 All right, everyone. Hello and welcome to the January Neighborhood Planning Assembly in Ward 5. Lots of new faces in here. Thank you for joining us. It's such a pleasure to have you. Familiar faces. We've got our counselor, Ben Travers here as well. We, School Ward Rep, will probably hear from many people in this room, and we're about to have a public forum, but going to get us settled in the meeting and we'll get to hearing from people other than me. So here we are. We've got some guiding principles in Ward 5 at the NPA. This is a safe space. We're here to provide a welcoming forum. We aim to keep this accessible, reducing barriers to participation and engaging with all community members. If you have feedback on that at any time, please let us know. We are hoping that this will remain a respectful space where we respect cultural and economic differences and value diverse perspectives. And we want to be vital, relevant, creative, and fun. This is always an effort. Again, if you have ideas about this, we want to hear them. And we are nonpartisan. We do not endorse political candidates, although we have a number of them here with us tonight. And our steering committee. I'm Lena. I use they them pronouns. I'm sorry. Joe Dairy, Bergus, and Jason VanDreis, Caroline Street. And I'm Terry Rivers. Oh, sorry for you guys. I'm Terry Rivers. I live on local stairs. Cool. And wow, we're all here. Okay. And we've got a couple of websites just to keep things interesting. NPA5.org is managed by us. And then our city website is on the city website. And then FOSCA keeps us honest is helping with agendas and can answer questions that we can't. And we got Charlie on the camera. We have an email address if you want to reach out to all of us at any point. Come on in. That's word five NPA underscore BTV at googlegroups.com. Next, I think we're mostly good on this at this point, but zoom quick reminder, you can unmute your audio or start your video at any point on the bottom left corner of the screen. And FOSCA will help me in case I'm forgetting anyone who has raised their hand. Feel free to put something in the Q&A if you're you're waiting too long. Okay. And our agenda for tonight, we are doing our welcome right now. In a moment, we'll start public forum. Everyone is welcome to participate in public forum. We'll go over ground rules for that in a minute. I'll give a little preview. We're going to do some bylaws work for the NPA in the coming weeks and months. We'll hear from Samantha Dunn on the Gateway block development. We'll hear hear from Lucia Tempriello. Yes. Okay. On the school district budget proposal over you. And then we're going to revisit a fun activity. We started many months ago in August at our social event in Callahan Park and have carried that through to here. So without further ado, lots to get to tonight. For public forum, please identify yourself. We want to know your name. We go to the next slide. Thank you so much. And where you live, whatever about that, your comfortable sharing is fine. If you're affiliated with an organization or an entity, please let us know. We try to keep things to four minutes. But if you are being really interesting, maybe we'll let you talk for a little longer. And I'll give you a prompt after three, just to keep things democratic. All right. Would anybody like to speak in public forum tonight? Reid. Hi, everybody. My name is Reid. I'm a volunteer for the People's Kitchen. I just want to thank you. I thank our neighbors who have helped us in our winter drive. We distributed over 200 pieces of toys to kids and families in the South Midow neighborhood and Salmond Island neighborhood. We also distributed over 200 pairs of gloves and warm socks, as well as police blankets. So thank you for all your support. Joe Dairy, Ben Trilbridge, especially I see here. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Reid. And just for folks, if you haven't been here before, these mics are not going to amplify your voice in the room, but they're really helpful for the people online. So for Reid, you're off the hook. But everybody else, please, if you're going to speak at public forum, make sure that you're near a mic. If you're not at the table, feel free to just poke your head in. Anyone else? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Come sit next to me if you like. Who else would like to speak? Yes, go ahead. Thank you so much. Hi, everyone. It's so nice to be here. I haven't been here in person in a long time, and I've been channeling the food and looking forward to the meals. So for Reid, thank you so much for feeding us. I wanted to say hello. I'm on the agenda, so I'll be brief. My name is Lucia Campriolo. I am currently your representative for Ward 5 on the School Board, and so I am just wrapping up my first of a two-year term. My first term, it's two years long, and I will be inviting your signature tonight, if you would like, to add your signature, which helps me get on the ballot because I'm meeting again. And so thank you in advance for taking a look and considering adding your name to this list, and I'm sure we will have more time and conversation about my candidacy, another time entirely separate from tonight's business, which is about the budget. And I also just want to welcome my colleague and Board Chair, Claire Wolk, who I'm so thrilled is here with me tonight. So thank you so much, and I will go ahead and pass this around. Anyone else? Andy? Hi, my name is Andy Simon. I live on Locust Street. And it's election season, as you may have heard several times tonight already. One of the ways that people get to meet candidates in Burlington is host parties, small gatherings in people's homes for meeting a candidate, being able to ask questions on a more intimate way than sometimes bigger public events. I wanted to draw your attention to some events that are happening in Ward 5 in the next few weeks. There are several events for Emma Mulvaney-Stanik, who's running for mayor. Her website is up there, Emmafrommayor.com. The first event is on Saturday the 27th at 2 p.m. on Scarf Avenue, and several hosts, including me. And for each of these, it's really hard to see, but there's an RSVP for the for just letting people know, so hosts know how much snack food to have and things like that. And there's another one later on that afternoon, so Emma's going to be hopping from one to the other. That one's on Scarf Avenue. The next one is in Red Rock's Condominiums on Red Rock Drive hosted by Linda Siegel. That's at 3.30 or a little after. The next one is on Sunday the 28th on Charlotte Street at 10.30 a.m. There are more meet and greets house parties that you'll find at Emma's website. Well, for some reason, none of the Ward 5 ones show up there, so I wanted to underline those. And then there's one house party scheduled for Laina Greenberg, who is running for city council, and her website is greenberg.vote. Their website, excuse me, thank you. And the, I thought you were going there. Oh, but Andy, sorry, one thing backing up looks like Jess Oskie's email is probably incorrect. I'm guessing it's not O-A-K-I. Oh no. A is right next to this. You're right. It's probably Jess Oskie. Jess Oskie at Gmail. Thank you. Thank you, Jason. Laina's, the one meet and greet that I know of is at our house, 54 Locust Street on Saturday the 2nd of February at 3 p.m. And you can essentially RSVP for all of these by just calling my number, which is 999-5275, and I will relay your RSVP to the various hosts. So thank you. And, you know, I want to say one other thing. This town is a wonderful town, but there are not enough people who vote. And it would be a much better town if more people voted. Normally, even in mayoral elections, we barely crack 40% of registered voters. And presidential elections, we might get up to 50%. But it's very, very, very low over all the whole city. We're higher in Ward 5 and in Ward 4 and in Ward 6 and some of the other wards. But over the whole city, the voting percentage of registered voters is relatively low. So please vote. But ballots come out by Valentine's Day, I think, and by mail. And then March 5 is his town meeting that you can vote in person. Thank you. Anybody who wants to register to vote or change your address? You can do it right here. Thanks, Charlie. Thanks, Fosco. Okay. Anyone else? Go ahead, Ben. Thanks, Lana. So since it is election season and everyone else is announcing their candidacies, I suppose I'll take a moment here as well. My name is Ben Travers. When we first moved here to the south end, we were renters on Hayward Street and then started to raise our family at the corner of Home Avenue and Pine Street. And now we live on South Crest Drive. So we've done the tour to Ward 5. And I have three young kids. Our two oldest are at Champlain now. And I work here locally here in Burlington as an attorney. And it's been my great honor for the last year and a half or so to serve Ward 5 on our city council. And as Lucia mentioned, she's running for reelection now to the school board after her first term and Lucia and I jumped in at the same time two years ago. And I will be running for reelection as well to the city council here in Ward 5. I anticipate that we'll have additional opportunities hopefully here at the NPA to talk about the issues with you all and certainly to hear from the community but I know that Burlington has a number of issues that it's dealing with right now and needs to continue to deal with. That said, I think we've done a lot of good work on the city council and here's the city over the last year and a half. I'm very optimistic about the future of our city. I'm looking forward to Samantha's presentation on the gateway block. For example, it's great to see buildings rising over downtown Burlington right now as chair of our ordinance committee on the city council. I've been very proud to champion initiatives like the New South End Innovation District which should bring roughly a thousand new housing units here at Burlington. I'm excited that here in the coming weeks we'll be introducing the new neighborhood code which city-wide will open up additional housing opportunities here in Burlington. We've championed a number of important climate initiatives including our standing up. One of the few communities really in the country that stood up a carbon pollution impact fee. I'm proud to work on new regulations for short-term rentals in our community which because of those regulations have now taken our housing trust fund which supports affordable housing here from a value of roughly less than $500,000 to over a million dollars now in our housing trust fund to support affordable housing. I will tell you that in joining the city council there is a