biased on it needs work and when i read when i read the second half i got scared by putting the two together my daughter is as afraid to tell her college friends that she celebrates hanukkah because they keep saying to her you killed palestines my daughter is a is a is a liberal jewish mexican woman born and raised here but and she stands she's been black lives matter she's been all of that and she's be this there's a conflation as people are saying between zionism and anti-semitism and i think your wording needs to be really careful about separating that out and also making a stand against hamas and demanding that they release the hostages not only israel thank you so much our next speaker is elia hujunic to be followed by jeff schulman rachel jolly and sarah klianski good evening good evening i stand before you to express my strong opposition to the current resolution it's not just me all four synagogues in this area oppose this resolution as you know we don't always agree with each other but in this we all agree it's not about it's not just about the factual errors and biased perspectives and wow there is so much misinformation being said here but there's a more significant concern at play the intention and objective of this resolution what are you seeking to achieve this body's mandate is to take care of this city addressing issues like the drug problem homelessness the lack of police businesses leaving etc and ensuring the safety of its residents you don't have a mandate to achieve peace in the middle east or call for a ceasefire nor do you have the power to do so not because you are far but because you just lack the power this resolution does not make a safer the opposite is true you are bringing a war in the middle east to our doorsteps and instilling fear in this community voting yes is not condemning violence which we do condemn it's creating a bigger divide in this community the very thing you want to condemn you are creating a space for conflict and hate in essence rejecting this resolution is not silence rather it's recognizing your place and your primary responsibility voting vote for peace a declaration that we focus on our local needs safeguard the harmony of burlington and work towards solutions that truly address the concerns of our citizens i urge you to consider the potential consequences of this resolution on our community and vote against it on one more point on november fourth joe maggy tweeted a picture from a rally in burlington stating resistance is a human right in october seventh when jewish blood was still wet he retweeted that palestinians have the right to resist culmination implying that the attack on my people it's justified so i asked the show maggy justify acts of murder and rape with the guys where is this order thank you yeah please let's just try to keep in mind that we're not here to personalize our comments please uh jeff schulman to be followed by uh david getty's good evening my name is jeff schulman 30 a resident of burlington's ward five and i'm here tonight to add my my voice to those who support a strong unifying resolution in support of hisham kinan and tassim i'm here to support a resolution that celebrates the character characteristics that make our community special dedicated first responders medical professionals and caring neighbors who stepped in to help three young men that they didn't know a community that came together muslims jews christians members of other faith communities and those who don't identify with a faith community at all who joined together to say that hate has no place here that dehumanization has no place here and that our community should be one that is safe for all how powerful would it be if that was the focus tonight but instead by adding in heavily one-sided language that clearly takes sides in a highly volatile conflict this resolution has managed to divert attention away from where it should be on supporting the three students who were shot and all the amazing things about our community that we should be affirming nobody on this council could reasonably think that this resolution will have any impact on how this war will play out but we do know that it passed and even its mere inclusion on tonight's agenda so is division right here in our community at precisely the wrong time when jews and muslims when palestinians and israelis are feeling more vulnerable and unsafe than at any time that i can remember and this resolution makes us feel less safe and less supported by our city i've sat here for three hours and i've listened to speaker after speaker talk about how much they care about being a humanitarian and not a single mention of what happened on october 7th on hamasa's massacre of babies who were butchered in front of their parents of parents who were butchered in front of their children and no mention of the hostages who are still being held in horrific conditions uh in gaza if you are not acknowledging if you are not condemning suffering on all sides of this i seriously question your moral authority to speak on this issue thank you thank you uh our next speaker is david gettys to be followed by rachel jolly and our last speaker will be sarah kleonski thank you my name is david gettys i live in the south end of burlington i am also president elect of temple signi for the record i support israel i support a palestinian state something that could have and should have happened several times in the past 1948 1967 1993 2000 2008 and i hope will happen in the future i speak to oppose the ceasefire resolution and support the amended resolution offered by councilman travers the amended resolutions reflects the core values of our community rejects anti-muslim and all other forms of hate expresses compassion and support for the three victims of the recent shootings and brings us together in a difficult time the ceasefire resolution is divisive and veers into a lengthy inaccurate distorted criticism of israel alone the resolution fails to mention the fact that hamas broke a ceasefire to invade israel on october 7th the fact that hamas murdered 1200 israelis the fact that hamas took 220 hostages the fact that hamas committed brutal sexual violence against women the fact that hamas leaders said they will attack israel again and again or the fact that hamas seeks to destroy israel could kill all jews in the middle east yesterday bernie sanders said on face the nation that you cannot have a ceasefire with a hamas that seeks a permanent war let me repeat bernie sanders who knows his way around foreign affairs said you cannot have a ceasefire with the hamas that seeks permanent war i encourage the city council to focus its efforts on the local issues for which we elected you i encourage you to oppose the ceasefire resolution and support the amended resolution from council person traverse that seeks unity and brings us together thank you thank you so much uh so our next speaker is rachel jolly to be followed by sarah kleonsky hello my name is rachel jolly and i've been a resident of ward two for the past 23 years i'm happy to call burlington home and i'm proud that our town has a variety of methods community and municipal-based services to speak up for justice and advocate for victims i want to add my voice to the expression of support for councilor traverses community statement of solidarity and my strong displeasure confusion and sense of concern regarding the resolution 8.1 it is entirely appropriate for the city to come out and support a three palestinian and palestinian american students who are shot and against the senseless act of violence that that incident represented in the not so distant past the city has also very appropriately expressed support of other marginalized communities who have been targeted for their identities and have had to doubt their safety in going about daily tasks and activities that any community member should enjoy without fear of harm though i'm entirely though i am entirely angered and distraught at the killing of thousands of innocent palestinian citizens believe that netanyahu's policies and practices are extremely dangerous unjust and are in direct opposition to lasting peace and i am in support of an immediate ceasefire i am at a loss to understand why burlington would choose to engage politically in this particular conflict over any of the dozens and dozens of unjust occupations acts of genocide authoritarian regimes and brutal massacres many of which had american financial and political backing the desire to simplify this conflict and place blame entirely on one side confounds me and is extremely offensive the fact that hamas is explicitly called for the eradication of israel and the extermination of the jews should at the very least signal that there is a more complexity to this matter than this resolution acknowledges what has not been mentioned tonight is what happens after the ceasefire neither hamas nor netanyahu are in favor of a two state solution resolution 8.2 takes a more productive positive local and strong statement that does not try to put one side against the other but instead models the very thing this moment calls for unity and solidarity thank you thank you very much and our last speaker this evening is sarah clianski joanne just said i was called earlier but i missed is that okay sure right burlington resident of 15 plus years and ward four and thanks so my family's been in the land of israel since before it was a state and my mother was able to leave ukraine during the time of ussr's closed borders only because israel took her in and for that i think israel first i'd like to see condemnation for the attack on october 7th against innocent civilians if any resolution is passed from burlington related to a ceasefire how is it possible that it doesn't demand the release of many remaining hostages hostages that were raped and tortured by hamas these are the folks that survived many innocent the folks that survived many innocent women children and others were raped beheaded murdered in the name of freedom for palestine um secondly i'd like to cut the loose strings that are connecting israel to the attack on the three boys here in burlington and instead connect a strong tie with the easy access the shooter had to obtain a gun legally i hope to see resolutions that make it impossible for folks to obtain handguns and assault weapons in burlington and vermont that's it thank you so much and our last speaker is sarah clianski my apologies these were the these are the these are the sheets of paper that were burlington residents if there is someone who's a burlington resident who's in contois who hasn't spoken they can speak after sarah clianski if you have filled out a form sarah please go ahead thank you thank you to all the council members and um to the mayor and it's um i have been a resident of burlington starting 30 years ago um both my kids are born in this town and they've gone through the school system in burlington proud to be in burlington um and love this city um we moved to the suburbs for a few years and we came back because i felt it was you know we discussed it it felt like it was the place that we could raise our kids and they could have a proud identity and see diversity and be in the diverse environment and be able to be proudly um represent and learn about different cultures and different faiths where people um of different colors by pock um lgbtq people and people of um different abilities are all together so it was a really intentional purpose i felt they got wonderful education in many ways um here i condemn the tragic shooting and senseless acts of hate against the three palestinian young men hisham and kenan and ali and i condemn any hate or violence in the burlington community and i do feel that i have to relay a per on a personal note that um i've had nightmares of beheadings i am jewish and i need everyone to listen that when you say there's no space for hate having these policies brings hate and fear to me as a jewish person i was setting out my um you know hanukah decorations and was talking to a neighbor who had all her beautiful christmas lights out and i was admiring them and i realized i had put all of my hebrew or jewish symbols facing in i didn't want them facing out thank you very much uh that concludes our public forum thank you very much to everyone who spoke um if there is are you a burlington resident you did okay i'm my apologies i have all of these forms and i did not see one please did yes please thank you for giving me the time to speak truthfully i almost didn't come here because my parents were scared for my safety because i'm an iraq american citizen i address you today with the heavy heart mindful of the gravity of the situation unfolding in gaza the ongoing conflict has caused a measurable suffering claiming innocent lives and perpetuating a cycle of despair it is within our collective power as representatives of humanity to take decisions decisive actions and advocate for an immediate ceasefire in the pursuit of lasting peace it is crucial that we recognize the shared humanity that binds us all the people of gaza and the west bank like any other community yearn for security prosperity and other opportunities to build a better future for their children by acknowledging these common aspirations we can lay the foundations of genuine dialogue and understanding a ceasefire is not a sign of weakness but a courageous step forward towards breaking the cycle of violence it provides a crucial pause and an opportunity to engage in meaningful conversations and negotiations it is through dialogue that we can address these roots causes of conflict fostering an environment whether grievances are heard and solutions are sought we must consider the humanitarian implications of conflict in gaza and now the west bank as well the toll of civilians 20 000 dead including half of that children is devastating humanitarian aid and support must be accessible to those in need transcending political barriers for the sake of elevating human suffering i implore each one of us to champion the cause of peace let us stand united in our commitments to a ceasefire fostering an environment where the people of gaza and west bank and the region at large can rebuild their lives may our actions today pave the way for a brighter and more peaceful and tomorrow inshallah thank you thank you very much thank you very much so that is