 Good evening to all today is May 23rd 2022 Thank you to those of us joining those of you joining us in person in Contra's auditorium And as well as those online for the Burlington City Council meeting the time is 6 20. We're a little bit behind We're going to begin our agenda this evening with a motion to adopt the agenda Counselor Barlow, please Thank you I moved to amend adopt the agenda as follows add to the consent agenda items 6.38 communication from Chris Flynn Regarding redistricting with it with the action to waive the reading accept the communication and place it on file note revised version of agenda item 7.03 Resolution enforcement of bed and breakfast permit requirements and suspension of new bed and breakfast permits Counselor Shannon and Bergman per counselor Shannon and Bergman They thank you, Counselor Barlow. There's a motion to adopt with amendments our agenda By Counselor Barlow is there a second to that motion second seconded by Counselor Bergman Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none all those in favor of the motion, please say aye Opposed please say no We have an agenda The next item on our agenda is a work session regarding Memorial Auditorium There's been a request that before we go to the work session Just because there is someone who is here to speak specifically to Memorial Auditorium that they be given time as opposed to during public forum, so Jim James Lockridge if you would like to come forward and speak now And if we can try to keep those comments to two minutes, that would be great. Thanks so much and welcome Jim, I'm not sure that you have the computer the Excuse me. I don't know that you have that on do you have the button? It should be green. Thank you. No worries. Go ahead start again, please You were elected to office to seek and embrace the tasks that improve our city and steward the legacies that previous Generations trusted you with And I want to make a statement that challenges you as a city council to see Memorial Auditorium as a canvas for the expression of our values We care about each other and being a community Community happens when we gather in a common space We care about recovering from the pandemic crisis Reopening our civic hall would be a statement of resiliency We honor our veterans Memorial Auditorium is a literal landmark that makes those who served in uniform Recognizable to every single visitor to Main Street We are an equitable inclusive society Restoring the city's performing arts stages ensures we all have a platform for expression We want our youth to grow into engaged citizens Two for two main was where a sense of belonging was imparted We trust the voice of our residents and invest in transparent public processes to learn most completely and Responsibly what the right path forward is when the city makes big decisions in 2018 the people of Burlington said they wanted Memorial Auditorium restored and returned to use You each do your own thinking so the best I can ask The best I can do is ask if you share these values Please recognize that Memorial Auditorium should be returned to having the uses that Thousands of Burlington residents said they wanted when the Center for Research and Public Policy surveyed more than 2100 of them Or 2300 signed the save to for two main comm petition. I Offer these comments with faith in the values-based leadership. You'll show as our civic leaders Thank you Thanks very much Jim The work session regarding Memorial Auditorium It's going to be led by Samantha Dunn and Brian Pine of CEDO and my understanding is that you'll be giving us a brief Presentation and then there'll be time for questions and answers and maybe a little bit of work by us counselors to help you Help sort of refine the direction that we're going to be going in so if you'd like to Join us, please Thank you. Should we just start right in here? Sure the Record on Brian Pine CEDO director and We're lucky that Samantha joined us last fall and the title of community works doesn't always necessarily Translate for a lot of folks, but Samantha's job is broadly speaking responsibility for public-private projects that involve City assets city real estate sort of the development side of of CEDO's role and brings a Background in both architecture affordable housing development finance and all the essential things that we need so we're really glad to have Samantha with us and As part of this project, I think we're in we're in good hands with her work I think I would just add to the comments that Jim Lockridge made earlier that Memorial holds if you've lived in this community for Any real amount of time Memorial holds some special place in all of our hearts. I know that I in the mid 80s then Mayor Sanders had created this thing called the youth employment program and Out of another department or off initiative that he created They had this idea that there would be a daycare for city workers to be able to afford child care And so he hired he said to the youth office go find someone to renovate the basement of Memorial auditorium and I brought a group of young people into Memorial and a month later We had created a space for a child care center To operate out of Memorial and fast forward about ten years later. Our first kid was born and I Was lucky enough to be working for CEDO and so we had access to child care and Memorial and our first Son went to child care there until it moved to the Burlington Children's Space with a multi-gen center The place holds a lot of memories I coach both parks and rec basketball and center city baseball and we actually would do our spring training in Memorial Both our kids played music there through rock camp and what was called trad camp which is where they try and play traditional music So the reason why I share this is just because I think if we ask anyone who's lived in Burlington for a period of time You'll find there's a personal story in the connection to Memorial. It means a great deal. I think to our collective Identity as a community. It's it's about to be celebrating a hundred years from when it was created and I think we as as the city our responsibility is to steward city assets and city resources as responsibly as we possibly can and Honestly, it's kind of I would say something that I share some level of Embarrassment honestly that we've we've that this public asset has deteriorated to the point where it is now Which Samantha will explain some of the serious conditions that we're facing but I think Finding a path forward in the past has has eluded us Because of the both the complexity of the of the project and assembling a partner and assembling the financing But also to ensure that there's a sustainable operations plan going forward Is it is a real challenge? And so I think hopefully from our work session tonight We will be able to Establish next steps for bringing this project You know to to a point where we have the ability to make some key decisions and and it's really the councils We're taking direction from the council as far as what those decisions Where we will end up, but we wanted to at least provide information to you now about the conditions of the of the building some of the key decision points that need to be made over the coming weeks and months and Lay out for the council some of that information. I think I'm gonna run upstairs and shut that shade though because it's Kind of hard to see this So I'm gonna I'm gonna pass the microphone over. I think you can get in there. Yeah, I think you can get it Thank you So I'm gonna hand the microphone over to Samantha who will carry us take us through An update on a number of factors regarding Memorial the conditions and the options And the diff and the decisions that you all will be making But also getting your direct feedback about direction and guidance that you want to share with us because it's we're gonna take your lead here Right. Thanks, Brian. And it's nice to see everyone my first city council since joining the city in End of October just last year. I would say Maybe six weeks after I started I got an email saying So this Memorial Auditorium is this is a challenge that the city has and it's gonna be on your Plate and I kind of set a timeline to be able to come In May with the information that we I think we need to start making some decisions for moving forward So that feels like success for sure I think as Brian alluded to most people know the building was built about a hundred years ago with large public assembly Auditorium It's very valuable as a Chittenden County, Vermont. I grew up visiting Memorial Auditorium My you know stories from my parents who went to college and visited as you know very close to our hearts in a lot of ways And I think as Brian also alluded to it's been almost three decades that the city has really struggled with being able to maintain this historic building and the building was closed in 2016 so we're now in year seven of the building being closed due to public safety And and in those three decades there was a number of studies have been done to understand What's happening in the building and sort of what it would take to get it stabilized there was a the first a Bond vote that failed in 1994 that was going to take on that first addressing deterioration Some more studies and then there was about ten million dollars in the 2021 bond that failed that was going to do some substantial rehab to the building Jim mentioned the amazing 2018 redevelopment efforts. I wasn't a part of that effort, but I know It was run really successfully by CEDO with a lot of partners to get input And come up with a plan and for people who want to see more about that or dig into like the survey responses That's all on CEDO's website, which is linked here, but easy to find if you just search Memorial Auditorium And that really that effort Kind of did this, you know provided four options for next steps one was to mothball the building Just keep it as it is keep it closed The next one was for basic renovations and that's really I think what that ten million dollars in the 2021 bond was directed towards like it no longer would have been enough money But to be able to re-opened address code issues and structural safety issues and be able to reopen the building kind of As is without updating it. The third is the community hub option, which was a fully re-envisioned You know community hub where there was performance and youth space and all these things that the community Was asking for in that building and there's a design You know a schematic design and pricing that went along with that and then the fourth one was that same hub but Sort of developing it along with the rest of the gateway block And to bring in private partners to the project So the Costs for those same four options are here operating costs. I think As Brian mentioned, you know coming up with a plan has to do not just with raising the capital But being able to continue to maintain and operate the building Background information. So what happened? Really, I think what happened was COVID The default was this was the mothball approach where nothing no Decisions or investment were Continue to be made. So the building has continued to deteriorate Catherine was just reminding me that we have to ask her permission anytime someone is going to enter the building for Liability purposes. They have to sign a waiver It's you know, the structure is continuing to deteriorate. There's continued to be water infiltration People have caused a fair amount of damage inside the building that have broken in and we have an amazing set of parks department staff that are maintaining these Original boilers to make sure the heat stays on to make sure that the fire Suppression system will work. So during the heating system, there's a staff member that visits that building every day Samantha just one I do just want to expand on the point Samantha hit on but briefly she wasn't here at the time but Very much following the 2018 process. The plan was to move forward an attempt to bring forward a community hub type option but the And we took we had a several processes that were completed on the road towards that we had a RFP process for an operator that did somewhat succeed in identifying a potential operator that would work up with us in a community hub basis, which gave us an us of confidence that we were starting the process to move forward with a RFP for development partner and As we were preparing the documents for that RFP March 2020 arrived and all those efforts basically stopped until We've been emerging from the pandemic and Samantha was able to start this work again last fall and And we find ourselves in very different circumstances than Then leading into the pandemic. So I just want to make sure that was clear Following the failure of the bond vote in November of last year We decided to move forward with a different kind of assessment and one that was Really based on just immediate stabilization What do we need to do today to make sure the building doesn't? Continue to severely deteriorate or injure someone at the same time. We did some hazardous materials testing To better understand I think thinking about what's going on with the high school Just a better understand that that part of the building as we knew it's information We need to have to move forward and then getting a cost estimate for demolition just to be make sure that we had all of the Options on the table and that report is also available on the CEDA website The recommendations that came out of that that report was done by engineering ventures who had done several Previous assessments on the building were very familiar with the building Said that these are sort of the immediate things that need to happen there's damaged and undersized structure in the roof that needs to be sistered that could really fail at any time with a snow load This would put together a proposal to repair and kind of seal the parapet where we think most of the water is coming into the building There's a new roof on the building So there's no longer water coming through the roof But it's still coming through that parapet and then adding containment netting because of sort of the way the building is Failing and moving there's a lot of risk for bricks to be falling off the building and you know could really Hurt somebody if they were in the wrong place at the wrong time at the same time parks Facilities folks have come up with a plan for continuing to provide adequate heating over the next three years Which is really required again to keep the sprinkler system operating But it really just to keep the building when most of us know Vermont if a building goes through a freeze thought That it's pretty hard to recover from in a building of this age. So those are the main recommendations that came out of that report So I think one direction I think We know where we're going but wanted to make sure to hear from City Council like at this time sort of moving forward Is there you know should we move forward with stabilizing the building under those recommendations? There was a million dollars for this Stabilization in the bond that passed in March. So the funding is available to do this stabilization and I think it's important step for the city to take to protect the building and Protect people in and around the building. It is a capital investment with No active benefit doesn't mean we're gonna make that investment and you're still not going to be able to occupy that building Or the alternative option right now sort of like in making a decision now is to demolish the building The price for that came in at about three point three five million. I don't think And anyone's recommending that but just information to have so that people feel like they can make an informed decision Demolishing the building of course we would lose that historic fabric, but it would eliminate the Liability associated with the building and ongoing operations cost we spend Between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars a year Keeping that building mothball the people anyone have questions about these two options And I think this is kind of why we're here Tonight is to talk through like as as the mayor was saying we had a path that we were moving on Like why aren't we just jumping right back on that path? I think there are a couple of Obvious we are clear reasons One of them is the escalating construction cost If you look at the bottom row here, you can see that that thirty three million dollar project is Now at about forty five million dollars and honestly just given the way that costs have continued to escalate This was an escalator. I ran in December So it could be fifty two million, you know with construction costs right now. It's It's a much higher capital number and then of course with The need for the city to bond for the new high school That's going to take up a significant amount of the city's bonding capacity so I think Once we've made this decision. Yes, we're going to stabilize or demo The next thing is okay. Once the building is stabilized. How are we going to move forward to? Make sure this building continue to be an asset. I just I just want to make sure the point is clear to the Increased cost is part of the problem, but the maybe even larger issue is even the 20 Even the thirty million dollar plan was going to require 15 million dollars of general obligation bonding in that vision and Now we're looking at even higher total and our general obligation capacity bonding capacity Is essentially zero right now beyond the 24 million that we was approved by the voters last year Given the expectations that essentially all of our bonding capacity for general obligation bonding capacity for some years to come is going to be likely committed to the New high school. I just don't see a path where we can make even the 15 million dollar kind of commitment that was assumed several years ago much less the larger total that would necessary be necessary now for that prior prior plan and That could change perhaps, you know, eventually we will have new bonding capacity perhaps something about the high school Needs are going to change but It it seems unlikely quite unlikely that we have Any excess capacity that we can put into Memorial at this point I think the voters kind of told us that with the vote last fall as well. So I I think That's a critical Point to understand about why We're in a really different place now than we thought we were in the fall of 2019 early 2020 as we were moving towards bond vote and Some kind of development RFP You know the city will want to figure out how to enter into some kind of public-private Partnership and there's those can take a lot of different forms and so I'm just going to talk about a couple tonight and one of them Jim Lockbridge was speaking to and I think that so this concept is Entering into some kind of public-private partnership where the community hub is still the you know We're working towards generating that Community hub vision in Memorial Auditorium But instead of the city bonding For that money with that without the capacity There's a group of private citizens who are working together to identify They're the majority of the capital resources necessary To do that and I promised this group and I I don't know exactly If you want to speak to this when this form I have a feeling it's that there was like Someone heard the word demo like because I was getting a demo number and people started to pay attention Which is great if that's what it takes tomorrow at trying, but I promise that I This group because they couldn't all be here tonight. I would read this about What they're thinking So it says counselors this information is offered by Melinda Moulton and James Lockridge in support of a public forward option for the future of Memorial Auditorium in 2018 a public process that included responses from more than 2100 Burlington residents led to the approval of a plan to return Memorial Auditorium to Use as a multifunction public commons Programming priorities specified by more than 50% of surveyed residents include shows community meetings farmers markets and youth music space That public process and outcome was catalyzed when every NPA in the city organized an event in support of Memorial Auditorium At con choice auditorium a new community group get it done Memorial Auditorium has formed to aid the city in pursuing this plan Recognizing that throughout the recent mayoral terms the administration hasn't had the capacity to resolutely accomplish the public vision for Memorial Auditorium Which included funding goals for phased improvements to the building This group along with city state and federal support Proposes to develop and steer new financial resources into this goal Harnessing the experience relations and political wisdom of Burlington residents and regional institutions Who are committed to restoring the building and accomplishing this authentic public plan Get it done in the city of Burlington administration departments would demonstrate the confidence values and efficacy of a public-private alliance With the people of Burlington and responsibly steward a historic and meaningful landmark Into a productive self-reliant future of service to the city The get it done group has been coordinating with groups like the preservation trust of Vermont and Vermont's congressional delegates while growing their list of supporters So that's get it done Vermont that get it done Memorial That's one kind of option for moving forward with a public-private partnership There are obviously if that were successful a lot of pros to that It's a vision that has been supported by the community I think there's a question of the feasibility of raising the funds required that would need to be considered And just you know looked you know explored