learning curve a year and a half in. I feel like I'm just getting my legs underneath me and hope that the community will elect me to another term here to continue that work. Andy's mentioned that Lana's running. Lana I welcome them to the race and look forward to the discussion to come so thanks very much. Thanks Ben. Anyone else for public forum? All right we've got one more minute left. Just kidding I keep thinking those sixes are nines. We've got four more minutes left so I'm going to take one of them and say hello I'm Lana. A lot of people have been talking about me so I'm just going to say my own words. I too am running for city council in word five. I'm really excited for the opportunity to run I think that we have a lot more space to talk about important stuff when there are two people in the race instead of one and I am excited to talk to you all about this this bold Burlington that we can have in which everybody has a place to live that they can afford and everybody feels good about sending their kid to walk up the street to go to school and is not worried about them getting hit by a car and imagining that you know we're going to count all of our emissions and really meet our climate goals and raise those standards and take care of everybody in this city so I'm sure we'll talk more about that. Always lots to say the best thing about running for office is that you get to spend a lot of time talking to people so more to come and maybe I'll see you at Andy's house in a couple of weeks. Any further public forum before we close it out? Last chance. Anyone online? All right. So let's get back to our agenda so we can just do a little time check. So I'm going to oh preview of our bylaws work. Anyone else on the steering committee feel free to chime in a few months ago there was a resolution passed in city council that required the NPAs to update their bylaws in accordance with anti-discrimination policies we've had a really great discussion here over the last couple of NPAs about what that looks like for us the beauty of NPAs is that they are independent of the city although to some extent although varies depending on who you ask they do fall under the city purview so we are we are being asked to update our bylaws the steering committee in ward five is working hard on identifying what it is about our bylaws that need to change and we're going to find a time for a special meeting so we can do that work in such a way that doesn't doesn't burden our existing schedule and also make space for anyone who's interested in participating in that to join us so that's really just a sneak preview bylaws are certainly not the most interesting or fun thing about the NPA but they're important so stay tuned if you heard about this meeting in all likelihood you will find information about that future meeting in the same spot and feel free to chat with any of us at any point this evening if you're curious about bylaws yeah just a clarification because I don't remember and I wasn't clear from how you said it we're going to have a a working group sort of a working session that's open to everybody where we're going to work on the bylaws but we're not going to vote on them there correct we'll bring them back to a regular meeting to actually vote on yeah thank you and so every every time we vote on something we have to make sure we have successfully warned our community that the meeting is happening with enough time so people can make sure they can make it and then what we invited we got to remind everybody which was my first time experiencing a resolution vote a couple months ago that the neighborhood planning assembly is all of us and so we even though there are a number of us on the steering committee when we vote if you live in ward five and you're here you count and your vote is really important so we'll we'll be in touch about what's happening with the bylaws when we have a date for working on them and you will find out about when the vote is long before when the vote happens and and just to double underscore it just because what we're doing is a little bit unusual the the work session about the bylaws will be an open meeting just like any other npa meeting open to everybody and anybody who wants to engage in the scintillating work of bylaws or agents thanks jason any other anything i missed from other steering committee members grand okay um smitha yes you're on come sit next to your thank you please join me yeah is that the easiest i think so hi everybody i haven't been to ward five in a while i think maybe the last time i was here it was virtual but it's great um great to be here my mom actually lives in ward five so so i never know when she might show up but what are these things i don't my name is samantha dunne i work in the community and economic development office so some people know that as sido um my position is called the assistant director for community works which means just about everything um but my focus um over the past few years has really been on supporting um real estate development and redevelopment of underutilized city land to increase our housing capacity as well as to address homelessness so i was very involved in the development of the elmwood shelter and um again work with both um private and nonprofit developers on housing developments um and others um to sort of make sure things are moving forward and then focus on city property uh that is currently underutilized and could be better serving our city so tonight i'm here to talk about gateway block um i think my email's at the end but you can always find me if there's a different project you're interested in that i just mentioned or you have a question about always feel free to email me and are you going to just when i turn the page right yeah um so this is the gateway block um i it's called the gateway block because some people see um this as the gateway i think we we've heard from city counselors and others there are many gateways to burlington but historically this entry down main street from the uvm campus has sort of been considered the gateway to burlington with memorial auditorium that says auditorium there um on the bottom right hand corner within the block on the same block we have the historic um fire station one we have the flutter free library there's a church on the upper right and um there's a vacant um parcel that used to be the midtown motel and a small building there in the middle that's in pink it's in pink we'll get to why that's pink but just remember this image um here's just another um version so people does everyone understand where i'm talking about based on these okay great so this is the gateway block um the gateway block obviously includes memorial auditorium um which is uh building when i started at the city just over two years ago on my second week someone said to me hey this is your um this is a problem for the city and you need to figure out what to do with it um so i've been working on that for a couple of years um but obviously i grew up in brahmat we go like many people here have a lot of memories of being a memorial auditorium it's been a very important um institution for the city of burlington um and it has been closed since 2018 um because it is unsafe to occupy um and so this is just a little background and sort of how we got to this place starting in the 90s it was clear the city was not um able to keep up with repairs um there was a failed bond vote in 1994 um that would have kind of hoped to address those so the it continued on and then it was actually 2016 not 2018 um that the building had to close right at the end of 2016 for public safety reasons there's structural failure within the building um in 2018 sido actually led a very robust um public process to better understand the how we wanted to adaptively reuse this building to continue to serve um the city and you know there was um reuse plans that came out with a you know at a 30 million dollar price tag basically and then covid happened and all of the city's priorities everything um shifted there was a another bond vote in 2021 that would have um really stabilized the building at about 15 million dollars and made it possible to continue to occupy it safely but not do that big vision that bond vote um also failed the next bond in 22 did bring about a million dollars to the building um for stabilization and an analysis of what should happen next with that money the roof has been stabilized and some so it won't fall in under snow load and some other things um and then um as our school board members here know um the city approved 165 million dollar bond for the new high school very clearly that is a priority for the city as it should be to serve um to serve our community but one thing that it does that is challenging is really take up the bonding capacity for the city it really limits our ability to to continue to bond so if we said today that 30 million dollars which now with um escalating construction cost that is actually a 45 million dollar project the city does not have the capacity to bond um to to make that project happen so i just i think it's important um note to clarify because of that um we we started looking for um a private partner to help redevelop that building and keep it we were actually selected a proposal um very interesting sort of immersive art experience that was going to happen in the building and just before we really were able to announce they had we're doing some feasibility and said we cannot make the numbers work to to to both stabilize this building and do the work we want to do in it so it was it was back um to the drawing board for memorial auditorium last summer um cito and the planning office and um some folks from dpw sort of facilitated some strategic visioning for the whole block understanding we needed to look more broadly to figure out what we were going to um do here and that included um adjacent property owners and that sort of um gotten to us to where we are today just another so that was all background just some memorial auditorium there have been some previous proposals for redevelopment of the entire block that um some people might be familiar with there was a public safety facility in the 90s that was proposed the ymca looked at potentially moving to the block with some other student housing and mixed use there was a uvm arena vision for the whole block i see some people nodding that but i was not a part of any of these um it was actually considered in 2021 as one of the locations for the new high school um and then as i mentioned we um did the rfp in 2022 to try and get a redevelopment just that building so that's a little bit of history on the block um these next two slides these are just images but i want to touch