that concludes our that concludes our public forum thank you all to thank you to so many of you to all of you who came in and spoke we're going to continue with our agenda the next item is item number seven which is our consent agenda is there a motion to move our consent agenda and take the actions as indicated thank you so much councillor shannon is there a second to that motion thank you seconded by councillor dory any discussion on the consent agenda seeing none i will go to a vote all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes unanimously which brings us to our deliberative agenda that we have five items on our agenda our deliberative agenda and we're appropriate there are time limits on each item that we agree to by approving our agenda and we'll do our best to keep to that i just want to remind councillors of our five minute rule please self monitor and be mindful of your time as i have no desire to interrupt anyone but i but i will when your time is drawing near so that we can wrap up and be and give everyone fair time the the first item on our deliberative agenda is 8.1 which is a resolution in support of the three young men a palestinian descent victimized by a senseless act of hate and honoring the berlin tonians who helped them and calling for a permanent ceasefire between israel and palestine for this item i'll go to the lead sponsor of the resolution councillor jang the floor go please go ahead thank you president paul and thank you everyone also for being here first i would like to wish and you're going to make the motion i would like to move the resolution supporting the three young eight eight point one and looking for a second so you'd like to move the move the resolution weigh the reading and ask for a floor back after a second and that floor the floor the second would come from second councillor mickey councillor jang the floor thank you councillor mickey first i would like to wish happy hanukah to the jewish community members here and around the world celebrating it yes and second i would like to also thank those who have reached out to me directly to the city councillors and sharing their support of this resolution and those who also who shared some concern thank you all of you uh some of those concern this resolution will only further divide our community and i've been asking that question to the people please tell me how send text messages email to people no one can respond why this resolution is going to further divide our community and i haven't heard it here either on october 7 2023 hamas did perpetrate an attack upon israel that have killed approximately 1200 people and about 250 held in hostage and that is included as part of the resolution for those who said it's not included in response to a hamas attack israel the state of israel has engaged into a war against hamas this is a fact in which is resulting to a collective punishment of the palestinian people in gaza and in the west bank that's a fact and those killing is over 14 000 people as of end of november 14 000 and this is leaving 2.3 million in gaza in a state of despair and able to meet their basic needs in the early evening of saturday november 25th the burlington community and the vermouth community was horrified i'm sorry you've had you've had your chance to speak and now and now we're gonna we're gonna speak great thank you my apologies i'll go back again yes please do in early evening of saturday november 25 2023 the burlington community and the vermouth community were horrified to learn that three young palestinian descent have been shot on north prospect street which is right here in burlington while they were only visiting families for thanksgiving it's a justification being made for an incredible loss of his civilian lives in both israel and gaza is without a doubt affecting our own community right now it is creating an unsafe atmosphere and giving rise to hatred dehumanization islamophobia and anti-semitism alike the burlington city council honored the strength of the contribution of the arabs the muslims and jews and individuals and communities within our own community right here we must stand together to ensure that burlington is a safe and welcoming place i would like to thank chief mirad and anyone who helped our local safety institution in apprehending the shooter and bringing him to justice in the meantime i'm sending prayers of healing to the victims and their families and prayers for safety and peace here in burlington in israel in palestin and around the world i want also to be crystal clear that all that burlington is a safe and welcoming place for the people of old faith to my brothers and sisters in the muslim community i know you are hurting i know you are confused i know that you've been demanding answers but rest reassured that this city council put your safety at the forefront of what they do every single day why do we have the fundamental right to call for a ceasefire and no one has mentioned it here the city of burlington first developed a sister city relationship between palestine's city of betlehem and the israel city of arad in 1991 these are facts in october 1996 mayor peter clavel and our sister city committee hosted a four day visit from professor walid djani who represented betlehem mayor elias fridge and arab mayor bezaleh talib together those representatives right signed a cooperative agreement this is the city of burlington the first ever sister city packed among american palestine and israel community the burlington betlehem arad sister city program has sponsored numerous dialogues exchanges projects and developing mutual understanding and building people to people relation if we do not support a ceasefire we did not hold our bargain of that agreement that's why we are involved in demanding ceasefire and right now this is not we thousand miles we have sister cities we sign these agreements and you can find it on cities record that's that's a fact why do we demand a fundamental ceasefire why do we have the right to fundamentally demand it it's because of the fact that hate toward isham awartini kinan abdel hamid tashid ali ahmed took place on our street the hatred took place right here in burlington why do we have the fundamental right to join our congressional delegation for a ceasefire because muslim and jews in this community are living in fear both sides talked about it right here right now today calling for an end of this history loss of life and human rights violation being funded in part by our own federal government seem like at least something that we can do as a body i hope that we do not even amend this resolution and we fully come together because we are a sister city this badlehem and arad reason why we need to vote it anonymously thank you all so much thank you so much uh again again we don't we don't do that we don't clap in here uh councillor mickey to be followed by councillor bergman thank you president paul i'm grateful to have had the opportunity to collaborate with councillor yang on this resolution and with community members uh to work on this this resolution i'm called to the palestinian cause because i believe it's imperative for us to stand on the side of human rights always without question i'm a vocal supporter of palestinian's right to self-determination because my irish ancestors knew too well the harm of oppression by an occupying force i find tremendous strength in the solidarity between irish and palestinian siblings the shooting of hisham kinan and tussine was a horrific and hateful attack perpetrated in our city and i wear this keffiye today in support of the three of them in solidarity with palestinian people around the world especially palestinians and gaza and the west bank in the weeks since the horrific october 7th attack by hamas which are hundreds of israeli civilians killed and dozens more taken hostage the people of gaza half of whom are children have been subjected to unrelenting siege by israel the constant onslaught of israeli air strikes and ground raids have targeted densely populated areas hospitals refugee camps universities and holy sites these these israeli strikes continue today killing journalists un aid workers doctors and thousands of civilians we cannot stand idly by as us taxpayer dollars are used to support the indiscriminate killing and displacement of palestinians and gaza last week the us vetoed a ceasefire resolution voted on by the un security council and this weekend the biden administration approved another arms transfer to israel worth over a hundred million dollars circumventing congressional oversight in the process the united states veto of the security council resolution has resulted in the convening of an emergency session of the united nation's general assembly tomorrow december 12th where all member nations will have the opportunity to vote on the same ceasefire resolution the resolution we are debating this evening should not be controversial we were all horrified at the shooting of hisham tassin and kinan and we should all be horrified at the humanitarian crisis unfolding in gaza this resolution calls for the conditioning of u.s. military aid to israel not just asking the israeli government to exercise caution but withholding aid so long as the indiscriminate killing of palestinians and gaza continues additionally this resolution calls on our federal delegation senator sanders senator welch and representative bowen to do everything in their power to see the deceased fire agreement is reached and that israel ends its blockade of gaza to allow additional aid to reach those suffering i would hope that these three things would be something we could broadly support i'll close my remarks this evening by reading a statement issued by hisham shortly after the shooting and i'll quote from here on out i'd like to start out by saying that i greatly appreciate all the love and prayers being sent my way on a more serious note it's important to recognize that this is part of the larger story the city's crime did not happen in a vacuum i said about a month ago that palestinians cannot afford to hold vigils every time this happens and as much as i appreciate the love from every single one of you here today i am but one casualty in this much wider conflict had i been shot in the west bank where i grew up the medical services which saved my life here would likely have been withheld by the israeli army the soldier who would have shot me would go home and never be convicted i understand that the pain is so much more real and immediate because many of you know me but an attack like this is horrific be it here or in palestine this is why when you send your wishes and light your candles for me today your mind should not be focused on me as an individual but rather as a proud member of the people being oppressed thank you thank you very much counselor mcgee will go to counsel bergman bergman and then counselor travers uh thank you uh this has been really hard for me to take a public stance on palestinian israel since october 7th uh divergent values and principles in my own history in the struggle for human rights and um liberation have been evoked and because it is not been easy i take seriously the heartfelt emails that many people who've reached out to me and i feel the weight of the traumas caused by anti-semitism by colonialism pogroms the napka and the holocaust i'm a jew named after my father's brother who was mortally wounded fighting the nazis my grandfathers both left eastern europe in the wake of the pogroms i take very seriously the significance of this legacy and the legacy of my people and it's why i reject the criticism that hanukkah is being desecrated by our bringing this resolution now hanukkah is not just about latkes and dreidels singing the bruchas and lighting the candles it's a commemoration of a revolution of a of the jewish people against foreign occupation and repression this is not a holiday that is incongruous with a resolution asking that we care about the palestinians that we speak out against anti-semitism and islamophobia and i question the use of my holiday as a cudgel against acting for peace and justice my sponsorship of this resolution is founded on six basic beliefs one it is not okay to shoot people down in the street especially for them speak in arabic and where are wearing kafias two it is not okay to kidnap or murder three-year-olds or 85-year-olds or use sexual violence as a weapon of war no matter what the rationale or justification number three it is not okay to bomb a people a people that includes tens of thousands of three-year-olds and 85-year-olds into rubble and not to do and to do not to do everything humanly possible to immediately end the humanitarian crisis that results for it is not okay to harass and threaten the people due to their religion or nationality and to not acknowledge the competing traumas that people in this case palestinians and jews are suffering five it is not okay that terrible things are being done in my name as a jew and with our money and my money in power as a citizen of the united states and number six and this gets to be part of the really difficult thing these others are very difficult but i believe in the right to self-defense i believe in the right to resist and rebel against oppression and occupation but i have had a growing belief that gondi was right that an eye for an eye just leaves us all blind so reconciling all of these has been really hard but i believe that this imperfect resolution fairly does that let me briefly respond to three objections to our resolution the listing of the number of people killed and taken hostage in hamas's october 7th attack in lines 24 and 25 and the number of palestinians killed by israelis in response in line 29 is factual it is not embellished but it's simply but simply stating the facts does not gloss over anything you and officials have called the bombing of gaza collective punishment for over a month a prominent israeli human rights organization has characterized the conduct of the israeli war as collective punishment the statement on line 27 that the palestinian people are suffering collective punishment for acts of hamas is fair and accurate we've also been told that we should not be dealing with non-local matters and i reject that entirely this council has had a long history of being part of a global movement for peace and justice from the