further Another option I think is a different kind of public-private partnership where it would likely be with a non-citizen group where we would continue to retain the historic fabric of Memorial Auditorium But without all of the uses that are there so this would be an adaptive reuse of the building Where we would work together to identify what are some of the public uses that that we could Continue to provide while there are other uses that a private developer would put into the building And I think that the main Downside of this of course is the loss of the public assembly space that that's so meaningful to all of us I think very hard to imagine adaptive reuse of that building that includes a large public assembly space with other non-public uses And I think another thing I want to make sure we're thinking about tonight Together is thinking about are we do we want to think just about Memorial Auditorium? Or are we ready to think about that whole block when thinking about a public-private partnership? To be having developing a vision and a process for for redevelopment of that whole block I think especially with the Great Street Spain Street work starting to get underway. There's a real opportunity to Have not just a revitalized building but a block there. So I think this was just sort of Overview of what we're hoping to hear from the City Council tonight Should we stay move forward with stabilizing the building or people interested in exploring more demolition? talk about what the Goals and priorities of a public-private partnership would be and then look at just a little bit at next steps I know Karen. This was a slide. You thought maybe we had forgotten to fill out But my hope is to is to get input from from this group on If we're thinking about that partnership You know, what are the must-haves and and what would be nice? This is an opportunity. It's a work session. This is an opportunity for our counselors to give feedback as to You know, what are the items that we feel are must-haves within the building and Those that we feel would be nice and yes, I did when I was reading this I said, hmm, I think they left they left this incomplete. Well, now we know why We're hoping you're hoping that we will fill in those blanks for and at least help guide this Conversation so if there are counselors who have opinions or counselor Shannon Thank You President Paul and thank you for the presentation The a lot of work was done in the surveying process to flush out the community Must-haves would be nice priorities and as we had discussed in the in pack I really think that going back to that and looking at what the community has asked for here is what's important not so much What 12 people around this table? Are thinking the the real must-have that this group must grapple with is money to do anything and I very much appreciate the private effort to Raise that money And I think to do that The funders will also have their must-haves I imagine so that's That's pretty much my concern is Reaching a match between the community priorities and the funder priorities Thanks Thanks counselors Shannon counselor Barlow and before before you speak counselor Barlow Just wanted to note that I'm counselors Hanson and house are on although. We can't see them right now They are online if either of you wish to speak I'm looking at the raise hand function if you wish to speak and be recognized counselor Barlow Thank You President Paul. I had just a clarifying question around the statement on I think the last slide where It indicated that a public-private Partnership one of the cons would mean the loss of public assembly space. Why would that have to be it seemed like there's a number of Arrangements that could be made in any public-private partnership and we could incentivize a private developer or even You know pay a lease fee to have space as a city that wouldn't Require a capital expense on the part of the city, but would still Ensure that we had that space available Assembly space. I'm saying sort of that the main auditorium auditorium. There's not a lot of redevelopment to happen for You know for a private investor In that building I think it's possible and I think that's a little bit of what I'm wanting to hear tonight Is like is Maintaining that public assembly space that auditorium the most important thing and in that you know And then we're looking at do we could we work with a private investor that does the whole block and the keeps the public Assembly space or do we give time to work with get it done memorial and focus on on that and not working with private investor? So I think that's still some of the input. I think we could definitely as counselor Shannon Was speaking to there are a number of other uses like just public meeting space that could be incorporated without keeping the auditorium Could we include a youth space without keeping the auditorium? I think those are all things that we can keep on the table that that set of priorities of the community identified But if we keep the auditorium, there's not really a private Development that would also be able to work with and when I guess the other sort of must have for me as I'd like to Understand the relationship of memorial auditorium within the context of development of the greater block And it's it's hard to just take it as by its by itself and on its own I know that there are other public infrastructure pieces that have to happen like the sewer piece under the parking lot and In some of the stabilization that has to go on there But I would like to understand more about what the opportunities are for the whole block So thank you Thanks, counselor Barlow. Did you want to was there any comment that you could? Offer in that regard as far as what with the suit with respect to the super block if that if that thought has been thought has been given to that sure the There's not a simple answer to that and that there's definitely some uncertainty and a little bit of complexity to That in a number of ways Maybe most significantly that the seat does not own all of the property currently on the block. There are a couple of in holding properties That said I do think if it was if we came to a decision that our goal was to pursue a Full redevelopment of the block with both the memorial parcel and the gateway the parking lot parcel In the properties in between being developed at the same time I you know, I think there would be some clarity in that and we likely would be able to find some route forward where The full at least half block the southern half of the block could be pursued together I think that we'd have some uncertainty exactly how we Execute that but if that was the way we wanted to go which hadn't was not the decision back in 2018 there There was going to be a focus on a more auditorium On its own first If we want to change that because of the change circumstances and look for a full redevelopment of the southern half of the block I think that's that's something we likely would be able to pursue Thank you counselor Bergman well the first thing that I have to have is a no Additional holes in the ground in downtown Burlington. So demolition seems to me to not be a something I want and I'm intrigued with the The get it done Approach and I happen to agree with counselor Shannon That we should be looking at the uses that the public said they wanted I was one of the participants of that Survey it was comprehensive. It was not easy And I guess I need to have a refresher on What those were and what they could mean and sort of the options within that I? Have fond memories of shows at Memorial Auditorium I have fond recollections of the news reports of the the chaos under the pocket administration at the At the auditorium That I did not participate So I mean the idea of a big Public assembly place is sort of interesting on the other hand. Do we have enough? Capacity in the local area for Venues that are larger than the Flynn, but not as big as the fairground I sure would have liked to have seen Marley one more time before he died Which I had tickets for but Such as life So I'd really like to get some advanced an advancement of those so to speak a real better understanding of what that would mean and then The same thing is true in terms of getting clarity about the funding And the way I look at it is non tax revenues I Am not a personal fan of the selling of naming rights So that all of the iconic stadiums and marinas are for you know sale to the private sector on the other hand I understand why people do that so Trying to understand much more deeply what those sources were I sat on the other side of this table when we Went ahead and bought the waterfront That was not easy. We didn't have the money You look at it now, right? I'm really proud when in terms of public policy a great feather in my cap So there are moneys that we don't know that are out there But this is a huge this is much bigger than that so I totally appreciate what the mayor is saying in terms of the the reach and To make a decision and I do think we have time if we take it It's our friend if we use it and it's our enemy if we don't To really understand What it would take to raise Whatever that was 15 million 16 million probably by the time you get done 25 30 million dollars add another five right to that because life seems to be like that So where that money? Could come from and the sources Potentials I really like to see that before I start to really understand but just circle back and conclude I don't want to substitute at this point in time my Opinions for what the people said and I would like us to Really sort of in a way doubled down on what they said and see how we can make that happen. Thank you Great. Thanks. Council chairman. Councilor Chiang to be followed by Councilor Hightower Thank you president. Thank you for being here mr. Pine And this is just maybe the second time hearing about this and we heard Accentive presentation at the pack meeting and thank you for coming here again From my perspective even though what the community talked about in 2018 will need to be revisited again We have to start over we have to go back to the drawing board Because the prior it is then and the prior is now for the people have substantially changed With the pandemic reappraisal the high school So one and so forth the community itself changed new people here many people left So I think it would be very important to go back to the drawing board I Think also it would be amazing. I completely agree with the mayor but at the same time The bounding capacity even if we have it because Burlington have high school has not used what they want Even if that capacity we need to think about again these taxpayers to not Use the capacity that's left for memorial. I think it would be again very important people have spoken so many times Maybe we have to listen here They turn down tax increases. They turn down Bounds that we definitely need so I think it's important for us to listen and Listening sometime is to reassess our priorities. I think selling memorial should not be Should be an option It should definitely be an option and people with capital can come develop it and the community the city Everyone can use it. I think we should not raise that option another element about the community and public-private partnership and I think it would be important also to not only look at it from those that approach the city Let's expand our horizon with hotels that are in this community and The flint here and maybe all of them bring them together What are options in partnership with the city the hotels the flint here to build something meaningful? As an option another option also, I think we mentioned it at the back regional option of partnership Wintersky South Burlington all the surrounding communities what is available for a public assembly space that we can all utilize and And make a dream come true for every single one of us Yeah, so far that and thank you for being here again Thank You councillor jing Councilor hightower I agree with pieces of what everybody else has said so I think demolition is not the right way to go Right now, so I would definitely move to what love to see the authorization for the stabilization I Think beyond that I do think we need to figure out the school question first and what that's gonna mean But I think to truly be a public-private partnership where we have enough stake to be able to negotiate on what we want I think we are gonna have to put up some money and so looking at what options those are once we figure out the school component So that we're bringing part of and also I think the voters might be more willing to do something if we're like we're gonna have a 45 million dollar facility that the city is gonna pay x amount for so I definitely Agree with a lot of what's been said and think we should pursue some kind of option But I think we should definitely be ready to put taxpayer money into this as well In order to keep it a truly public resource Thank you councillor McGee Thank you. Thank you director pine and Samantha for the presentation I just want to add my voice to The option to stabilize the building I think anything that we can do to Ensure that we're able to maintain this vital community space We should be doing I think it's an essential a very versatile Gathering space that has not just hosted shows or sporting events, but also the indoor farmers market and so many other Essentials sort of gatherings that that we've really missed And I think you know really emphasizing the youth space that we lost when 242 million was closed. So I think Anything that we can do to ensure that if If the building can't be Saved and Returns to that use that we are finding spaces in the city that the meet those needs I think It needs to be part of this process as well. Thank you Thanks councillor McGee Don't say any others. I don't know oh councillor travers Thank You President Paul. I don't have much to add beyond my colleagues here I will add my voice to those against demolition. I'm mindful of the fact that we're coming up on the 100th anniversary of Memorial Auditorium, and I think it'd be It would it would sort of add to the embarrassment for our community if if a was unopened Still by then let alone demolished The one piece that I would like to add that that I haven't heard here and Did not see much in the presentation is it's not lost on me that this is Called Memorial Auditorium for a reason which is that it is a war memorial To burlingtonians who have fought and died in wars for our country And I know that there are folks from the veterans community who are particularly invested in saving this as Memorial and and I would be interested in addition to our revisiting Public comments from the past in addition to as councillor jeng said Going back to the public for Where we are now Even community gathering spaces has changed quite a bit with the pandemic and the advent of zoom and teams and so on But in addition to that I would be interested in hearing more about What efforts have been made to find alternative financing resources for Memorial? outside of bonding capacity what what efforts have been made to find alternative resources for this in the past and I'm assuming they haven't been if they have been there all that successful because here we are But again keeping it in the context of this being a war memorial in addition to an auditorium That to me seems it may open some opportunities in itself for some Financing outside of taxpayer funds. So or at least local taxpayer funds So we'd be curious to hear what efforts have been put into that in the past. Thank you Thanks councillor travers. I don't see any others. I would just simply add for myself that I agree with the all of the thoughtful comments that have been made by others around this table and Do agree that we should as councillor jeng said look beyond Just those people that have come to us, although I will say I was Online for the meeting for the get it done memorial And there's a lot of real there's a lot of energy and a lot of focus on on keeping Memorial and Given the people that are organizing that I have no doubt that they will do everything in their power to to make that a reality But there may be others and there may be others that they can get together with as well We don't know that unless we unless we do the work to to find that out. So that's all I would add If you want to go back to the As far as next steps, maybe you could just lay out what those next steps were I'm not going to share my screen again. Okay. Are you go ahead for Smith and maybe I'll just anything you don't hit I'll finish up. I think I interested in continuing to explore demolition. So that's a very clear We're gonna be again. We have the money so we can move forward with the stabilization Which will definitely be back in front of the council with a you know with a contract You know, we've got to go through a little bit of design and bid that work So but I heard clearly that that's the desired immediate Next step and I think beyond that It's really helpful to get these comments to try and pull together The information the questions that people asked that we weren't able to answer tonight and to start to think more about What what public-private partnership could look like based on what we heard tonight? And and bring those back. I think it's helpful to understand also To think I think it's an opportunity from what I'm hearing tonight to think creatively about How Memorial Auditorium can work within the entire block and it might be a public-private-private partnership where We're bringing together multiple outside stakeholders to to bring forward a vision for the block And so that's sort of what I see and I think that will hopefully over the next I would say maybe by the end of the summer be able to come back with them some more detailed Proposals about how we want to move forward with pursuing those options Mayor Weinberger Great, I think just a couple additional points I Want to be clear as well the I Do not support this administration's not never supported the demolition of Memorial having the updated demolition figures I think does clarify what our option is at this point stabilization or Spending millions more to have an empty site We will as Samantha said be back shortly based, you know with the Feedback we've gone tonight that I think confirms that path will be back Soon to be able to move forward with the stabilization work I will do you want to make sure it's clear to anyone watching tonight And you can kind of see it in all those studies that have been done since 2014 Over the last decade. We have put quite a bit of money into stabilizing the building This is that's why there's a new roof there. There was a fair amount of masonry Work done to keep there from being fallen falling Bricks this will be a continuation of that another Pushing a million dollars per Samantha's figures to to essentially buy us some more time We also will take the discussion tonight and Digest it and be back as quickly as possible with some clarity about how we move forward with the potential redevelopment options I've heard the strong preference for finding a way to save What the public express support for in 2018 that We've we've been motivated by that strong support for several years the challenge we face now is whether there is a path that can provide that while given the dramatic change in the Economics even from what already looked like an extraordinarily tough project where everything needed to go right in 2018 Things have deteriorated things have not gone right since them they've gotten much much worse and that's a reality that we're gonna have to grapple with and Find a path through together. I do want to make sure To councillor travers this point. It was clear I am fully committed to finding a way to make good on the proper honoring of the the veterans That are honored by the plaques in that building I've been very clear with the vfw that that is a major priority and that actually in the number of few things that we felt we can definitively say our must-haves that was one of just the couple up there is that we have to find a way to do right By by the individuals the families that are Memorialized on those plaques people may recall it was about It was early on in my administration where we actually found and brought out of the base Memorial auditorium and put back on the display Plaques that have been kind of lost and kind of hidden for many years We remain committed to making sure that the building that that we find a way to properly Preserve a memorial and we'll find a way to do that at the very least and I hope we get a lot more done, too And we'll be back soon to talk more about it Thank You mayor wonder So your plan is to come back to the council in June. Is that correct? I think we probably got back in June I think we heard it was pretty definitive that that we want to move forward with stabilizing the building because The bond has fine because we have we know we have the money to do that I don't think we need to come back until we have an actual proposal to do that to you know to move forward with that work Okay, I don't think it'll be that would be ready Well, we will be back with a proposal and a contract as soon as we get that Process finished. Okay. All right. Well as counselor Travers, I think pointed out 2029 is the 100th was it? Yes 2027 was the 100th anniversary and that gives us five years and I hope I I think we probably made our message pretty clear that you know, we're looking for vision and creativity clearly with the scarce resources as we always have so We'll leave that in your capable hands and We'll look forward to when you come back to us either later this summer. Hopefully later this summer Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks very much the We do have a we do have the presentation if we could just have a motion to To accept the communication and place it on file So moved Thank you. Counselor McGee. Is there a second to that motion? Councilor Burke. Oh Counselor house. Thank you so much All those in favor of the or is there any discussion on that motion? Seeing none all those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? So we'll accept that communication. We'll place it on file and look forward to the summer The next item on our agenda is a presentation regarding redistricting a discussion and introduction of the redistricting maps for our consideration and community feedback we have Nancy Stetson the senior policy and Data analysts and Megan Tuttle director of planning back with us for the presentation and I believe the plan here with this item is to have a short presentation and then discussion from the council Given the hour at now at 7 15 will do the presentation Discuss what we can and then we'll break at 7 30 for public forum and then come back for additional Discussion by the council Nancy Megan. Thank you so much for being here Thank you, and yeah, we'll try to be as brief as possible Nancy is going to walk through a presentation for all of you That outlines the draft maps that were in your agenda packet and we'll queue up the discussion Is your microphone on in green it would turn green it is green There you go So you can find the maps we're discussing at Burlington vt.gov slash redistricting that highlighted link on the page will take you to a interactive map where you can see past historical maps and Sort of zoom in on details of these maps that I'll be sharing So just to recap I'm here because the council Asked me to prepare three maps one for a seven ward option and eight ward and a 12 ward option With particular emphasis on keeping the new north end and the old north end distinct there were other considerations discussed like compactness and neighborhood integrity and also thinking of a new way to Organize word 8 so I'm going to before I get into the maps. I'm just going to go through quickly a few constraints I met when I was making these maps the first is that the The words as you expect have to be basically equal The courts have decided that basically equal means within 10% of each other by population The next two items I'll talk about in more detail, but the new north end Is difficult to make separate from the old north end based on geography and the sort of set population The other issue is that that I ran into is that the UVM Population counts on the southern campus are not correct The population isn't allocated to the right blocks and we know that because we know generally how large the dorms are So we'll need to dig into that a bit deeper if we want to separate those out And then finally We in talking with other city staff we we learned that unique combinations of wards and house districts make Elections more complicated for For the city so all of these maps that I have made have actually fewer Combinations than our current word map, but it's something to keep in mind as we shift blocks around Because a single block that has a different house district in a ward would mean separate scanners separate ballots for For those polling places So to talk more in more detail I made this map or this chart to illustrate the difficulty of The new north end so the new earth and has a population of ten thousand six hundred and eighty six people What this chart shows is it compares the relationship between? The the target population of a ward and how many wards There are so you can see in a forward map you would need around eleven thousand people in each ward The black lines behind that those error bars are the five percent deviation away from that target The red lines are the ten percent deviation What this chart is showing is that? The entire new north end as one ward is within a four ward map that within that target population range But once you split it in half it falls within an eight ward Map but well below a seven ward map And then you can see also if you split it into three pieces It works with either a 12 or a 13 ward And so those are the only ward configurations where you can keep the new north end completely separate from the old north end And then just to talk a little bit about the UVM issue as I mentioned the Blocks don't have the right numbers of students in them We did just receive Dorm counts for this time period so we will be able to figure out our actual Population according to those blocks the other thing to know about this part of the city is that the the blocks are quite large So the largest one the largest block is the living and learning and the athletic campus, and that's around 2,500 people And so wherever that block goes will very much affect the rest of the map So now I'll get into the actual maps The first map we have is a seven ward option I made a few choices here. You can see that the new north end is split generally between the north and the south I think one thing to note about this sort of configuration is That the the bulk of the population in the new north end is actually concentrated in that northern section And so any southern new north end ward would be much larger in land area, but those populations are approximately equal Also worth noting that this ward reaches into the old north end and takes up a fairly large section of sort of the north Western old north end The UVM blocks you can see are those southern that southern campus is in Ward 6 and Then Ward 3 becomes sort of a more of a downtown ward And this just gives you some detail about what that what that word would look like And again I think it might be easier to look at those dynamic maps that Nancy shared that have The ability to zoom in and you can see street names and all that information as well So for the eight ward options, I made two different versions the first I made just to show How you could change the wards as little as possible and get to an allowable deviation so here all the words are Practically the same as what we currently have. There's you know one block From Ward 4 that moves towards 7 and then blocks are shifted around Ward 8 to make that Ward work, but generally They're in line with the current words and there's some more detail for the next Ward 8 option I once again tried to split the new north end Sort of more into a northern and southern section though this one's sort of diagonal and Then shifted Ward 8 more into the center of the city So Ward 3 and Ward 8 sort of share the downtown Ward 1 and Ward 5 are generally the same where Ward 2 takes up most of the old north end north of North Street And Ward 6 again has the UVM blocks in it for the 12 Ward option This I would say is the most drastic change from what we have now the ward numbers don't match What the ward numbers are now? So you can see there's three wards in the new north end There's sort of a similar Ward 1 That's now now called Ward 4 that takes that sort of most eastern section Ward 8 is actually just two blocks on UVM campus Again, those blocks aren't quite correct because of the population errors, but this is what I was working with Ward 6 is is similar the the Hill section And you can see the rest here. I'll show the detail I would say this if a 12 if there's a Particular interest in a 12 Ward map there could be a lot more iterations of this This is sort of a first pass But a 12 Ward map is more difficult to make because the deviations are smaller each word has to be around Within like 300 people of of the others so it single blocks make big differences And those are the options that we put together so happy to answer questions And do you want to go to your next slide? so just in thinking about how Some helpful feedback that Nancy could receive at this point. She also shared a couple of questions here for you The first is just you know reactions to your feedback on the number of wards that you requested in these various maps And then if you would like to continue to move forward with some of the maps There are specific questions about How you think the words should be divided particularly in the new north end? Any questions or suggestions that you have about the division of the campus area south of Main Street in particular? And any other considerations that the council has for Nancy to continue to iterate Thank you. Thanks very much for this helpful presentation. This is a Complex issue we started with Memorial now. We're going on to redistricting both difficult difficult topics and Thank you for these key questions because hopefully these can help to guide us to guide us and to guide you as well Just also wanted to acknowledge even though you can't see it on the screen That we do have another counselor counselor Freeman has just joined us on on zoom It is now 725 we do have a couple of people that wish to speak during public forum But we do have a little bit of time if counselors do if anyone has any comments that they Would like to share with us at this time and then we would go to public forum after counselor Bergman I have a just a quick question related to the numbers and I'm particularly interested in the eight ward option two and but the question is whether you kept these to census blocks and whether you Have also taken a look at splitting census blocks as the city attorney indicated in his memo we can do I don't know in terms of the practicality of that but legality It's sort of like what he said in terms of the deviations. We could actually go over We could hit 11% if we've got a good reason for it. It's not quite as presumptively, right? But if there were good reasons to go to 11 or 12 percent, I His memo made clear what I thought was the case So that's a question. I'll leave the comments given the time of Day to just try to get an answer to that for the initial maps. I did not split any blocks It I took away from that memo that it would be possible But I would need counsel direction about Which blocks you would like to split in order to make certain word configurations work Let me end by saying that I see the potential to even out the Deviation betweens word two and three and that does and in that option to it seems that we've got room to do it and And actually maybe even lower the deviation on there and make that map more reasonable If I could just add one piece of follow-up information I Think the city attorney's memo was really helpful in clarifying that we could use a smaller Unit of measure than the census blocks in some parts of the city The census blocks are literally a city block and they might be quite small In order for us to be able to move forward with reliably splitting those We would need to have some way to know what the occupancy of the individual buildings within those blocks was I Think that in some parts of the city This is an easier kind of challenge like understanding bed counts on on campus at UVM Or Champlain College, but in private residences that becomes a much more difficult challenge Thank you and understood Thanks very much counselor Bergman We've we've brought ourselves to 730 so if it's okay, we'll just if you can just Sit a sit on off to the side and we'll do the public forum and We have a few people that are here to speak to public forum as well as a couple of people that are here online Before we begin the public forum just a few pieces of information For those who participate in person the system on the table in front of us has three lights There's a green light that'll shine beat when you begin speaking a Second yellow light when you have about 30 seconds left and then the last red last light is red And that will shine when your time is up We ask that you please complete your comments when the sound dedicates that your time is up So that everyone has the same amount of time to speak And also so we can keep the public forum moving along We also as I mentioned we have people here in person as well as people that are participating via zoom And we have a hybrid system for public forum. So the way that it works is that? Those people who are participating via zoom have filled out a form online you can still can still fill out that form It is Burlington vt.gov Public forum and the information that you put in that form will come into a spreadsheet that I can see so that I can Call on you If you are here in person and wish to speak during public forum there are sheets To I'm so bad with directions That are to my right that are to your left at the table you are going in the right direction That are here right in the back of the room And you can fill those fill those in and then just give them to the clerk at the front of the front next near me and She will bring them to me on and the way that we do this is Burlington residents have first priority So we'll go to Burlington residents that are here in con toys Then Burlington residents via zoom then back to con toys for non Burlington residents, and we will wrap up with non-burlington residents that are here via zoom And the only break request that we have is that when you're speaking during public forum That you be mindful of the fact that there are many community members that watch public forum and watch our city council meeting Please try to use respectful language and also please direct your comments to me as the chair We do have We do have two people that wish to speak during public forum that are in con toys The first is Diana Carlisle and the second is Chris Hasley Haisley Haisley Ms. Carlisle, thank you so much for being here So you'll have two minutes to speak and please make yourself comfortable and then the clock will start when you start speaking And just make sure that you make sure that the green light is on on the microphone right in front of you Yes, it is. Thank you Diana Carlisle I'm speaking about the short-term rental resolution. That's before you As you know, I'm pretty keen on this subject having watched a home in our street be bought And turned into a whole house rental with no owner occupancy and it isn't the first one I found out I there was some other one too But anyway, I see you have a resolution and it can start Enforcing and I mean start because I don't think there's been well. I won't put my own anyway Make sure that enforcement because it's an elite It's illegal to not have an owner occupied house. That's being rented short-term And so that would be a very good thing to do to get some enforcement mechanisms and to set a date If somebody doesn't comply with it We're having a real problem with STRs all over the country People are investing the stock market is not a good place for your money And it's only going to get worse and I really worry about Burlington And I hope we can get a handle on this not all STRs are bad Some are very good and they help people and they've gone through the right Process and they've been approved but others are taking advantage and they are not having to to to come forth and They've got notice of violations, but it still goes on and I really hope that you'll take some action I don't see it as wasted effort even though I know you continue to work On this project because I think an enforcement mechanism is a very good step It's I think many people say no owner occupancy is something you all agree that owners must on so This will be clear and the enforcement can find that and it can do something about it And you can find what the places are that you may have to Work on in your in your um further deliberations. So I think it's something that would be useful and extremely important Important. So thank you very much. Thank you so much for those comments Our next speaker is chris hasley And I don't have any others that are within that are in con choice. Um If you could fill out a form, did you you did okay? Thank you so much chris go ahead, please Thank you councillor paul Like to say thanks to all the counselors that have had time to chat with us and the map making community that have either I'm in person of a phone or responded via email. Certainly. I appreciate the opportunity if I haven't talked to you I'm going to make that effort here in the the very near future Um, just wanted to follow up. I think that our analysis was very much Congruent with miss stetson's analysis regarding the challenges of maintaining the old north end of the northern border Due to the the mathematics involved as well as the similar issues Over on the uvm athletic campus and regardless of what the final maps look like I think that anyone who has rolled up their sleeves and done the mapping has run into the challenges presented By the census blocks the fact that they vary in size from a low of 20 to a large of over 2600 The lack of consistency both in size shape Makes it difficult to tweak the maps at any kind of granular detail level So I think that it might be helpful at the end of the process to debrief and convene a meeting of the interested parties to maybe Send communication to the census folks with some suggestions on how those blocks might be drawn a little bit better the the next time around so Um Secondly I think you've all seen the maps. I'm not going to sit here and plug the maps I think you've seen them before I will say that upon review of the city attorney's memo I would appear that the maps that the independent mapping group have put forth Maybe over the 10% uh deviation for the threshold So don't be surprised if you see a couple revised versions coming your way to address those contingencies Um, it looks like I'm getting down in time. So I will yield the rest. Thank you Thank you chris, uh, so there are two speakers who in con choice burlington residents who wish to speak The first is david shine to be followed by todd lacroix Thank you city council for uh having public forums. I want to speak about memorial auditorium I don't know if the work session was open, but I didn't read it right if it was um I've been involved in uh, save a memorial auditorium for a while. I grew up two blocks from it Um, as far as I know, I don't know what happened in your work session It was deeded to the people of burlington as a public trust as a civic auditorium And to privatize it or to consider privatizing that site and that building is a real violation of trust and of the deed of a memorial auditorium I would hope that you would really consider That possible violation of trust in making that space and that building private It's a public auditorium also as an artist as a performer as a sometime musician This city is completely lacking in a civic auditorium. This is it folks And a town of our size with the amount of performing artists and schools and people who use Who who used to use a memorial auditorium? For I don't know 100 years 80 years. I forget to not have one. It's just a travesty in a town this size I ran an arts council in western new york. I've been involved in uh, chicago in the department of cultural affairs And to not provide for your performers this town is great for visual artists And you got festivals where people can play in the street, but to support a place where performing artists and students Is that my is that my sign That you don't have that it's just unconscionable in a town this size Places like oscosh wisconsin and mesula montana would be Appalled to think that burlington doesn't have that so please think about providing for your performers your students your schools and having a civic auditorium that is a public space as it was deeded and There's a big movement now and we're gathering money And uh, we'll probably be seeing you again Thank you so much and thank you for honoring the time david Uh, our next speaker is todd lucroy I agree with what he just said now Let me remind you guys that you're all scared about all this, uh police And all this violence going on on the streets Let me remind you what happened to me 10 years ago during occupy the man who shot himself out here in the tent Who uh, was the excuse as to why they shut down occupy all across the country? Well, I know that you allowed journalism to die So you never got told this but he was an undercover asset And he accidentally killed himself. It wasn't intentional and he was there to mess with me For trying to peacefully improve our country Now let me remind you that what's going on on the streets is just a continuation of what's been happening Since january 6th It's still playing out on our streets Except the difference is that you people are ignoring the reasons and the causes And you're blaming vagrants and poor people For what was clearly the people Who during occupy wall street were empowered at going after people like me and treating people like me and citizens violently aggressively In the very same way that they are now going after democrats and let me remind you it's the same people I watched as you applauded them when they did it to me during occupy And ignored the abuse that they were doing to me for years And now they're coming for you too Let me remind you i've been on the front lines of fighting for your rights not just mine And that you're selling out your souls and because journalism is dead You people are having psychopaths control your freedom of speech and your information And you're literally letting them run you around and destroy your communities And you're still supporting them You're allowing them to do this because you don't want to talk about the reasons And the issues at the heart of it all Thank you. Todd We don't have anyone else who has signed up to speak in public forum from burlington in con toys except for one person who I believe is Just finishing a form And that is phil carlton. Is that correct? Um I apologize Could you tell are you are you from shellburn? Okay, um, we actually have um burlington residents going first And so we then go on to burlington