on um we have a really stellar planning department and 10 years ago um we created plan btv for downtown and the waterfront um that had lots of community input and engagement and a major component of this new downtown plan was um re-envisioning public and private sites throughout the downtown including this block and the vision really looked at how do we take advantage of underutilized sites on the parcel in the city and within the downtown core really um and so the entire main street uh corridor was a focus and so so envisioning or visioning for this block has has been going on i would say for more than a decade kind of with and without memorial auditorium make sure there's no questions want to go quick um what now i think again as i said uh we we have to do something we need to do something two years ago we're still trying um we we really need to address the ongoing costs and liability of the memorial auditorium building um we need to chart a direction for capital activities in the downtown we need to to be able to move forward with vision and activate our underutilized properties to create public public benefit generally and and to help address our housing shortage which i think most people are aware of as we're looking forward we are um caring in that 2018 work that happened we had um over 2,500 surveys um where people were identifying community priorities for what should happen in a redeveloped memorial auditorium um so we you know those factors beyond a public assembly you know a large public assembly space are things that we know should that the well the community in 2018 identified as priorities we think most of those are still relevant the top five are here that we want to make sure we're continuing to incorporate as we um think about redevelopment of block um in addition to those i think these are the key priorities to the city sort of taking that gateway making sure we've got an attractive and welcoming entrance to the downtown we're creating new mixed up income housing um we're of course preserving the veterans memorials that while the whole building was a memorial there are actual um memorials within the building that need to be preserved and and open back up to the public um and then inclusion of public space that addresses those priorities that were on the previous slide and we've heard very consistently that it needs to well 242 main itself probably isn't going to come back that there needs to be dedicated space um just to that is youth led and serving the youth of the city because that is that is a sorely missed asset since the closing of the building we know public parking is important in the downtown and we know we need to grow our grand list increase our property tax revenue and generate long term economic benefit for the community barriers part of the reason we're we're feeling confident about how we're moving for now is we feel like we're addressing some of the barriers that um made it got in the way of some previous redevelopment efforts one of those is that the ravine sewer does everyone know what the ravine sewer is yep we've been talking about quite a bit crosses that's a little bit about you don't know what the ravine sewer the ravine sewer um was the historic uh sewer uh in the city of Burlington and it is literally like a ravine that got built over and it runs through our downtown it's like and I you can walk it's like now it's enclosed with brick on the top um but it used to be a ravine um and you know people just threw stuff in it and now there's a very antiquated sewer line where would you see that where would I see this you wouldn't see it it's all underground yeah but the one thing the ravine sewer crosses diagonally it goes under our fletcher free library so you've probably been above it um crosses that um the vacant parking lot that's next to the fire station which has meant that you made it very difficult to redevelop that site because you can't put anything down the great streets main street project is is um addressing that so it's going to get rid of you know stop using the ravine sewer and you and um put in new modern sewer lines as part of the upgrades to our stormwater and wastewater infrastructure the other big challenge we face is lack of control of that privately held land if you remember the the magenta shape um on the beginning of the those those parcels have been privately held and we have not been successful in the past with being able to negotiate um with that land over landowner for a um a shared vision for for redevelopment um and then the cities as we talked about inability to finance the bond um for the vision for 2018 and um just sort of the costs of repairing and renovating memorial auditorium makes adaptive reuse really financially unfeasible we're continuing to explore if um all our parts of the building can be preserved in depth of reuse but on its own it's not financially feasible to ask anybody public or private to take them on it just doesn't doesn't work um so we feel like what we have now um is a is a potential um way of moving forward with that addresses those barriers so as I mentioned the ravine sewer is going to be relocated um we are going to be looking at private investment to achieve some of the public objectives as we looked at it in that those 2018 um priorities from the community um we you know are facing a housing crisis that requires us to create opportunities to and and approaches that we wouldn't have considered previously to bring new housing as we mentioned growth of the grand list and and the potential to advance the the long-term planning goals often in a lot of communities there's long-term plans that get put out and they just get every decade they get redone but there's not really a lot of progress something that is amazing about Burlington is there's really good plans and we're making progress on them we're actually they're actually being implemented and this is one of those opportunities um this specific opportunity is for a public-private partnership with two local developers Eric Farrell and Joe Larkin um these are both people who come from Burlington and really care they care about the city and they they care about they care about this block and having something um happen on it that that is better serving the city um they're they're as I said they're local they have a lot of experience working in this community they've got a proven track record they have site control over those parcels that we have previously struggled with negotiating over and they have a vision for this block that aligns with our with our goals and priorities that come from their love for the city and and a long record of securing major project financing that the city is not not able to do on its own so Ben hope this this presentation probably looks familiar we did get city council approval um in the fall to enter into a letter of intent um with Eric Farrell and Joe Larkin to kind of go into due diligence to see if we could get to a development agreement for how to move forward um so that work is underway the work will is going to identify roles responsibilities and capacities of the partners going to start to identify how we value property and think about ownership and redevelopment structures is it a land lease and there are things being sold things like that and then what the development program priorities are and just all of the logistics there's likely that this project will include the relocation of that fire station which is actually also been a long term um goal of the city there was a study done a few years ago yep sorry let me say relocate the fire station do you mean move that function elsewhere or physically move the building the function the function yep um so there's um best practice um recommends that we combine fire station one where they always forget the six is it six in here down here five five yeah fighting five sorry that we combine one in five um to get the adequate kind of um staffing per vehicle and per station um that we really can't achieve right now as we're spread out um and so that's a priority the city has maintained the historic fire station but it's you know the windows some of the windows are about to fall out I mean we still struggle with I think the city really struggles with um capital maintenance on historic structures so it's not in great shape it's certainly not serving that fire station well that building would absolutely stay as as that building but hopefully serve a public use likely in the redevelopment so I think the proposed next steps um as I said we were with city council in November we're in this initial due diligence period both the city um and working with Eric and Joe and then doing making sure that we're visiting every npa and making sure people are aware of what's happening and being able to answer questions um and gather feedback um the goal is to um probably in late February return to city council in a public meeting and and share um sort of the terms that have been negotiated to date um so that we can enter into a development agreement or kind of a pre-development agreement um before April 1st um and what it's looking like is it will then be kind of another year um of much more um in-depth due diligence where the private parties will have to spend you know some significant money to better understand the feasibility to do geotechnical work look at the structure of the building things like that and and that you know it would be another year before we would be coming back to say okay here here's the plan and what we're thinking um and and certainly working with the public during that time as well I think that's it just a reminder um that there is a memorial auditorium and gateway block website on the you know web page on the cedo website that has the most up-to-date information so this is the best place um to make sure you're up to speed and that's it yes I have one question yes is there a claim to be an effort to preserve any part of the memorial auditorium yes absolutely okay and what what would that look like I I think there is an evaluation I think it's a combination of evaluation of the the different structural challenges and um so what makes sense to preserve is there a portion that is makes sense um structurally to preserve and then programmatically how it would fit in with the overall programmatic vision I think uh you know personally I I think it would be wonderful if we could preserve the portion of the building that the memorials are in and they could stay there and that would be open to the public oh that's a way of kind of keeping that fabric and that um continuity but you know that work hasn't been done yet but certainly that is a priority is to is to preserve as much as is feasible yes