nuclear freeze to the central america solidarity movement and even palestine and israel through the bestly hem iraq and burlington sister city program that i was a co-sponsor of in 1991 with bill aswad lebanese american councillor here let's try to wrap it up i am going to thank you very much so what we do here does and can make a difference in the greater world i want to just close by saying i thank councillors jeng and miggy for drafting this resolution and asking my for support my support a muslim and a jew and the descendant of irish immigrants uniting to call on us to stand against hate and for peace and justice is a good thing we need to speak out against hate and support the victims of the shooting the palestinian people need our voices to help them get the humanitarian need they urgently need it is clear that an end to the blockade the bombing and the military operations in gaza is essential to getting that aid through they need a ceasefire and palestinians and israelis need their war to end this is what our resolution calls for and that is why i ask for this council's support thank you thank you very much councillor bergman we'll go to councillor trappers thank you president paul let me begin by saying i respect my colleagues who brought this resolution forward i understand their reasoning for it and appreciate those who came to speak in favor of it tonight and appreciate the words of my colleagues here this evening we are all collectively outraged about the shooting of three palestinian men here in burlington on november 25th separately i believe all of us are collectively outraged about the tragedy that continues to unfold in israel and gaza personally i agree with many of the sentiments included in the draft resolution before us of course including our solidarity with the shooting victims and their loved ones and gratitude for our community first responders and medical providers who came to their aid of course i also agree with our collectively condemning islamophobia antisemitism and other acts of hate i also grieve the loss of innocent life in gaza support the delivery of aid to palestinians in gaza and believe our federal delegation should take all possible steps to secure a lasting enduring peace between israel and palestine words matter though and as well intentioned as this resolution may be for many in our community its words and the rhetoric surrounding it remains hurtful although i personally acknowledge burlington's long tradition of calling for peace around the globe i also have to acknowledge that many of my constituents that i represent feel that an international issue like the conflict of gaza is not something the burlington city council should be weighing in on i also have to acknowledge that many others in our community have reached out to express serious concerns about language in this resolution that they view as maligning the israeli people as well as language they view is not accurately characterizing the positions of vermont's congressional delegation others have expressed concern about this resolution not also fully condemning hamas for its ongoing calls for worldwide harm against jewish people call calls that have caused great fear here locally as jewish schools closed on hamas's so-called day of rage and jews walked through police checkpoints this past weekend to celebrate hanukkah at their synagogues many issues that we try to address through resolution are issues outside the control of the city of burlington what is within our control is making sure our resolutions act to unify rather than divide our community ensuring all in our community feel safe and ensuring all in our community feel welcome in one breath the resolution before us laudably works to unify our community in solidarity with the victims of the tragic november 25th shooting to collectively thank those who came to their aid and to speak out against hate in the next breath as all of us here on the council have heard in hundreds of messages received over the past few days this resolution is seen by many as running against the grain of unity and if past will leave many in our community feeling more divided more unsafe and more unwelcome than they do today and whether you agree or not on whether members of our community should feel that way it is indisputable that they do now i also acknowledge that individuals who are supportive of this resolution will be similarly upset and dismayed if we reject it that is legitimate but so are the concerns reflected by my constituents concerns that are specific to this resolution as written and here lies my issue the legitimate concerns reflected by hundreds of my neighbors our neighbors specific to this resolution those concerns are not shameful those concerns don't make our neighbors inhumane or hateful they don't make them obsolete they don't make them racist white supremacist or complicit in ethnic cleansing their concerns do not make them genocide deniers or apartheid apologists those concerns do not make them criminal their concerns specific to this resolution are legitimate and while i know this rhetoric is not relied on by most these allegations loudly surrounding this resolution represent precisely why this resolution is so divisive to our community and why i cannot support it all that said this council should make a statement about the tragedy our community faced two weeks ago our council should make a strong statement against the increased frequency of islamophobia antisemitism and hate in our community and abroad this council should make a strong statement for peace both here in gaza and around the globe to these ends as others have mentioned here tonight i have submitted an alternative resolution to refocus our efforts and if the resolution now before us fails i hope this council will still be able to use tonight as an opportunity to speak out on the november 25th tragedy to stand against hate and to call for peace in terms i believe will have broader community support thank you thank you very much councillor travers we'll go to councillor high tower thank you president paul i'm just gonna start a timer and make sure i'm not going over because i did not time this before today um i think there's two important things in this resolution that are not um in the resolution we're going to speak to next which should not be divisive which is joining center centers and calling for the condition of us military aid to israel to end israel's blockage and siege of the palestinian people and to ensure that humanitarian aid reaches the people of gaza joining senator welch and representative valent and calling for a ceasefire for the people of palestine and israel and that copies of this resolution be sent to the vermin of governors and congressional delegation upon adaptation i'll speak later to what i think is missing from this resolution or i'll speak to that at the end because i do agree with some of the speakers that i don't think we did the same level of condemnation for hamas that we could have oh my gosh islamophobia is real anti-blackness is real anti-semitism is real and they're on the rise all of them and we as we have conversations about racism in the u.s as well as israel in palestine the backlash is real and we need to be careful about how we talk about these things my colleague at this table mentioned rhetoric that was harmful from those who are speaking to the resolution i think i saw it from both sides i think there was harmful rhetoric on both sides so many of us though came and spoke with love in our hearts and i think that's what we need but more important is not just what people have in the hearts but the fact that hate anti-semitism anti-blackness and islamophobia and a whole bunch of other things isn't contained in people's hearts it gets to escape and have violent impacts on the people in our city our country and across the world so we cannot talk about it and just offer thoughts and prayers or we cannot not talk about it and just offer thoughts and prayers because that means that the status quo remains and that we're saying that is fine with us and i'll admit i did not want to talk about the bds resolution last time this came towards the council and i would have voted no on it if it had come to a vote and i think that that was from fear of the backlash of what would happen to our community again be that jewish muslim or brown members of our community and it happened anyway the backlash came anyway so i would just encourage all of us i i understand the sentiment that we don't want to have a conversation about this because we don't know if it's going to make an impact but also we know that the harm is in our city we know that the hate is in our city regardless of regardless of if we want it to be there or not and it has had real impacts on people in our city so i will be supporting this resolution i do think it is fair that this resolution although it mentioned the attacks on israel it did not call them it did not speak about in the same way that it spoke on the israeli attacks so i will send this president paul but i would like to offer an amendment to change line 24 through 25 to say according to the israeli government on october 7 2023 hamas perpetrated a terrorist attack upon israel that killed approximately 1200 people largely civilians with about 250 taken and held hostage and i will send that to the council and to be clear what that changes is it adds an adjective in front of attack and adds civilians to the people killed thank you point of information yes i mean i think we are talking about an already amended resolution uh and and actually yes council jang that that actually is on me when you move the resident when you made the motion we should have made the motion and made it clear that you were moving the amended version does that take care of your amendment maybe take a look yeah line 24 my apologies it was on me okay i don't think that it does if i could change the amendment though to say i'm sorry i'm looking at the amended versions now my apologies um what is what is the line item the line it's still lines 24 through 25 the line according to the israeli government was already struck i apologize for not seeing that but it says on october 7 2023 hamas perpetrated an attack i would like to add terrorist attack upon israel that killed approximately 1200 it says people i would like to edit it to say civilians with about 250 taken and held hostage so you would like to add the word terrorist between an and attack correct and you would like to add the word civilian and strike out people i don't see the word oh people so in other words you wanted to say 1200 civilians or we can add largely civilians after the people let's do that that's what i originally said people comma largely civilians comma with about 250 and i think that sorry i'll wait for a second all right there is one i second that okay so what we're doing is online 24 we're adding the word terrorist after in between an and attack and we are adding comma on pay online 25 mostly civilians meaning 1200 people comma mostly civilians comma with about 250 taken is that correct yes okay there's a second that actually is that a is that a is that friendly to the maker and friendly to the seconder it is friendly okay so then we will we will continue on and incorporate that into the resolution do you have that lori okay great great did you did you want to add i'll just finish my comments which is to say i do think it's incredibly important to call out to call out all kinds of violations and i think we can agree that that has happened on both sides obviously there's a power dynamic there that i think is needs to be considered in terms of what one side can do to the other versus what the other can do um and the just i went off for two thoughts because i think i still had two minutes when i started the um thing which is i've heard like on what like i think that some of the biggest what i've heard mostly from friends who support is reels current actions is a self defense is that until hamas is gone and i just i just want to push back on that to say that if like what if someone sanctioned violence on the us until the kkk was gone what if somebody sanctioned violence on germany until the nazis were gone like terrorist groups exist and they cannot be eradicated by violent actions that's not what that's not how terrorist groups lose their power that's generally how they gain their power and so um i want to say that and then to some of the speakers i think just going back to language um i just really hope that folks and this is sometimes why i hate when city things come in front of the city council because i think sometimes the resolutions pass or they don't pass and then people disappear and they don't pay attention to what's going on after that they don't support they don't they do nothing to change the system and then they come here and yell at us because the system is the way that it is so i hope everyone who came and spoke um actually does something to change the system beyond tonight because tonight is not enough regardless of what side you were on thank you thank you so much council high tower it doesn't appear as though there is any uh council grant thank you um so i had a little sum sum written but a lot of what i originally had written has been said tonight so i want to respect that i have a little bit of a different point of view i was born and raised in new york city i went to elementary and middle school in the upper west side of Manhattan i went to high school in the Bronx um i have found this topic to be interesting since i was a child because i found it as a young black person with black parents educating me about how i will be treated in this country no matter where i go and to be prepared for that i looked at what was going on with a really different point of view i also found the story of the fallasha to be extremely interesting to me and for those of you don't know the fallasha uh were jewish people from ethiopia and when they started to go to israel they were not welcomed with open arms and that was because they were black so that story of those people and over the decades that they have been in israel where they face um issues of police brutality where they have issues with being employed although some things have gotten better over the decades they have faced a lot of discrimination so it always made me look at things differently