residents that are joining us via zoom So if you can just hold those thoughts for a couple of minutes and i'll come right back to you Thank you. Um, we have a few people that are online that are burlington residents and so We will go to them the first uh person online Is linda risvi? and linda I have found you and have enabled your microphone if you'd like to speak now Can you hear me? Yes, we can Go ahead Good evening, everyone. My name is linda risvi and I live in ward eight I'll be reading my comments I'm here to focus on two redistricting concerns and I'd like to ask You to keep both of them front and center as you do your worst trading The first issue is that the new map should not be gerrymandered I'm sure you're aware of the principles of redistricting to avoid gerrymandering One of them is called compactness, which means that individual wards should be compact in appearance on the map But ward eight looks like the wings of a bird Bird wings are an excellent indicator that gerrymandering has occurred. This needs to be corrected The second issue is that the majority but not all ward eight voters live work and study at an institution UVM It doesn't allow equitable access for campaigning by candidates running for office This results in a structural disadvantage for any candidate not affiliated with the university This has been described in detail elsewhere There are special rules regarding campus access including to residential units by individuals not affiliated with UVM These rules make perfect sense for UVM as an institution that they create a unique undemocratic situation Imagine you're campaigning and you want to run for office and you live in a ward where the majority of the voters live in a neighborhood You don't have the same access to them for grassroots campaigning as your opponent who lives there And you have obstacles and hoops to jump through that your opponent doesn't have Sadly, this isn't imaginary I tend to believe that this undemocratic structural disadvantage that's been built into our ward Resulted as an unintended consequence of last redistricting But now you know the consequence and I hope you'll all agree with me that it would be indefensible to repeat it Thank you Thanks, linda The next person um online to speak during public forum is matty posig Matty, I have found you and Enabled your enabled your microphone if you would like to speak Um Sure, and you can hear me, okay? Yes, we can hear you just fine Sure, so my name is matty posig. I live on hungerford terrace in ward eight I've lived here for over 40 years and I would also like to speak to the city council about redistricting And about ward eight in particular My neighbors and I have been concerned about the makeup of ward eight since it was created in 2015 Ward eight as it currently exists has several problems Since the majority of the residents in this ward live in uvm dorms Any non-student is forbidden to campaign door to door in the dorms It is equally difficult to get signatures to run for office in this ward for the same reason In addition due to the transient nature of students who live in dorms It has been challenging to find candidates to run for office in ward eight It has also been very difficult to find poll workers I was aware that My self and my neighbors found our ward problematic However, I was surprised to see that changing the configuration of ward eight Was the number one priority of residents throughout burlington as found by the redistricting committee That was tasked by this council So my neighbors and I are looking to you the city council To reconfigure ward eight so that it has a more balanced makeup The student population should be evenly distributed throughout the city Not concentrated in one single ward Thank you Thanks maddie The next uh next person to speak during public forum is andrea rogers Andrea, I have found you and enabled your microphone and you can begin speaking Actually, I wasn't in I I sent in some comments. I wasn't really planning to speak although I might just quickly say I mean I live on south union street. We've always been in ward six in Changing to ward five wouldn't be terrible, but the plan number 12 I'm breaking it up into much smaller units Creates this unit sort of that's half the sisters and half part of south union street but you know, it kind of loses the history of both wards and Also, there's no polling place there and and the whole concept of having so many more much smaller wards to me just It doesn't make good economic or management sense Because of what it adds to the whole process of voting. So those are essentially my comments I would prefer it the Number eight, but I could accept number seven Um in the plan. Thanks Thank you. Andrea With that we have one other person online. They are a non burlington resident. So we go back to con toys and one person who is Who wants to speak and that is that is you sir, uh, phil carlton Please go ahead and I don't know if you got here before we had started We have a timer system in front of you when you start speaking the green light will go on and you have two minutes Thanks so much Sir Right in front of you is a little button and the green light will go on Thank you. Yeah, I've been working at burlington's downtown transit center for a couple of years since before the pandemic And the situation there has been getting steadily worse And it's getting to the point where many of the elderly people that come through there are terrified to be around there They're even terrified to be on the buses It's gotten completely out of hand. And I think you're entirely missing the source of the problem Um, there's this pattern that's been noticed as long as 3500 years ago Which is that when the judiciary gets corrupt or unresponsive People choose to go with a monarchy or empire Instead of taking the judiciary back and saying you have to work for us And that's exactly what we're going through in this country that is President trump shows a lot of signs of wanting to be king The book the imperial presidency was written in nixon's time talking about How we were getting to that point So it's been a pattern that's been going on for a very long time and Once you go to a monarchy, it's very hard to get back That is the roman empire never came back In the hebrew scriptures once they had a king they had 300 and some kings Most of whom were terrible In germany, we reestablished the peace After after they lost their democracy and that has lasted a while But you know that that movement is coming back again So Our freedom is being lost right here in this room by democrats and Progressives Who are not doing the job of making the judiciary Responsible to the people there's no consequence for the kind of behavior that's totally unacceptable that goes on all the time at the downtown transit center And that's something you have to fix, but it's not going to be fixed with the police It'll be fixed only if you fix the judiciary. So there's actually a consequence for what happens. Thank you so much We will go back to on back to on zoom speakers on zoom And the only speaker we have signed up was a non burlington resident is jb kozano kozano And I have enabled your microphone. So you're able to speak Okay, thank you very much. Um, I spoke actually earlier at the finance Meeting and just wanted to reiterate to any of the councilman who hadn't been able to join that I my family owns 100 main street north star sports. We've been there for over 30 years I am excited about the main street redesign or you know, revitalization But I am definitely concerned about redesigning the parking You know, we have a lot of people who are loading and unloading bikes, you know, purchasing bikes things like that and Just to do that is hard for them to walk multiple blocks with either a broken bike or loading a bike into a car So parking is definitely very important. Um, Especially when we're getting out and actually helping the people on load bikes and if it's an e-bike, they're extremely heavy Um, and generally they have car racks on them, which makes their their, you know, their vehicle a little bit longer Um, and frankly, I'd not, you know, none of the businesses on main street have heard anything from the city Or designers consultants about what's going on. I just randomly had gotten all this info that this was happening about this vote So before voting, I would like, you know, the city to start talking to some businesses And I know you're on a time crunch for it But to get a meeting and like sit down and let us know like exactly where we're losing parking If we're losing it, how much is there a ways around it? Um, you know, because you know, again, we're the It's pretty important for us. Especially for what we do. We don't have You know, we don't have bags with a You know, we don't sell a lot of just a piece of clothing that someone can walk five blocks with with a, you know in a bag And I know my counterpart across the street, Zandy at the ski wreck, you know, feels pretty strongly about the parking issue as well I appreciate all you guys's time and thank you very much Much, uh, we don't have anyone else who signed up for the public forum Just give this another couple of seconds here If there's anyone in con choice or anyone online who wishes to speak during public forum With that we will close the public forum at 7 50 Okay, sure You can do it after if you'd like Welcome. Thanks for joining us. Thank you so much. Um, my name is brad wilfong I really appreciate you guys taking the time and i'm sorry to jump in last minute um, I'd like to step in and voice my support for the changes to main street in terms of, uh Bike lanes and making it more walkable and bikeable I think in regard to the owner of the businesses in in those areas If there is more ability and ease to get to downtown by biking or walking The parking that is available will be more open to those businesses And I think it's important especially as we move forward into a future where Personal automobiles cannot be the dominant form of transportation That we make progress as a city to make biking and walking easier and safer So Eugene bergman or gene bergman Is my representative in board 2 and I would ask that you please vote. Yes as we move forward into that vote Thank you so much. Oh, thank you very much. And then if you could just fill that out So we have that that would be great. Um, is there anyone else? Seeing none, uh, we'll close the public forum at 7 55 And before we go back to the discussion on redistricting, we do have two other items of business and those are um item four five Item five item five is the climate emergency reports Is there any counselor or does the administration wish to offer a climate emergency report? Seeing none, we'll close that item and continue to item six, which is our consent agenda Is there a motion uh to Move our consent agenda and take the actions indicated Thank you, councillor bergman. Is there a second to that motion councillor shannon. Thank you. Is there any discussion on the motion? Seeing none all those in favor of the consent agenda and taking the actions indicated. Please say aye. All right Any opposed? Thank you. Thank you. Any opposed? We have approved our consent agenda, which will bring us to the deliberative agenda Just so we can all plan accordingly We have three items on our deliberative agenda Due to the discussion that we already began on redistricting and the public forum where we did get some comments on redistricting We'll go to item 7.01 and when we finish that we'll break to convene the local control commission On in case there are any applicants that are here So they don't have to wait too long and then we'll return to the rest of our deliberative agenda So with that if megan and nancy if you could come back and um We Did we get in the in the uh I don't recall that in the process of doing the redistricting that that That that items was the item was the slide with the key questions That is in that that is the the very end of the item that of the item the pdf that we have Yes, uh, nancy did send the slides to lori this afternoon to post and the key questions are at the end of that document But we could also pull them back up on the screen if you'd like as well Okay, so based on what we what we can manage to cover this evening and getting feedback then we'll figure out next steps Um, because we really don't know exactly what we're going to get and what information We're going to be able to give you nancy so that you can continue your work Um, are there counselors who have comments or feedback to offer either on the four? Uh key questions or just in or maybe there were five Cs. Oh, I'm sorry. Councillor Hanson, please go ahead Great. Thanks. Um I guess I'll do my question first. So my question is If if we went to a 12 board system would that require us legally or Otherwise to have a polling place in each of the 12 new wards That's another question I can answer Yeah, I think that um, we can also the Justin st. James wasn't able to be here tonight And so he did also ask us to take down any questions that are legal questions Um, but I believe one of the considerations was to make sure there's a polling location I'm not sure that that's a must have um, or if polling locations can be shared But we can confirm that with the city council or with the city attorney Okay, great. Thank you. And I guess my comment is just to reiterate and Now having seen the maps, um You know my support for the 12 board system. I think There's a lot of benefits to it. We could keep the council the same size, but really have a more equitable system where each counselor represents the same number of people and Where people are represented in a much more hyper local way. Um, and I think it avoids some of the It would avoid some of the debates and controversies that um come with Trying to figure out a seven or an eight ward map, but I've spoken at length about this in the past, so I'll try not to just repeat and I'll just leave it at that Thank you Thanks very much. Councillor Hanson, uh, councillor carpenter Thanks. Um, I just want to let the council know that um Sort of irrelevant of of the redistricting. I've asked the charter change Committee and the city attorney to look at what we would need to do if we could share Um polling places and this is coming up just because of an issue in our end of town where one of our polling places Is a church and it's it's somewhat problematic. So, um, it wasn't the city attorney's going to get back to us about whether We can do it by ordinance or whether we have to do it by charter, but I think Personally, we should take that consideration off of the table Because we're doing so much mail-in ballots and there may be other good reasons to share polling places Thank you. Thank you councillor carpenter. We have councillor house. Uh, please go away Please go ahead I was like, uh Leave the meeting, what? Um, um, yeah, so, um, thank you President Paul. I, um, just wanted to say, you know, being the um, word eight, uh, representative, I definitely, um, you know, have seen kind of firsthand some of the um, the the challenges that present with, um, you know, running a campaign in that ward some of the inequities that occur, um, in the district and, um, I just, uh, you know, I I I want to say that, uh, the um You know, I do think that it is important to, um, engage the student population and local government I don't think, um, the right way to go about doing that, um, is to have a gerrymandered district But I do think, um, that it's worth in this conversation, um, considering ways where, you know, as we create more equitable wards, how can we continue to um, engage the student population because part of, um, being a good neighbor and being a good citizen is engaging in local government and I think that, um, UVM, uh, does, uh, not do a great job of encouraging students to engage in that way and so I do think, uh, it is critical that we as a city, as we're redistricting, also ask ourselves, um, how we can, um, bring, bring some of the issues that we are aware of to the consciousness of people on campus. Thanks very much, Councilor House. Uh, Councilor House, I owe you a cup of coffee. The next time we're together in person. Thank you, President. That's quite all right. Thank you. Um, Councilor Hightower to be, uh, followed by Councilor Travers. Um, yeah, I think that this is going to be hard because we're not probably going to come to as much consensus as we should or as you would hope. Um, I think the, I think the 12 Ward map is hard. I like the hyper local, but I think it, it's also very small and I think people will feel, um, to some extent a little bit more cut off. I do prefer the 12 Ward over some compromise thing where we've got districts again or anything else like that, which I think is not a good pathway forward. Um, in terms of the eight Ward maps, I think we should abandon the, like, try the one where we just tried to update our current plan, which, because I think it's a non continuous kind of Ward eight. I don't think that's, um, the plan that we should go with, whereas the second one is a better option. But again, I don't know what that Ward eight map would look like in terms of counselors. I don't want to go back or want to continue having the districts. Um, I didn't hate the Ward seven map, but I know a lot of other counselors did, but I think that gives us a good option for having some of the priorities that we had of having more of a downtown core, but also, um, having two counselors per Ward. So I would be in favor of the Ward seven and the Ward 12 maps. Thank you, Counselor Hightower. Counselor Travers to be followed by Counselor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. I suppose just beginning with a question, I think many of us have heard and we heard today again in public form from, uh, representatives from the group who have been advocating for a downtown Ward. And I'm just wondering if you can speak to whether or not you have seen the maps proposed by that group. And if you've looked into this prospect of, of, of what this group has referred to as a downtown Ward. Yeah. Um, from what I've seen of their maps, I think they had a similar sort of Ward three downtown. Um, I would say the main difference between the map that I've seen from them and, uh, the maps that I made is that they included that athletic campus block in Ward one, which then led them to move the sort of Riverside Avenue neighborhood into Ward two because of that. Things have to shift if you split up those UVM blocks. Um, so that's what I took away as sort of the, the main difference between our maps. Okay. Uh, thank you. Just a couple of other comments. First of all, thank you for all the work you've put into this. It strikes me as this is not easy work. Uh, so really appreciate all the time that you've put into it. Um, I really wholly agree with the comments made by Counselor Hightower. I recognize the value, uh, potentially to be found in a Ward 12 map. But as we discussed at our last meeting on this, I think that, uh, many folks in Burlington feel quite a bit of Ward identity. Uh, someone who's been five years on the Ward five NPA. Uh, I know that our NPAs in particular go back some time and, and, and I don't know that, um, voters are, are ready to, um, go too far from the structure that we have right now. Uh, like Counselor Hightower, I also don't mind, um, the Ward seven map, um, uh, the seven ward map. Um, if we were to continue with an eight ward map though, I also prefer, uh, option two, um, to answer the questions that you presented on the new north end. I would really defer to my colleagues from the new north end as to, uh, the east, west divide or the, uh, north, south divide. Um, and, uh, on, on the other questions here, um, uh, UVM campus, I appreciate you're looking into that. Uh, and, and perhaps providing us some updated numbers, I suppose in looking at the maps myself, I know that at the last meeting we talked about perhaps not wanting to align local wards with the new house districts, but in looking at this from a very much bird's eye view, it appears that there may be some wards that are maybe just a block off or so from where the house districts are. And so if there is a way to align some of the boundaries with, uh, existing or new house and senate districts, um, perhaps not the whole ward itself. Uh, but if there's a southern boundary or directional boundary one way or another that could be aligned, uh, there it may provide for some simplicity. Um, I suppose the, the last question that I would present to the council though is that, uh, I think whether we go with a seven ward or eight ward map, a big question here is going to be the size of the council. Um, and, uh, I, I, uh, from my own perspective, I'm not opposed to, uh, increasing the size of the council, but I think proceeding one way or another with a seven ward or eight ward map will require some guidance from this council as to, uh, as to that question as well. Thank you. Thanks. Councilor Travers, uh, Councilor Barlow. Uh, thank you, President Paul. And, uh, thank you, President Paul. Um, I just, my questions were more, I had a clarifying question about the updated dorm counts. Did that, so you found there were, um, there were inaccuracies in the counting. And so did that affect the overall citywide count or they were just where, where the, where the students were counted? Yeah. So it seems like the, the students are just counted in the wrong block. Like, so there's one block that doesn't have any dorms in it, but has 1200 students allocated to that block. And so clearly those students should belong in other blocks. We just need the dorm counts to figure out which ones. And this is something we picked up on this year because it was actually an error that happened in 2010 originally. So we had discovered this problem with the misallocation and had been able to clarify it and properly account for it in the process of developing the maps in 2015. So we had proactively reached out to the University of Vermont to get their bed counts as of March 2020 so that we can clarify this data again. So it's not something that's insurmountable and it doesn't affect the city's population overall. Okay. Thank you. I mean, then my next question was around, um, the new north end division in the, um, version two of the eight word map, there was a decision made to divide the new north end, north south instead of the way it currently is east west. Um, and I'm just wondering about the thinking that went into that was it around aligning with having less permutations of house and, um, and local ward, uh, combinations or was it around some other factor? Councilor Hightower requested us to see that division. Um, and so I was trying it out. I personally am not that familiar with the new north end as a neighborhood. So I don't know sort of where the sort of more like where the neighborhood groupings lie. So that was something I tried out. I think you can see from the, the two word eight options, the overall new north end division is the same. So either of those would work with any other word combination. I think what just one thing to add to that though is I think with the, the overall grouping of maps that you have, you can see different ways to divide between words four and seven. And part of that is just trying to get a quality between words four and seven, especially if those two words are to represent that neighborhood. Ward four has been growing faster than Ward seven. And so in any configuration, uh, some portion of Ward seven would have to come across the west side of the avenue to get population either from the far north end or the far south end of the neighborhood. So it was in part as a result of a request, but I think if you've seen lots of the different maps that have been floating out there from other groups to people have just been looking at different ways to think about how to divide the population in the new north end. Oh, thank you. And yeah, I would, I would, uh, echo the comments of Councilor Travers. I think the, the least amount of change that we can make and also achieve the objectives of the redistricting process, um, would be the least controversial. So I would, I would at least like to entertain, um, an ocean of a uh, east-west split in the new north end for words four and seven, if we did an eight word map or even a seven word map for that, for that matter. And that's all I have for now. Great. Thank you, Councilor Barlow. Um, Councilor Carpenter. I just want to echo that, that what Councilor Barlow said and clarify that between the two options of the eight, the one and two, they're a little bit interchangeable. It goes towards. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor Carpenter. Oh, go ahead. Um, to be clear, yes, the between options one and two of the eight word map, the new north end options could be interchangeable. On the seven word map, I'm going to find it here. Um, where'd we go? Is, are there still options of sort of within the two wards going more north and one and more south and another? I mean, I don't know how the blocks work, obviously, but. Yes, I think that's possible. I think we'd shift some of that for, but again with, with the board seven, you would need to. Understood that. Yeah, from the old north end. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor Carpenter. Councilor McGee. Thank you, President Paul. Um, I am grateful for the work you all put in to bring these maps. In looking at them, I think I, I like the 12 word option more and more. Um, I, you know, hear the concerns that some folks have shared about some neighborhoods being split up and would like to see other iterations of that. Um, that may be addressed some of those concerns, but it does seem to me that a 12 word option gives us the closest thing to a downtown ward while also preserving the old north end neighborhoods. I am concerned about the options that sort of pull part of the old north end into the new north end or have part of the old north end combined with parts of the hill section in downtown. Um, I think it would be important for us to maintain the neighborhood integrity. So that's sort of where I'm at right now. Thank you. Thanks, Councilor McGee. Are there any other Councilor Shannon? Thank you, President Paul. Um, thank you for all of this work. It's very helpful. And I wondered if it's possible to work with that independent mapping group. I had asked them for PDF of the map just so I could see it better. I found it hard to work with it how the way it was presented. And they couldn't figure out a way to do that. And I wondered if that is something that the PDFs that you, you provided us, I found to be the most helpful in my ability to look at it. Something strange happened on board docs. I had all the documents there and that they've now disappeared. So I don't know what the four questions are. I apologize. Um, but I'll just go along the lines of speaking about the things that everybody else is speaking about. Uh, I have a concern that some particularly with the 12 word map, um, in an effort to achieve compactness, I think it makes a lot of sense to have a district right around UVM campus. But in terms of the functions of governance, I think it has been brought to our attention that it doesn't work very well because they have a lot of trouble getting people to fill all of the positions that need to be filled with an award. Um, I would also note that I really appreciate counselors, counselor houses comments about engaging students. And I completely agree with that. Um, my daughter is a college student currently not at UVM. Um, but I think I love to talk with that peer group, um, about our local top politics. And I do think they're pretty engaged, you know, some of them at least are quite engaged. But even when they're engaged, they actually have an option like by definition, if they're living on campus, they do have another home. And they do have another option about where they vote. And I know trying to register many of them in Burlington. They often have reasons why they choose to vote, um, in their home residents rather than in Burlington. And that includes both our Vermont students, students coming from Vermont, as well as out of state students. Um, and consequently, we have an extraordinarily low voter turnout from our current Jerry Mandard board eight for the students. Well, the result of that is that counselors will get elected by far fewer voters. And so the weight of each voter in those districts is more than in a high turnout district like the new North End. And so I do think that there is a justifiable reason to potentially make those wards larger to encompass more people to go outside the deviation there. Uh, I think, um, having lived in both Ward three and in Ward seven, and I didn't move, um, the way I look at the compactness question is if I live in any part of this district, can I get elected? Or am I not electable just based on where I live? So what I mean is I don't mean based on my politics, but I know that somebody ran on Lake View Terrace for a Ward seven seat. And the fact that he lived on Lake View Terrace was used against him, I think, effectively in the campaign. And so, um, I realized that some people don't want to change their wards because they have an identity with that ward. But more importantly, I think when we're looking at changing people from wards, I'd like to ask a question. Can you get elected from where you are in your new ward? Or is there some reason that you can't? Um, and so for that reason, I do have, and I appreciate, I have done these mapping exercises, and I appreciate how difficult it is to make the numbers work and that we're all going to have to make some compromises on the various things that we want. But I am very concerned about the maps that just take Lake View Terrace out, put it in the new North End. And for that reason, I actually kind of think that the seven ward map addresses that electability question a little bit better because you have enough concentration in the old North End that you can't alienate everybody in a section of the ward as not being one of us. Um, so I'll leave it at that. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Shannon. Um, are there others who wish to speak even on a second round if there's others? It appears as though I don't know, have we, have we given you a reasonable amount of information? I sort of feel like we've, a number of us have tried to give you some of our either personal preferences or based on constituent needs, based on the city's needs. Do you feel that, for example, with the question of the number of wards, you've heard from three of the people that have given you feedback, three who are supportive of the 12 ward map, others who are more supportive of the seven or eight. Um, and then as far as the division of the new North End, um, you've heard from a couple of councillors who represent those constituents that there is a concern and a desire to see that map in another configuration. Um, at least of the few, you know, of two of the three that have offered that feedback. And then, um, as far as merging the new North End and the old North End, it appears as though the majority, um, probably would prefer not to. However, there are those that feel the seven ward map for a variety of reasons would be an alternative. Um, so I'm just wondering if you, if you feel that you've got a little bit more to go on than you did when you, when we started. I think that, um, the feedback specifically about some of the questions about the new North End split and the combination of the new North End and old North End are helpful. And I do think that there are pieces of that that, um, Nancy could take back and use to at least to narrow down some of the eight ward options with regard to the new North End. Um, I think, you know, in terms of how many comments we heard about the different configurations in terms of seven, eight or 12, I heard a fair amount of similarity between people who like the options and people who see one or the other as problematic. So, um, I'm not sure that I heard enough clarity in terms of being able to narrow down, um, from the three different sizes to maybe two sizes. So not sure that we have much clarity to move forward for with on that part. And, and could I just, I just wanted to make one clarification about the request on the UVM dorms. Um, what I was hoping to get or to get feedback on is where less about the, the inaccuracies, but actually where those dorms should be located in most of my maps. I think currently they are in ward six, but I was hoping to get some direction about whether council would prefer them say in three different words. They could be split between ward one and a ward eight and a ward six, or they just between one and six, or they could all be in ward eight. Um, but where those blocks, who, like, who, which, which ward those blocks belong to make a big difference for the rest of the maps. Are there any feedback that we could give to Nancy on that? Councilor Shannon, please. That's, that's a hard question, but I think that, um, that the dorms that are on the, um, the dorms that are on the south side of Main Street, it makes sense that, um, they would be in ward six, or at least some of them would be in ward six. Possibly some of them would be in ward eight and that maybe the ones over on the central campus would belong to ward one. That just made sense to me based on kind of location and trying to connect with the neighborhoods that they're adjacent to. Yeah. And my question is specifically around those southern campus blocks, assuming that the other parts of campus would be in a ward one or a ward, like a ward one. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think that they could, um, it's probably possible to make a map either dividing some of those between six and eight or keeping them all in six. But yeah, there's trade-offs everywhere. So I guess I don't feel that strongly about that. Okay. Thanks. Thanks. Go ahead. The only thing I would add is if, if the entire southern UVM campus is in ward six, that campus population then makes up a, a quite a sizable percent of the ward six population. I think something like 60% of the ward six population would then be that campus. I would say then it makes more sense to divide that. Thanks, Counselor Shannon. Just want to cover where we are in terms of next steps. So today is the 23rd of May. You were looking for council feedback and direction on map refinements, which moves us to June 6th. So just wanted to put out there to counselors that I was asked by a number of counselors to schedule an opportunity, another opportunity either by meeting or some other means on redistricting that would allow community members such as the independent mapping group to present ideas on alternative maps. And our options would be a public forum solely devoted to redistricting on June 6th at our next meeting for say 30 minutes at the beginning of the meeting. Or we could have a meeting on June 13th as a public forum on redistricting, call it for say an hour from five until six, devoted only to that topic. And rather than pulling everyone sitting right here, I'll just be reaching out to each of you to elicit your feedback and what you would like to see or if you feel that we don't need to have either one. But if we do, we need to try to make that decision very soon. And that would sort of conflict maybe with your timeline. We have June 6th would be the tentative for revised maps. And is it possible for that to be June 13th instead if we were to need additional time? Or you've also had another meeting on the 20th for additional discussions? Or are you leaving yourself both of those dates? And I understand that you're not available on the 27th. Yeah, so we had offered those dates understanding that we could probably bring back some minor refinements to these maps for the June 6th meeting. We could check in on availability for the 13th. So you're thinking a special meeting for that night? Okay. And then because there is already a council meeting on the 20th, we were just kind of holding that as having some availability to come back and either support additional iterations of maps or additional discussion about them. So certainly if you wanted to schedule a dedicated public hearing on the June 6th meeting, we're available for that. And if the council wanted to see some minor tweaks to what is already presented to you for that meeting, that would be achievable to help aid in that discussion. All right. Well, I'll hope to be able to give give that feedback based on what my colleagues are looking to do in terms of either the 6th or a special meeting, just really not a special council meeting, but just simply a community forum of sorts to give people who may not be able to cover their their thoughts in two minutes. And there have been people as you know that have spent a fair amount of time trying to work on this alongside your efforts. But that would be in the next couple of days that we could certainly figure that out and be able to move forward with that. And then my understanding is that at the meeting in July, at our one meeting in July, that is when we must make a decision on the map that we are going to move forward on. Is that correct? That is my understanding that that would be the last date that the council could discuss a map that they want to put forward for the ballot and initiate the public hearing process for the charter change. Okay. One additional thing I was going to offer. So Nancy had shared this map package. We've been calling it a story map, which is the technical name for the website. This virtual map package, which shows all of the different options that she presented to you tonight, as well as historic ward maps. This is something that if the council, if it was helpful for getting feedback on these different options, we could include some kind of a, you know, comment form or something that people as they're looking at these different map options could share feedback on. If that might help in just thinking about how you move forward with next steps. All right. Well, we'll certainly have our homework cut out for us. We've had a first go around. We've had an opportunity to look at the maps. This will give us all a chance to reach out to constituents and to get further feedback and then talks amongst ourselves as well. And hopefully be able to give you lots of, lots of great feedback for our next, at the next opportunity. Is there, is there anything else that any other council would like to offer at this time? Councillor Carpenter? We're talking about the wards sort of independently of the fact that the versions of them will have 12 councils, 14 councils and 16 councils. And in terms of governance, quality of governance, our ability to be efficient, get work done. I really think it's important for us to keep that in mind too. We need to function well as a council. I personally have a lot of concerns about a 16 member council and our ability to offer the best governance that we can. And that doesn't, having more people doesn't necessarily mean you're better represented. Thank you, Councillor Carpenter. Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. And I'll just add on to Councillor Carpenter's comments. We've heard a lot of us, we have, and I represent districts, have talked about district as being this anomalous sort of ugly feature that we want to remove from our, our current, the way we currently set up districts in the city. And I'll just suggest that, you know, if we get to a point where we're at an impasse, I still think it's a viable construct to get to a consensus on the number of councilors. So I'll say that I'm still open to the idea of districts being a mathematical construct to sort of get us to, you know, 12 councilors is the number and word, and word eight words to do that. Because yes, it isn't ideal and it's not as elegant as I would like, but it's less problematic than some of the other decisions we might have to make around redistricting. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Barlow. Councillor Bergman, did you know? Oh, I'm sorry, Councillor Hanson, please go ahead. Great, thanks. Yeah, I just wanted to, I wanted to respond to the question about the UVM dorms, which is that I think they should either be, we're talking about, I guess the question was specific to the athletic campus and redstone campus, which are both the two campuses south of Main Street. And I think it should either be, you know, all in one word or divided somewhat evenly between the two words, you know, maybe athletic campuses in word eight and redstones and word six or something, it doesn't have to be exactly that. But I say that because to right now we have this really bizarre situation where the redstone lofts building, half of that building is in word six. And really the rest of redstone and athletic campus are in word eight. And so that half of the building essentially, I think goes pretty, pretty ignored and within campaigns and with, you know, people trying to engage voters on these issues. So I think it's trying to get to more balance and not just have a tiny slice of campus, you know, in one word. And then to respond to what Councillor Barlow was saying, I feel differently, I guess, than Councillor Barlow. I do think it should be a priority to eliminate the districts and then get to a better system. To me, that is one of the more important things that we should be looking to do here. But thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Councillor Hanson. Councillor Hightower. I'm sorry. I know this is my second comment, but I agree with Councillor Hanson. I think of all of the priorities that I have, I think removing the district versus ward system is pretty high up there. Councillor Shannon. Just a stick on the same topic. I will say that I voted no on the district system. I thought it was terrible and I appreciate all of the problems with it. But at this point, I think people have more or less adjusted to it. And I kind of agree with Councillor Barlow that we have a bunch of difficult decisions and while it's definitely not my favorite way to go, I'm trying to remain open to finding that consensus and addressing some. To me, the more important issue as a voter is that question of would somebody be eliminated from running just based on where they live? For example, that would be a real concern for me. Thanks. Thanks, Councillor Shannon. Councillor Bergman, please. I think that if we can solve the ward configurations, then you don't have a problem with the districts because the districts are creatures of the ward. So if we can settle that, then we have settled it. And then it's just a question of whether you can stomach going up to 16 or going to 14. I served on a council with 14. It seems to be no different than what we've got here. And there's enough work to go around for more councillors. I do not think that it will be a problem. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Bergman. Well, we'll leave you with all of these opinions. As I say, I will be in touch with you after speaking with others about how we go forward in terms of additional public comment and public feedback. With that, we'll close this item and before going to the other two deliberative items, we'll recess the City Council meeting at 8.35 and call to order the local control commission meeting and give everyone a chance to get to that agenda. The first item on our agenda is item number one. Is there a motion to adopt the agenda? Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Is there any discussion on the agenda? Seeing none. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Any opposed? We have our agenda. The second item on our agenda is the consent agenda. Is there a motion to adopt the consent agenda and take the actions indicated? Thank you, Councillor, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Is there any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Any opposed? The motion passes. We have approved our consent agenda. We have three items that are on our deliberative agenda. The first is item 3.01, a first class liquor license application 2223 for Lalagoras Indian Nepali Restaurant at 148 Church Street. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2022-2023 first class liquor license application for Lalagoras Indian Nepali Restaurant with the following conditions contingent upon fire marshal approval. All city permits need to be closed out with all standard conditions. Thank you, Councillor. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Is it seconded by Commissioner Travers. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please say no. The motion passes. The second item on our agenda is item 3.02, an outside consumption permit application for Lalagoras Indian Nepali Restaurant at 148 Church Street. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2022 outside consumption permit application for Lalagoras Indian Nepali Restaurant with the following condition. Church Street marketplace approval. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Please say no. We have approved that motion. The last item on our agenda is item 3.03, an outside consumption permit application for the other place. Commissioner Shannon. Move to approve the 2022 outside 2022-2023 outside consumption permit application for the other place for North Winoosky Ave. Thank you, Commissioner Shannon. Seconded by Commissioner Travers. Any discussion on the motion? Seeing none. All those in favor of the motion, please say aye. Aye. All those opposed? Say no. And we have passed that application with no other business on this agenda and seeing no objection. We'll adjourn the local control commission meeting at 840 and return to our council meeting and the next item on our deliberative agenda, which is item 7.02, the Main Street concept approval and design contract amendment. We had a presentation on this at our last meeting and before we go into further discussion, Councillor Hanson, did you want to bring forward a motion? Sure. I'll bring a motion and it is slightly different than what's on Board Docks, but I did circulate it to the full council and to Laurie Oldberg as well. So, I would move that we, let's see, sorry, I would move that we one, authorize the Director of Public Works to execute contract amendments with Vanessa Hengen-Grusslin, Inc. raising the maximum limiting amount by $202,534 with an additional $217,000, 15% in contingency funds for a total up to $1,663,665 for anticipated scope adjustments for the design of the Great Streets Main Street project subject to final review and approval from the city attorney's office and two, to approve the Great Streets Main Street concept designed with a fully separated bicycle facility from Battery Street to South Union Street and a proposed curb-to-curb width of 40 feet, reducing from an existing bearing width of 50 to 70 feet, which will effectuate the conversion of the on-street parking configuration from diagonal to parallel. No, I think going to staff at this point would make the most sense. Thank you. Spencer, Director of Public Works, joined by Senior Public Works Engineer Laura Wheelock and Public Works Engineer Olivia DeRise, and we also have City Engineer Norm Baldwin here as well. So, we are very excited to follow up on the May 9th meeting that we had with you all. We are not going to rehash that presentation, but we are going to focus on what we've heard from the public and how we are responding to that. There were some public comments tonight and I'll turn it over to Senior Engineer Laura Wheelock to go through that. Hello, good night. So, here just to kind of go through the, as Chapin mentioned, the really high level kind of the focus of a lot of the comments that we've received so far. So, early on with bringing the project back, we heard a lot of questions about the intersection controls within the corridor. So, in response to that, we've commissioned or hopefully we'll commission tonight with the first motion the ability to review the intersections and prepare an evaluation matrix. This will be, I'll go into that a little bit more in the next slide, about what that might include. The next topic would be the on-street parking with the change from the diagonal to the parallel, as well as with adding some of the other amenities and whatnot. So, we've asked our consultant for a proposal on a new parking study to update our inventory and assess the need that we have in our corridor and within a five to ten minute walk of Main Street, as well as what the availability is of our existing parking capacity and then offer solutions. This could be mitigation of the way that we are maybe not using our parking efficiently, better wayfinding to where the parking exists or a finding that could be that we need more parking to mitigate the on-street loss in a structured way. The last, which was touched on with the amended motion, is the shared use path that was a part of the concept package that was submitted. It is on the south side of Main Street from Wendyski to Union. The goal or the fundamentals behind having brought that forward is that we asked our consultants to keep all of the amenities in our cross-section, but this is the one area of Main Street where there's significant encroachments of buildings and properties. So, their compromise was merging the bicycles and pedestrians, but we've heard very strongly both at this meeting, our public works, as well as independent outreach, that that's not really a great path forward. So, before we had gotten here tonight, we were going to look at the dimensions and really play the game of inches. We talked at the Public Works Commission about the potential to relocate the six parking spaces to create new parking either within the concept plan or on side streets or in use the parking study if necessary or if the findings are such that we don't need the spaces, we could remove them. So, just to quickly touch on the intersection evaluation matrix, this will include review of things like the level of service and the operations, the size of the different intersection control types, really high focus on the safety of our users at these intersections, but what is these intersections also do to the rest of the space? How much space can be activated? What are the utility impacts? What are the road grades that go into creating safe intersections as well as, you know, what could be the parking impact from these different sized intersections in our downtown? So, those are all key factors that we can bring forward as we continue on the design of this project. To speak to parking and what the parking study and assessment were really composed of, this is a partnership paired with CEDO and our planning office to ensure that what we're doing on Main Street, you know, like everything with Great Streets Main Street, it's a multi-departmental collaboration. So, this will also include, you know, looking at different techniques, looking at our zoning, the flex space, the land use, the demand, really lots of just different things that go into parking. That could take a lot longer than we have tonight. And then the last one is the cross-section. So, for those who might not be familiar, this is looking up Main Street over on the right-hand side. This is a really slow to respond, but this is the shared use path that was proposed in your concept packet that is on the amendment for the motion tonight. And that's what I've got for you guys. So, overall, we are here to answer questions. There are two actions in the motion tonight. One relates to the general concept design and the Council's authority to set line and grade of road. And the second one is related to this contract amendment. We really see this as a generational opportunity to overhaul a very pivotal street that connects our highway to a new train station and everything in between. The water mains under this road are from the 1880s. That's over 130 years old for some of our most valuable transmissions lines. We want to do this right from the bottom up and this whole scale, re-envisioning of the street similar to St. Paul is an exciting generational effort for us all to contemplate. Thank you. Thanks very much. So, if there are Councillors who have comments or wish to have questions of staff, now is the time. We're trying to allot about 20 minutes for this discussion. How many Councillors are there that wish to speak to this item? Okay. That should make life pretty easy. Councillor Barlow. Thank you, President Paul. I'm excited about this project. I think it's going to be a great improvement to Burlington. But I have heard loud and clear as it seems you have as well, the concerns of businesses around, specifically businesses around parking loss. We heard from North Star and we've heard from the ski rack and I'm encouraged that there is going to be process around trying to mitigate that loss, not just with wayfinding but also taking inventory and everything. And I'm wondering if you could talk more about the timing of that in relation to the overall project. And so, like, would we do this first, hopefully, find the parking that we need and then proceed with the rest of the project or would it be other than that? Thanks. It would happen starting immediately. Main Street is a fast-paced project. But it will still take a while to construct. And so, even starting now and not waiting for the rest of the design will still have an impact in its findings. We anticipate taking the inventory and starting the study and hopefully concluding, certainly, I said within a year, our other partner departments wanted it much faster than that. So the hope would be that we'll be hearing about the findings of this study much sooner than even the completion of the design of the project. And so would the rest of the project be dependent on the findings of the parking study, I guess? No. The change in the parking is significant enough, which is why we are in front of you guys tonight. That really, it changes the course of the design, the decision that's in front of you. So we felt it was really important to ensure we got good public buy-in. We've been to a lot of different places since this project started, but certainly again, since the end of April, looking for feedback and to provide back information to people about where the project is going. So I understand the concern, and I think the Church Street Marketplace probably, Commission stated it the best. Everybody that was at the Commission meeting this month loved the idea of what would happen on Main Street. They struggled greatly with the parking loss. They understand that Main Street should not be a parking lot in our city, but there still is a parking need that needs to be mitigated. I felt that echoed really true with where I thought Main Street was at, but I still do understand that the parking is a great concern. If I could add on to that engagement moving forward, we heard tonight from businesses they wanted to be engaged. And while we've had three dozen meetings to date, while we've had online surveys, while we've gone door to door with consultants, there's a desire for more. I spent time today going door to door to two key businesses that we heard from tonight, and I will make it a commitment to continue to do that with our team, because what we're hearing is that people are excited but nervous that this needs to be done well. And so we need to make a direct line of communication with our awesome local businesses, and we will make that commitment. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Councilor Barlow. Councilor Berkman. Well, I want to thank you for listening to folks. You've heard a lot from people over the last couple of weeks. I know that we have as well, and I just want to appreciate that incorporation that we see in the revised language, particularly with the shared use, or the moving away from the shared use on the one block, which I think will make kids coming down from Edmonds a whole lot easier. That's the sign of the street that they're going to march on down in large groups. I am also appreciative of the roundabout openness that you've got that's really critically important. And I want to say that the lessons that we continue to learn from the North Winooski Avenue corridor process is applicable here. So the TDM work that we're starting to do on North Winooski Avenue, and that we'll talk about at the TUC some tomorrow, is something that we can't forget. This is, as you said, transformational. And so the idea that transportation is just limited to tourists or to customers is actually quite silly. So I really look forward, I'm looking over to Megan, at the TDM study that is in the budget. Because at the end of the day, the folks at DPW can't be left hanging with the whole thing on their shoulders. They need the support to do that. I've heard from them loud and clear that that's the case. But together, we should be able to make a go of it and make some real changes so that Main Street is not a parking lot. Because we deserve significantly better than that. So thank you, and I hope we all will support this motion. Thanks. Thanks, Councillor Bergman. I see Councillor Hanson has his hand up. Please go ahead. Great thanks. I really agree with Councillor Bergman. Just want to thank the project team. This has been a ton of work, a ton of engagement. And it's a really exciting, huge, and hugely impactful project. And of course, you know, anything we do, this big and significant, there's definitely going to be pushback and opposition, and there's definitely going to be concerns. And I think we need to do our best to address the concerns. I trust this team to really do that and work on that. And the big picture is that we're making a really important step forward for safety, mobility, stormwater, adjusting the climate crisis, equity, you know, allowing people to get around our city by different modes, and especially low-cost transportation modes that we're making easier and safer. So I think it hits on a lot of our priorities as a city, and it's right on one of our most prominent streets downtown. So I'm really excited. I'm really proud of all the work we're doing and the fact that I believe, you know, that we're going to continue to move forward on this and really appreciate a lot of the feedback that we've heard recently around ensuring that, you know, pedestrians and people on bikes aren't, and people in wheelchairs aren't all being, you know, merged into the same space in that one section. And excited to hear that we can avoid that and keep these facilities separate throughout the project because I would much rather, with something this big, let's do it right from the start. So yeah, thanks everyone and excited to support this. Thanks, Councillor Hansen. Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. Thank you for all of your work to make this project possible. I think it's something that's very much look forward to in the community and, you know, including our business community, but I do have concerns about the parking, and I have kind of a specific question. I think that it's right to say that as we develop this street into a very beautiful place that people don't mind walking because they're walking, they're planning on doing some walking, right, if they're going to the cafes and things like that on Church Street. But I also think that what we heard tonight is from a very different kind of business. And there are certain kinds of businesses that need that direct parking access, and we've lost them on Church Street, like a hardware store. And so North Star has that type of business and I don't think has access to off street parking. That block though, I'm wondering how many parking space, what is the net loss or gain of parking spaces there, because I also know there's an outrageously large driveway apron there currently for what used to be a bus station. And I haven't looked carefully enough at that piece to know how that's being treated in the new plan. Is the driveway apron there closing and gaining some parallel parking spaces? Yeah, as we redevelop the street and actually we do with a lot of our projects, we do bring driveways into our driveway standard compliance. So with Great Streets, we'd bring that driveway curb cut as well as a few others along the corridor into what our standard is. And so it does optimize the amount of parking that we can get in a parallel capacity. The net loss is still, you know, for that block fairly significant because there's diagonal on both sides. And so you're losing that number of spaces on both sides of the street. And so it's a loss comparable to the church to a new ski block, but not as significant as some of the others. So it was hard to measure against them because there's different parking configurations along each of them in the corridor. Is there a number? Do you know? Sorry, I hate to ask for things like a number off without warning in advance. We do have a number. I'd have to look it up in our files though, so I don't know it off the top of my head. Okay, thanks. Thanks, Counselor Shannon. I believe the next person in the queue is Counselor House. Thank you so much for needing to speak again this evening so that I can ask you to please go ahead. Thank you so much, President Paul. Yeah, I just want to thank you all for putting this together. It really sounds like you have done a lot to, you know, engage with people in our community, hear from them, and see what they are wanting in this project. And yeah, I definitely, I trust that DPW will do its due diligence in the parking study. And yeah, I appreciate you all building that in there. And, you know, just especially because there are buildings like City Hall and the Superior Court that are just, you know, they're critical to civic engagement. And I do, you know, I do have concerns about the parking because I think we need to, I think we need to figure out how to support people in this city for whom it's essential to have a car. But, you know, I think that we also, we need to figure out for people who it's not a necessity how to provide, you know, reasonable and reliable and sustainable alternatives. And I think having separate bike and walk spaces is great. Yeah, so thank you all for putting this together. I appreciate it. Thank you, Councilor House. Seeing no others in the queue. Oh, Councilor Jang. Thank you. I'll be short. I mean, I think it's just, I don't want people to be expecting that this parking management plan will become a crystal goal and change the world. Let's be very realistic here, right? I think we have done it with the North Winniesky Corridor and we all know what was the outcome. So I just want people to understand that, that, that particular aspect. And I was just also wondering for the businesses, are there opportunities for, let's say, temporary parking, at least for people who can drop things and then continue to move on? Is it something that you will be studying as well? Yes, thanks for bringing that up. The organization of the, and the regulation of the on street space is certainly something that's being looked at. You know, we've, we've talked with JP a few times through the engagement that we've had with him earlier on the project about, you know, he doesn't have to wait for Main Street to be constructed to look for those types of changes that could really help their businesses now. You know, if there's, and we've done the same with the Flynn, you know, they've asked for ADA spaces. We've already started that conversation. JP talked to me today, you know, maybe we just need to go visit with JP and ask him about that kind of a pickup and drop-off space, you know, in his business and find a way to make that work. And I think that's going to be one of our follow-ups because he's repeated it to many people a couple of times, you know, that necessity that's not there today. And we'd like it to be there today and we'd like it to be there at the end of the Main Street project as well. I mean, I think that's, that's great. So we have to be very clear from the big, any backlash is in the future. But also I wanted to say, Jack Hanson, Councillor Hanson, thank you so much for what you just said. It just spoke to me very well. And I'm looking forward for that tea where Chair Street and Main Street will allow people to just walk, bike and make it beautiful with us cars. Thank you. Thank you so much, Councillor Chang. Are there any other Councillors that wish to speak to this item? Seeing none, we can go to a vote. Oh, Mayor Weinberger. Thank you, President Paul. I appreciate the chance to just share a couple of remarks before this significant vote. This project, the Great Streets Main Street project has really been a very significant priority of this administration since approximately 2014 for the reason that it will do so much to improve our downtown. It will improve the tree canopy, improve active transportation both biking and walking with all the climate and health impacts, benefits of flow from that. It will, it will improve our ability to protect Lake Champlain, do so in a manner that has both environmental benefits and landscaping benefits that will contribute to Main Street just being elevated as a public place to be quite dramatically. Ultimately, I'm convinced that this will be