um speaking just as a ward five resident not my role in the steering committee um I this of all places in the city this is a place where surface parking should be absolutely minimized yes um I I would uh I would love to see and I'm sure many others would as well um nothing but uh handicapped spaces as surface parking the rest structured yeah that even that less than people have historically thought we need this is a site where there'd be so much benefit from a real focus on space for people to interact not space to store people's cars I totally agree thank you please record that as a public request yes I think that is that that vision is shared too great yeah it seems like there's been a lot of challenge around securing funding to do this understandably enormous project given that the city is going to enter into a relationship with a private developer what room does the city have to say actually we need 50% of that housing units that are built to be affordable like where's where's the room for for making sure that this is not just what the developer wants but actually what we're on two needs um I think there is certainly an opportunity I mean we have a zoning ordinance obviously with IZ the 50 percent I think if we really have to balance financial feasibility um with with our goals and so um you know if shipping housing trusts could come in and you know they they are able to access the resources to build affordable housing units at this time could come in and wanted to do 50 percent I mean that is one way but we need to be um we need to be careful about kind of overloading some of these things to for something to then become financially infeasible and nothing happens I say that my background before coming to the city was as an affordable housing developer I I'm I like I'm right there and said and it's a huge part of my job is figuring out how to get these affordable housing units built but it's also really important for us to be realistic and recognize that building a housing unit costs five hundred thousand dollars and that's it you know you can only make that work financially when you have access to other types of financing that that aren't the traditional private financing so it's it's really complicated so outside of the requirements of inclusionary zoning there's kind of a question about how affordable the units will be that do people up there yes yep I would say I I think there's a yes the city is not right now proposing anything greater than um what's in our zoning ordinance yes um so having lived through in Burlington another massive project in the middle of downtown which is now turning into a building but I think it will always be known as the pit we'll see we'll see I still remember the mall I mean I spent a lot of time in the mall so yeah um so my I guess my question is about transparency of finances because one of the problems with that project uh the pit or other was that we really we meaning the public really never were able to see the fact view the fact that the finances weren't really there and they weren't really there right the um and I don't think that that Joe Larkin and Eric Farrell are comparable to Don Sinex but uh but I but I do think that it's very very important that people be able to see not just the city council but the whole of Burlington public through the NPAs and various other means be able to see that the financing is in place we're moving forward it's not going to become a semi-permanent dead area in the middle of the city I just really think that that needs to be part of this whole process yep I hear that and I think there I think there certainly can be more transparency and the city has a much greater opportunity to be involved in this project because we actually own the majority of the land it's very different from city place for the as a private land being sold by one private developer to another private developer and and there were those limitations on what the city you know really had had access to um I I can't promise that it's like a private developer is going to open their books up to the to the public but I I hear what you're saying and I think that is and it's a very important part of the due diligence we've identified is to say is it realistic like what are we talking about and is it realistic and that will be something that will that process is something we'll be sharing with the public unfortunately that block is already and I mean I know the pit you know was something and then it was the pit this is kind of already nothing so hopefully it's not going to get worse yes just being ignorant just out of ignorance um so I'm assuming that the YMCA is not part of the gateway block that's right is it is it a city-owned building site you know I run all through that area and I see that something's happening there that's private that is um yeah that is privately held and um something is happening there a local developer um has received their permits to sort of the front of the that historic building will stay the back is going to be demolished and that's going to be 90 new housing units and that's not part of the gateway that is not part of the gateway blocks that we're talking about we're talking about just in between college and main and that's on the on the north side of college can you tell us who the developer is for the Y um can I tell you I'm not sure was it in seven days yeah does someone else want to say Bruce Baker yeah okay I have two questions maybe can you remind me of the schedule for the Great Streets how that aligns with your development planning and whether that will be executed you know yeah so Great Streets was will be starting construction I believe this spring and the relocation of the ravine sewer is one of the first parts of that which is helpful and then it will play out over the next three to four years so I think there's an opportunity for us to to be aligned thanks the other part of the question was you know this main street on one side college or any other side seems like the properties that are on College Street maybe aren't and maybe everything is in scope but like we aren't really thinking about carrying those buildings down not replacing them with anything else no we we are looking at the um the surface parking thank fosca we are looking at the surface parking adjacent to the library and actually adjacent to the church as well Eric and Joe are working with the church to say could we give you parking spaces and structured parking and could this be open greens but you know we're as as you said we're trying to eliminate all the surface parking on this block and see how it's utilized from yeah it's really within it's within that one block yeah sorry one more question so um the ravine sewer if that's going to be repaired will that shut down main street for a while yes and if so we've got that entry into burlington being shut down while the circumferential highway is being constructed that sounds like a nightmare to both ways to get to downtown well I think um I mean I think the traditional way like yes I mean closing down streets is painful and for you you guys all your word five you lived through hind street this summer it's painful and it's the only way for us to achieve our goals we have to modernize our wastewater system and other utilities but yeah it will be it will be closed down route seven will be you know we'll be open maybe that's circumferential highway we'll get yes the timing yeah just a question before we move on to our next agenda item if people want to stay informed and give feedback and know know how this is evolving what's the best way for people to do that I think on this website I'm trying to see my email isn't on there I mean I don't know if you can just like type coming it's sdunn at Burlington vt.gov also share with them when they're giving them a minute okay and I and I'm just looking at this like too small I don't know if that last slide might have had a place like to log in we don't have necessarily like a list right now that we're sending updates to because it's there's not a ton happening but this is the best place to go and always feel free to reach out to me thank you so much thank you I should join us awesome and Claire again thank you so much for being here and I know um thank you also for bringing a few handouts for folks which um I think we have some information that we're able to project if that link is available and then Claire brought some hard copies as well for folks in the room and otherwise all of the materials that we talk about today are on the school district's website which is bsdvt.org and all those letters sound the same so it's Burlington school district vt like bsdvt.org okay awesome and there's the url that's sort of Jason do you want to move your mic so that when Claire oh sure jeff thank you um okay so I think what we want to do is maybe run through we're we're gonna use um this two-page document um as sort of an engagement tool for this conversation and be brief about it so that we can preserve the majority of our time for discussion and questions if that works for folks um so just and and um yeah so I think before I jump into this I did also want to share sort of the board guidance that um board members provide to the district team as they're rolling out the budget process and beginning to think about how to develop and develop the budget and so um the guidance has actually been quite consistent over the past couple of years because we have anticipated the increasing costs um due to the high school and tech center um construction and so I'm going to read these from a separate sheet but just to really highlight them the guidance that the board um has provided to the district includes that um it's really important that we recognize that our staffing level must be responsive to enrollment changes and so we can talk about this um a bit further on but the majority of the budget um is based on uh the number of students that we have to serve and so it's a fairly straightforward formula um that aligns uh educators um and adults in the building to the number of students and what their needs are um emphasize this next point which is to limit budget growth due to increases in wages benefits and pending bhs btc costs we began forecasting these increases um a year ago and even before that um but really began socializing with voters and hopefully actually before I keep talking are there people in this room who were not living in burlington two years ago no okay great that's helpful um so began so well yeah good to know who I'm talking to as we digest this um big budget so yeah so began really socializing this a couple of years ago because we knew we were going to face increases um in our costs because