 All right. Well, it is over to 702 on my clock. So we'll just let people come in as they do to reintroduce myself or to introduce myself for the first time. I am Billy Clark. I am a ward five member of the steering committee for the NPA. And this is the February meeting of the ward five neighborhood planning assembly. I'm just going to give a little rundown at the opening of the guiding principles of what is the word five NPA and what we do here. So what we do is we provide a safe space and a welcoming forum for all members of our community. We strive to be accessible to engage with all community members to minimize barriers participation. There is a particular challenge in these coven times, but we are looking forward to having more of an in person presence soon going forward assuming rates continue to go where they are. Stay tuned. We're respectful. We provide cultural and economic awareness and value diverse perspectives. The fact is going to be a major component of the public forum that we're about to have, you know, I would love we would love to have our community members discuss issues on their mind and everything but we will always, you know, create a safe and respectful place for those discussions to occur. We believe we are a vital fund and creative organization and we are non partisan. We do not endorse political candidates. We are a open resource for all members of the community. I'm pretty sure this is up to date and that we haven't had any fall off, although I know we are reaching a point where we're about to have a little bit of turnover on the steering committee. And that's an invitation for any interested members who are looking to join the steering committee to stay tuned because I believe elections are not tonight but will be at next month's meeting or coming up shortly if not at next month. So if you have more information that you can see about the word 5npa we've got an amazing website set up by one of our steering committee members, you can always find videos of these recordings afterwards. And we give great thanks to the people at CCTV for helping us out and tell me TV with that. So this is our webinar format. I believe the way that's working is that you'll be promoted to a panelist if you wish to speak at public forum or if you're a presenter. And when you so use the raise hand function and zoom, and then you unmute your mic when it's your turn to speak, and you can choose to have your web camera on and on or off however you want to do it. This is our agenda for tonight. The next item we're going to have is public forum, and we're about to open that up. Just as a reminder here the ground rules for public forum. We would ask that you identify yourself when you first speak so first and last name is comfortable giving it your residency, you know, street what part of the ward you're from. And if you are speaking on behalf of an organization we asked you to, you know, state the organization's name. We do ask you to limit your points to five minutes. We want to make sure all voices can be heard. We have dedicated a good amount of time for it but just want to make sure everybody gets a chance. And I will step in if people are going a little long. So, and there's just a little thing about our zoom chat, but I think that will do it so let's head on over to public forum, and I will. Put your hands either via zoom or otherwise or just unmute yourself if you're already a panelist you can get going and I see David has unmuted himself so I'll mute myself and you can start us off. Okay, thank you so much. Thanks for the time. I'm here in Mickenburg. Long time resident of Charlotte street. Ward five grew up in Burlington, not in Ward five, but I guess what Ward one by the hospital. So, where my parents still live and thanks for the time I'm here. I'm a resident but also working with the campaign for yes on ballot item number five, which is a ballot item that's going to be appearing on March 1 in this election. Everyone has their ballots now so they can vote now if they want but it's a ballot item related to eliminating. And this is archaic, arguably, we think sexist and certainly outdated language, as it relates to through to sex work and prostitution in Burlington, and I'll just read the language to the group. And this would be on our city charter, and this would be eliminated not replaced with anything but just struck and out struck out. The charter currently says that the city has the ability to restrain and suppress houses of ill fame and disorderly houses and to punish common prostitutes and persons consorting there with. And this went through a process at the city council was supported the change and the elimination of this archaic language was supported in the charter change committee, then went to the council was supported unanimously, and then supported a second time would I think just one just one or two dissenting vote votes to put it on the ballot so we think that this language is outdated and really perpetuates very negative stereotypes and needs to come out of the charter, I will clarify, despite some. I would say is misinformation prostitution sex work will not be legal in the city of Burlington once once this language is eliminated. There is state law which maintains illegality as associated associated with sex work so that state law would prevail in the city of Burlington it would just take this