 Started at 7pm. My name is Jeff Clark. I'm from Ward 4. Welcome to the NPA community meeting for wards 4 and 7. Wanted to go over some of our ground rules, listen to others speaking, respect the agenda and process, share your opinion politely and treat people respectfully. We'll start off with, we have a nomination I'd like to start off with and then we'll go to see if anyone has announcements from 7 to 710. Eric, I think you have a nomination for Ward 4. Yeah, I would like to nominate Evan Litwin, you know, who is here tonight. Evan lives in Cambrian Rise, you know, in our neighborhood. And he recently, he recently left the position at UVM and, you know, he had some more free time and, you know, graciously wants to, you know, get involved with the NPA and, you know, give back to our community. He already does a lot of giving back with that amazing site that he administrates and the new North End that has grown to, you know, 1,200 somebody uses. So in any case, you know, I'd like to nominate, you know, Evan to, you know, be on the NPA steering committee for Ward 4. I second. Do you want to say anything, Evan, or do we just? Oh, I didn't know, but thank you. I appreciate it. It is nice to join the community and be a little more engaged and involved. And I'm looking forward to when we can get back connected with each other when we were having the dinners that I occasionally was able to join. So thank you. I really appreciate the nomination. You're welcome. So as Evan is coming from Ward 4, I believe all Ward 4 residents are supposed to vote either yes or no in terms of accepting the nomination as a fellow Ward 4 resident. I will start that off. So everyone from Ward 4, who is in favor, say yes. Yes. Yes. Do we have any no's? Congratulations, Evan. Welcome to the group. Thanks a lot. I appreciate it. If you're on the lakeside of North Ave, you're Ward 4. If you are on the eastern side of North Ave, you're Ward 7. Thank you. Except for up in my neck of the woods. True. Yes. And where is that neck? If you're up by the north gate, both sides of North Avenue are Ward 7. North of North Gate. All right. So we had everyone from Ward 4 vote yes. Mm-hmm. All right. Does anyone have any announcements for the group? I know that elected officials are coming in. I see Bob Hooper. I saw a great from Porch Forum notice from Mark Barlow about groups getting together in the New North End for Green Update on Saturday, meeting at the tennis court in Letty Park. So something to look for from Porch Forum. Any other announcements? All right. Emma, why don't we go to you? I think you were first on. Welcome. And if you could give an update, that would be wonderful. Of course. Thank you. Hello, everyone. My name is Emma Mulvaney Sannick and I'm a state representative for the southern portion of the New North End and the west side of the Old North End. It's Chitton 6-2. It goes up to about Letty Park and Ethan Allen Park roughly. That's not quite the boundary. But subject to change through the census. So just a quick update from the state legislature. And I'm always happy to answer questions. I never remember if I also participated in the Old North End NPA. If I can chat, if I can chat afterward, I'll put my email in. But you can also find it on the legislative website. So I picked out three issues that I thought would be useful for folks tonight. But if it's not one of your three issues, feel free to email me. And I'm happy to update you on issues. I serve on the House Commerce and Economic Development Committee. So my skew is really towards those topics and those bills that come forward. Although we are headed into the last month roughly of the legislative session. So a lot of things are also coming to the floor. So Burlington specific, just so folks know, the charter change items we voted on in March are in a bill called H-448. And I'll let Bob speak to that a little bit more. He serves on the government operations committee, which here's charter change items. But those four items, which were the airport commission reconfiguration, just cause voting, or sorry, just cause eviction. It's been a long day. Ranked choice voting. And this is like a pop quiz. The fourth one is thermal energy. Those are all bundled into one bill. H-448, if folks want to track it along. And it was just, the first walkthrough was today in government operations. So the Burlington delegations, hopefully this moves this session, but we'll have to see because things get quite busy in these last few weeks of the session. The whole Burlington delegation has also been working and is 100% in support of advancing those items. So folks know. The second thing I'll just speak to is last week we acted on the pension issue. So the state legislature decided to move towards a path of forming a task force to look into the issue in more depth. This is the issue related to what to do with the unfunded liability related to teachers and state employee pensions, which at least for me received probably the most constituent outreach so far of my tenure on this issue. So that bill did pass. I did vote against it because the task force I felt was not balanced between those most impacted by the pensions, those being state workers and teachers and folks who are not impacted by the pensions. And I also thought that the scope was a little bit limiting in the sense of really sort of scripting a little bit of the outcome. And I'm really concerned about making sure that we have a balanced approach that really looks at both funding the pension system, but also making sure we don't cut benefits that public service workers have expected when they took jobs in either our public schools or state government. I'm worried about the long-term impacts of retaining folks, of making sure that we aren't constantly having a shortage of teachers and state workers working for our state. Happy to talk more offline on that with folks. But again, the bill did pass. The task force will move forward and they'll give back recommendations on a rather aggressive timeline that they admitted to the reporter of the bill for mid-September. So that's a very fast turnaround to come up with solutions, which was my other concern. The last thing I'll say is on an unemployment related bill coming forward called S-10, which has already been through the Senate, is in House Commerce now. It's a bill that started as a alignment bill with the federal government on some of the issues that or changes that the federal government has been making to support folks, both businesses, employers, I should say, and unemployed workers around the unemployment system. And this bill goes a bit further than that because if we do nothing to our unemployment system right now in terms of how it gets funded, there will be a significant tax rate increase for employers based on our laws right now. Obviously no one anticipated we would be through a pandemic or we would have an unprecedented number of Vermonters on unemployment. So the governor proposed and the Senate took a variation of that, which is in the bill right now to freeze the employer tax rate where it is right now for a year to let employers recover and help to start to pay back into the trust fund that pays for UI claims, but not to jump the tax rate up significantly based on the formula. S-10 also includes something for claimants right now, which is a dependent benefit, which would be $50 a week for any claimant who has children under 18 dependents. It's a benefit that's widely used throughout New England except for New Hampshire and Vermont. And unemployment is very complicated, so I'm not going to get into the weeds. I'm happy to geek out with anyone who wants to do this offline, but all you need to know for tonight is it's very hard to compare state unemployment systems against each other. I've been calling it a fruit salad because there's really no apples to apples because some calculate a formula this way, others that way. Just know that for the dependent benefit, that's not an unusual thing. 13 states have that. And it was a way that the Senate felt this was a more balanced approach to provide something for claimants who also need help recovering from this recession we're in and the pandemic. It has an uncertain future in our committee. We'll see. I'm a little worried the dependent benefit might be pulled out of the bill, but I'm hopeful. As folks might know, I'm very interested in workers' issues and helping Vermonters. There's 30,000 Vermonters still on unemployment right now, also recover as much as we've been supporting employers. So I hope that we pass the bill as is, but we'll see what happens. And the final thing I'll just notice, I did an update on Front Porch Forum literally today, so it's probably in your inboxes. If you are on Vermont Health Connect right now, or if you've been unemployed or laid off in any way, the ARPA, which is the American Recovery Rescue Act, it has been such a long day, ARPA, which I talk about all day long, has some significant changes there for folks on health insurance. And so I really encourage folks to look at that post on Front Porch Forum. The short version is more folks can get subsidy support. So helping paying the premium through, if you're on a Vermont Health Connect plan right now, there's more details in the post, but you might be able to save money. And I really want to help folks know that far and wide, because even if you're on something right now, you can get a better deal right now due to ARPA pumping more money into and helping people with health insurance premium costs. And COBRA rights, so that's if you lost your job or got laid off or what not, they've expanded the rights and benefits there for COBRA recipients. So if you've been laid off recently, you might be able to get back on the plan the employer is providing. And in some cases, get full premium paid for. So meaning paying nothing. And I really hope people get that information out and far and wide, because this is a really important piece to help folks and their families have health insurance coverage during this time where we're all trying to get back on our feet. So happy to answer questions offline. Thank you for the time. And yeah, thanks. Thanks, Emma. Bob Hooper. Thank you very much. A couple of things that Emma went over are actually jurisdiction of our committee. And I'd appreciate hearing from anybody that has input on the Burlington City Charter items as Emma went into. Today, we did our first walkthrough. We'll hear from Legislative Council probably early next week about any rumble strips that they've identified from either constitutional or other law in conflict issue. But I don't think we see anything at this point that's going to stand in that way, which does not mean this is going to be easy path. There were some questions that were brought up today that were sort of what if things and those are the things that slow things down. As Emma mentioned, we're getting very close to the end. And I think time is going to become an issue in any of these considerations. The big thing that our committee dealt with last year was the pot bill. This year, it seems to be the retirement fiasco. Handled very poorly, I think, by people in the know bringing out draconian sort of proposals to begin with and expecting people to agree to less draconian things, but still draconian