a transformation comparable to the transformation that the city achieved 40 years ago with the elimination of, with the change in Church Street and the move towards a pedestrian marketplace. And it is amazing that we have, through really years of planning that go back all the way to the last administration, be in position to pay for this transformative investment using the tax increment financing economic development program. I want to be clear that I absolutely support both of the material changes that seem to be coming out tonight, both commitment for further study of our options for mitigating the parking loss. And importantly, I fully support the separation of the bike and the pedestrian uses on the eastern most block as I believe this motion does. It's exciting to be on the the cusp of this consequential action, and I want to really voice my appreciation to the counselors who are on the two committee and other counselors who are partnering with the administration to build on the good work of the team that has put us in position for action tonight and to keep this major project moving. It would be easy for a project of this scale and complexity to get bogged down and delayed and to push the construction period out beyond next summer. And I think the council seemingly be on the cusp of taking strong action is really one of the consequential step towards keeping us on track and actually getting this project into construction next year. So I want to thank the counselors for that. Thank you, President Paul. Thank you, Mayor Weinberger. Seeing no others, we'll go to a vote. All those in favor of the motion made by Councillor Hanson and seconded by Councillor Bergman regarding the Main Street concept approval and design contract amendment, please say aye. All those opposed, any opposed? The motion passes unanimously. Thank you very, very much. We appreciate it. Thank you. The last item on our deliberative agenda is 7.03, which is an updated resolution now entitled enforcement of short-term lodging permit requirements. Councillor Shannon. Thank you, President Paul. I move to waive the reading and adopt the resolution enforcement of short-term rental permits that is marked final updated. I'd ask for the floor back after a second. And I second. Motion has been made by Councillor Shannon and seconded by Councillor Bergman. Councillor Shannon, you have the floor. Thank you, President Paul. I brought this forward because I had been hearing some things from members of the public and there seemed to be some confusion about the enforcement of our existing ordinance as it applies to short-term lodging. And when checking with what I had heard was that we were not enforcing our existing regulations but Director Ward has confirmed that we are in fact enforcing our existing regulations. I think the confusion comes in part because there was a period of time when we were not enforcing our existing regulations and I think it's important to make that clear. There even has been some communications between councillors and staff members that is less than less than clear. So this resolution does two things. It confirms that we do have an intention to enforce our existing regulations as they apply to all lodging units as well as ask that we aren't doing a really hard enforcement on people who have been running short-term rentals. We have recognized that people have bookings on file, that those folks who have booked lodging through online platforms like Airbnb, they could be very victimized honestly if we had a very hard enforcement policy and I don't think that we want to ruin anybody's wedding after they've planned it for a year. And so for that reason this also clarifies that we will be allowing for agreements to happen that allows people to honor those bookings as late as December 31st but that is the latest and it's not the intention that everybody necessarily gets to December 31st if you don't demonstrate that you have bookings now that run that late. There would be no reason to work out an agreement that then allowed you to continue to advertise so I want to be clear that that's not the intention with this resolution. So thank you and that's all. Great thank you very much. So we've we tried to a lot about 20 minutes for this item as well. Councillor Berkman please go ahead and are there other Councillor and to be followed by Councillor Travers. I spent 20 years in forcing ordinances for this city and it was always my perspective that if we had a policy on the books that we took it seriously and until it was either deemed unconstitutional or we changed it that it was important and that was particularly true of health and safety. I spent a lot of time in the enforcement of housing codes and Director Ward succeeded me in that job. We're in a wicked, wicked, wicked crisis. It's probably beyond crisis in terms of the loss of housing. My wife's the ward clerk for Ward 2 just lost another inspection election official because they got priced out of their housing. We have to do everything possible to stem the tide. What this does it says we'll use whatever we have at our disposal to enforce the law. Nothing in this says that if we come up with a better solution and you're working on one ostensibly that won't be able to replace the zoning ordinance and then we get a chance to move on to that brave new world. But right now we have got a zoning ordinance that defines hotels and inns and motels. It defines bread and breakfasts. I've heard a critique that says that it's vague. It's my opinion that it is not vague and that we should take it on. The facts always will determine what something is or is not. But those regulations, those definitions in there have been on the books for a long time. The industry changes over time and so language such as the customary uses change as times change and we get a chance to update that because otherwise y'all would be changing an ordinance like every month, every year, every two years. It's ridiculous. So we get a chance to do that with our ordinances as long as what we do is reasonable and it is absolutely reasonable in my mind that we enforce the current zoning ordinance related to hotels and inns and other lodgings to the extent we can. I understand the last point I just want to make is enforcement is not a quick fix. It is not an immediate fix and the judicial system is frustrating in that but you know what we live in America and due process is really important and so I'm willing to put my heart and my soul into doing the right thing. Part of that is accepting the due process and the other part of it is using the resources that we've got to enforce the law and that's all that we are asking for this and it would be a shame if we basically said that the existing rules that we have that are governing do not count and y'all don't have to abide by them out there in the public and the hemorrhaging of housing will continue unabated and and accelerate. Thank you. I hope we all will support this. Thank you Councillor Bergman. Councillor Travers to be followed by Councillor Hanson. Thank you President Paul. I appreciate the effort that Councillor Shannon and Bergman have put into this. My preference would actually be that the council either refer this matter to the ordinance committee or table it for two weeks. Speaking as the chair of the ordinance committee I can tell you that we were sent enforcement framework to consider for short term rentals a few weeks ago with a director from this council to act expeditiously to bring it back to this group on or by June 1st. Certainly I'm just one of three members on that committee but can say that my hope is that we will have proposed a new enforcement framework for this council to consider in two weeks. So therefore my preference would have been that we not be discussing this matter tonight but rather in the context of that larger discussion in two weeks yet yet we are discussing this now. I wholly agree that there is a housing crisis in Burlington at the moment and that we need to be doing everything we can to to expand the number of housing units available to folks and appreciate the mayor's efforts and colleagues on the council's efforts to be reviewing that and I'm excited for zoning changes to come to perhaps open up opportunities for more housing. I also agree that we need to be better enforcing and regulating short term rentals. I think the advent of Airbnb and VRBO is something new that's not entirely contemplated by our existing ordinances and I agree we need to be acting expeditiously and I'm excited by the work that the ordinance committee is doing on this. I also think that there is general consensus among counselors that there are certain short term rentals that are simply going to be left out of any enforcement mechanism will not be allowed as a short term rental. We heard from public comment for example about a single family residence being used as a short term rental when it's not the primary residence of the owner. I haven't seen any version of short term rental regulations that would allow for something like that. It's not something that as far as I can speak to the ordinance committee is considering. I know the versions that the previous council passed as well did not consider that either and so certainly with respect to that building I'm glad and I understand that department of permitting and inspections and Mr. Ward's office have been enforcing against units like that and to that I say go forth. My concern is that there's debate and there's different interpretations beyond that as to how different short term rentals are enforced and honestly I am somewhat concerned that by going ahead and enforcing the existing regulations and zoning ordinances we have in place that it may be counterproductive and that we may lose long term housing units to the bed and breakfast permitting process that would be better regulated by whatever framework this council comes up with in a couple weeks. So we heard from Director Tuttle a few weeks ago with respect to pending and permitted bed and breakfast capital B bed and breakfast in the city and now 15 percent of them were for partial short term rentals within housing units. I think there was general consensus in the council that you would be allowed to rent out rooms in your own house. 20 percent are for short term rentals of an owner's own residence and I think there's been general consensus among counselors that folks should be able to rent out their own residence but that's only 35 percent of bed and breakfast permits. 4 percent were for seasonal waterfront homes. 20 percent involve properties with an accessory dwelling unit. 24 percent involve short term rentals in a duplex property. Another 13 percent are for short term rentals within a three or four unit building and and I don't know that there's consensus among this council that enforcement means that those types of units would not be allowed and so my suggestion would be yes we need to enforce yes I'm hopeful that in two weeks will be in a better place to understand what that enforcement is going to look like but let's let's not give this directive quite yet. I think there's general understanding as to those truly problematic short term rentals and I would say go ahead but but maybe let's let's hit pause a moment and allow a couple weeks until we can have this discussion in greater context. I will just also add one other item which is that I appreciate the effort to honor existing bookings through December 30th for those short term rentals that are not in compliance. I don't want to ruin anyone's wedding either but I also know there are plenty of short term rentals within Burlington that are on Airbnb and VRBO right now that effectively have been permitted to exist for for some time now or at least I understand the offices that are very busy with enforcing many matters across the city perhaps have not completely caught up with every short term rental a number short term rentals have bookings beyond December 30th and so I think there's an honest discussion to be had of of our other legal ramifications for us tonight taking action to say that those short term rentals need to cancel their bookings into 2023. I think that a part of the discussion a couple weeks from now is going to have to be for those short term rentals that are not permitted by and what whatever enforcement mechanism we come up with what are we going to do for those places that are able to demonstrate that right now they have bookings into next year it's already it's hard to believe but it's already May 23rd we're almost halfway through 2022 so it's it's not unreasonable to understand that folks have started to be booking into early 23 and perhaps even into next spring and summer so again my preference would be that we either refer this to the ordinance committee or if there's enough support for it I would move to table at a couple weeks I won't make that motion quite yet but certainly would be open to doing that so we can have a broader discussion of this again hopefully at our meeting on June 6th thank you. Thank you Councillor Travers we have Councillor Hanson and then Councillor Hightower. Great thanks and I'd love to hear if the cosponsors or you know anyone from staff or others have responses to what Councillor Travers has raised but in general I am supportive of this I think another concern or question I would want to raise is around this December 31st aspect and I just want to make sure we're not undermining the intention of this resolution and want to make sure there's some mechanism for understanding that you know it's bookings that have been made up to this point and yeah I don't want to create a scenario where people can actually after seeing this you know can fit in many new bookings that would happen before December 31st so that's the only I know that that's the intention but I just want to understand if we think that that will be the outcome and maybe why so thanks and yeah definitely supportive of this and look forward to hearing more information based on what I've asked and Councillor Travers thanks. Councillor Hanson were you looking for a response from the from the from on the resolution from from Councillor Shannon or just as an observation? I would yeah I would be it would be helpful to hear response either from one of the co-sponsors or if we have anyone from city staff that is able to speak to that that would also be either one would be great thank you. Okay thank you. Councillor Shannon do you want to try to answer that? Sure I'm not sure exactly the specifics that Councillor Hanson is concerned about but I will say that our existing ordinance if something is being permitted as a bed and breakfast it does require owner occupancy if it's not owner occupied it fits into the hotel definition which would be allowed downtown but it is not allowed in the residential areas as far as so could some things be permitted that some future ordinance wouldn't allow that's possible but we don't really know at this point and I think it's kind of bad policy when we're changing when we're making changes to ordinances which we do that's like our job we do that all the time we don't abandon the existing rules as we change them we continue to to live by those rules until we adopt something else in every case really so this process even though the ordinance committee may be able to bring something to us in two weeks changing zoning ordinance requires going to the planning commission and public hearings and it's a very lengthy process and I don't see how that is avoidable you raised one other question about the does this language allow people to go to December 31st which I agree is not the desired result um and uh attorney sturdivant who worked on this is not here but I don't know if maybe director ward feels comfortable addressing that if that would be are we she here oh yeah she I think that that's probably the best thing or let me just we could also hear from director ward okay we do we do have um uh assistant city attorney sturdivant if you wanted to ask that question I would just say um that we did add language um one of the things that we changed is that we clarified that the December 31st state is at the latest and at the latest is added language to help clarify that but um I'd also like to hear from attorney sturdivant and director ward to make sure that they're feeling that that's adequate good um good evening hi hi go ahead um am I just make sure I'm recognized or I'll set yes um thank you um I did look at the language and initially had some concerns there is added language uh regarding at latest into the extent practical um so I do believe those add in and allowance to try to make sure that um you know that that uh the court office when looking to these agreements can look to have the best time frame possible um to restrict them as as feasible without making them reduce their their bookings that are already booked great director ward do you have anything to add I would just add that um our office has been working with um host compliance through granik granicus that companies have merged to uh for at least a year now trying to come up with a contractual agreement about how we would work with them so that we could get the information that they have but we don't have the ordinance that specifically says it's going to be a specific set of 100 likely uh participants that would be permitted or 400 those are numbers that would be helpful for me to have um so that I could then budget with with Catherine's office to confirm this is what we'd likely get through the budget process through the permit revenue and then we could have the expenditure for the relevant uh budget permit budget um I would have put that in the 2023 budget that you just heard a week ago but we don't have that yet because we don't have the an adopted council resolution quite yet or ordinance but Scott Gustin and I are meeting next Tuesday with the hope that we'll come up with an interim contract with them that will be minimal to get us to that point but we've been working on that with them to try to get that information so we can more aggressively locate the properties that are not in our direct purview now some of them are not clear from the exact location they don't have a specific address there's some photos that requires some sleuthing that goes with that we have to also balance our enforcement with all of the other things that we have to do with zoning enforcement and when I quickly looked at it things like parking on lawns and um you know expansion of yard parking is one of the biggest issues that we get from residents that's one of their highest concerns we also have um ununpermitted work and more than foreign related enforcement so balancing all those things is a challenge but while this has been going on and the policy has been debated with city council we have been working on 18 different cases where we've done enforcement and I think as that policy has gotten more closely developed we've seen as councilor travers just mentioned we can pretty clearly move forward with those properties where there's not an owner occupancy we have several on the the queue now and in fact today during our enforcement meeting two new zoning violations were moved forward there's a quick process I'll just say that we issue a zoning warning letter first and then we wait to see if the property owner responds to that warning letter because most people don't understand zoning we give them time to understand that they're in violation of the comprehensive development ordinance ask us questions and give us their response whether they agree that that's what they're doing or maybe they're doing something else in some of those cases we've learned that people are renting for more than 30 days they advertise as a short-term rental but under the definition they actually don't meet that and so we can register them as a regular rental it is a little complicated process but I just want to be clear that we are already enforcing and we look forward to clarity from council so that we can sharpen our pencils so to speak great thanks director ward I think where we had left off was just those were in response to councillor Hanson did councillor Hanson did you have anything else that you or were you were you all set um no I was if I could follow up for a second on this um I I guess I'm just yeah I'm a little confused because the lang and I'm sorry I didn't flag this ahead of the meeting but what I'm concerned about is the language says that we would continue to op you know they would be allowed to continue to honor bookings I think it says beyond December 31 22 at the latest so that's also a little weird the word beyond but it I think the intention is pre-existing bookings not just all bookings otherwise we I think are undermining ourselves and actually sort of permitting that so I see director ward may be ready to respond thanks director ward I will say I was trying to be brief one of the things that I missed sharing was that as part of the warning notice that goes out when if a property owner responds to us that yes they are doing it what do I need to do to come into compliance one of the things is they can stop and we won't further enforce they can get a permit if they are still renting they can say to us oh we've got bookings for UVM graduation and for leaf peeping we've got six more already on the books what do we do now the first message is stop don't do anymore and we'll consult with the city attorney's office who will write an agreement that moves that forward so I think what council Hanson may be referring to is bookings made by a certain date rather than at ending at a certain date that's our practice already but if someone says I didn't realize we were violating the ordinance director ward what do we need to do to