when i looked at how the palestinians were being treated now i will say that um i believe what happened on august on october 7th was a war crime and i believe the taking of hostages is a war crime but i do not believe that hamas started the war this is not to excuse in any way what happened it did not happen in a vacuum and we must understand that and we must we must embrace that what is happening now is going to cause generations of more hatred this is not the solution and uh thank you to the speaker earlier who come made the comparison as if every student in our city were to disappear that really struck with me i appreciate my fellow counselors um comments and uh just to sum it up i believe that we have to do something as the queen city of vermont we have to make a statement and when people say we have to concentrate on the things such as a drug crisis community safety and things like that yes we do because we have all this money going outside of our country being unaccounted for causing death and destruction when it does need to be here where we need to house people where we need to provide services for people to get into recovery on demand because we don't have that right now and many other things that we need so i will support the amended of a point one i do not support um the a point two because it's just been so watered down to not mean anything thank you thanks so much council grant uh councilor dory i'll be brief i mostly uh want to echo uh well councilor traverse has said um and add this uh traverse has said and add and add this you know in my view in my opinion uh when this council makes a resolution uh we're not speaking about our own beliefs and our own opinions uh on an issue of foreign policy um we're speaking on behalf of of the city of burlington and when we speak or purport to speak on behalf of the city of burlington i think it has to be based on some degree of consensus even if that consensus can never be perfectly achieved and if one thing i think about all of this is indisputably clear from our public forum tonight from the many many many dozens of emails and phone calls that i've received and that i know all of my fellow counselors have received uh in in the the most recent days it's that burlingtonians like americans all across the country have a wide diversity of opinion on this conflict in the middle east um and at their best i think those opinions that they're most compassionate um i think those opinions are nuanced and and hard earned and i think at the best moments in today's forum uh we heard that from from people um that nuance that complexity uh that struggle uh as we all grapple um with the horror that we're seeing in the middle east i simply and respectfully do not believe um that this resolution captures that nuance and that complexity um in what it says and what it fails to say uh and i frankly question whether any resolution of this type uh ever could no matter how well it's written and regardless of the intentions uh behind it so i will be voting no uh on the resolution and urging uh others to do so i do think where we find unanimity um is in our condemnation of the horrible crime that occurred in our community on november 25th and our support um uh for those who are affected by it and so i'll be supporting uh the amended resolution thank you thanks very much councillor dory we'll go to mayor weinberger thank you president paul um i want to thank everyone who's come out tonight and had this very difficult important conversation so respectfully and and uh i um i think so many people are moved by this uh in some ways because ramon and brolinton have long been a place of refuge safety and inclusion and because of that at different times over generations both jews and muslims have sought refuge from persecution in this special place believing that they could live here without oppression we're a community where uh jewish synagogue and our states only Islamic center we're a community where a jewish synagogue and our nation's only our sorry our state's only islamic center our neighbors literally neighbors sharing parking lots which i was reminded of again yesterday when i visited the islamic center of ramon to meet and talk with muslim community leaders we are a community where our faith leaders work together collaborate and support each other and have spoken together with one voice to condemn the horrific shooting of three palestinian students last month as they had many times before in the wake of tragic and hateful acts against jewish muslim people and on other moral issues we're a community that strives to never lose sight of the fact that we all share a fundamental humanity and worth we all share the same love of our children the same fear of discrimination and violence we share the same hope for the future and the same expectations that we will live worship speak and raise our families and freedom for all these reasons and more i'm sure the unprovoked attack on the three palestinian students visiting our city was appalling unacceptable and on a front to the values of this community we are heartbroken that this event happened here and it has been heartwarming and exemplary to see so many berlingtonians respond and offer the students rescue and support their recoveries the horrific terrorist attack on october 7 and the unthinkable violence and destruction in the war that has followed has been terrible for all of us to witness even from half the world away and it's reminded our large local jewish muslim palestinian arab communities of some of the darkest days of the past and cause widespread fear and despair and outrage when we are hurting and afraid it can be more difficult to see the humanity and others and thus the war between hamas and israel threatens our ability to continue and engage each other as neighbors but we must do that and i welcome the senateman the room tonight there were efforts at that i also share the sentiment the war must end as soon as possible to protect innocent civilian lives in the palestinian territories and in israel and to bring peace and safety to the millions of jews and muslims around the world who suffer from the increasing threats of islamophobia and anti-semitism anti-semitism including here in brolington further clearly israel must do more to protect innocent innocent civilians and to ensure that humanitarian supplies continue to flow into gaza however i also agree with those including president biden and senator sanders that believe that a ceasefire with hamas an organization that remains committed to destroying israel is not the path to securing a peace that ends the 75 years of conflict between israelis and palestinians there is much however the united states can do to pressure both sides in this conflict to restart the long and painful process of working towards a two-state solution that is the only path that can achieve and accept the outcome for both israelis and palestinians two peoples who have suffered far too much oppression and tragedy for far too long i welcome that councillor travers has come forward with an alternate resolution that i believe um more directly reflects um where i and me brolington's are that we should issue a commitment to working on a path of enduring peace in the middle east and here at home and i think council travers's resolution is the best path for us towards towards that tonight so i hope the council will act in that direction thank you so much i will go to council jang and then perhaps maybe we can go to a vote thank you president and i think it will be very important for people to understand what we are voting for here tonight this is about ceasefire and we cannot talk about anything about this war until we have a permanent ceasefire that's that's as simple and as basic and as elementary let's stop this war first then we can talk about discussions about how do we bring peace very fundamental from my perspective if you become an elected official and you have some level of power the power that you have is not only by words but also by action one action that this administration this city has taken for justice was when ukraine was invaded by russia we received an executive order from this mayor to end our sister relationship with russia because they invaded ukraine i just told you that basically this city have the same sister city relationship with the city in israel in the city in palestine why can't we call for a ceasefire as basic right and i think we are also that power also is to bring people together and we need to be united and we need to be equitable about our actions i can't call yes on the right and then call no on the left i cannot comprehend that i still did not hear from anybody including those around this table how calling for a ceasefire will divide our community i could not i couldn't hear it yet if i heard it i mean repeated so i can understand also when we talk about inequities it is about sometimes a lot of things can happen in this country not long ago this room was filled of people from all faith couple years ago because an anti-semitism hate was perpetrated in pittsburgh somewhere here we all came together as a community to send a strong message that it's not acceptable and that same message is in front of us we have the opportunity to send it by voting in support of this resolution this resolution also we did not come up with any language that our congressional delegation have not already stated ceasefire humanitarian aid right um blockage allow blockage of the of gaza right all of those are languages that we already adopted from our elected leaders it is imperative if you want to send a message to the tree palestinian that was shot here to the muslim people our own children if we're not tired yet of waking up and hearing thousand and thousand of people are being killed people need to be saved because they are under the rebels to be buried properly then i think this resolution is our way forward and our way to go i would not support any other language right in supporting the three victims that is not calling for this is fire i will not support a watered down resolution okay if we are real resolution is in front of us very balanced this is not bds this is just to call for a ceasefire thank you president thank you very much councillor jang uh seeing no others in the queue we will go to a vote on the resolution as a mid counselor grant thank you um so if you don't have a ceasefire you're not going to get the hostages back you know if they're still alive you know so we have to think about that and it just continues to i can't wrap my head around it how this slaughter is divisive it's it's to stop this slaughter should not be divisive we we need to care about this because this will hamas is gone something else is going to come up in its place no question thank you thank you very much uh lori we'll go to a vote a roll call vote please call vote please councillor barlow no councillor bergman yes councillor carpenter no councillor jang yes councillor dority no councillor grant yes councillor hightower yes councillor king yes councillor mickey yes councillor shannon no councillor travers no city council president paul no six eyes six nays uh six six six eyes and six nays the motion fails and the resolution does not pass uh we will go on to i'm sorry hey the kids of gaza and you're fucking in we're going to continue with our agenda we're going to move on to item 8.2 which is a community statement of solidarity and a response to the shooting of november 25th 2023 if that door could be closed please again we're going to go to item 8.2 a community statement of solidarity in response to the shooting of november 25th 2023 for this item i will go to councillor travers thank you president paul i move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution would ask for the floor back upon a second great is there a second to that motions seconded by councillor dority councillor travers the floor is yours well the resolution we were considering under 8.1 uh included both statements of solidarity uh for the victims of the tragedy that we fell our community a couple weeks ago uh as well as uh statements with respect to the ongoing conflict in gaza of course much if not most of the discussion this evening has focused on the the latter aspect of that resolution um but the the former part of it is one that we've collectively heard from everyone here uh which is a desire to to speak with unity about our uh our outcry and outrage um about uh the the shooting of three palestinian men who were visiting their loved ones here in burlington for thanksgiving two weeks ago as reflected in the resolution and let's take a moment to um discuss what what happened in the wake of that uh there were courageous community members who immediately came to the aid of those victims and offered them sanctuary our burlington police department and other law enforcement partners including federal partners with the federal bureau of investigation and the bureau of uh alcohol tobacco and firearms uh immediately conducted a swift and comprehensive investigation to apprehend the alleged shooter and bring peace of mind to our community first responders including professionals for the burlington fire department as well as medical professionals at the university of vermont medical center provided care to the victims who continued to recover from grievous injuries and this resolution allows for us to speak as one to extend our again outrage for that shooting to wish the victims of that shooting uh physical strength and peace of mind as they continue to recover and to also in one voice condemn uh increased acts of islamophobia anti-semitism and other acts of hate this council has taken action over the last year to call out uh other forms of hate and uh we should take action collectively as well this evening to call out this uh type of hate as well and i believe we also have to acknowledge that this hate which has significant local impact for our israeli palestinian arab muslim jewish communities is at least in part being driven by the ongoing conflict in gaza and so to that end i do think um that it's important and in line with uh burlington's tradition to uh call for peace uh in gaza uh to call on our federal delegation uh to do everything within their power uh to end the ongoing war i understand that the terms used in this resolution are obviously not as strong as many on