outdated language off of our sort of founding documents, and I think also create a conversation moving forward about the nature of of sex work and whether or not it should be decriminalized that's a conversation that would happen on a city on a state level not on a city level anymore so I'll pause there I'm happy to answer questions I know this is public forum so I don't know if questions are appropriate but there could be some questions that people may have and happy to have folks get in touch with me separately if this is the place for it. Thanks so much David know this is absolutely you know the place for it, I would say you know I think this can be a part of a spirited conversation I do want us to be able to talk about other topics as they come up but if there's anyone who has questions I see Andy as his hand up I don't know if that's on this or something else but if anybody does have questions they should feel free to jump in. Yeah, David, thank you for that for bringing this to the forum and I just, you know there's been a whole bunch of discussion about this. This ballot item, and some of it. Well I heard people come to the, come to city council and say it's going to, you know, promote sex trafficking it's going to do all this stuff, the people who are very earnestly opposed to this. Can you address any of those concerns that is there is, I assume you think that it's not going to sort of encourage sex trafficking in Burlington but could you address that. Sure. Yeah. Yes, I was part of many of those spirited debates. Many of them just, you know, frankly, many of the folks that came came from out of state to, to make this into a sort of a ground zero of this debate which is happening only happening around the world, frankly, and around the world, frankly. But two things, one, the idea that Burlington is all of a sudden become going to become as it was stated the international capital for sex trafficking I think is just absolutely false. And currently, you know, as I said, this wouldn't make sex work legal in Burlington it would take this language off the books so there's a distinction there so all of a sudden, it's not as if this language were to pass that brothels would be allowed that you know that sex work on any level would be legal. And that being said, if you wanted to have the conversation I mean, I think there's a distortion being made to say that the decriminalization of sex work were that to occur on a state level, that the decriminalization of sex work means an increase in sex trafficking that I work with and from my perspective, decriminalization of sex work is about promoting public health and harm reduction, similar to the decriminalization of drugs. And so the organizations in Vermont, folks like the sex worker collective out of Montpelier called the Ishtar Collective that has members of Burlington are are by and large anti trafficking organization first and foremost and what we're talking about when we talk about sex work is consensual sex work, not anything associated with sex trafficking or non consensual sex work which I think we all universally oppose and rightfully so. So I think there's been a lot of misinformation and fears that have been stoked about this language it does nothing to change the underlying underlying legality of prostitution or sex work in Burlington and I frankly don't think you're going to see any change, other than a positive change in terms of having a conversation about a public health approach to sex work so that helps. I should mention also, you know, there are many leading international human rights organizations like human rights watch and see international, many other groups that actually look to this issue and the decriminalization of sex work as a human rights issue that needs to be talked about and forward this charter change doesn't do that, but it does elicit the conversation to see if, as a state we should be headed in that direction or not, just because it brings the topic up. So. David, I do want to make sure you know because we haven't run a little bit on this if there's any other topics that people want to talk about. If there's if there are people have further follow up questions for David that's totally fine I just want to make sure that we're. If there are any anything else that people want to raise. This is the time. And again the easiest way to do that will probably be to use the raise hand function on zoom as Andy is so level demonstrating right here. I'm actually demonstrating because I do want to say something else, not about sex work, but if there are other questions about about ballot item five, I would defer to those. Thanks for coming David. Thank you and I'm actually going to duck out I happened to just have picked up coven last this over the weekend so I'm a little down and out and this is the end of my work day so I apologize for not hearing the other issues and I certainly will be back this is great. I'm ashamed to say that this is my first NPA meeting having been brilliant and since 1976, I can't believe that, you know, but nothing shameful about that we are always excited to have new faces and so feel free to come on back next month hopefully by them will be in person and feel better hope for the best. Great. Thank you so much. Alright, thanks for the time. Take care. Bye. Thanks for coming back to you Andy. Yeah. It's really quick one one is