come into compliance the first message is either getting a permit or stop any new bookings and we can track those we can track them better with the agreement we'll have with host compliance but that would be stopping it as soon as we're aware of those bookings and if the council's recommendation is to stop them by a date certain that's welcome that was the only thing I was going to offer in addition is just that if the council did desire to move forward with this kind of language recognizing that there would be some honoring of existing bookings that it might be helpful to include bookings made by a certain date in the past just to address that concern okay thank you okay great yeah I think that we I don't I mean would it be a problem to say to honor pre-existing bookings or should we use like today's date or something if you all could respond again because you said by it by a certain date would that be today's date if this were to pass sir in our case it's when we learn of the bookings so if we sent a notice to someone and they respond it's the day that we're doing that so I think it's the council's prerogative about what date they put on when the bookings are made by okay um yeah I'm just I'm concerned with how it's written now where it feels like people could continue to make new bookings at this point based on how it's written now count at director ward I would say that the city council city attorney sort of it doesn't excellent job working with us so that when we do have someone who doesn't comply with those instructions that they've continued to make bookings beyond our notice that that is what helps us to enforce that environmental court that they've not followed the instructions that were provided by the office so I don't have further guidance about the specific language of the specific date I think we can work with what's in there because we're going to stop them regardless councilor Hanson okay I'll hold off on an amendment for now but I think we should be thinking about that as we debate this thank you thanks councilor Hanson and councilor hightower yeah I agree with councilor traverse that I would rather see this tabled not like this has been very confusing to me and I've been working on this issue for the last more than two years ever since I joined the council and I'm I'm reading this I'm still not a percentage or what it does despite the discussion and I'm also frustrated I'm still frustrated because I think we're now still channeling folks to bed and breakfast and putting into code and tying to the house what we were hoping to avoid in the first place which seems so backwards to me but I'm also still not sure what this does that in terms of the intent that we had which I think from my understanding is all of us collectively we're okay with in unit bed and breakfasts and I'm not sure what this does I think this suggests that you can't have those bookings anymore and if our intent is to allow it later to say well you can't book anything now but maybe in like four months we'll have something where you can start the bookings again it's it's a very strange and confusing regulatory system and so and I'm sorry director ward but I think I might just ask you again because I still don't understand like if we pass this tonight how how will it change what you're planning on doing versus what how would it change what you're planning on doing I'm not sure that it'll change what we're doing already I think what will have a greater impact is the agreement will have from host compliance to give us specific information that we can move forward with and then council action that gives direction to community members about what the specific regulations going forward will be and sorry but you're planning on doing the contract with host compliance anyway correct okay we were going to do a limited agreement so that we can get to that point to get some additional some initial information because we're not quite there to be able to determine if they're going to be 100 properties that might comply or 400 depending on how wide the net the city council casts great and to councilor traverse points this what we're about to pass makes no discrimination between short-term rentals that are in unit short-term rentals that are in building short-term rentals that are investment properties we're just saying you can't have them after a certain date is that sorry and you don't have to answer that if you don't I don't think that this is ready I can't tell what this does I think it's confusing I think it's vague I don't think it is the staff is telling us it's not changing what they're going to do I think we're about to talk about this in ordinance let's figure out if we can get to some agreement if we can't I don't want to nicks this because I don't want us to not be able to bring it up again because of some rules so I would rather table it see if we've gotten somewhere better in two weeks and give something that is a little bit more direction to folks than than this so unless somebody has my answer to the question of how discriminatory this is across different types of short-term rentals that's that's all thank you councillor hightower um councillor councillor chang to be followed by councillor bergman and then councillor carpenter thank you president tracy thank you mr bill for being here and you thank you so much I just completely agree with what both councillor travers taverns and hightower talked about and basically I believe that we need to table this because this is not clear I mean and at the same time I would rather work on winning the war than these small battles you know and I feel like in two weeks maybe a policy will be coming in forward right here to us I think it will be better but let me ask you would you would you make that recommendation for the council to maybe hold on to this until you figure out until what they're working on ordinance to come forward is it okay yes yes go ahead I'm what I'm saying is I feel like we can take on what is asked here without a council resolution I think that what it probably does is if the council was unanimous to say this is a high priority director ward we think we want you to put any and all resources into this it might help balance when I work with the city attorney to say it needs to be higher priority than some of the other things that we do for example whether it's housing inspections or weatherization work or more than foreign related enforcement that's the type of direction the council would be giving from the way I understand it it's it says any and all resources so we it's a way of setting the priority for us I I'm hoping and I expect that the direction that we'll get the information we'll get from the Granik granicus agreement will provide us the necessary information to do this more aggressive enforcement without that but again we will need some final say from city council on what the direction is going forward if that's going to change from the way it is today that would be extremely helpful to make sure that we have a clear direction to give to residents okay thank you thank you sir so I'll support definitely the any motion to table this resolution thank you great thank you councillor jang councillor bergman so I think that this does give new guidance because it talks about proactive enforcement as opposed to a complaint and reactive enforcement I do not read it and my intent in being a cosponsor is not to elevate this over other things that would seem to be more important because each time you're engaged with resources you've got to do that whether it's a yard parking you know if you have two yard parking ones or you can do yard parking versus the foreign related and so you're always making those and so this is just I think a clarity regarding that this is focused on unpermitted uses under our current ordinance so a bread and breakfast is defined in the ordinance and if we find that there is a something a short-term rental that is operating you know we going to look and say well does it have a permit oh it doesn't have a permit then we're going to say okay is it a bed and breakfast oh let's look at the definition I have it up on another screen I can come and get it I could read it to you but I don't think that that would serve us well at this late hour but then if it doesn't meet that definition well perhaps it is then a hotel in or motel does it meet that meet that and there are clear places in this city where those are permitted and where they are not permitted and when they're conditional use and oh then we go back and so is there a permit for it either there is or there isn't if there isn't well then bill gets to send the letter that says guess what I don't think that's vague I don't think that's unclear and I think that sends a message to the people of this community that we got rules particularly around housing that we expect y'all to follow and this is particularly important because of the housing crisis and actually I think that tabling it sends the message that it's actually a low priority I don't like that as a as a statement of policy around this important matter and I would not support tabling it and I would hope that we would agree that the ordinances that we have particularly around housing should be enforced thanks councillor bergman councillor carpenter to be followed by councillor hightower and then councillor shannon thanks um I give councillor hightower I find this resolution very confusing this council made a commitment to send the short-term rental ordinance back to ordinance and come up with something in early June I understand from councillor traverse that that is in queue to happen and I think this is part and parcel of it we should wait until they come up with whatever recommendation they're going to come up with and we can be clear particularly for the permitting and inspection office around what we're talking and I guess I would disagree having read trying to read the codes there is some lack of clarity I mean a hotel is defined as three or more rooms so what if you only have one or two it's silent related to that a bed breakfast you're supposed to serve a meal or what if you're not serving a meal I mean I think there's there's a lot of little things that we need to get our hands around and in particular I think pushing people to permit as a hotel or a bed breakfast is not the way we want to go we're trying to adapt to a change in the industry that people want to use their own personal property for we're not encouraging the development of small boutique hotels and downtime building that we probably want to discourage that and I think we we just should give ourselves a couple of weeks to get through that process I understand that councillor Bergman and councillor Shannon don't support the proposal on the table but that is what the ordinance committee is considering and I think we need to give them the time to consider it and and quickly so that we can get the rules of the game out there and not push people into boxes that we don't want them to be in in the first place thanks councillor carpenter councillor hightower I think councillor carpenter actually just said it I feel like best case scenario this ordinance or sorry not this ordinance this resolution will just put enforcement on more things that are then going to be pushed into more boxes that are then going to be permanent that we didn't want it or at least I personally didn't want in the first place and so I think it is unfortunate that we are in this place I wish that the previous council would have come to something and the mayor hadn't vetoed but here we are and I feel like just saying we're going to move forward with the current regime that we think doesn't work it makes permanent this not permanent permanent but like incentivizes the the status quo I don't think is a I don't think it's a good policy decision and so I will go ahead and move to table and move to table too okay so councillor hightower what you're what you want to do is lay aside the resolution not for a specific date but just for another time if we want to take this up again in a month I will just table it no I'll just table it for no time certain okay all right so my understanding and this is why we have a parliamentarian here is that a second is needed for that and that is a majority vote is the emotion to table debatable it is not debatable so we need a second to that motion seconded by councillor carpenter it is not debatable so we're going to go to a vote it might be best uh cao shat if we could call a roll since we do have three people who are on zoom of course councillor barlow yes councillor bergman councillor carpenter yes councillor jen yes councillor freeman hi sorry um but this is the motion to table correct correct yes oh no sorry my um my signal cut out I apologize thank you and that was a no councillor freeman no to table thank you councillor hanson yes councillor hightower yes councillor house no councillor McGee yes councillor shannon no councillor travers yes city council president paul yes eight eyes four nays so the motion to table um is successful uh and we will move on to our next item that will complete our deliberative agenda uh we have four remaining items on our agenda the first is committee reports um is there a councillor that has a committee report councillor McGee and to be followed by councillor shannon um councillor hanson and then councillor bergman go ahead councillor McGee thank you president paul I just wanted to say that the public safety committee will not be meeting this week we're going to wait a couple weeks until we're able to continue work on um the final uh summary of the work the previous committee did on the cna report and the recommendations um and we will meet in a couple weeks thank you thanks councillor McGee councillor hanson thanks the transportation energy and utilities committee we'll meet tomorrow at five p.m. um dpw 645 pine street and or um as well as zoom it's a hybrid meeting and it's a big agenda we're looking at the sidewalk work plan and prioritization uh queen city park road and austin drive scoping um north when you ski avenue implementation update marketplace garage assessment as well as shamplain park way update looking at the repayment provision um so number of things hope folks are able to make it up thanks by sorry not by but thank you thanks councillor hanson councillor bergman to be followed by councillor hightower the chart of change committee is going to meet on wednesday it is a zoom only meeting uh and uh we are going to be taking up uh primarily the non legal resident uh or the legal resident voting um matter um and uh uh we've had some very good conversations about that including the public engagement process i had a conversation with councillor jen and i'm looking forward to us uh taking this on the road so to speak and really getting out out into the community so thank you great thanks councillor bergman councillor hightower to be followed by councillor travers yeah i still don't have a retroactive update because we haven't met but we are meeting tomorrow the cdnr committee is um i know folks have been waiting for us to talk about the um camping on public lands resolution or i don't think that's the correct term but folks hopefully know what i mean with that and we won't be discussing that until our meeting on june 14th because with the city attorney's office changes we are waiting for a legal review thanks great thanks councillor hightower councillor travers thank you president paul there's a written update on board docs reflecting that the ordinance committee will be next meeting on tuesday uh may 31st uh to discuss short-term rentals the only thing that i will add is um that i appreciated the discussion that we had tonight on that resolution i think that it's it was helpful to further gauge the sense of the council on this issue um and uh appreciate comments raised by some and including councillor hanson with respect to uh questions on for those items that uh for those short-term rentals that are left out of whatever enforcement framework we come up with um what's the timeline on when and how they'll be enforced and to what extent is the council going to honor those bookings so appreciate those comments and look forward to the discussion and committee thanks councillor travers any other councillors with committee reports seeing none will move on to uh city council general city affairs any councillor like to comment on general city affairs councillor hightower um yes this is i'm sorry i know these are usually not so long but um i just wanted to address um as the ward 1 councillor the trinity campus project um i think the council or at least members of the council tried to make fairly clear what was important to us on the trinity campus um zoning uh request changes and this is going to the planning commission on wednesday and we've not heard back on any of the crests that we made which i think means that they are being um largely ignored and i think that it is very important to the residents of ward 1 and i think other members of the city that um ubm commit to not housing more students off campus um and that is not an agreement that we've made yet so i will continue to raise this issue um both today and at the planning commission and throughout the steps in the process and i hope that we we get a new update on that great thank you uh any other councillors on general city affairs well then we will move on to the next item which is um city council president updates i just have two the first is as we all know may 20th last friday was the deadline for anyone who wish wishing to serve on a commission or board for the annual appointments that we go through next month um the next step was the selection of four councillors to serve on boards and commissions committee and that was done uh that was developed um as per a resolution that the council passed back in 2015 so we have four councillors that have stepped forward brave souls that they are um to serve on this committee and that is councillors bergman carpenter jang and magie um who will also be serving with chief of staff rodel who will join them as a represented representing the administration thank you all very very much for agreeing to serve on this committee um and i believe we are they are working towards a date um for the first meeting um uh i will not be serving on that committee so it will be up to the four members and the chief of staff to have a chair who will guide the process and then let us know how things are going um and then also wanted to mention that there were uh three other councillors who stepped forward willing to um offering to review our council rules and that would be councillors barlow shannon and high tower um and that was something that we had discussed at our council retreat so it's been a while since we've reviewed our council rules and given some of the changes that i think we will all like to see made to our council meetings um this will be a good opportunity to to take a look at those rules and i um i will join this committee or this actually just a group that we will just be meeting um and be will will be in touch with the other four of you to set up a time to meet um with that our last item of the evening is comments from the mayor mayor wineburger you have the floor thank you president paul the improvement of the weather last couple weeks it's been exciting to see the downtown um really coming back alive and return to some of the pre-pandemic feel that we haven't experienced in a long time and um there i just wanted to share my remarks tonight there's some events coming up that should continue that uh before we meet again um the jazz fest discover jazz fest will return to downtown berlington june third through the twelfth are the jazz fest dates this year the flin discover jazz have really added a new twist this year with a couple of guest curators um really changing i think a lot of the some of the spirit and um focus of the events and i really encourage everyone to check out the events uh almost all the events again this year are our free events uh similar to last year there are several ticket events but for the most part there there's a a real commitment to this being an event open and accessible to all the um first of the new btv markets events will take place on june fourth also before our next meeting um there is a webpage up now where you can really start to get a feel for this exciting new market 49 different vendors that are um uh listed um on the on the website it's a quote a collected collection of local artists makers live music games and kids activities taking place in and around seahall park and hope everyone will come out and participate in this first of these events it will be then every saturday through october and then finally also taking place on on saturday june fourth there will be a ceremony for the placement of an historic marker in the lake view cemetery this will be a marker to recognize the graves of 30 uh soldiers from the war of 1812 who have been relocated to that cemetery and in conjunction with the evm historic um preservation department there'll be a ceremony for the placement of that that new historic marker that's what i got for tonight president paul i hope to see you all around uh at these events and before we before we gather again uh in two weeks thank you thank you mayor weinberger with no further business i would ask for a motion to adjourn so uh motion made by councilor mcgee and seconded by councilor jang um all those in favor of the motion to adjourn please say aye all right hi any opposed uh we are adjourned at a few minutes before 10 p.m our next meeting is june 6th um hope you all have a wonderful evening and i would say weekend but it's only monday thanks everyone take care thank you