this council and many in our community would like to see but i do believe that the terms in this resolution are put forward in a way that can have broader community support uh and um i'm i'm glad we have the opportunity to take action on it now thank you thank you thank you so much councillor travers that um count councillor councillor jane councillor jane did you wish to speak councillor jane no okay councillor bergman well um i wish i could support this i could even you know even with saraya's um proposed amendment there but i can't um i do not think that it is the unifier that we wish for and i agree with trying to do that i i just don't think that we can do that it i'm reminded of what hasam said about the crime that occurred on prospect street not happening in a vacuum and i really do think that um this does that lines 40 and 41 are not unbiased and is no less divisive than the prior resolution they sanitize the fact that the hostility is resulting in the deaths of civilians is the result of israel's saturation bombing of zegaza and the blocking of humanitarian aid aid i believe this must be named as the uh now defeated resolution did uh these actions are being done in my name is a jew and i just can't abide by that um this you know this resolution is not the unifier that uh the the maker and it and believes or desires it to be um in the last uh resolve clause in line 77 through 79 um as i think councillor jeng said so eloquently and the end of the last um resolutions uh debate uh this does not call for a ceasefire the world needs a strong clear voice saying that a ceasefire is needed now uh that massive amounts of humanitarian aid must be allowed in now that blank checks on aid to israel when it is acting in ways that block that aid only enables and perpetuates the crisis so i'm i'm sad that i can't believe that this is a um is a unifying less divisive um action it doesn't ask for what's needed it's far too tepid it's not the unifier um and therefore i i cannot support it thank you councillor bergman um councillor grant so this council operates out of fear a lot and i i think this is another representation of that doesn't really do anything that we haven't already done um so i don't support it uh the first resolution was already watered down significantly i um continue to be profoundly sad and dumbfounded that we aren't recognizing things that are very obvious um but then my perspective again is different um i won't be supporting this and i don't it definitely doesn't seek to achieve what it it claims to thank you thank you very much councillor grant we'll go to councillor chang and then hi tower and then we'll try to go to a vote speaking in support of the young palestinian that were shot here was supposed to happen in a very urgent matter you know by calling a special meeting for example the next day that the shooting took place that's how that would have been very genuine the council president could have called one the mayor could have called one for us to talk about the state and also talk in terms of a unified voice um and i think speaking in support of them is also calling for a ceasefire just like both bergman and maggi uh stated right and reason why i will not be supporting this amended resolution thank you thank you councillor councillor chang we'll go to councillor hi tower and then maggi yeah i guess um before i have a question for the maker of the resolution um which pertains to what councilberg and councillor dang spoke to which is we're asking our representatives to call for peace but all three of them have done something more specific than that so why wasn't that included in your resolution a couple different responses to that one first as i mentioned before um i i recognize that the wording of this resolution as brought forward is is not as strong as many would like to see and you know what i can say is that um i think the wording of this resolution is not necessarily as strong as um i personally feel um but as we've seen even among the representatives in our federal delegation um there is significant sensitivity sensitivity that's also felt by folks in our community around uh calling for a ceasefire versus calling for a humanitarian pause um and these are the kinds of issues that uh again um have brought controversy to our community that have been divisive within our community and again whether or not you agree with one sentiment or the other and not you specifically councillor hi tower the sort of collective view um the the fact of the matter and the reality is that this is hugely divisive in our community right now regardless of uh which side you agree with and so the intention here was to put forward language um without taking a stand either way even though it may not be reflective of my personal viewpoints here okay um i guess i'm concerned that i i don't mind the whereas clauses at all of this resolution i think they're fine with the exception of one which i'm going to propose an amendment to i haven't decided not sure i guess i would then say if we're asking why was that resolve clause in there for calling for peace but we're not willing to say even a little bit what that means or what that looks like what are like we're not calling for anything then because we're not even supportive we're not even saying we're joining ending a humanitarian blockade or hoping for a ceasefire so we're not we're not calling for peace um so i'm i i guess i want to give that critique that it is pretty meaningless to say that um i think that's a fair assessment of councillor ging and councillor bergman if we're not if we're deliberately taking out um what our delegation has done and that said um i feel like this resolution has the same flaw that the other resolution had in the opposite direction where i think it um suddenly condemns one side without condemning the other side um and that here it says that the hamas terrorist attacks were the cause of the violence without um noting that's a vast majority of people who have been killed in the conflict have been palestinians um not hamas not israel citizens israeli citizens so i would like to add and i've sent this to lori and the council i would propose an amendment um clarifying that um that the hostilities between israel and amas result in the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians the mass majority of who are palestinians killed by israeli military action what what line are you on uh so the whole wears clauses line 28 through 31 and i guess i'm inserting into oh sorry my line 29 through 32 my apologies i think i'm getting all my versions confused yes 29 through 32 so what's your i'm sorry what is your what's your amendment yeah the amendment is on line 32 before the last word same word before the comma and oh oh i'm sorry my apologies you sent it to us i did yes i'm sorry i'm not not paying attention no worries okay so ever so has everyone seen this am i the only one who hasn't you need to just check your email okay so for the benefit of others that don't may not have the email um after the word after the words innocent civilians on line 32 it would be comma the vast majority of whom are palestinians killed by israeli military action english is my second language so you know oh i said english is my second language but i'm clearly fluent is there a uh is there a second to that amendment the amendment is amendment is friendly okay the amendment is friendly to the maker and to the seconder councillor dory okay all right so we need to go no further that will be part of the that will be part of the um part of the resolution uh did you want to did you have anything further to say councillor hightower or we'll go to councillor mcgee uh please go to councillor mcgee okay we'll go to councillor mcgee oh actually i'm my apologies councillor mcgee i forgot we have come to uh 1038 um which means we're a few minutes behind 1030 in order to proceed we do need a motion to suspend our rules um i do want to let the council know that um we do have uh two items on our agenda that we must do today do tonight one of them is because they are charter changes we do need to pass this evening we need to pass item number four and item number three those must be passed tonight um so um is there a councillor shannon i'd i'd move to um extend our meeting to complete our agenda up to item 8.4 okay uh is there a second to that motion seconded by councillor jang um any discussion on the motion yeah uh councillor bergman i mean we have a tuke meeting that um is meeting and would allow us to deal with 8.5 um and uh doing that then uh really is an attempt i i think if not intended has the effect of really um excluding us from bringing the the carbon fee back in time there is some adjustment for that but uh given the way that things are um i am i i believe the um the motion should be amended to include all of the items uh did you have something you wanted to say councillor all right so you you've got it you've got an amendment to the you've got an amendment to the motion is there a second to that amendment a seconded by councillor mcgee so now we'll we can talk about that um i'll go to councillor barlow first well it's true that we have made space on our tuke meeting on the 19th um to take this up i'm not sure we would be able to complete it on the 19th even if we did take it up um because we've sort of also committed to ending that meeting early that said um my hope would have been tonight that we would have been able to put some more process around this that's our neck that is this this item that's next so um as much as i would like to just complete the two charter change items i will also i guess i also want to take this this eight point was it eight point five now eight point five up tonight so that we can at least discuss the possibility of putting more process around this which i'm hoping we'll be able to do okay so is there any if there's any is there anyone else who wishes to speak to the amendment to also include in our suspension of the rules item eight point five president paul uh yes councillor shannon i don't believe in a motion to um suspend our rules is debatable nonetheless i will change this motion to include up to eight point five uh yes you are right you are right point will taken um got carried away on the amendments um okay so we will we will change it to eight point five all those in favor of the motion to suspend our rules to for us to complete our deliberative agenda please say aye all right any opposed please say no all right so we're going to complete our deliberative agenda um we are in the middle of a debate on eight point two uh councillor McGee you had you had the floor thank you president paul and thank you for pointing that out councillor shannon i uh question whether this is the unifying resolution as the room is empty save two members of the public and other people who are paid to be here um uh i just spoke to several people who were in tears i consoled members of our community who are rightfully horrified that we failed to take the limited action within our power to try desperately to bring about a ceasefire in Gaza and this was the only meeting that i can recall in my time on the council where this room was literally full to capacity and maybe beyond i'm not sure how many people were in the lobby my very first city council meeting when i got elected in 2021 we debated the bds resolution a few days before that i was driving down to boston to be by my grandmother's bedside when ended up being her uh her final days and while i was there i was receiving calls from televieve calling me a jew hater i was upset that we didn't take action on that resolution that evening i have been upset any number of times since that evening in the last year i have contemplated resigning over any number of issues where we failed to act in a meaningful way and i'm finding myself in that position again this evening uh i am not prepared to say whether or not that that's something that i'm going to do after this meeting but uh i can say surely that i will not be supporting this resolution thank you thank you councillor mickey um councillor jang very quickly and you know it's unfortunate that it did not pass but also to remind people that the bds resolution was not actually killed it is it is still on a committee and i think that committee can take it back up and bring it back forward because we had one option of sending a strong message of um ceasefire and i think reconsidering it is now in order for us to send a strong message that we want peace in the middle east thank you thank you with that we will go to a we will go to a vote um laura if you could call the roll this is on item 8.2 the community statement in solidarity in response to the shooting of uh november 25th 2023 as amended thank you councillor barlow yes councillor bergman no councillor carpenter yes councillor jang no councillor dority yes councillor grant no councillor hightower no councillor king councillor mickey no councillor shannon yes councillor travers yes city council president paul yes six eyes six nays the motion fails so the resolution does not pass we'll go to item 8.3 8.3 is a resolution march 20 march 5 2024 the annual city meeting these are proposed charter changes regarding policing we do need a motion the motion on this resolution is to adopt and warden the change so the point of tonight's agenda item is to introduce the proposed charter changes open the floor for discussion this is not our our last opportunity we will we would then be voting to adopt and warn um and we would not be placing this on the ballot until january i believe councillor there was a coin toss done between the two co-chairs and i don't know if that means you won or you lost but you'll be you'll you'll be taking this councillor councillor travers on 8.3 i would move to adopt the resolution and warn the proposed charter change for two public hearings pursuant to 17 vsa section 2645 seconded by councillor bergman councillor travers the floor is yours if you wish to and then he is keeping in mind this is we're not voting on this tonight as it is where this will just advance it so if we can hopefully limit some level of conversation on this and get to other agenda items but i'll leave that to you councillor travers well thank goodness the rest of our agenda is not focused on items that have been controversial in our community over the last year or so