just having to do with our agenda I'm Andy Simon I'm a steering committee member ward five. I, because Jeff wick couldn't make it here until 745 that agenda that you showed is a little bit off because that Chris Hazley or I think leecher he one of the other is going to present on redistricting and then Jeff is going to come in after that. The other thing I just wanted to say to everybody here and I'm sure it's preaching to the choir vote. You should have gotten your ballots in the mail by now and if you haven't gotten your ballot in the mail, that means that something something's wrong and you should call the city clerk's office, because they have been sent out. All registered voters could be that you're registered somewhere else in the city, and haven't transferred your registration or the clerk hasn't learned about it. You, if you're going to mail in your ballot, mail it you're supposed to mail it in by this Saturday, just because the males are iffy enough so that really you shouldn't mail it after Saturday, February 19. You can drop them in the drop boxes their drop boxes here at DPW on pine street. There's one downtown. There are two out on North Avenue and there's one on Mansfield Avenue that I know of so all you can drop them until 430 on the, on February 28. And after that you'll have to bring them to to the polls on March 1. Thank you, Andy. Also, anybody that didn't get a ballot we have same day voter registration in Burlington. So anybody can go to the polls and if by any chance, you're not on the checklist you can register on the spot and vote. Thanks for reminding me of that Lee. And one other option if you forget your lose your ballot as I often do that gets mailed to you you can vote in person and then fill out the handy dandy affidavit saying that you're only voting once so that's that there are multiple options to exercise your right to vote. No excuse not to vote. Thank you. I see a raised hand who I need to promote to panelists hold on one moment. Great, you should be able now to. So, Ilana, I just promoted you. Hi, sorry. Thank you. Ilana Blanchard I live on Salstown plain street. We just had a discussion at work today and I wasn't really aware of this issue but I wondered if Joan Shannon, I don't know if she's on yet but when she joins us if she could also just take a few moments to talk about the public parks ordinance. That's, you know, I live across from a park I'm sure lots of us do. And I haven't really had time to look through the ordinance so just curious what the status is and what she thinks will happen with it. Thank you. Thank you so much I do not see Joan on yet but I do know that she's coming at the to discuss the ballot items later on. And I know there has been some news coverage about the, about the new ordinance, and I won't put words in anybody's mouth but if anybody has knowledge about it on this panel, they're more than happy to jump in. And I see Ben Travers raising his hand I don't know if it's on this but I'll send it over to Ben next. Thanks Billy, and I'm happy to start with that question so I can't speak to it like a lot of the experts on it quite yet. The city has for a few years now had a policy in a settlement agreement with the ACLU with respect to camping in public spaces, including parks. That became an issue here relatively recently because there were folks and advocates for the Sierra's land community that were trying to enforce that policy as if it were in our ordinances. And the court came and said that the folks who were trying to enforce the policy there did not have standing to do so so I'm getting into the legal weeds here but did not have standing to do so because the settlement agreement is between the ACLU and the city. So really only the ACLU has standing to enforce the agreement and they were not involved in that particular matter. So there are a couple different things that are going on one is that there are members of the city council that are wanting to take parts of the existing policy and put it into law. And then there are also members of the city council that are looking to expand upon folks right to camp in public spaces, including public parks. This proposed ordinance change was sent to the city council committee on community development and neighborhood revitalization and they're tasked with reporting back to the city council on it I believe at their meeting and mid April. I also serve as as chair of the parks commission and I can tell you that we will be talking about this issue in the proposed ordinance at our next meeting. It's the second Tuesday of every month so the second Tuesday in March at 530 the parks commission will be talking about this and we've invited City Councilor Joe McGee who sponsored the resolution to come there so alone, I would more than welcome you're coming to that meeting but I also know that the CDNR committee is going to be looking at it as well. So I originally raised my hand. So I was going to mention as as Andy did and as lead did the fact that ballots are out the city recommends that folks mail them back on or by this Saturday and if you don't do that to put it in a drop box or to make plans to vote in person. But I also wanted to take an opportunity to respectfully asked that when folks fill out the ballot that they fill it out for me. I've been on the NPA steering committee for five years now it's been a great honor