things. The Senate has the bill now. They originally were going to put it in a budget to send it back to us. But that sort of has fallen through because there seems to be a House Senate bit of contention going on originally the proposal that everybody that works for the state pretty much state cops, judges, court employees, take your pick. And just about everybody that works for the educational system would have taken up the proposal basically said, pay more money, get less benefit, work longer. And I'm sure that you've caught wind that just about everybody was objecting to that. It's almost as if somebody got a little burr under their saddle. And this is how they're going to cure it. We'll see how it comes out. But it'll have to come out within the next two weeks. Recently in our committee, at least we approved something called a nurses compact, which is an agreement between about half of the states in the country where our nurse that holds a license in Vermont can apply for basically an interstate license and doesn't have to go to that jurisdiction to pick up another license. Personally, I voted for it but with great reservations, because I think that giving people the ability to move to other jurisdictions very easily isn't going to help our nursing shortage much. And nursing shortage drives healthcare costs. There could be some unintended consequences here that I'm hoping don't materialize. We're still dealing with cannabis setting rates, things like that. Day before yesterday, we dealt with whether you know yesterday actually COVID time, it all goes together. You never know what day it actually is. Whether you can put a ballot, put your name on the ballot with a nickname. And it's a relatively long bill that says if you've used a nickname for three years, you might be able to use it. But you can't say, Bob, I won't raise your taxes, Hooper, on the ballot. So it's convoluted. It's complicated. It's probably necessary, unfortunately. And last thing I'll mention is there's a national vote at home initiative. We're trying to move to the point where people can automatically opt for a mail-in system as opposed to go under the polls and whatever. It makes it a very boring day for candidates because you stand there and you see one person every 10 minutes or so. But it's great for voters. Voter turnout is up. Voter participation is up. It's a great thing in terms of election process. It's a little bit more costly, but I think it's a good thing to spend money on because people who are engaged in democracy have a tendency to appreciate it. And you get more people out doing what they need to be doing. So that's my little angle where the government operations committee sticks their finger in a lot of small stuff. We move the most bills of any committee in the house and they all become a blur. Anybody that has any questions, of course, feel free to give me a ring. Thank you. Oh, I have to go prepare for a presentation tomorrow, so I'll be disappearing before the end of the meeting. All right. Thanks for your update. Carol Odie. Thank you. Thank you, Liam. Thank you, Jeff. And thank you to everybody who helped me get on today. Last month, I couldn't get on at all, but Liam really helped me just now. Okay, so I am on the House Ways and Means Committee and we're facing a few questions. Vermont statutes use static conformity, which means that every year our House Ways and Means Committee must decide whether or not to link up with federal tax provisions. The committee must decide now whether to link up with new federal tax treatment of the earned income tax credit and the children and dependent care benefits for the 2021 tax year, federal changes that may last into the future. For EITC, which is the Earned Income Tax Credit, federal changes would reduce from 25 to 19 years of age, the qualification for beneficiaries would remove the 65-year-old cap to qualify, so you can be over 65 and qualify, and increase the credit amount for single filers. Under the regular rules, the maximum tentative EITC for 2021 or a taxpayer with no qualifying children was scheduled to be about $543. And under the American Rescue Plan Act, ARPA, which you've probably been reading about, the maximum federal 2021 EITC is up to $1,502. This is significant. EITC is considered one of the nation's most successful anti-poverty programs, providing a refundable tax credit to low-income working households. EITC allows low-income firm owners to retain more of their income, adds an incentive to seek employment for low-income individuals not currently working, and helps families and the Vermont economy by providing a mechanism whereby families may retain more of their income. Increasing the child and dependent care benefit would help families that don't necessarily benefit from the child care federal assistance program so that parents caregivers may be employed. Finally, we are waiting word in our House committee and in the House from the Senate on their decision about whether or not to link Vermont's treatment of the Paycheck Protection Program loans that became grants in 2021 with their federal treatment, which would both not count the grants as income and allow recipients to deduct expenses paid with those grants. We used to have every year a fee bill. We would take one-third of the fees that are paid by people when they get a driver's license or register their car or register their boat or try to build something. Those fees are directly related to your use of state government to provide you services and every year one-third of the fees were looked at and then were adjusted to cover the cost or cover the cost of running whatever program. But we have not had a fee bill now for several years and so we're falling behind in updating our fees and one fee that came before us today was something that hadn't been updated in many many years having to do with the service of civil process. So we're going to be asking the we've asked the House Judiciary Committee to take a look at that and that may become an independent bill and we would be looking at at least at that. So those are some of the things that are happening in particular in my committee. You probably I don't know whether am I up is my time up. I think you're pretty good. Okay Bob may have mentioned we are looking at pensions for public employees teachers and and Vermont state employees are two of those groups where we have fallen behind in what we in the funding of those pensions and in order to protect the employees who are working now and who are deserve to have the benefits that they bargained for we are looking at what we can do to improve what's happening in that system and something that we have all agreed upon is that we could do a better job with how pension funds are invested and so we are working on adding some professional investors to the mix of people involved in the pension investment committee and employees are already on that in that mix and who are currently on that committee and so we're just working toward the strongest possible mechanism to to fund our pensions. We had a tough time in the 90s we were we the legislature underfunded the pensions because things were looking so good I guess that they thought well we don't have to put more money in things are the investments are going well the economy strong everything's okay but that under investment has is the reason for a one third to one half of our problem right now and then in 2008 came along all the conscientious investing that had happened you know there was a problem because of the whole economy going sour and investments took ahead and of course this pension system is paying out benefits at the same time it's trying to invest the money for the future and it has to then be a little more conservative than it might than other funds might you know then when you invest as a person you can't be as as risk-taking when you are the closer you get to retirement and so the system is trying to pay benefits as the same time as make money in that system so um so it's really it's complicated I know representative Hooper is an expert on all of this I am not the expert that he is and we're just trying to get a hold of you know of of where we're going so we can ensure that we follow through on our promises and that we also are sure to protect our public pensions for our public employees who have done so much for us all the time and especially during this pandemic and there's other stuff going on there's so much going on but anyway those are some things thank you Carol um we'll move on to city counselors um and Sarah mark and ellie I saw your from porch forum if you could give an update on that I I um set it in announcements but I'm sure I did not do it justice um for green up day what you have come on on Saturday if you could mention that I saw your post mark um but we'll start with Sarah okay um let's be here it's uh hard I'm just trying to think back what we've done this month this month has sped by and usually April is sort of a slower month because it's reorganization month um and we swear in the mayor and our new counselor mark barlow but it seems like we've had a lot going on that happened the first weekend in April um I've been appointed to the community development and neighborhood revitalization committee um also on the human resources committee and the tax abatement committee so um we serve on on three um committees um a little bit of news that I posted earlier on the front porch forum or the facebook probably um there's a few new positions within the city we actually have a new human resources director our own very neighbor um Karen Durfey so that's very exciting uh and I think it's great for the city they've been without human resources director for over a year and um as chair of that committee that I was beginning to take a little personally not really but um so it's it's really a great addition to city hall we also have a new assistant city attorney um Jared Hellerin who comes originally from the place he's been in all serving for the city of albany but he's from he grew up in plaquesburg and so he's very familiar with burlington and fond of burlington and spent a lot of time in burlington in this year um day so that'll be a good addition and then we also have a new communications director from hethishian and she just started on monday and will be plunging in on communication issues uh one of the tasks that the cdnr committee has been working on the last few months and we just completed monday night um was the authorization of a city um council in aging so this was the result of a task force or really a summit that met I believe in the fall of 19 and then kind of got set aside with covid one of the one of the um goals they originally started the group really trying to strategize how to support the two senior centers we have in town one of which has become now part of parks and rec that's the former champlain senior center which is now the core adult center located in the st joseph's ony center in the old north end and then our own um hindberg center um which still continues to exist as an independent senior center but the city um has been able to provide them with more financial support which has been critical and they've been a critical partner um during covid and uh getting out programs and particularly food programs to our neighborhood seniors