of the project and and that's what we're going to see this year um also to ensure that there is funding to meet strategic plan objectives we'll talk about how we met that objective through cuts significant reductions um to be able to do that continue to offer robust programmatic offerings so again that balancing act of ensuring that the quality of services is consistent and as excellent as we all want it to be um while being really mindful of um of the costs uh consider multi-year impact of changes and minimum minimize annual disruptions so it's so important when you're adding services and when you're removing services that you consider what the impact of those changes are over a period of time um what you know what and I can share the experience of uh when we absorbed and benefited from COVID relief funding which is not included in the numbers that you're looking at today and was not included in the numbers that you all looked at and voted on a couple of years ago um there were a number of positions with that funding that uh we made specific decisions to not bake into the base budget because we knew they would be short-term positions and and we didn't want to cover the cost so very limited um limited growth in that way um and then finally identify investments that serve our most vulnerable students and are being made in response to the financial capacity gained from the new approach to pupil waiting um and so this really reflects the district's uh community informed budgeting process around ensuring that uh our most vulnerable we are directing as much resources as possible to our most vulnerable students and so again the majority of our budget is based on enrollment um then of course we have operational costs the pens the materials the pencils etc um that are required to to run an operation and then we have a very small amount of money um but it's a really exciting piece of the budget that is dedicated to dedicated to schools uh and based on the demographics within those schools so that elementary schools for example with uh numbers a greater number of students who are English language learners or on IEPs etc are receiving more funding than elementary schools with fewer students um who are either uh more vulnerable or historically marginalized and so it's a small amount of money but it is a way that we are able to direct resources to those who need it most and just to wrap up on that point because it is an important one when we think about how we build equity into our work at the school district those budgets are developed at the school level and led in conversation with principals and community-based advisory groups so parents community members who are not parents um a whole bunch of different people have the opportunity to weigh in and help direct those resources so I just want to provide that that level of guidance because otherwise there's not too much content about the board's role specifically in here and that is who we are so important to share um all right so down to the numbers propose budget at a glance last year um helpfully we anchored this year's conversation to the numbers last year uh the current budget that we're working with right now that you all well that was passed by voters um last year was 104.1 million dollars you'll see at um toward the bottom of that chart the budget that we are proposing this year is 119.6 million dollars um the majority of that increase is due to two factors one the BHS BTC 2025 borrowing which you heard some about from Samantha that's the 9.5 million number I was refreshed to see when reflecting on last year's one pager and the content that we um shared with voters and had a lot of conversation about at the board level this number is very consistent um with those projections it is a touch higher there a very small amount higher only because um we were anticipating borrowing a hundred thousand dollars by this a hundred million dollars um by this point in time we borrowed 130 million dollars um and that's because of the city's bonding schedule um and when those requests roll out otherwise um this is the impact that we were anticipating last year would hit in this year's budget um and then the annual increases to wages health insurance debt service um utilities again was refreshed to reflect back on last year's conversation um and see that we began this conversation a year ago um also really while it is a significant increase as industries across the country and across industry are kind of all experiencing what it costs to um employ human beings and um provide services um the important piece about this and where we feel um good about what this number will look like going forward is that we are in a three-year contract um right now which is new for the district um based on like previous years we we've been cycling through one-year contracts um which you can imagine is administratively burdensome and also um more importantly uh impacts morale um at the educator level and so last year we were able to establish three-year contracts and Claire I welcome you to add more color to that um as we go but three-year contracts which means we have a sense of the expectation and our contract um is fairly consistent with uh communities in Cheney County um as far as what what those costs are um I'll speed up because now I'm just lingering here the modest strategic plan investments which is really where we are able to direct money toward programmatic initiatives um we are making 1.2 million dollars of investments in our strategic plan but the only way we are making those investments this year is by reducing um central office staff um and for FTEs which we're able to do through enrollment um decreases because we wanted to be responsive um to the fact that uh we have real serious um cost drivers um in other spaces so ultimately the programmatic increases are about seventy six thousand dollars on a hundred nineteen million dollar budget um lovely ring um okay so moving on we'll look at the tax impact um which is I know a question that is top of mind for folks so the property so so basically what we land with is a hundred and nineteen million dollar budget with a thirteen point nine uh seven percent um increase and and you see the projections for uh home value at um three hundred seventy thousand dollars um as well as the experience for an income sensitized berlin tonian um that is the annual tax impact that this budget produces importantly and I'll welcome um Ben to chime in on this um the school budget represents about a two thirds of the tax impact for berlin tonians with any municipal um tax impact representing one third so effectively this number will be weighted at two thirds um with a municipal rate increase if there is one at one third um and then budget highlights which we've touched on a bit so um again the biggest cost driver in this budget about sixty three percent of the total um increase is the high school and tech center um and then the other biggest cost driver is wages benefits increased operating costs um with strategic investments offset by reductions and then this last point which might take up a good chunk of conversation so um I'll speed through it a bit but um really the driver of this budget experience is the common level of appraisal which adjusts the property taxes um for every municipality in the state it's a state driven decision um and what it does is ensure that the taxes the state collects are based on fair market value of homes um and this year the experienced difference between our appraised values and our fair market values was significant um I will and and so what was projected to be about a five percent increase from a tax perspective as you see has skyrocketed to a thirteen and change percent um increase and so I I will welcome Claire and Ben into the conversation here as well because I know Ben is already hard at work um communicating with Montpelier on this and I will say that when I look at the charts for the common level of appraisal throughout the state across municipalities um every I can share that that um just about every single district in the state is facing this um really significant and and unanticipated burden um there is serious concern across the state about um rising costs and the tax impact and I know that folks in Montpelier particularly uh representatives who are down here in ward five as well as the Burlington delegation are paying close attention to this and our in close uh communication with our superintendent so we are deeply concerned about the impact of using a real estate instrument to impact educational decisions um and it is a much larger problem than the district alone can solve and so we expect that um there will be some serious advocacy happening during legislative session um this session with potential opportunity to impact these numbers uh before they go into fruition on tax bills um so there is a second page it is heavy and narrative so I'm going to stop talking here and welcome Claire to add anything that you'd like to add and and then open it up for questions great thank you for having me um I appreciate it I'm look forward to meeting everybody individually after I've met you already um this is my seventh budget as chairperson of the Burlington school board I am a parent of three uh public school graduates who are um now my last one graduated last year uh and uh my career is uh based on finance as a line producer so I am dedicated to fiscal responsibility and frugality um and also um passionate about the success of Burlington we are dealing with a um factor that um no other school district and community in the state is dealing with the closure of our high school campus by the state health department and we have managed it um over the last three years as best as we can uh we are grateful that Macy's exists and we're grateful that other um there were other empty real estate uh rental places throughout this downtown area that we could accommodate our Burlington Regional Tech Center we serve a thousand students a day down there we serve breakfast lunch and dinner um based on the needs our population is 63% of our population are on free and reduced lunch but right now there's school-wide free lunches but I want to get back to the point of our campus was shut down we passed the bond a year ago thank goodness our community understood it was a need not a want but that need should not be the burden alone of Burlington taxpayers um we have sought federal support and state funding and we've been successful um in the surplus that the state had at the age of education 32 million dollars they allocated 16 million dollars to Burlington to for the PCB cleanup but that is nowhere near the 190 million dollars we need to develop a cleanup