this version of the charter change coming from the committee the joint committee that was established on police oversight and accountability in a memo authored by myself and co-chair bergman we've outlined for the council i think in detail the work done by the community by the committee in what is reflected in the resolution that has been posted very briefly what i will say is that this joint committee was created after last town meeting day voters elected against standing up the community control board of policing that was put forward in ballot item seven last march since this committee started meeting i believe we've held 14 meetings i think it's fair to say that the first half of those meetings were really information gathering meetings for this committee learning from different stakeholders as to what the current lay of the land is in terms of the relationship between the police department and our police commission there are various roles and authority and responsibilities i think personally what i learned through that process is that the relationship that exists right now between our police department and our police commission is one that is worth our putting down in our charter and asking voters to put down in our charter this is a relationship that on paper exists in multiple different places it exists in directives from mary weinberger it exists in departmental directives that have previously been agreed to by the police department and the commission it exists in third part in memoranda that have been agreed to by the police chief and former members of the police commission and i think it's due time that we memorialize those those various parts in this proposed charter change in broad strokes those various parts outline a relationship where the police department and the chief must continue to be transparent with our police commission about allegations of police misconduct they received from the public share information voluntarily and also upon request from the police commission seek their feedback as the police chief reviews allegations of misconduct and takes that feedback into consideration ultimately in deciding what if any corrective action is necessary it also makes clear that the police commission has a role in an auditing and monitoring function of our police department including not the least of which is a role in if and when the police department wants to modify or stand up a new departmental directive that the police commission has a role in needing to approve of that and vice versa if the police commission wants to put forward their own recommendations in terms of a departmental directive or training it it memorializes that is their that is their right to do so and if the chief for whatever reason disagrees or the commission disagrees with those proposals it makes clear that there is a path to this city council to resolve those differences all of that reflects an existing transparent practice that again I think deserves to be in our charter the proposed resolution the proposed resolution does go a couple steps further than what the status quo is in a couple important ways from my perspective one is that it makes clear that in what I believe should be a rare instance but nonetheless realistic instance where the police commission wants to conduct its own independent review or investigation of a complaint that has come before the department this resolution would allow the police commission with a two-thirds majority vote to conduct that investigation in another important way whether the police commission decides to exercise its right to conduct an independent review or investigation or not it provides a path where if for whatever reason the police commission disagrees with the police chief's disposition of a complaint of misconduct it provides a separate path for the police commission to offer a different recommendation and if the chief rejects that recommendation a path with two-thirds majority to send that to a new independent panel a majority of which must be made up of professionals to review that complaint and resolve the dispute those are the additional steps that it would take beyond the status quo that we have right now there's obviously more detail in the resolution itself as well as in the memo I suppose the last piece that I will add here is that although we had 14 meetings even at the end of that 14th meeting there was still some feedback that we continued to receive from leadership within the police department from the police union from members of the police commission from members of the public and other stakeholders and as laid out in the memo there are still a few outstanding questions where as this moves into the public hearing process we would welcome feedback from those stakeholders and other members of the public before we decide whether to place this question on the ballot in March thank you thank you so much councillor travers councillor bergman well I just want to take this opportunity to thank all the members of the committee you are all incredibly diligent and you worked hard this is hard work and I just want to appreciate that work I want to appreciate the the attendance of the mayor's office and Jordan in particular uh that was really important I don't know that you all are totally on board I hope that you will be this does not go near to where I was supporting but you know um the minutes would reflect that I joined consensus after it was very clear that I was not going to be getting to go as far as I wanted to do and I think that the process was one of enough give and take and where necessary um using the democratic process to have majority votes and and get them and um at the end of the day we worked through a very difficult process of drafting legislation that we have in front of us and that is not easy and we are able to in uh several meetings at the end really get to it once we got clear and actually it points to the last point I'll make which is deadlines are good and the deadline that we have tonight is a good one for us because we get to to meet it but by meeting it and hopefully um approving this we will put before the voters a system which is fundamentally better than what we have now and I will be absent some major problem uh supporting it and hope that we can get this on the on the on the ballot so thank you again for all of your hard work thank you so much councillor bergman councillor shannon thank you president paul um I voted to send this to the council because we had a a deadline to warn something but this work is not done from the beginning I had asked that we get feedback from both the commission and from the um police union and that we did have um commissioners who weighed in at different points but they never really had an opportunity to um reach a conclusion at the commission to come back with a report to us um recording in progress the bpoa uh came to us at our last meeting they had never really been engaged in this in these discussions and they came with some grave concerns about what we were moving forward and the impact that that these changes would have on hiring and that is some but something that I think everyone at the table has said that we need to hire more police officers and this is going to have a detrimental impact particularly on hiring lateral officers and um the the you know one of the big issues is just all the length of the process when when um an officer is being investigated we're really extending the length of the process um in ways that I'm not sure uh necessary is even necessarily beneficial by adding an additional investigation when what the police commission I think wants is not a new investigation but a person to review the investigation that was done so we're adding layers we're adding time we could be adding a delay to actual actually holding somebody accountable by extending this process um but at any rate those items are listed at the end of the end of the may memo and I believe the commission is going to be taking this up December 26th so I look forward to hearing um hearing what they have to say I think there were some there were some other areas where there was language that was largely agreed to by the committee but we didn't actually have the language at that last meeting and so we were hoping to get some language to make some changes so this in my view is still not ready for prime time but I did want to get it warned and I will support warning it tonight thank you thank you so much Councillor Shannon um Attorney Pellerin if you could explain from from where it goes now to there will be two public hearings and then what are the options that the council has either through the public hearing process or after the public hearing process before this would get on to the ballot so that we not only for the not only for every counselor but also for the public to understand where this process goes from here so in short President ball the process here is that the council has the option to warn these two excuse me warn the language as a proposal for two public hearings upon those public hearings it's the opportunity for the council to take further feedback from the public from other parts of our city governance whether that's the police themselves etc in which the council then can make further amendments and then in January before the I think believe is before the 29th out of the exact dates I can circulate that to the council we would have to have another action by the council to affirmatively say we are placing this before the voters on town meeting day thank you and um I just have one other question do you happen to know because I know you I believe you do you still staff the police commission I do not currently Attorney McClendon does okay I just wondered if you knew if there was going to be a police commission meeting in December yes I believe there is one okay all right so this so this could go to yes so yeah okay so let's hope and I don't we don't need to make it make an emotion but let's certainly hope that the the is it on their agenda for the month of December I can't speak to the point of information both co-chair travers and I are going to be going and making a presentation okay well I guess at least two people are way ahead of me probably a few probably more than a few um I just just want to make sure councillor actually councillor shannon you had that you still had the floor you're okay all right um that was my question my question's been answered councillor hightower did you want to speak to this yeah um I was very hopeful when this process started and I do feel like the one thing I will agree with the council shannon is I feel like um we actually are just adding a lot of bureaucracy to process that in large part to councillor traverse this point maintains the status quo um I was maybe less appreciative of the mayor's office um jumping in um and threatening to veto everything um but I feel like we've gotten to a place that doesn't actually change that much I think it's one of those things where we try to make people feel better by saying that there's a process in place but ensuring that the process has the same outcome that we've our community has had for a very long time um which I could get behind if I at least felt like this guaranteed more transparency in the process but I don't feel like any of those guarantees made it into this proposal um and so I would rather leave this for future council and I'll be voting now thank you okay thank you councillor hightower so the motion is just simply to adopt the resolution worn for the um worn the charter change for uh two public hearings um if there's nothing else on this I'm sorry councillor grant thank you I just wanted to offer some feedback um on this process that I was very emotionally involved in given my work in the last four years four and a half years uh first I was frustrated um that we were starting from so far back because we did have individuals on the council who quite frankly did not care about oversight and accountability did everything to fight against it did not understand the feelings of many people in the community and how it affected trust in our police department because that's one of the things that we know causes officers to leave but there was never an honest conversation about how we improve that trust and how accountability and oversight helps with that there were only count there were only conversations about how do we get away from it so then we end up with this item on the ballot that quite frankly freaked a lot of people out because it almost seemed like it came from nowhere because people were not listening to residents in this city and then we dismiss those who voted for it which was 37 percent that's not an insignificant number 37 percent is close to 50 which can be close to 60 people are watching people care now me personally when I was elected everyone's like oh we have a landslide you know but I think about those other 30 percent that didn't vote for me and I think about them and I I say why did they make that decision when I believe for many many reasons I was the best choice at that time so I am mindful of those individuals and what I can do for them because they are part of my committee my community so when this 37 percent of individuals voted for this ballot item and then promptly got dismissed that's a failure and then we had a group of individuals who started this process and were so far behind as to frequently be confused and it was frustrating and quite frankly it made me cry I was not at the last meeting but the meeting I attended before that I was at the verge of tears because there was just a lack of understanding there's been a constant concentration on the wrong things I'll say it again what type of officers are we trying to attract you say that this type of work keeps lateral transfers away I will remind everyone that I discovered and I had some assistance from council president Paul when I brought it to to the forefront that hey we the council took all these steps to increase salary and bonuses and things like that and didn't even have it advertised on the city's website where people go to file applications didn't even have the right right salary range and we still don't on landing pages for for jobs for officers in our city so I think that you know we blame oversight and accountability and we we're really what we're saying is we're lowering standards