one of the things the city did during covid was pull together a resource council of providers of services and they've actually done quite a great job with that and as some of that's winding down that's in part where the interest of council on aging came from to keep that momentum going um I expect the we'll be posting an application for council members within the next week on the city website and I'll try to let people know when that's um up there and posted um we the three city counters have um often running and we've been trying to meet the three of us regularly to coordinate on ideas I'll let um we just came from a meeting on dogs and I'll let uh council jay update you on that now um council barlow can update you on um green up day we just had a meeting this noon time with the planning um staff of the planning department they would white and public works department chief and spencer to just begin a very preliminary discussion um over time about how can we um get some attention I guess I would say um through our planning efforts in the city long range planning around the new north end re-envisioning the new north end so it was a very positive meeting and we're hoping those conversations will start and continue over um the months to come at how much energy and staff time they can put in it becomes a resource issue but um uh we'll we're really looking forward to that we're trying to think of any of the other sort of hot issues um I think I informed you last time that the fire department's moving along with our our new ambulance and hopes to have that operational by the end of July um there was an ordinance kicking around around um weatherization of rental properties and some of you may have seen that pulled from the agenda that was primarily for technical reasons and some notice reasons so it's still in the hopper it's just going back to the ordinance committee to get fine tuned particularly around um some of the timelines that were put in it um what other issues and then I guess the big hot issue will be the beginning of our budgeting um we've got about five additional meetings in the next six weeks around that um and just to let you know we're going to be be handling the ARPA money which the state reps were talking about but that's the rescue plan money the city itself will get some directly we think it's in their range of about 27 million but we don't have a real true reading um from Treasury yet and all that it can be used but we do know that we're going to plan on using uh about a million of it for more immediate needs we want to continue the recovery and resource center and a lot of the support programs that we've had around the pandemic it hasn't gone away an entirety so there's still a lot of work to be done and then the remainder of that money and how the city chooses to use it will become part of our our regular budget process over the next two months so I guess I've heard a lot if there's any questions or I can let Mark and Ellie go and then we can each answer questions okay welcome Mark congrats well thank you and thanks for having me tonight um I'm completing I'm completing my first month on the council um I've been appointed to the Transportation Energy and Utility Committee otherwise known as TUC as well as the Charter Change Committee and the Tax Abatement Committee where I'll be serving with uh Sarah um I'm still getting up to date on some of the issues that have been in process um and it'll be and it'll be before the council soon including but not live and limited to a consolidated collection of trash and recycling short-term rental regulation and rental property weatherization that Sarah mentioned um been trying to look at some of the past meetings and a lot of the uh you know work material that's come out of other committees on those items and others um as Sarah mentioned all three of us uh Councilor Chen, Sarah and I myself were meeting every Wednesday and it's been super helpful to me appreciate the talk the opportunity to talk with them just to get up to speed on things but also to coordinate on things specific to the new north end like like the dog issues that we've been hearing about master planning for the new north end, green update plans and and other things um I'll talk more about green update in just a minute um but uh the only committee meeting I've been to so far is TUC and TUC met yesterday and the one thing sort of significant that we did is we moved the water resources billing changes to the full council and that will probably be voted on at the May 10th meeting um I think it's going to be a super packed agenda on May 10th so I'm not positive it'll be there but I'm expecting it to be um that project's been in the work for almost two years um I think it's been on the agenda of this MPA at least twice um and the changes of approved will take effect in July and some of those changes included included um fixed meter charges uh class based rates and those are that's pricing based on the strain that a particular class of user puts on the distribution system and and private fire protection charges um they'll also be an expansion of affordability programs including lifeline tier rates assistance programs and flexible payment terms um if you want I can put a link to the uh to the web page that dpw has for that in the in the chat if I'm able to do that um and then in terms of green update um we're planning to the counselors are planning to be present at least three locations on green up day um I talked to Paul Morris today and he's got a lot of um interested parties to do green up around the city and in particular in the new north end um Sarah Ali and I are planning to be at Letty park uh Ethan Allen park and I believe Sarah is not going to be at uh the park uh near Cambrian rise um but also we're trying to and I don't have it finalized yet uh get some get some people into star farm park too so um if you're interested uh you know meet at either the Letty uh tennis court parking lot the main parking lot at Ethan Allen park near the playground there um and we'll we'll coordinate um getting people to different different places that need uh cleanup I'm going to talk with Paul Morris and he's the grounds uh supervisor for um for the parks department um on Saturday morning and try to fine tune that and calibrate it a little bit but please by all means come out and green up the new north end on Saturday um and I guess that's all I have for now so I'll pass it over to Ali. Thank you thank you Mark and thank you NPA for having us here again um I mean I think the two city council's Barlow and Carpenter I mean they nailed it they talked about all the issues happening the city council and I just wanted to thank the NPA for allowing um director Vachery to do a presentation especially um um some Mr. Scumstack you know for making some room and allowing him to come and talk to us about that and I think that's the biggest issue right now in the city it's a reappraisal happening and the deadline to appeal is on the 30th which mean in two days and all the communication that I received are somewhat you know just needed more information but many people I believe that they will be concerned when the tax implication are starting to they start to see the tax implication in regard to the reappraisal overall I think the other city council's talked about it all and the dog issue at least we just come from a meeting that was you know 17 18 people showed up we advertise that this NPA also is happening but they choose to do something else and it was great and today we had a representative from the Burlington Police Department to talk about the data collection the type of incidents that they receive we also hosted the director Dr. Maria who owns a pet store at the same time and also he trains dog she has a PhD very knowledgeable and we had representative from the human society and there is also a dog walk group that is happening here in the new north end and you know the dog park people also were there as well as Cindy great conversation and we looked into one resolution that the three of us crafted in bringing this conversation now at the console level by tasking the parks art culture committee to explore the creation of a dog tax for a dog task force for the city of Burlington I think the process is very well thought out and very inclusive and we're looking forward to see recommendation when that task force is created that's yes and for me I mean I think I am still the chair of the racial equity inclusion and belonging for the city of Burlington you know I am back also as a member of board of finance and also I am a member of the parks art and culture committee you know like what Mark and Sarah talked about I think the biggest element here in the new north end is we need to think about paying a particular attention to our part of town and we today said I talked about it we had a great wonderful meeting with some department heads of planning DPW to just start the preliminary conversation of the re-envisioning north avenue you know not specifically the whole new north end but north avenue it needs more love it needs more support more investment in making it modern welcoming and vibrant you know so yes also in the new north end we have a great group and I think Carol Odie is included in it including also Mark Barlow and Sarah Carpenter and it is about the creation of the new north end business association and community and community right so we are already working on a logo we are already working on a website and also we are also working on outreach and we are also requesting some fund from the city to at least pay someone to be able to coordinate on that you know as well that's specific to the new north end so my focus basically over the next couple of at least this term will be for the new north end here and I'm glad that to have great wonderful colleagues and I think we establish a great wonderful working relationship so far and I hope that it will continue to strategize for the people that elected us um and lastly it's Ramadan I am going to break my fast thank you all for having us thanks city councillors um Monica will go to school commissioners hi everyone I'm Monica Ivancic and I'm your award seven school commissioner and I just I wanted to thank our city councillors for organizing a green up day here in the new north end I think I've never I've been in the new north end six years and I haven't heard of an organized cleanup event here as far as Burlington school district news we have started the recovery efforts so pandemic recovery director of curriculum Stephanie Phillips was put in charge of recovery efforts which is in three phases and phase one is essentially over and it had to do with planning and looking at student engagement and achievement and the review of the data was due to the AOE middle of April and so now we're in the implementation phase which is phase two so for those of you who have kids in the school district you know that elementary schools went back they've been four days a week since late October and starting this week starting today they're going back on Wednesdays but Wednesdays is only until 1130 and then middle schools have been two days per week until spring break and so now Hunt and Edmunds middle school are both four days a week middle schoolers still have a study at home day on