a sick location a sick campus and rebuild um but the impact of not doing anything is far greater so we move forward as Burlingtonians did uh in passing the bond there is some educating that has to be done because there were a handful of people that I had spoken to when we passed the bond many thought we were moving ahead and it was just the authority to borrow so you pass the bond with everyone understanding that eventually we're all going to paper that ourselves but we also as elected officials not just school board members city counselors state legislators senators uh the governor how they could help us in our with our situation so we are actively working and engaging on those other avenues of funding but for now we have to keep moving we will have been in Macy's for five years my two daughters graduated from Macy's uh that was their high school experience for our city to be a college town without a high school we have 11 schools all of our six elementary schools two middle schools ascending to this one campus this is this is a must uh and a need and it impacts us and I'm I'm sorry um you know that we are the bearer of um this tax impact given the bond um and it and it is an absolute sacrifice for Bronton taxpayers but it has to be communicated by all of us that we have to prevail in in supporting this um and so as we go out and the work that we did to pass that bond um last November we will do the same work between February 14th when you get your balance to march fit and that's just imploring citizens um to you know we'll create an avenue that if this impact which we're we are all suffering from this impact um we have to communicate that to Montpelier and to the governor uh and how they can help us in the future but for now we have this obligation to build this high school so that our home values do maintain their value that we do have a community that those of us that are in elementary school have a something to look forward to we plan to open in fall of 2026 our high school so we are closer to that um goal than we were you know two years ago but this is the impact and as luce said as much as we we shared it with the community uh and we've seen these budgets coming in um this we had planned for this what we hadn't planned for um when we did our budgeting is the benefits and wages our health care our health care and costs which is our largest besides the bond wages and benefit has gone up double digits so i've shared you know we are a for-profit country for health care we cannot keep going at the rate we're going in all of our school district's budgets for health care being that expensive um and we are absorbing those costs naturally and we offer good health care for all of our faculty and staff but wages and benefits totally beyond beyond our control so i take the bond impact beyond our control they shut our they shut our school down we have to build it back health care beyond our control what we can control i hope you all see the confidence in myself and our superintendent that we are frugal we are right sizing they call it if enrollment decreases we reduce teachers last year we reduced seven teachers this year we're reducing teachers so we will have those tough decisions as well based on um you know future future years and and where our enrollment is but burlington is an anomaly we do have people moving into the city of burlington because of the medical center because of our higher institutions of learning and property values to lucia's point it has been two banner years in covid for real estate sales so this common level of appraisal even though burlingtonians were reassessed less than two years ago comes in at a big surprise if we did not have this common level of appraisal our tax impact would be five percent that's what we would be talking about today so the state has has looked at common levels you know the like lucia said the appraisal the the the what your house is appraised at is what the state is telling us has increased by 13.9 percent that is that is where the the rest of the pie fits in um so i'm sorry i'm long-winded but it is so much longer um you know it's so much it's so important because there's so much more to even say the backfill that we've spent um you know this last four months looking at where we'll be um and i'm confident um in our management and our financial director and our team um in the in the oversight of the board so i welcome and follow up with questions but we will have to mobilize as a city um you know based on um you know if we're not receiving uh oh the support from Montpelier lastly and again it's a lot of information 14 years ago the state put a moratorium on construction aid i think we if you hadn't heard about this when we went to the bond every other state in the united states gives 30 to 40 construction aid to any school district that is doing a capital improvement whether it's a new roof or new plumbing or HVAC system. Vermont put a moratorium on any support for school districts to fix buildings failing buildings improvements it came out of the education budget the reason for it was they just didn't have enough tax base we couldn't generate enough based on all the failing structures in old buildings. BHS is an example of trying to do a renovation where we failed environmental tests and then we had to suffer the cost of trying to renovate it to you cannot even go into this campus anymore so we are working fighting is the wrong word but we are working with our elected officials and hopefully our governor about bringing back that construction aid so that we are not finished paying for this um and we are we hoping to not have to borrow 35 more million for our projected budget and if that would be the case wow that would be incredibly impactful for brolintonians to receive some of the funding that we will already invest in this in this campus um and for the future because next year we will not be hit with a nine million dollar percentage of 50 percentage of this budget it will go down but we're still borrowing to complete it so again so much to say um and so important to support our public schools we have five presidential scholars that we just awarded uh and recognized at our last meeting out of all the school districts in the state the last seven years five of the there's only two us presidential scholars that go to the white house out of the last seven years five years it has been burlington high school students like amazing amazing we're doing a great job you know in educating our students we're always room for improvement so i don't think any of us have an ego or we're sure fist but we have to convey the message to everyone because this is we're asking people for your support fellow citizens i have a couple of questions with my the first is um it's just a basic question about our teachers our staff paying any contribution for health care yes okay yeah because i think those people have to do that i didn't know whether or not they did and by the way um my family are just full of public school teachers so you know it's in my my bones to support public education um the other is that um there's the cla is that something that is a new law that you have to use a common level of appraisal i'm looking at your band well i mean claire and lucia may be able to speak to it better but this this see it let me just say a couple things briefly um this cla from my perspective and i'm still trying to make heads or tails of it because it is very complicated um is to me yet more evidence that our statewide education funding system is broken claire spoke to one reason for it which is the absence of a statewide construction fund for schools this cla cla from my perspective is is another one uh it's not new law it's something that has been with us budget year after budget year um as lucian claire mentioned the vermont department of taxes every year they conduct this uh equalization study they call it um where they look to every municipality's grand list value and they compare it to what they have determined to be the fair market value based on multiple factors including sales prices over multiple years and as lucia mentioned um you know unfortunately fortunately depending on who you are and how you're looking at it uh we've had a huge housing boon here in terms of cost and um that is now reflected in what the state department of taxation has considered our fair market value to be and they use april first of the prior year to decide what fair market value is so actually the median home value as borrowing costs have gone up has has gone down somewhat significantly right now as compared to where it was in april first but they're using april one of last year to decide what fair market value is and then they uh look to see uh you know they divide your fair market value by your grand list value and then they compare it to that same equalization study from the last year and see how far down has your percentage gone right and so last year you know we were let's say at 95 percent or something along those lines and then this year uh uh our appraised list value to fair market value is is closer to um 88 percent or 87 percent so it's gone down 8 percent if you look back over the last six or seven years a couple things will point out to you one is that that number has typically been about two or three percent which is natural right there's going to be natural growth in fair market value and so you would expect that as your years go on from your last assessment and as property values sort of naturally go up that that equalization study is going to show about two to three percent and so it's been buried and incorporated into our previous school year budgets and claire would be able to speak to that better but it hasn't had nearly the impact that we have here i mean this is you know more than triple what we've normally seen and just one is just one other thing that flagged for me is that the state informs school districts around the country if you look at the old letters that they send the districts typically around december 20th 22nd 23rd or something along those lines this year the burlington school district didn't get the letter uh until january 5th um saying that we effectively have to up our taxes by eight plus percent giving you all really i think 11 days between the date that you receive this letter and the date that you all had to vote on your budget in order to give it enough time to put on the town meeting day ballot to to figure this all out so to me it's completely broken uh you know i i have reached out to our uh state delegation in montpellier to start the discussion from my perspective and i know you all are already too um to see what can the state do to please help us uh i don't know