that is something that we really need to be thinking about BPOA and certain individuals are obsessed over discipline when in my experience over three and a half years it wasn't this issue of discipline it was an issue of constantly asking for retraining and constantly saying that some of these incidents that were occurring in complaints that were deemed as as as low were not in fact low and when it was brought up at any complaint against the chief should be brought to the mayor I that was the one time out of feeling like I was crying the whole meeting I burst out laughing because we bought example after example after example especially around issues of deescalation so I think part of this process hasn't been honest and then that there was feedback provided by former commissioners including myself and it wasn't respected because it wasn't agreed with so let's talk to new commissioners who don't fully have the experience let's maybe try to intimidate them to make them think they can't do the job or they don't have the expertise that is what I felt was happening thank you thank you so much councilor grant go to council trappers I just want to quickly say council bergman thank you for extending your thanks to everyone on the committee who supported us and I completely echo it I also want to specifically extend my thanks to you and your partnership and our being able to work together in this joint committee process so thank you very much for that I also want to mention that the committee in addition to those councillor bergman mentioned did have the very able assistance of attorney sturdivant from the city attorney's office as well as outside council support from attorney josh diamond at dinsey I don't know if josh is still tuned in online or not I'm I'm assuming that he probably does not have much to say but I did want to take an opportunity to extend my thanks as well to attorney diamond and if he if he did have anything to say I could certainly probably raise his hand and zoom but but I suspect that his feedback will come later as we continue to discuss the resolution thank you thanks very much so we still have a moment we have the motion on the floor to adopt the resolution warn the proposed charter change for two public hearings hearing no other comments we'll go to a vote on this or I'm I apologize mayor Weinberger thank you president paul for the late reason to hand I would just like to um I say that I appreciate the committee was did listen to the feedback that the administration had to offer after having lived under the current system a new system this idea that this system has been in place for a very long time is just not accurate we had nothing like this system in 2015 and we are still figuring out how to work with this system this from my perspective after the work that's been done particularly the work in recent meetings I think this does does improve the the system over what we currently have and I would like to support it I certainly support taking the step tonight to warn it for a public hearing to take further feedback I do think this is not a perfunctory process I think we should keep our our ears open and listen during these these public hearings but I'm hopeful we're going to get to the end of this process and there'll be something that will resolve an issue that has been hotly debated in a way that moves the community forward and puts in front of a voter something that can advance advance the city advance the department and make build trust in uh in the in the police and I'm I think we're close thank you Mayor Weinberger let's give this a raise of hand kind of vote here um we'll go to we'll go to a vote on the resolution all those in favor of the motion please say aye aye any opposed please say no right so we have two three nos we have a no from councillor Grant councillor McGee and councillor high tower so that means that we're nine to three um we will move on to item number four which is a 8.4 which is a resolution March 25th or sorry March 5th 2024 annual city meeting charter change regarding the electric department this charter changes to increase the maximum amount for borrowing from five million to a maximum amount of 10 million in order to provide working capital and liquidity for the electric department it would go from a resolution straight to the um March 2024 ballot um I do not if if someone is willing to move that that would be great uh Councillor Barlow uh thank you I uh moved to waive the reading and adopt the resolution thank you Councillor Barlow is there a second to that count uh seconded by Councillor King did want to actually notice that I did not see when I sat there and give my gave the two second explanation that uh uh bed general manager Darren Springer is here Darren did you want to um did you want to add anything my apologies I did not see you sitting all the way over there and you're not alone you have you have you have the whole team with you my apologies um were there any questions that any councillors had on this item before we would go to a vote uh seeing none then all those in favor of the motion to waive the reading and adopt the resolution please say aye aye any opposed please say no that motion passes um with my sincere apologies for you for the two of you sitting here until 11 15 at night thank you for being here though um that will bring us to the last item on our agenda which is 8.5 uh Councillor Bergman thank you I would move to waive the reading and ask that the action be to refer the measure to the toke for its consideration in time for the toke to report back to the full council so that the proposal can be considered to be placed on the March 20 24 town meeting day ballot and I ask for a the floor back after a second okay so Councillor Bergman you've made a motion to waive the reading and you just referred it to and to refer it to toke for the benefit of the of the public that might be watching this is a resolution on the implementation of a carbon pollution impact fee for new construction and large existing commercial and industrial buildings 25 000 square feet or larger is there a second to that motion uh that was just made by oh my apologies uh Councillor Councillor King Councillor Bergman you have the floor back uh thank you uh the world uh passed a terrible benchmark uh recently according to a study reported in a today in usa today and that is that co2 levels in the atmosphere are at their highest point in human history 420 parts per million and there hasn't been this much co2 in the atmosphere in 14 million years earth was about nine degrees hotter than than it is today and sea levels were 40 feet higher the fate of our and caught and countless other species on the only planet we got rests in our collective hands uh we've got to act like this is the emergency we've said it is and that it is the item that I'm seeking to pat to go to um the toke focuses on the big issue carbon emitting systems the focus on fossil fuels in the existing authorization is necessary but is woefully insufficient we need the authority to go further than we have and to have that authority in place as quickly as possible 14 million years the ballot item gives us the potential to raise the fee in line with the trend in other cities and raise a significant amount of money for the weatherization and clean energy installations that we need right need to repeat that we need the authority to go further than we have and to have that authority in place as quickly as possible the ballot ballot item would authorize us to focus on and bring into the emission reduction regulatory framework significantly size buildings that we've excluded under the current authorization again we need the authority to go farther than we have and to have that authority in place as quickly as possible the ballot item will not does not adopt any fee regulations or ordinance what it simply does is ask the voters to put the authority in place so we can act as quickly as possible preemptively i do not support councillor barlow's amendment for two simple reasons they kill putting this in front of the voters in march and the actions he's going to propose uh propose uh for bergman i'm sorry you know better than that i i don't know i think that this speaks to we haven't done that yet i think it speaks to the issue which we're going to do and i was trying to save time you can have me come back but we've scheduled uh two meetings so that we can bring this back we can deliberate it and um it is important let me just say that um okay you're going to hear from me again that's that's that's okay so i would ask your support for this we all know that the amendments are on are posted there and he's spoken to it i don't really understand that but be that as it may um the sending it to took is a reasonable compromise and uh would hope that we can get your support for it great thank you councillor bergman so with that we'll go to we'll go to okay thank you president paul um first of all i am supportive of building on the carbon pollution impact the ordinance we just passed um and i look forward to working continuing to work with councillor bergman on ways we can enhance our policy to meet our net zero roadmap goal so hopefully we'll be able to do that but i have two concerns about this resolution first in the lead up to the ballot question that was a that who's approval authorized the ordinance we just passed there was a period of public process staff input and stakeholder engagement that's missing here before we ask the voters for additional authority we should spend more time to better understand what we should be asking for and follow up process similar to the one we used in the lead up to the last ballot question um the other concern i have is that we just passed this carbon pollution impact fee for new construction in buildings uh greater than 50 000 square feet we just passed that so we should we should let that ordinance be in effect for some period of time and review its effectiveness before we go modifying it so i'm proposing that we amend the resolution to to allow us to do more work and better understand what extending our policy to buildings between 25 000 square feet and 49 999 square feet means by following a process very similar to the one we have leading up to the last ballot question um the amendments can be seen on the agenda item there it's a title proposed amendments per councillor borough agenda item 8.4 even though this is now 8.5 and you'll see um in that amendment that the title's been changed because now i'm asking for more process and not a not a valid item um and the resolve clauses follow a process very similar to the one we we used before um it doesn't kick the can down the road it actually sets a couple of milestones with concrete dates for june of this year and september of this year um and would allow us time to develop the more informed ballot question that we could have on a ballot later this year we it's very probable that we'll have at least a couple of bond items on in november so i understand it's not march but it's also not next year even it's i'm just asking that we adhere to the same processes that processes that we thought were important when we passed the first decarbonizing resolution thank you uh thank you councillor uh councillor borough i actually um while i well i thank you for the explanation i didn't get a second to your to your so that that's okay that's on me um so i need a second to the amendment um seconded by councillor travers so you've spoken to that assumed you wanted the floor back you got it um and i'm off that now right now i think you're all set now so we'll go to councillor travers and then councillor bergman and did you want the floor as well so uh councillor megey no okay all right okay councillor travers then we'll go to councillor bergman uh first of all i want to say that i i share the sense of urgency expressed by councillor bergman for us to act on our ongoing climate crisis i also hear councillor borough in saying we just passed the carbon pollution impact fee that is the subject of this resolution and by and by just past sometimes we say just passed we're saying we did it in the last few months we did it within the past year we did this just at our last meeting uh on november 20th and now here we are at the very next meeting with a proposal that's asking that we go to voters to increase that fee to 234 per ton to increase its application to smaller buildings and to further regulate the types of fuels that buildings may use within burlington without the carbon fee applying to them and uh i admit to not being completely informed uh yet as to whether 234 per ton is the right amount whether the carbon fee should extend to buildings uh 25 000 square feet or larger or whether that number uh should be some different number uh i think we also need additional review of the the state process that's been stood up uh in terms of uh the the clean heat credits that they are issuing and the intersection between that and our carbon pollution impact fee which while just passed won't actually take effect until january i should also mention that you know i i'm open to a discussion on whether or not this is actually the best path for us to address greenhouse gas emissions in our buildings we we received an email actually tonight during this meeting from a member of the cambridge city council where they've gone in a completely different direction and have stood up uh building performance standards uh that required that those buildings by certain milestones uh eliminate greenhouse gas emissions from those buildings regardless of what field what what field type they're using in practice i suspect that buildings in cambridge are going to have to uh get off of fossil gas but maybe that's the better way uh for our city to be approaching this rather than through a carbon fee um the underlying resolution putting this forward for us to come back with a question or put on the ballot in march i'm anticipating allows the two maybe one or two meetings at most over the holiday season um and is not going to have the kind of public process or stakeholder input that i believe is necessary for this council to make a fully informed decision on the items that it's touching on and i agree with council barlow that that we are not acting to kick the can down the road here because the underlying resolution even as written says that if