on Wednesdays and there are still seven weeks left in the school year and so I think there's some kind of evaluation plan that's due to the state there's something that's due to the state on the 1st of June there's a tight turnaround there's a directive from the state to enhance our summer programs we've had you know with equity issues children that are on special education plans or low-income children there's a big achievement gap there that's been exacerbated by the pandemic and having to you know essentially study from home and not get as much support so the state would like the district to use the summer to have more programming and so a couple of the district leaders are engaging our community partners what we heard at the latest April school board meeting is that we'll have our regular VST school board school programming and they're working collaboratively with area districts and typically programming ends at the end of July but they will make an effort to extend it into August because that's what families have been requesting and so you know here we are seven weeks more left of school it's just a tight timeline to beef up programs for the summer and a lot of parents families have already made plans for the summer and so we're waiting to hear you know what's enhanced about our summer programs at this point the next thing I wanted to cover is the BHS BTC campus here on Institute Road I guess that's technically the new north end and the news is not so great because more and more PCBs are being discovered initially the PCBs were in the window caulking and soils then they found it in the block and brick walls then the mastic or glue under the floor tiles and then most recently they learned that the PCBs have leached from the mastic glue into at least the quarter of an inch into the concrete flooring and so we've been looking at doing this pilot remediation program project which is what they're called to where the PCBs this material that contains the PCBs would be removed and then the levels of PCBs would be re-measured in the in the building and so this remediation is expensive it'll be anywhere between seven and one twelve million dollars we were told the re-envisioning funds are we have seventy three point six million dollars for re-envisioning and that doesn't include the funds to do this pilot remediation project I think the superintendent and myself I'm not in the facilities committee are getting more and more nervous about the re-envisioning project and how much money are we going to have to spend on removing PCBs and getting contaminations out and at the May meeting and I'm not sure we have a meeting next week we're moving to a first Tuesday and third Tuesday the month board meetings so that there's a week in between you know we used to have second and third Tuesday of the month now we're moving to first and third there's going to be some kind of vote because do we sink more money into remediation and getting rid of PCBs and then what if we get to a level that we're not you know it's not acceptable still do we sink more money in it and then try to go forward with the remodel um so at some point soon and maybe latest in August we're going to have to make a decision on whether or not to continue the re-envisioning or go with a new building and then you know where do we get the money for a new building so uh so that's going to be a big decision um as you know many people have put many hours uh into the re-envisioning I don't know you know some of us Mark used to be on the school board some of us were for building a new building in the first place but of course that's not if you look at it it's not the least expensive way to go but you know when you find so many contaminants on a construction site perhaps just going with the new building would have been so so we're going to have to make some tough decisions here in the new future near future and then the third thing I wanted to tell you about briefly if I still have a couple of minutes um last oh okay two minutes you know last June uh well we had the George Floyd incident nationally and uprising across the nation um and um folks are questioning the presence of police officers in um our school buildings and so we proposed um forming the board proposed forming a safety task force um and the same and to to look at this issue that they were tasked with four uh tasks essentially looking at the role of police officers in the schools and what the those roles could they be done by other types of workers and so uh the task force members had uh one student and one uh previous student it had about 10 people including um Brian DeFranco who's the lead SRO person um it had one city councilor Soraya High Tower it had added Haji from the the school board and other district leaders um perhaps I'll share this link once I'm done speaking in the chat or I'll send it to whoever can share it so these 10 people met I believe 16 times over the course of three months every Wednesday and thoroughly reviewed the role of police officers in the schools um and the report is uh quite comprehensive and so um you know I wish the city would have paid us $75,000 for this report because it's it's a comprehensive report um with 10 outcomes in the end um they um evaluated that 95% of the of what the police officers were doing in the school could be done by other personnel um and so um I guess the take home lesson here uh it's in this report it's uh number eight is that we will not have police permanently in schools they are still going to come to school to teach uh elective courses or do the active shooter drills and these things called barricade trainings when they do have to come to schools they'll be wearing a soft uniform so I think that means khakis they wouldn't have the full-on police uniform and a soft holster that doesn't make their weapon as visible um and then they also suggested that in lieu of the two SROs so there still be an SRO stationed at the Burlington Police Department and that SRO would be like a liaison so the school principals could call them if need be if there's emergencies but they this task force proposed to fund two positions that the city should fund two positions that are from the community justice center and that are tier two restorative practices student safety specialists they're called and so I'll share this link with you folks and um it's available on board docs um so uh check it out there's community volunteers that spend many hours working on it oh there is no chat so I sorry I can't yeah we're on the the CEDO um platform okay does anyone have quick questions before we move on to um her next topic Bob Hooper well before we go to the next topic uh it's something else I want to say so if if somebody else has a question for Liam Jeff question I was just going to say um Monica you're more than welcome to email it to me and I can include it in the notes that go on the website and I can give you my I'll change my um name to my email address so you can just write that down so ready Bob so seeing I saw Lee there now she's gone reminded me that uh Carol and I missed something that I think is pretty uh significant to the community and that's the coffee cup bakery closing down and we've both been pretty involved with that uh it's Emma's committee but I think she left it looks like um but it looks like it closed down because if somebody said we're not giving you any more money um and 160 I think jobs Carol between here and Brattleboro I think all together about 250 and and Bob's right I meant to mention it and I I get so like how much time do I have left and I forgot to say wrapped up is the work but it it looks you know there's some investigation into employee ownership but I think that's going to be a far reach because I wouldn't be surprised with the debt that they had it'll go into receivership and that's really going to plug things up so we'll keep it posted yeah we are hard at work on that yeah and there's a I think a lot of people out in our neck of the woods that work there yeah thanks all right no questions um we'll move on to Burlington Public um Parks and Rec I saw Diana and I saw Cindy welcome I think there's a few of you you have nice backgrounds look at that you're muted if you want to unmute you all I guess we all come out of the woodwork when it's our turn thanks for having us multiply we do and we come um decorated and all right welcome we have you um till about um 810 815 yep hopefully that's enough time to get through our presentation I'm here with Sophie Sauvei our our planner our comprehensive park planner and you know Cindy White our director and also introducing Max Madalinsky and John Adams College to other members of our planning team and they're going to give you a really quick run through presentation hopefully they can share screen um of some of the upcoming big projects that we have um particularly highlighting some of the ones in your neighborhoods also turn it over to Sophie all right thank you Diana can you let me know when my screen is visible please it is awesome thank you as Diana mentioned we're here to give you an overview of the projects that are in the in the works um in your award but also in the larger um context within Burlington but it will be a quick overview I'll give you that and um also just also foreshadowing some of the projects that are coming up that we're not that are not Nestle active yet and before we get into that we just wanted to mention that a lot of the projects that we're going to um talk about um are being funded by Penny for Parks which is our um sorry are one of our improve park improvement funds that was established in 2008 and it's supported by a dedicated tax um for short and long-term planning for parks and also a project implementation tool and while our parks team and park staff identify a lot of the projects that are listed here also a lot of them come from the community and everybody is welcome to um suggest projects as they see um needs within the parks through our pay for parks program and our we have a form online that you can fill out we accept proposals on a rolling basis and then they're evaluated in October of every year for the next um next year essentially but there's funds allocated every year for community requests for that purpose and just to give you an idea of some of the icons we use through our public engagement process but also just um internally as part of our project development um and I use them in the presentation just to give you an idea of some of the projects where you might want to keep on your radar to provide feedback is especially when you see a light bulb it means we're in the process of collecting ideas and are really looking for public input into projects um specifically in the master planning projects or um playground development of ideas etc the pencil means that the project is in a um design stage so we've collected initial ideas and we're progressing towards um developing alternatives for a project and the check mark means the project is ready to build so we've received enough feedback um we've gone to the drawing table and probably back again a few times and then we're um hoping the next stage will be construction max I'll pass it over to you all right I'll jump right in so at 311 North Avenue our newest park we have some ongoing projects right now which is the stone