to serve with folks in the steering committee. It's been a great honor now to step up and to run for city council to speak to so many of you. I know that the NPA hosted a candidate forum last month so I won't go on at length here, but only to ask that folks consider me in filling out their ballots and if they have any questions I welcome you're reaching out. My email is is Ben Travers just as it's spelled here in the zoom at Gmail so Ben Travers at gmail.com or feel free to give me a call. My number is 802-357-2055. So thanks very much and like Andy and Lee and others have said I hope that you do vote one way or another. Thank you so much Ben and Lee I see your hand as well so we'll pass it over to you luckily the next speaker is me so we're not really intruding on my time. Really is it possible to take the screen share off so that we can see everybody who's there. Absolutely. I did not realize that's what it was happening. I can see you nice people on my end. Although I am going to put it back up in a second let's start presenting unfortunately but we'll keep it going. Okay great so that puts us at 722 so we are moving on now to the first presentation of the night which is done by me. So let me figure out how to do that this is me stepping out this is not being done as me as a steering committee member just me being done as a lawyer with too much time on his hands and what I what this is going to provide is sort of a brief overview of where I end with the access to Callahan Park from the birch cliff neighborhood. It's been brought up at a couple of the public forums at both at this and in the context of the Callahan master plan that's being crafted. You know people are wanting to concern about who's responsible for this space who's responsible for the upkeep of this path and so this is mostly just to start the conversation again and maybe get a couple of wheels turning. Unfortunately start sharing my screen again so that I can get my nice presentation up. Hold on one moment. Okay. So this is just going through the access to Callahan Park from birch cliff. In case you don't know. Let me get the presentation view on there we go. Okay, so can everybody see the slides. Okay, cool. So this is Callahan Park, as you well know, and what we are discussing right now is the path right on Lyndon terrace and cherry lane the corner right there. The access to the park from that neighborhood. Here's a little handy arrow that I've done pointing out where that is and here is what it looks like from the street. As people who have walked it will know and as you can tell from this picture it is a very narrow path with a fences that are starting to collapse and asphalt that is at times buckling so people have rightfully been wondering who owns this and how do we do this. And what I'm going to do is my understanding of the city's position on this I'm not speaking for the city as I do this this is just for what I've seen from public public statements and from what we've heard at previous presentations. Okay, and one place that I've gotten a lot of this information. There's a C click fit, C click fix ticket that talks about this issue that has some statements from a few years back from the city attorney's office and from people at the parks department. I'm talking about sort of the complex issues of this so to take a step back the birchcliffe association that the birchcliffe development was done as sort of one development in the 50s way back when when all those houses were developed. And at the time when that development was done this little path was built that would access then South Park. And as I'll show you shortly there are several deeds that show that the original owners of the whole subdivision that was the whole the whole development, deeded that little strip of land to a group called the birchcliffe dwellers Association, which all historical facts indicate may have never existed and certainly does not exist today. So this back in 2017 the city attorney took the position that the access path was private property and that the city had no legal authority to improve the path, just like any other piece of private property is a piece of private property and as you get into the deeds you can understand how that can be of you. And my understanding was as of you know 2020 this was still the parks department's position and I believe you know from hearing from people tonight a little bit I believe that's still the position that this is if owned by anyone it's owned by this birchcliffe dwellers Association well let's go to the documents and we can show sort of how that all came to be. So this is the deed that shows the Champlain Realty Company of Vermont Corporation for the lovely price of 10, 10 or more dollars. Deeding a strip of land five feet in width to the birchcliffe dwellers Association, and I won't make you all squint I'll blow up the text that's there. And I would have got here are the sites to the big volumes at City Hall if you want to go dig through the land records yourself. It's a strip of land five feet in width, and it talks about how the transfer is made for the purpose of use as a passageway by pedestrians, and the grantee so in the birchcliffe dwellers Association. And the accessor's in the signs has the duty to keep and maintain said passageway unobstructed and maintain a suitable fence along the easterly side. So according to