voters approved of it in march that any changes could not take effect until january of 2025 so we have time here and we have the luck of 2024 being a year where we actually have voters going to the ballot on three separate occasions they'll be going to the ballot in march uh they'll be going again in august uh for primaries for the november election and they'll be going to the ballot again in november um you know i would frankly uh be open to the two pushing stakeholders for us as a full council to get a report back in time for if we wanted to place a question on the ballot using the august ballot as opposed to the november ballot um but either way august or november if we want to put a question to the ballot it will give this council time for us to act on it before uh the the proposal and the underlying resolution that this go forward and into effect on january first of 2025 so i don't see why we wouldn't take the time bring in the input such that everyone on this council feels like they can make a fully informed decision on it um it seems like the reasonable thing to me uh and and i don't think will in any way delay the timeline that um councillor bergman has understood understandably put forward to address the urgency that we're all feeling thank you councillor travers uh councillor bergman um i don't see how you can not be thinking that this is going to kick it down the road if you delay the vote from march to august or november um you know again all of the the possibilities whether the fee is the right number whether the the cambridge approach is a different is is an appropriate thing are all consistent with what this resolution would what the voters would be authorizing so all that is still on the table and let's also be really clear the department the two departments can undertake all of that work without any of us passing anything all the things that are in the amendment the study the dates they all can be done we don't need to delay a vote so that they can do that we don't need to um to to delay getting the authorization as quickly as possible this is important authorization the the the lowering of the building thresholds the raising of the fee the focus on uh emissions as opposed to either fossil fuels or so-called renewable energy they're all important and yet nothing that is being asked of folks is um to be set in any stone what it does is it authorizes us to move forward with that process i i i think that it is it is totally delay and it's unfortunately consistent with the way that um far too many decisions around climate are being made across the globe and i hope that we defeat the amendment and we refer this to to can have that process and perhaps there'll be some changes that come out of that but um thank you thank you very much councillor bergman uh as the hour is getting late we're going to go to councillor barlow thank you i just just to say that i ultimately think this will come to toke i just think it needs a little bit more work before it comes to toke i would like to know for instance how many buildings in the city are between 25 000 and 50 000 square feet i i i don't know that number and i'm not sure if anybody does at this point we would need director springers or director wards or general manager springer director wards input on that that's just one one aspect of it i'd also like to understand the interplay between um the state climate policy and the clean heat standard and some of the things we're proposing so we could make a more informed ask of the voters on a ballot question with a little bit more work rather than just you know picking a number like 236 dollars per ton or the building size i sorry to get that wrong but my point is is is we just need a little bit more process i fully expect this to come to toke i fully expect us to you know work toward a ballot question so i am i i am giving you my word that i'm not kicking it down the road i'm just wanting to do more work on it before we take it to voters thank you thank you councillor barlow so let's uh let's go to a vote on the amendment um it appears as though it'll be not be a unanimous vote it might be a good idea if we could just go to a roll call councillor barlow yes are you doing this on the amendment this is the amendment okay this is the bar i we'll call it the barlow okay uh councillor bergman no no councillor carpenter yes councillor jang no councillor dority yes councillor grant no councillor hightower no councillor king no councillor mickey no councillor shannon yes yes councillor travers yes city council president paul yes six eyes six days okay so the motion uh the motion fails so we move forward with the original uh we move forward with the original resolution um is there anyone else who wishes to speak to the original resolution um and i know actually as well uh we do have uh director springer here i don't know if you wish did you wish to speak on the on the on the on this resolution okay the floor is yours you don't need don't need to run good evening councillors i know it's late i i did want to speak to this because it's important uh given our work on the net zero roadmap um we worked with uh then councillor hanson back in may of 2022 after the charter change that gave us this new authority was approved and set up a process by which we had an interim report uh july of 2022 and a final report in uh december of 2022 that set up the successful town meeting day 2023 ballot item councillor jang asked us to do a public meeting which we did uh we were asked to go to each of the mpa's and solicit feedback we were asked to work with all of the relevant stakeholders and work with expert organizations like the building electrification institute to really hone in on these questions of performance standards what's the right carbon fee what keeps us competitive and affordable with neighboring communities and really to hear from the buildings that would be impacted because they're all different and that was the above 50 000 square feet building so um i have a couple concerns with the ballot language as it stands um the first is 234 dollars is the carbon fee that's being used in new york city it's not in use anywhere in the state of vermont it's not consistent with the state of vermont climate council social cost of carbon which is in the 126 to 148 dollar range and that's why our number at 150 is slightly higher than the state of vermont number but not as high as new york city and we're a different city than new york city so i have a concern with the carbon fee number uh being authorized um the second item is buildings 25 000 to 4999 i looked at the list ahead of this meeting and there are addresses on pine street and church street and main street and north avenue and i don't know that those uh building types are necessarily the right building types to apply carbon fee to um but we'd be authorizing that we'd be asking the voters to authorize that so i have some concern about putting the cart before the horse essentially with the idea that those are that's the right tool in the toolbox i'd really like to work with those buildings and those stakeholders and determine what we could do with them uh that would be effective and it may be that they can't uh work with this type of carbon fee the way that a campus system like the university of vermont or university of vermont medical center that has a sophisticated capital planning operation can um so i'm concerned that we're putting the policy solution on the table before we've done the appropriate stakeholder work and then lastly i'm very concerned that we just uh as councillor travers pointed out we just finished a process well over a year of work uh for for our team that led to burlington implementing a carbon fee for new construction and for large existing buildings we had three meetings at the tuke three meetings at the ordinance committee debated whether we should follow state policy or we should regulate renewable fuels and the council settled that question uh last week and this ballot item would immediately reopen that question not less than three months into the implementation of this new policy creating a lot of uncertainty for all the affected potential buildings and creating a lot of uncertainty from a policy standpoint we are as committed as you can be to this vision we've been trying to drive it and lead it with you uh since uh well certainly since i i can remember and before my time at bd i know and so we are very very interested in having additional policy we would like the opportunity to engage in additional process first before we bring something forward to the voters so that it can have the broad consensus that it needs to keep burlington as a leader that other communities want to emulate and make sure what we're doing works um thank you for allowing me to share those comments of course thank you so much for being here um anyone else have a councillor travers and maybe we can go to a vote i'm sorry councillor carpenter as well yeah thank you uh although um i disagree with the resolution as written in substance for all the reasons i outlined on the amendment and echo the concerns that general manager springer just raised um because the question before us is one of uh simply sending this matter to the two committee um i will support the motion um if only to keep the discussion going on this matter i will say though that um i disagree with that part of the motion again for the reasons i stated before that are asking for this to uh come back and a question that this council would vote on uh for march um to my colleagues who are on the two committee i respectfully say that um whereas i'm hopeful for you all i'm i'm doubtful that the public process that i would expect in a resolution with this impact will will be able to be accomplished by your committee in the time between now and january uh when we'll have to act uh if we want to put a question on the ballot in march so i'm i'm very skeptical that um a version of this will be able to come back before the council in a way that uh i would be able to support in placing it on the march ballot uh nonetheless i will support the motion uh for that committee to continue the discussion and would ask for you to please keep those concerns in mind as you proceed with that debate thank you thank you councillor travers go to councillor carpenter um why i share all of that i just had a couple of questions um i too want to proceed with it but the my skepticism like councillor travers is to get on the ballot for march we we have to explain this fully to the voters as somebody who worked actually um with uh former councillor Hanson and tried to explain it there was tons and tons of questions to get that across to the voters and i i don't feel i could do that now so i i guess i'm maybe asking the maker of the motion or um if i support this i am very doubtful and i'm not prepared to have it appear on the march ballot until all the work that um manager springer is talking about so i guess i'm sort of asking a question if i support this you know am i saying i'm supporting it in march or um or am i just saying to start looking at it maker is uh if you want to hear from me you are that's right you are i am i am the maker yes you are we are um asking for its consideration in time for the tuc to report it back so actually it does not commit the tuc to doing that i mean it doesn't go all that far as far as i'm concerned not nearly far enough but it so i think the short answer to your question is uh it is not in the making of the motion um committing you to do anything um yeah or this or this body to do anything it does have it directs the tuc to consider it in time to be able for us to consider it and that deadline according to the uh the ceo's office uh our monday january 29th is the last practical date for the council to approve non-charter change ballot questions so i would think that that is our deadline then so what was what was that date just january 29th i mistake that january 29th is the date that that's my understanding as well it's the same day that candidate petitions have to be in so by approving this we're essentially asking tuc to come back by december 29th or january 29th excuse me yes but effectively get all that work done in a month that's what you're asking that's what i'm asking us to ask us to do i guess i don't see how that's possible my answer is 14 million years uh councilor carpenter you all said okay uh anyone else have anything to add councilor barlow um i will not be supporting this because i think it's an unrealistic timeline however i i realize i may not be successful tonight and i just wanted to uh say that the the work that i've outlined um in the amendment that just failed is exactly the same work that we would likely need or something close to it coming out of tuc so it seems like a lot a lot for us to get done um in a month and especially when we we need to put from bed we're going to need um stakeholder engagement it just seems unrealistic to me but um when it comes to tuc this is what i'm going to advocate for still so thank you thanks very much councilor barlow uh councilor hightower um yeah i will be supporting this um guess i also am curious to see what we will see by the deadline um but would love to get the work started um and then also share some concerns with the the current carbon fee proposed all right how about we go to a vote uh why don't we do a roll call vote lori and this is on the resolution uh the resolution was not amended this is on the original resolution councilor barlow no council bergman yes council carpenter no councilor jane yes councilor dority yes councilor grant yes councilor hightower yes councilor king yes councilor mcgee yes councilor shannon no councilor travers yes city council president paul yes nine eyes three nays so that motion passes and uh the resolution passes uh and with that uh we will um i will we will get ourselves to the end of this meeting um councilor bergman you look like someone who wants to make a motion to adjourn i do i do i do i figured you did second councilor and councilor mcgee will second that all those in favor of the motion to adjourn please say aye aye and he opposed please say no uh that uh motion passes so thank you for joining us this evening our next meeting and our last meeting of 2023 will be next monday uh december 18th and we will look forward to seeing you then have a good evening