house we have an architect who's on board looking at some design options or turning the inside of that building into a shared community space that can be host public meetings as well as have like a reading room and some space for offices for our staff in the upstairs and also our conservation team is working on a management plan for the natural areas throughout the park that public input process will kind of be ongoing and they're working pretty closely with the city's conservation board on that and then for upcoming projects we have a natural trail a stone dust trail that will be rerouted around the community gardens there that will eventually connect to a multi-use paved pathway that will come down behind the camber and rise development and that one will actually provide a universally accessible access all the way from North Avenue to the bike path and then last but not least taking care of the roof on that stone house it's due for replacement another project that's coming up pretty quickly here is our first stage of implementing the trails master plan at arms forest we have a trail construction contractor board to build out this first segment that was called for in the master plan he did pretty extensive public input last year sort of to finalize all of that just probably we finished up in February I'm going to say 2020 they're going to be building a section that connects here from as you can sort of see in this drawing the base of the the hill coming down from Burlington High School and going all the way out to a segment that is pretty close to the bike path but not quite connecting there we're going to be working with them sort of for probably two to three weeks this summer on the construction of that project starting likely it's looking in like early July Ethan Allen Park in the near future will be developing a master plan process for that park specifically which will in addition include playground design and that will definitely be requesting community input for that process throughout that process max all right I got muted so that you must have accidentally upcoming it's probably starting actually next week the stairs that go down to the beach at Letty Park are going to be replaced if anybody's been down that way but those stairs are in pretty rough shape we've been waiting for the new steel structural frame to get ship back up here from where it was getting color galvanized down in Boston and it should be making its way up we expect that project to be ongoing for two to three weeks starting sometime in the next week and people left to go around on one of the other access paths to get down to the beach during that time other ones that are coming up we are working on implementing the pause place that intersects with the bike path and the entrance to Letty Park it's sort of been a project that's been in our radar for a while we have some permitting stuff that we are just wrapping up and are hoping to get that one finalized and out to bed soon for construction fall or spring of next year and then upcoming projects we did some community input a while back at Letty and got a lot of good input on what people want to see in the park we want to take all of that and work with the consultant to sort of finalize it into a complete master plan for Letty some different components that are sort of included in there or a shelter outdoor pavilion type thing near the picnic area behind Letty Park Arena or Gordon Paquette Arena I should say a playground design and siting study many of you may know there's a community group that's been advocating for a bike park a mountain bike park at Letty which we've done quite a bit of outreach on and that's ready to really start getting into the details and design other projects are upgrades to the restrooms of the concession stand and then eventually the playground and construction of that shelter in the next years at North Beach campground we have a construction project that is just wrapping up this week the relocation of the dump station and a new turnaround for RV campers this past winter we actually demolished the big wooden maintenance building that was in sort of the center of the campground there and we are working on design right now for about 10 RV pull-through campsites and all of their utilities and putting in a number of new trees sort of in that area and really graining up that space that was formerly mostly maintenance activity and then also in that design we are designing starting way up at the entrance on Institute Road separating camp traffic from beach traffic and creating a two-lane road with a dedicated sidewalk that goes all the way down to the beach so that there's just fewer pedestrian bike and vehicle traffic through that part of the campground and getting down to North Beach where we're hoping that if we get through this design and we can find the funds to build that it'll really be an improved experience for everyone. At Schifoli Park we have a couple projects coming up we were awarded a grant from the state this past winter I want to say to transform sort of what is now an informal path that goes from James Avenue over to Gosk Court and from the Miller Center into a dedicated paved multi-use pathway so it'll be about eight feet wide sort of similar to the 127 bike path and yeah we're hoping to get that Grand Green been signed and then we'll be working with the state on that one for the next three years because they have a lot of federal guidelines and processes that you need to go through to make sure everything is done the way they want it to be. And then another near-term project is we will be transitioning the Rock Roger Woods baseball field into a dedicated youth softball field it'll be the dedicated youth softball field for the New North End and then down the line in FY 24 looking at restroom upgrades for the concession stand there. At Star Farm Park we recently completed the replacement of the dog park fence. Upcoming you can see in this image here that we have stone dust pads at each of the dog park entrances we are having somebody come back to replace those with concrete because the first job that was done there just wasn't quite satisfactory and simultaneously that contractor is going to be building out a concrete pad for an additional fitness station near where the playground is and we are working on getting all the equipment quartered and lined up for install later in the summer. There's yeah we'll keep you up to date as that stuff all comes in and gets installed. Battery park we're working our way downtown. Battery park we've got an upcoming master plan in fiscal year 25 ahead of that we've got to work with the Cane Chief Greylock and we're also building a memorial overlook to Mayor Cane along the wall overlooking the lake and eventually we'll get around to playground upgrades and then plaza redesign of the central portion of the park. In terms of the boathouse we have funding set aside to do a scoping study in terms of what the future of the boathouse will be and based on that study we are looking to find funds to basically move forward with the recommendations of the scoping study. And while we're talking about the central waterfront area it's going to be a busy year it already is a busy year on the Burlington Greenway. What we're referring to as the realignment project really kicked off last fall but we'll kick off in earnest here in the next couple of weeks. The city is realizing the long-standing goal of putting the bike path entirely on the west or lakeside of the tracks through that area. Everything is in place to do that and we'll start probably in the next couple weeks and as you know the detour is currently in place on Main Street and Battery. And of course with that will come eventually passenger rail service via Amtrak. And then a little bit later in the season we will be back down in the south and rebuilding or rebuilt heading the last section of the greenway through the southern three-fourths or so of Oakledge Park. Then eventually we'll get back up in the north end and rebuild the overpass at North Beach. And Oakledge Park it's the 50th anniversary of Oakledge Park so we've got a busy season. I mentioned the bike path construction we are also wrapping up construction drawings for the universally accessible playground which will finally get built looks like early next year. And then we'll keep implementing portions of the Oakledge master plan including restroom renovations, beach access, etc. Perkins Pier is currently in the process of a mass our siting study. We had a first public meeting in March to collect feedback from individuals and organizations that use the park currently in terms of what works, what doesn't work, what things they're missing and would be beneficial at Perkins Pier. And we have a second public meeting coming up on May 18th which everyone is welcome to join it's a virtual meeting. And that it will be an opportunity to hear some of the alternatives that our consultants are proposing for Perkins Pier moving forward. Aside from the siting study we'll be replacing our moorings in the fall. They've been having a hard time with the climate change and increased wave action and wind action kind of making them age faster than anticipated. And as part of the siting study we'll be replacing or identifying the location of the playground and its future replacement. And system-wide, as I said at the beginning it's just a handful of our projects and system-wide there's always things ongoing in terms of dressing, lighting, playground equipment, replacement in terms of meeting code and safety requirements, adding wood fiber to the surfacing for safety reasons every year, improving our signage and wayfinding throughout the system. And just as I mentioned also any community requests addressing those and also emergent needs because as you can see sometimes although we inspect our playgrounds they deteriorate faster than anticipated and then we we need to move on them. So there's always things going on even if they're not projects we provide updates on but we definitely appreciate the community also keeping an eye out on things and identifying any needs within our park system. And that's all we had and we're open to questions if there's time. We have a couple minutes and but we're going to quickly move on to the next topic too. I can't see um can you stop presenting maybe and then we could see all the all the heads. Sorry. Have their hands raised for a question all right. Well I had a question but you addressed it in your presentation about the bike path. I was on it last night the awesome bike path and but thanks for that update. Thanks for having us. Yeah thanks you guys have a lot going on a lot of great work thank you. Thank you for all being here tonight too. But if I could add I forgot in my intro I wanted to sneak in the fact that we are doing um kids week so starting May 15th through the 22nd there's going to be some events in the parks so keep an eye out for that and um and we're working on July 3rd as well. So not only is the planning team division planning team busy the event team and recreation teams are all super busy as well. Jeff I just want to make one note that while on Mac you're muted Cindy. Yeah so Max is a new resident. Of the new north end. Yeah so four seven. That's why he's leading all the projects up