the deed it would look like this birchcliffe dwellers Association would be the ones who are obligated to perform the upkeep. If it never existed that becomes a strange situation where a organization that never existed was given a piece of land and told to upkeep it. I did trace it back so that this was the city's position they was owned by the birchcliffe dwellers Association. I did trace the documents back slightly and, as you can tell, there was a plot the whole plot was owned by this group by Robert and Ada Arnold, and that whole plot was then given to Champlain Realty Company which was the developer of the birchcliffe Parkway Development and Champlain Realty Company took ownership of that strip of land. That's the language that you just saw in the previous page. In Champlain Realty Company definitely was an organization they had directors they were the people who developed the property so that isn't, if not if no longer extant company which I don't believe it is, at least was an extent organization at one point unlike birchcliffe dwellers Association which may have never existed. The other wrinkle in all this is that Champlain Realty Company set up a whole bunch of protective covenants that govern birchcliffe Parkway as a group. I don't know if these are observed at all, or if there's anything that's done with them I want to talk to some of our birchcliffe neighbors to see if they've encountered this when they've tried to do renovations and things. In fact the covenants themselves created an architectural control committee that's supposed to review all developments that occur in birchcliffe. I don't know if that exists or if it has ever held power but there were people specified in it. And, as you can see these covenants were designated to run to bind all future parties and to be automatically extended in perpetuity forever. In theory, even though these are all fun things back from the 1950s these still govern. And the reason I point out these protective covenants is this provides and a potential avenue whereby the birchcliffe neighborhood could come together and maybe adopt resolutions where they either create the birchcliffe dwellers Association or create some sort of designated people who could do these things. What have you. And that's one thing I should do as a caveat here. I am a lawyer with too much free time but I there's no client that I have here this is just the research I've done to sort of start a conversation as a member of the community I'm not trying to provide legal advice to anyone or speaking on behalf of the city or anything like that so for next steps that I envision you know I think we need to I plan to do a little bit more research to figure out whether Champlain Realty Company has existed well I know it has existed. Does it continue to exist and if it doesn't continue to exist does it have successors who exist because if it has successors who exist. In theory they may own that plot of land, because a birchcliffe dwellers Association was never created, then the deed to them was like dating the, you know, your house to Mickey mouse it just doesn't doesn't really work. But again, you know there's a lot of intricacies here. I also want to keep engaging with the neighborhood at birchcliffe and see what are the neighbors want to do here I mean this is a pressing issue for our community and I don't just want to punt on a bunch of legal niceties we do we do want to figure out a way to maintain this important piece of access to a park in particular when this park is about to be undergoing some you know major renovations to make it an even more valuable part of our community. I think this you know this conversation presents a really good opportunity to renew conversations with city council members to see if there's any creative approaches and you know ways to get people to the table to discuss creative solutions to these issues. So, with that I'm going to stop sharing my screen and see where I'm at for time I'm one minute over in my one minute over my supposed to be doing this for in 10 minutes, think so. See if there are any questions that we can try to address quickly. And again if people want to use a raise hand function that's probably the most efficient way to ask a question, if there are any seeing none. We will move on to our next part of the evening, let me just clear off my presenter mode and get us back into moderator mode. And as a final pitch you know if anybody has interest and wants to discuss this further. My email is up on the website for the word five NPA but it's WT Clark CLA or K 21 at Gmail and happy to discuss this and any issues further. So, get out of this. So Andy, I had things backwards because I think I had the old agenda up. We are now going into redistricting is that correct. Yes, we are. Okay, great. I see Chris is here and Lee is here so I think we're all set. And I just wanted to say before we move on to that thank you so much Billy for doing that investigation. Of course. All right, and so with that, we are going to move over to Chris and Lee who are presenting on redistricting proposals on behalf of the Burlington independent mapping group. Everyone thanks for having us here at the word five NPA tonight. As Billy it just meant we're part of the Burlington independent mapping group, I guess you could say we're redistricting enthusiasts, we've been following the process