what support we'll get uh i'm hope we're not i hope we're not stuck with what we've received and we're kind of done the question maybe but where does all that money go because i can see two scenarios either the pluses are balanced out by the minuses sometimes have uh uh get their taxes adjusted up others get them adjusted down and it all evens out in the wash but it's like real estate values are generally going up so is there a surplus there that is being sort of raked in from multiple towns and if so what's happening to it and why is that okay you're building a women's prison instead yeah what what's what's what's the what's the overall math of of cla across the state and what exactly are we subsidizing with our eight percent yeah larry you may be better positioned i mean i know you've been looking at what other minnesota and burlington's on the second slide and we write you know it basically all goes to your education properties so keep going the impact of the cla so we talk about how everyone again the percentage we call them that it is fully um viewable on the my vermont tax and it'll it will show you state by state so you're asking well with all this increase in value so the state um you know is recognizing everyone's homes have increased because of real estate sales over the last two you know year um and they're collecting it all to see with hopefully based on the projection they they they look craig our you know state tax uh the state vermont state tax letter cited everything we said cost of living insurance double-digit insurance inflation infrastructure pcb remediation so they you know that from this the state and from the governor uh they said that you know this this will be the avenue to you know cover those costs um so the money the surplus that is be that burlington is being forced to raise is going to not a surplus i mean to them it's this is what your assessment is it's not a surplus it goes into the state of administration so yeah one fund so burlington actually gives is the largest we're you know we are the largest contributor to the ed funds second to south burlington but throughout the state so all money goes to the state and then it's equally distributed yeah what lucia when you said referred to funding our schools who are real estate instrument is there an alternative to that well i think that's ben's point is that yeah it's super problematic that we get handed what is effectively a real estate instrument that imposes decisions like he said we had 11 days to make decisions based on real estate changes and we are making decisions about educational services for children and so i think that's that's kind of the overall point here is that though the way that and i think recognized one from Montpelier as well is that just the way we are organizing ourselves to support quality educational services isn't working in vermont and so i think that's the change that votes will be calling for on the flip side it will say though and and what's disappointing especially about the common level of appraisal is the other piece of information that we were talking a lot about a year ago and three years ago and four years ago when members of the board including claire and others who are no longer serving advocated advocated hugely and successfully for the changes in the equity pupil rating and so we were anticipating and had we not had this really catastrophic cla impact we were anticipating that this year being the first year of that reconfigured equitable equity pupil rating that burlington would experience a favorable results and that are we would have a favorable result we would begin to receive more money because our population has higher needs and we had been underfunded before so we were anticipating that that favorable impact would absorb some of the increases that we knew we would we would incur from the bond and from other things and had we not had the cla come in this way that would have been the case so and so we don't want it and importantly we don't want to change that instrument right so that's yeah again in more more information but your burlington vermont school board um two years ago volunteered more time to call out a 2019 study that was initiated by the agency of education about our how we weight pupils how the state funds pupils it was a indefensible formula and we presented in 2019 to the state house to the senator elected officials examples of every other state throughout new england and elsewhere how they weight pupils in an equitable and empirical data that you know made sense and we passed um not just burlington we then reached out across the entire state worked with school districts from all over the state so rural districts that um you know impacted to urban districts like ours and we passed with the support of our elected officials act 127 this is the first year act 127 has gone into effect and what that means is out of our 3000 plus students we are weighted double 6932 students roughly that's how much the state is money is giving us because in our with our population in our urban environment just like in a rural environment we need um our weights are are more so it costs more to potentially educate students in our um with higher needs or um you know again uh that we were never receiving that type of recognition and funding that uh let's say our neighboring sisters sister schools whether it was you know our neighboring schools that had more money that potentially had students with less needs or fewer needs that makes sense so we were poised to really and we talked about it last year but we never wanted to count our chickens before they were hatched to say you know what this will help us immensely we're going to spend our two years knowing this bond is coming if we get that weighted pupil to an equitable and everyone spoke to it and people you cannot disagree with it you cannot disagree with it because it's facts of how how we educate our you know students so the cli system it seems is basically an accelerant of gentrification and property values go up and then our taxes go up even more because of the cli because we're we're we're we're out ahead of places where property values aren't going up this high that's yeah i think your assessment of funding that'll be broken is spot on yeah then you said it very well thank you well and did they get a step further right i mean if you think it looks bad here in burlington uh it's worse in shelbourne it's worse in south burlington it's worse in worse in wanouski i'm deeply concerned that school budgets are going to be are at risk of failing uh around the entire state and that would be devastating to uh our kids my understanding claire and lucha is that because of this cli i mean we're in a situation where our tech our education tax rate needs to go up at least eight percent and if you all wanted to get your budget down to a point where we're only only increasing the education tax by eight percent it will require the the reduction of 50 teachers which would just be devastating for us to have to do something like that and but we're we're in a very difficult position right now because of our our state's education funding formula has there been been a sufficient for you has there been a re-appraisal of commercial properties in burlington after the very skewed appraisal at the beginning of the pandemic yeah uh and why as a result did residential taxes not come down in response to that yeah i've been concerned about that too and have been calling for a broader re-appraisal of commercial property values it's been done on a focused basis but not on a city-wide basis and my understanding is that over the next year or so there's an intention to go back in a more purposeful way john just a an observation is that there's the appraisal techniques for commercial properties it's based on income rental income in a pandemic when everybody's home the rental income is now i mean it's it's different in residential which is based on comparable sales and as we all know Vermont became a haven so it's it's it's it's not fair but but is that something you could change to make it make the the appraisal of commercial properties based more on the enduring value of the property rather than the transient income that it generates or just make education funded based on income yeah i think that's the ultimate fix and it's so interesting to hear this conversation when i was in my 20s shortly after i moved to vermont i helped put together a small statewide coalition called the fair tax coalition and it took us five years from when we started organizing to get a hearing on the floor of the house because the the people who were buying the money writing the tax writing committees were unalterably opposed they said at that time well the reason that we have education funding based on the property tax is that incomes go up incomes go down property tax property values are stable over time maybe go up a little bit so that's the only logical way to do it and then a few years later thanks to the leadership of Doug Racine and peter welch who were leaders in the senate at that time we got x64 which created a little bit of a circuit breaker where your amount amount that you paid for property taxes was leavened limited by income variation so if you had a lower income at a high value property you got this was then called a pre-bate now it's actually baked into the the tax rate and you get a letter from the state telling you how much of a reduction you get but you know there's other other ways to look at this and I think we're this is clearly a time when we should be asking our elected leaders to take a more long-term visionary approach and we should be talking again about as Lucia just said linking education taxes to the ability to pay which means income and just as a point of comparison last year or the year before Massachusetts had a statewide referendum to enact a millionaire's tax who was heavily bankrolled against telling people to vote no guess by who it passed strongly and now there's something I think I read in the globe there's like something like 140 million dollars in the first year which is the was dedicated as part of the proposal to go into schools and capital funds and addiction or prevent reduction and prevention strategies and an unpacked affordable housing. Vermont could really use that. Well and I think now's the time to advocate for that given the super majority in Montpelier and the appetite for a more progressive tax system. And another thing that I've read about that I'd be curious if there's any potential in Vermont is a different approach to property taxes where you don't pay property taxes yearly but rather they're paid when the property is sold so you pay property