there. Yeah I moved closer to cut down on travel time. And the new wall street to Ethan Allen Parkway. Yeah sorry about that I was muted partway whenever my cat crosses the desk he tends to hit the mute button. I haven't heard that one. It's on purpose. A cat. All right so Matt I think you're taking it from here. I will just jump in and basically being so fully immersed in the real estate world fair housing is my kind of day-to-day stuff. I didn't realize this was fair housing month but Jessica Hyman is here from CVOEO to lead a discussion about that along with Todd Rawlings from CEDO and Rachel Batterson from from out legal aid so I'll turn over to you. Great thank you so much Matt and thank you everyone for having us here today. We're here to talk about and celebrate fair housing month and we'll start out with Todd who's going to talk about the mayor's proclamation and then Rachel will talk about what what housing discrimination looks like in Burlington and Vermont and what to do about it and then I'll share some information about the fair housing month activities. So Todd it's all you. Good evening all thanks for having us tonight. I'm the housing program manager at the community and economic development office and again my name is Todd Rawlings. At the April 12th city council meeting Mayor Weinberger read a proclamation declaring April fair housing month and unfortunately the mayor couldn't be here tonight but has asked me to read that proclamation on his behalf for you all tonight. So I will jump into it whereas the fair housing act was passed in April 1968 in order to take steps towards eliminating discrimination in housing opportunities based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, family status and disability and to further housing choices for all Americans whereas Vermont's Fair Housing Act strengthened the protections of the Fair Housing Act to include age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, receipt of public assistance and people who have experienced abuse, sexual assault and stalking as protected classes and whereas the month of April is now celebrated as Fair Housing Month both nationally and locally and whereas the ongoing struggle for dignity and opportunity for all in housing is not the exclusive province of the state or for federal governments and vigorous local efforts to combat discrimination and expand housing opportunities and be extremely effective and whereas Burlingtonians need safe decent affordable and inclusive housing and illegal barriers to equal opportunity in housing no matter how subtle diminish the rights of all and whereas the city of Burlington supports the efforts of fair housing organizations, concerned citizens and the housing industry to create broader housing choice in Burlington and Chittenden County and to promote understanding of the Fair Housing Act and whereas inclusive welcoming and affordable communities promote diversity and a climate conducive to equitable and vibrant development and whereas Burlington submitted to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development an assessment of fair housing which was subsequently approved by the department in December of 2017 and whereas Burlington continues to work to expand housing opportunities and the availability and affordability of housing in Burlington through policy reform including the development over the last two years of new policies to implement energy efficiency standards in rental housing, eliminate requirements around parking standards in order to reduce a major driver of the cost of housing and align the city's land use policies with its climate goals and restore and increase the dedicated funding to the city's housing trust fund among others and whereas the coronavirus crisis has put additional strain on the city's housing and support services and exacerbated existing inequities for people whom fair housing laws seek to protect from discrimination particularly for people of color. Now therefore be it resolved that I, Meryl Weinberger, Mayor of the City of Burlington, to hereby proclaim the month of April 2021 the Fair Housing Month. Hello everyone and thank you for having us tonight. I'm Rachel Batterson from Vermont Legal Aid and I manage our housing discrimination work or fair housing work inter-retainable terms. I've been practicing for housing law since 2006 and I'm going to just say a little bit more about the Fair Housing Act and what we actually see in Vermont. So Legal Aid receives about a hundred complaints a year based on the Fair Housing Act and the primary, the biggest number of those is people with disabilities who are being denied reasonable accommodations in housing or related to housing. Let's take a step back and say that the Fair Housing Act actually covers any dwelling and any land offered for sale for putting dwelling on it. So it affects land, it applies to zoning and planning and it also applies to a lot of things that people might not necessarily think of as housing. It also applies, not everyone realizes, it applies to every person and it applies to home ownership situations. So neighbor on neighbor harassment or discrimination is covered if it's based on one of the bases that Todd read out in the proclamation which I'm not going to repeat because well I could if you want me to. So it's very broad, very broad coverage, all dwellings and planning and zoning and decisions about housing and what housing can be where. It includes discrimination that is based on adverse treatment or direct discrimination that sometimes called which is something like I don't want to sell my house to you because you're from Nepal. That would be direct discrimination it's directly because of a prohibited basis and the intent is very clear there but it also could be a neutral role or policy that has a disparate impact on a protected class or on a prohibited basis. So something like I will only rent to people who have a credit score of 780 or above. That would affect a large number of people and when you look at disparate impact types of discrimination, you really are looking at statistics. So what comes into play there is that because of systemic racism in our society, there is a large correlation between being a person of color or BIPOC meaning Black in dignities or person of color and being low income. So affordable housing and fair housing are very closely allied and related. So I'm just going to ask you to do a little thought experiment with me to sort of give a sense of what it's like when people are discriminated against or when it's like especially for people of color when they're discriminated against. Imagine you're applying for a job and you apply for lots of jobs and 40% of the time you just get to know sorry we hired someone else but later you learn that the reason that happened 40% of the time was because of discrimination. So out of all the jobs 40% of them were just not available to you because of discrimination. Then you have that 60% that you're still applying for and those 60% that you're still on the running for, there's still discrimination happening in that market as well. And the way that you would not know that that discrimination occurred unless you compared your experience to other people. The way this happens in the housing market is often someone is told that the house was already sold to someone else or they got a better offer or the rental unit was snapped up by someone else. But when you have somebody else call who does not fit into the same characteristics as you, they find out that the housing is still available. So for example, an African-American person applies for a rental unit and is told it's already been rented, then after that a white person applies and is not told that, is told to apply. That's the kind of discrimination that people of color experience because it's mostly, most people in our society know that you should not come out and say racist things. But that doesn't mean that they don't still behave in a racist manner. It also happens because we have, as humans, flawed brains and we carry a bunch of assumptions with us. So when we make our decisions about housing and other things, based on our gut instinct, we are most prone to bias infiltrating that decision making process. So the more that we use objective criteria and deciding who to rent to or what kind of housing to build or where to build it, rather than our gut instinct about things, the less likely we are to get into the area of discrimination without even realizing it or meaning to. That's pretty much all I wanted to highlight and also to say that if you do know of someone that has been discriminated against or if you have been discriminated against in housing, you can call legal aid, you can call CBOEO or you can file a complaint directly with the Human Rights Commission, Vermont Human Rights Commission or Housing and Urban Development, which is the federal agency charged with enforcing the Federal Fair Housing Act. And I think that Jess is going to talk about some exciting activities that are happening to celebrate Fair Housing Month. Thank you, Rachel. And thank you, Todd. So as was mentioned in the Mayor's proclamation, the Fair Housing Month is a recognition of the anniversary of the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968. And so that put into law into federal law critical protections against discrimination and harassment and also sought to repair and redress the patterns of systemic housing segregation. And then Vermont added additional protections later on. And so I think it's really important to note before I talk about all the fun activities this month that we had a housing crisis before COVID and COVID just made it worse. We know that in Vermont and especially in Chittenden County, there aren't enough homes available and what's available really aren't affordable to most people. And we have these and in a time and place where the housing market is really tight, it makes for more opportunities for discrimination and makes it harder to prove discrimination as well. So I think it's really important to celebrate where we are and also recognize that we still have a long way to go, that there are a lot of inequities in housing and we really need to keep fighting for safe and stable and affordable homes for everyone. So as part of Fair Housing Month, we like to draw attention to those facts and to really to help people understand rights and responsibilities under fair housing, under federal and state fair housing law, and also to celebrate inclusive and diverse communities and to show what we want to see in our communities. And so each year we coordinate a series of different events and activities in partnership with this year the Vermont Department of Libraries, Vermont Library Association, the Old North End Heart Center, Vermont Legal Aid, the Vermont Human Rights Commission, the Vermont Department of Housing and Community Development, CEDO, and a whole bunch of other partners. And so this this month's events and we're coming towards the end of Fair Housing Month, but many of these events have been recorded and they're available on the Fair Housing Month, vt.org website. And there's still a couple more events coming up this week, but there have been workshops for the general public, for landlords, for municipal officials, we've had great discussions