and listening to the public input and have been drawn some apps and we're not affiliated with the city where again we're grassroots citizen based kind of organization. And we've put together a couple mapping proposals that we feel reflect a lot of the concerns and issues that were raised in the public process including the argument for reestablishing the downtown which was, I guess, taken away for lack of a better term 1967 is part of the urban renewal project so got a little bit of a PowerPoint here, probably be tagged to me with a little bit. If anyone has any questions I'll be pausing for that. But without further ado do I have a screen sharing privileges. So I can do. Awesome. Thank you everyone. So yeah so our, our PowerPoints called no longer afterthought why the downtown poor deserves its own award. Kind of kind of captures the feeling of a lot of folks who live downtown kind of like to restore our voice as a community of interest so we're also beginning the, the process, you know we started with the statutory requirements about population, because that's really what this is all about and I suspect most folks are familiar with the redistricting process for those who are not. It's a process that takes place every 10 years, the federal level and here in Burlington and we're also taking a look at our ward maps. The goal is to minimize population differences between the wards to ensure equal representation for the people who live in the various neighborhoods to make up the city. So, from the statutory requirement that's, that's kind of the driving legal criteria that we have to meet in this process and then turning to the community values portion that was expressed during the public process for the ad hoc redistricting over the last four months in this past fall. You heard a lot of strong interest about preserving neighborhoods and community of interest, and using natural geographic features as boundaries between wards. Example this would be the, the intervail the swamp there between the north end and the north end. We also heard that the ward eight has currently configured is not working. That's not to say that people didn't like a wards a lot of folks seem to did. The ward eight is currently drawn out has been a little bit of a concern for a number of folks so there was a desire to balance students more evenly across the wards. One of the things that was a challenge when we got into this is the actual drawing of this night kind of came into this late back in early January and I said oh how hard can this be you know this can be too difficult and you know we heard the nostalgia for an old seven word map so I'm like well you know I need to learn the software will will draw that map and see how it goes and you know when I got into it and realize it's it's you know part of it's an art part of it's a science but it's a lot more difficult than I would have thought on the surface and a large reason for that difficulty is the way that the census blocks were drawn. So to give me an example we have some census blocks, which are as few as 50 people in them. And then we have other census blocks such as those over on the eastern part of the city, part of the University of Vermont campus with as many as 2,600 people in that. So, you know you plop that one down that that's you know takes up a pretty big significant portion of the wards so you have to kind of build around it so it's a little bit of a juggling game of trying to maintain the population will simultaneously trying to keep neighborhoods in using with all sorts of various size building blocks if you will so that was the challenge that we had come in there. And because of that that's ultimately how we had ended up on the eight word configuration here. We felt that the math simply worked better on that now with the number of words each word gets a target population which is essentially the city. The population of the city divided by the number of words and in an eight word map that magic number comes out to be just under 5600 people, which is just about what it was 30 years ago. And one of the goals that we had as part of our map the proposal that we put together is we wanted to address and unify the King Street Maple Street neighborhood here that is currently split between words three and words five, which I think is for you guys it's the northernmost border of your ward here. That was a particular of concern from an equity perspective in that is one of Vermont's most diverse neighborhoods and it is Vermont's largest community of color. So there was a desire there to kind of unify that neighborhood as it had been historically as part of the downtown war. We wanted to preserve the Beall Street Bradley Street historic district which is primarily home to a large campus student population with a smattering of longtime residential homeowners as well. So those neighborhoods along with the actual downtown core in the waterfront are what constitute in our proposal the the downtown war. That war does have a historical precedent. It largely follows historical boundaries, dating back to the city's founding. You know it wasn't existence again right up until 1967 when it was discarded as part of urban renewal. Have any questions so far anybody. Okay. So with respect to the proposed word eight configuration. Again new word eight would give downtown core meaningful representation the