taxes in a lump sum when you actually get cash. And I wonder if that's something that might insulate people from basically being pushed out of their homes by yearly tax bills and instead bring them to have the taxes come due when you cash out. Oh sorry. Yeah go ahead Dan. I don't have a question so which is a comment. It was like a really complicated issue but as someone who spends a lot of time doing housing advocacy I can't help but see that the real not the problem one of the problems that is not really being spoken about here is that the housing prices in Burlington are out of control. This is like a seconder this is a symptom of that there's kind of all of these incentives that push the price of housing or the value of housing up almost all of our systems try to push housing up and up and up and this is like this like rare occasion where there's like a consequence and so like we need to be thinking about as a community right like why how do we how do we flip that back around it doesn't necessarily I don't think that it needs to be like related to the school taxes like I don't think that this is a fair situation but it is this moment where we can't get lost saying how can we move these things around to like save our ass right now how can we like fix things around and make sure that someone else is paying this or whatever like it sounds like also with the things that have changed that like Burlington is getting more for what it then it then from the state then what I got for and now we're also paying more so there's there's a lot of money moving around but just when we think about how do we seriously tack the availability of housing which is the primary factor that drives up the the the price or the value of homes it's it's scarcity and we have a fundamental like absolute scarcity you know as a renter like I haven't been able to even consider moving out of my apartment in three years I'll probably at this rate if something serious doesn't ever change I'll never be a homeowner so like that's kind of like lurking in the background here and so if we're not thinking about how do we get more neighbors how do we build more housing in a serious way and like think about how much housing do we need you know these kinds of things maybe you know we can solve the problems that we're having with the school budget but it's going to pop up somewhere else it's going to pop up in public safety issues it's going to pop up some you know it's it's a it's a to me it's the eternal background issue that we're facing in Burlington so I just I wanted to make sure that that was visible and to kind of have this be not just a moment of how do we fix this problem this emergency problem we've got all these little emergencies popping up but how do we tie this back into the narrative of like what do we do in housing well on that note I would just offer maybe it's a small bright spot but a bright spot in the upzoning that just occurred in Burlington um which thank you Ben I know you are a huge part of that conversation but to yeah thank you I would I would say that it did not go nearly far enough it's a start it is a start right and so to your point I think we are we are a community that wants to make changes in that direction and to the extent that we are um upzoning and taking advantage beginning to take advantage of spaces that are underutilized for the purposes of housing that will have a huge impact over time on this issue I just want to thank you for thank you for spotlighting that don't necessarily see the connections at all is connected not just a jack's point I mean I I agree with it and but I am encouraged by some of the things that we even heard tonight the gateway block um you know the the changes to the code in terms of the residential districts a recent enactment of the south bend innovation district and I mean I you're right it's it's sort of this ubiquitous problem of sublime demand and the residential taxes is plays out in so many different ways so that if if we can increase the supply of housing it's not going to cure all of it but it but it's a it's a step in the direction good point I don't want to curb any other questions but I also want to acknowledge that we are so past time and so thank you so much Lena for allowing us this robust conversation and also to just again remind folks that you can find a ton of information on the school district's website you can also find Claire's contact information as well as my own we are available at your service and eager to continue the conversation to the extent that you have more questions and look forward to hopefully earning your support on town meeting day so thank you so much thank you all right robust discussion is what the mda is for yeah doing it right um we are gonna transition to something a little easier um if you want to stay that would be awesome if you want to go with them it's also understandable um we did a cool thing as a community in back in august we had a social event in callahan park we saw maybe 75 or 100 folks over the course of an afternoon which was really exciting a lot of a lot of new faces folks we had not seen at the npa indoors so it was great to see new people outside and we had a table that asked people to weigh in on what they wanted to see in the south end and we got a lot of ideas and feedback um and we wanted to do something with that there are so many opportunities to give input in burlington which is great but it doesn't necessarily seem like they always get taken so we want to do right by the input that was given to us by our community and we categorized those ideas into a couple of different sort of scales many of the ideas were community led these are things we can do amongst ourselves there was also city led projects that are a little harder to do without city support we need folks in the city to get behind them and support them and then there are capital projects bigger investments um and we in december had a little activity we had a sparsely attended npa because it was right before the holidays um and we got some input we had a form online we've sent it around on front porch forum a number of times which has been great and we've gotten 85 responses which is really exciting if you want to go to the next slide um there are some highlights I can uh read you all of the data but that would take us all evening um some notables people are really excited about veggie gardens instead of lawns community dinners and walking clubs we can do all of these things um we could get together and do that which really makes me feel hopeful um and the more city led projects category we got a lot of its excitement about fruit and nut trees on public land I'm seeing a common thread about food um as a as a food and mutual aid person this makes me really excited that folks are like yes we need more of this let's use our public resources to make sure that people are getting fed um people wanted investment in our parks we were in callahan parks so there were a lot of people who live right near callahan park and we're like this thing and this thing and this thing for callahan park we need to do all of them um so broadly speaking people want investment in public space um safer streets with traffic calming um and participatory budgeting um which this is kind of an interesting practice round for if we if we say okay what does it look like if we ask people to determine how we spend our money um I imagine the school school board folks have lots of thoughts about that and then the capital project that got the most votes was the south end common house especially looking at the gateway block development it makes you think okay what would it look like if we really invested in a space for people in the south end um so blah blah blah I could talk about this for a long time um but really let's take advantage of the fact that we're all here we've got some chart paper up on the walls thank you Jason for bringing that back um and we can spend some time look at the community land project proposals um talk amongst ourselves um there's a a link that looks really obscure but I promise you that was the date of our last meeting it's not just a bunch of random numbers um if you want to put that in on your phone and you can vote on the on the things that you're excited about great um but this is some some open time to look at the projects and and have a little discussion yeah Jason um so the name that we've been uh noodling on for all of this is the neighborhood doing assemblies um and the doing just like the neighborhood planning assembly is collective it's all of us meaning if you put your name on something if not because you want to see somebody else do it it's because you're willing to lean in in some way big or small to make it happen um so what we're planning on doing with this is um any of these uh items that have a critical mass of people who say yes I want to help make this happen um we are going to set up a way for those people to work together and the the um leading idea at this point unless we come up with something better is the steering committee currently uses slack to coordinate artwork um and we would be happy to set up um a slack channel for each one of these things that has a chunk of people on it and add those people to it and give the infrastructure and the support for people to do stuff that they want to see happen in our neighborhood um because these things aren't going to happen by themselves they aren't going to be happen if we ask somebody else to do it they're going to happen if we do them um and that's what we're trying to jump start here so take a look at these lists and put your initials on anything that you would like to have a rolling and that doesn't mean you're going to leave the charge it just means there's some small piece of it that you could see uh um you're being able to help with and then um critically there's a smaller piece of paper there put your name your email address and your initiatives so we can connect the initials on these big sheets which they actually are and then we'll follow up and uh connect people who've said that they want to work on a particular thing together so people should get out and we have markers right here um and don't forget to put your name your email and your initials sorry i'll put it back though yeah thank you so much thank you you are don't you get yeah we were just talking about that um yeah we might as well adjourn for the folks on why because they can't be here okay so for folks online we're gonna close out the meeting thank you so much for joining us please participate in the survey online um and get in touch with us if you have feedback um just to me hope to see you again next month minimum good night thank you