about racial discrimination in housing, about voucher discrimination, equity in housing, the effects of COVID on our housing landscape. There have been book and film discussions through the partnership with the Vermont Department of Libraries, there are story walks at libraries around the state, and a lot of these activities will be continuing past April into May. Coming up tomorrow there are two workshops that are available on Zoom and it's the end of a long day and I've forgotten the titles. One of them is presented by our friends at HUD and it's a basic fair housing law presentation and that's at 10 a.m. and then there's a workshop by the National Fair Housing Association on the Fair Housing Inequities of the COVID-19 pandemic. So both excellent topics will be recorded and you can find out more information about them on the Fair Housing Month vt.org website. And most excitingly tomorrow we have our Fair Housing Month wrap up and it's an artist reception and celebration. So as part of Fair Housing Month we encourage people to create art to express what home and community means and we've had 600 art kits sent all around the state and we've had kids and adults submitting their creations and so tomorrow we're going to be having a community reception. I mean tomorrow evening from 5.30 to 7.00 on Zoom there's a workshop and an optional art activity and then we'll be talking about housing related issues. People will be able to share what they've learned over the month and we'll talk about more ways that our communities can increase the amount of affordable and inclusive housing. So that's just a brief overview of what's happened. A few things that are happening in tomorrow and we really encourage everyone to be thinking about the role that housing plays in our community and how we want to make it possible for more housing and housing that's available to everyone. So if we have time, we have time for questions. If you have any questions for Todd or Rachel or myself about Fair Housing or about how to make housing more equitable to everyone in our community, you welcome your questions and comments. Lee had a question. Go ahead, Lee Turhune. I was in a neighborhood Zoom group today and a woman was talking about helping someone submit applications for the various housing opportunities in Burlington and she was telling us that it was just an unbelievable complicated task and the woman she was working with didn't speak English and didn't read it or write it and it seemed to me that this was a systemic barrier to a person finding housing. She never got to be discriminated against because she couldn't fill out the applications. What do you think, Jess? Yes, I think that's a really important point that well a couple important points. One, that it's a complicated process. So if you're looking for housing assistance, you can be applying for vouchers through Burlington Housing Authority or Vermont State Housing Authority or applying for apartments through Champlain Housing Trust or other nonprofit partners or even just a regular rental application if you don't speak or write in English, that can be a significant barrier. Many of the local organizations do have interpretation services and if folks are working with a housing support worker through CBOEO or other agencies, we have always have interpretation and translation services available and so I'd really encourage if you're able to get in touch with this person and encourage them to reach out to CBOEO we can probably help but it is a big gap because you know a lot of the resources especially in the private market those resources aren't available in languages other than English or it can be difficult to access interpreter. I know that the city has been doing a lot of work on language access and are many of the housing providers are working towards getting more translated materials as well. So if a housing provider or anyone receives federal funds they are required to provide a free interpreter but if it's a private landlord they obviously they aren't subject to that mandate so then they would need to go through CBOEO or ALV or USCRI one of those agencies. Any other questions? No questions seen. I'll thank you all for presenting a great topic and very important topic housing. Thank you all and I will pass it over to Jenna. Yeah thank you Jess and Rachel for that and I am thrilled to introduce Heather Torrey. She is the Assistant Director for the Burlington School District's food service program which is the Burlington School Food Project and even though we had snow on the ground not so long ago the school district has done just an absolutely amazing job of feeding our community throughout this pandemic and is already planning on how do we continue that for over the summer. So I'm going to turn it over to Heather to share just what is coming up and what how can we help spread this word. I also wanted to take a hot pack and say thank you for all the amazing work that you and your colleagues have been doing. Oh thank you so much. It really means a lot to hear that because it has been such a journey from last year to where we are now. So hi everyone. For those of you I haven't met yet my name is Heather. I am a registered dietitian and the Assistant Director for the Burlington School Food Project and this is I think my first time presenting at this this meeting. So I would like to keep my remarks relatively brief because we are still in the very initial planning stages for our summer the details of our summer programming but I imagine that there is probably a lot of questions that I'd like to leave time for you all to ask and I'm here to answer them but I'll start with just a brief overview of who we are and what we do and what what our operations look like now and what we're thinking of for the summer programming. So in normal times we would typically yeah I know everybody loves that turn it's like uncertainty pivoting I don't even know social distance there's like buzzwords that people can't stand hearing anymore but yeah in normal times we would be providing school meals in person individually to kids and we are doing that now that kids are back in school but a major part of what we're doing in addition to that related to a bunch of flexibilities that the USDA has given us as far as how we can provide food access to the community during this emergency is through family meal kits. I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with our online presence through social media apps like Facebook or Instagram but yeah we've been posting a lot of images of the meal kits that we've been providing to help bridge the gap of food access for communities or families in our community. So ultimately what we've been doing is twice a week providing I hate to call them a box of food but it is in a box so a box that contains seven days worth of breakfast lunch suppers and snacks for one child and I encourage you to take a look at it I can share my screen and I didn't have a chance to make any slides that show them but if any of you receive a csa I like to refer to it as a school lunch csa because that's what I'm really trying to make it look like and through this these flexibilities we've been able to send home such amazing stuff that we've never been able to send home before um we have been calling all of our local farmers and because these flexibilities have been extended throughout the summer we're going to be able to do this program until September 30th and possibly even longer than that so I've been calling every farmer and producer that I know telling them hey just a heads up we might be asking you for 700 heads of lettuce every week if you can start growing that now that'd be great because I feel like I'm rambling a little bit so please feel free to throw up I'm like kind of like in high energy kind of person so it's probably good that I'm like the last person to go um feel free to throw up a hand if you just want me to stop and explain anything in a little bit more detail um but it as difficult as this year has been it's been an incredible blessing to be able to provide food in this way to our Burlington families and also support local farmers and producers um it is interesting that someone brought up the coffee cup closure that was kind of a surprise because we were expecting a delivery for this week's meal kits from them so that was you know we had to hit it at the last minute um to provide a different different bread but that is something that there's there's not really anyone else that we can buy local bread from um at least not yet in that volume so looking towards the summer there are going to be some programmatic changes and fortunately we have a big network of community partners that we've worked with in the past to provide meals to kids participating in summer programming throughout the city for example parks and rec we love parks and rec and waterfront the rec and nutrition program we work with them every year um so in addition to the meals that we'll be serving individually to students attending programs such as those we will we're planning on also continuing these family meal kits um throughout the summer um the items that are still in the works are the specific details on where and when so staffing is I'm sure and this is not unique to us but that's the biggest challenge that we've been facing this year and um the rate limiting step in determining where and when we can have these food distributions currently we're doing the meal kits twice a week I'm not sure if we're going to be able to do that throughout the summer or if it makes more sense to do it once a week one of those days is more popular anyway um but again we haven't made that decision yet the other change that um is coming for the summer is that we likely won't be able to include supper and snack in the family meal kit so the the the kit itself will likely look smaller than it does now probably not significantly smaller um but it's just something that I want to mention in case um you know we get to June and we make the switch from school year operations to summer operations and folks are like what's going on this is looking different than it did for the whole school year um and then I'm thinking that's most of the updates that I have with exception of the really excellent news that we recently got make that in the school year uh 2022 all meals for all children will be free regardless of their eligibility so we will be able to provide free breakfast and lunch for all children in Burlington schools all year it's like the best news ever tell your friends and um to add one thing that would be helpful for us um it's really spreading the word about um universal school meals and what it means to participate we hear so often from families that they're reluctant to participate because they fear that their participation will take away that benefit from another family that might need it more and that's not the way these programs operate and I would encourage anyone that feels strongly about school nutrition and and um good food for kids if if someone in your community says that um please please tell them no no no that's not the case you actually strengthen our program the more people participate um so that that's one way really look a light lift um to help us serve more kids um and I think that's enough rambling so if anybody wants to ask me questions I'm happy to uh to feel them any questions raise your hand I have a question hi Ali yes um thank you for the presentation Heather this is a great so last next year it seems that all children will be accessing you know quality good food you know but now how would you determine kids who are eligible for free and reduced lunch knowing that now everyone is for the purposes of school um so we wouldn't necessarily need to um to serve so the waiver that has been extended throughout the next school year makes it so that we don't have to collect that information to to provide meals for free um I believe that the school district collects um oh Jenna did you want to come is that a question or are you going to help me I can try to tag team this though I will say you're the policy expert um I added a question okay um so I think I think I am dancing around the question a little bit does does that answer it a little bit we we don't actually need to collect any of that data um to feed kids the school district might require it um for other funding sources um but I think there are other ways to collect that yeah um I mean I am also I work for the district as well and most of the time you know we especially my program we apply to grants and sometimes they ask us questions about you know kids that you serve that are in free and reduced lunch you know and in some cases basically let's think about it our kids who are in poverty you know and I think for some some some grants application they require that and I don't know how the district can provide now the data knowing that everyone I so we will still be able to provide that information um it's likely that we will still ask families um because this is all happening so fast um there's not a new system to get that data for these grant applications so it probably will still be the free and reduced price meal application that we've seen forever um children can also be identified um without an application if they access other programs such as Three Squares Vermont um through a process called direct certification which is way more complicated than we need to get into right now um but that data will still exist and we will still be collecting it also you mentioned Ramadan if you know anybody who um is collecting these meal kits we will be putting dates in every meal kit through the month of Ramadan thank you Jenna did you retract your question um no your hand isn't up I just felt obnoxious jumping to the front of the screen I'll leave your um want some more information on this to Heather and Doug as well as probably the business manager at the Burlington School District could be really helpful and then me and my day job at Hunger Free Vermont I'm happy to chat with you about how those proxy data can still be collected um my question was for Heather and this is again kind of tying on my background knowledge but in the past the knowledge of where the summer meal sites were going to be comes really late as schools are wrapping up and families are going on vacation um do you have a sense of timeline so that once you make your decisions we can really blast out like here are the awesome places like I don't know if you're going to be down at the skate park again but that's a really great place that your kids are hungry while they're skating and they can pick up their meals will definitely be at the skate park again um I I'm that's actually one of my favorite locations so I'm glad you mentioned that one um because it's it's a great partnership with Rec and Nutrition and the Community Sailing Center and it's just it's really fun to get people on the bike path and just say hey we got burgers would you guys like a burger and usually they stop in and have lunch with us so um to answer your question about the timeline um we have already started working on um getting those details in place and I'm hopeful that we can have um a really solid start to share with folks mid-May um we might not have all of the details and it will change but the the core skeleton of our plans should be pretty well established by then thank you you're welcome Peter Hume your question um I was following the bill on the legislature and was really I saw you got a reprieve in this next year for universal feeding of children and I think that's really wonderful but I also saw that the legislature cut the bill back to universal breakfast and that really really alarmed me I mean I was a substitute teacher in the schools like 15 years ago or something and when we came to school in the morning there was a table by the door every kid walked by it and there was yogurt and fruit and milk and things for kids to eat so Vermont offering universal breakfast I mean what about the kids that get hungry by lunchtime that that is absolutely unacceptable and I want to thank Carol and Bob because you've both been really wonderfully responsive to the concerns about this but that absolutely cannot be allowed and is it the Senate that cut it back to universal breakfast Heather do you want to tag team this or do you want to take a lead I'm happy to respond so Lee with hunger free Vermont where the leads um sponsor behind that bill so this is referring to s 100 so it is still in the Senate and what our goal is and I'm really following up with you afterwards our goal is to make the universal meals all meals universal for all kiddos regardless of their family's income because when you think about it kids already have access to textbooks and that doesn't depend on what their families earn it should definitely be like your nutrition is so elemental to your education so where the Senate is right now is there they are going to move forward in proposing the universal breakfast which is good because originally they were proposing just expanding some eligibility it wasn't universal so it is everyone is committing to an understanding universal is so important and then they're going to be doing a study task course and by January which for our legislature is a very quick turnaround this task force is required to say this is how we're going to do universal lunches in addition and this is all the hard work that Heather mentioned earlier there's also a local purchasing incentive program so that the schools are able to buy from our local farmers and producers so that is moving forward from the hunger free Vermont perspective once it goes to the house we're going to keep pushing for that universal lunch because I absolutely agree like that is so critical and kids are hungry that's what you need and you don't want your students going to the school nurses because they have a tummy ache or going to the guidance counselors because they're having they're acting out because they're hungry so we'll be pushing for it there are going to be some more action points once it goes over to the house but we are I would still say optimistic like the senators have really understood why this is so valuable they're doing their due diligence in terms of making sure how would we make this work for the whole state and we're still thinking that we have some really great potential for this actually happening in the next five years did that help me or I love your passion good investment of money you feel the same way if I can just add something I will commend for the reasons that this sort of strips away the stigma for some kids to accept it in front of kids that don't need it or qualify for it and it opens it up to anybody that's hungry but it strips away that gosh I don't want to go to that table because I'm going to be you know judged and it's hard enough being a kid without having to worry about that so that's cool Monica I'm a large advocate for breakfast after the bell rings so SA used to do it and IAA I believe still do it but I believe that should be in every school in the district that breakfast should be offered after the bell rings currently all the schools have breakfast before the bell rings so kids have to get there early at 745 and with COVID I'm not even sure what's going on with that but there's a large population that come to school at elementary level not having eaten breakfast and most of those kids don't say anything but they can't learn because they're focused on their empty belly and so I know they have snack at like 10 a.m.ish but you know kind of a waste of the 8 to 10 time slot and I get a lot of pushback from people in schools because when I first ran for school board I was like we got to do this across the district you know they're concerned that kids will lose 10 minutes of academics because everyone's eating breakfast it's like well how about the kids that don't learn anything till they have something to eat at 10 in the morning can I tell you a secret the snack the snack that we send up to all of the classrooms at snack time is actually breakfast right so we would serve for grab-and-go or grab-and-go breakfast in the classroom so we have breakfast in the classroom across the district right now it just it looks different depending on which school you're you're talking about and in the high school for example it's we don't deliver it to the classroom but we have a cart that kids can grab grab their breakfast and just head on their way to bring in eat it in class yeah but you know this used to be like right at 8 10 or 8 20 like the essay bell used to ring at 8 10 and then the second one at 8 20 and that's when the kids sat down to eat the meal that you're talking about and then the principal the previous principal put a ganache on that but they'd had it you know for 12 years so or more yeah it's it's certainly you know they say it's the most important meal today I think they're all very important but you make a really important point that kids that might not have had the opportunity or the time or the wherewithal to make their own breakfast at home should get that nourishment so that they're focused and ready and at all at a level playing field so that once that basic need is met we can feel comfortable that they're you know going to not be distracted by by hunger right yeah and some of it is also the stigma you know they don't want to come early and say oh I need food and when the breakfast is served after the bell more of the percentage of kids eat it than if it's before the bell but I'm gonna connect with Jenna because I didn't realize you're with hunger free Vermont thanks for coming Heather thank you for having me any other questions or comments well I will wrap up um thanks everybody for attending great topics this this month getting outside with parks and recs and having fun getting a roof over your head with fair housing and talking about meals for the kids all really great topics we're thinking about next month and talking about the season of road work so maybe a update from DPW and our beautiful north avenue and let us know any other topics we have a new member in ward four but we're really needing new members in ward seven two we're down to two with losing well we have we lost Karen Durfee to her new position which is great for her but we will miss her so any other new members um we have Evan now but any other new ones let us know and any topics you want for next month let us know thanks everybody for attending we appreciate it enjoy the president's update thank you everyone take care thanks good night thank you thanks everyone