gerrymandered or salamanders folks like to call it would be eliminated. Old North and New North and would retain the traditional boundaries, Lakeview Terrace would remain in Ward three University Terrace would end up in Ward six for the residents request admin middle school would remain the word five polling location. So, Ward six polling location. Thank you, Lee. So why specifically eight words. Well, as I said before, eight words maintains a balanced population across the words that preserves our neighborhoods and communities of interest. It addresses a number of concerns voiced by the community. It also provides downtown with a voice also balances the student population evenly across the words. And also balances the on campus and off campus residents and words one and six and that's particularly important we've heard from a lot of feedback from the folks in those parts of town and under the mapping proposal that we're putting forth is kind of our best effort. There could be about 6040 split evenly with about the same number of on campus students with off campus residents as well. And again that target population is about 5600 residents per ward. And again, one of the things we had heard from folks is why go to small words why not go with a different number that has a large award maybe like four words or five words which would be much larger geography and a much larger population. And this short answer is residents, you know, preferred the smaller words they like having a direct relationship with the city counselor. And you know for those folks who are involved in campaigning and certainly a lot of years you're less costly when you're on a tour, and it makes things more personal. It also facilitates meaningful relationships with your counselor and facilitates services, and it provides for diversity of representation. And I think another factor is the fact, you know folks of modest means can be candidates. You know that if you don't have a lot of backing or a lot of financial resources you can still participate in the process. If you've had on the downtoward enough here. This is a kind of a snapshot of what our proposed map would look like. I did want to call out specifically this little corner down here where the Bob and mill is. So this census block here is a huge rectangle that extends from maple all the way down to Lakeview, and that's one big ward and the populations up here so I really want to draw the line kind of right about here to pick up the Bob and mill as part of the, you know the King Maple Street neighborhood there. So any questions as far. So anyways back to this student issue. Again one of the things we wanted to do is we wanted to balance the on campus student population across words that was a concern that was mentioned from a number of folks across the city. So number one, we have about 3400 students 3450 word to would have a 550 3100 word six and downtown would have 300 which would be the Champlain College Eagles nest. This is the breakdown for Ward one, we're going to have, you know, the two campuses here. So pick up the Trinity campus genemats residence hall, where it's six would retain the redstone campus and all the Champlain County housing, and again Ward eight would have the Eagles landing residence so in conclusion, the eight word map works well for a number of reasons that addresses a number of community concerns balances population across multiple words preserves neighborhoods of communities of interest uses natural geographic features as boundaries and a distributor student population across multiple words. So the PowerPoint presentation I'm going to stop the PowerPoint now and pull up a map for anyone who is interested, like to see that. Lee did you have anything you'd like to add here at this point. Well you know I'd like to see a whole map. So we see not only the new downtown district, but where the other maps configure around it. And I'll be pulling that up here just a moment. Apparently having some technical difficulties here. Here we go. The district builder software it's free and open source software for folks who are interested it's available at district builder.org. So if you have an interest in this kind of thing you can dive right in and start drawing your own maps it's not that difficult to learn. Alright so I'm pulling up a map here that we have for us to a quick streams here share here. So this is the map and kind of the 40,000 foot view with eight words. It's really in so zoom in here. Anyone has any questions on this or we'll see as you resume in closer pulling the word five because you're more five. You know if you kind of see the streets and some of the features here so this was the long census block that I mentioned previously so. Chris explain what that black boxes. So the black box and you see is a kind of data elements when you hover over census blocks it'll tell you the name the number of the block along with the population so here we have 206 people which is the Bob and mill development. And it also breaks it down by races you can see there, and also breaks it down by political affiliation, and as we kind of hover over this different blocks will see that the stats kind of change a little bit depending on where we go with this here. So. Yeah. Chris maybe explain the green leg. Hang in down there. So yeah so this is yet. This is the athletic campus from UVM. So this was part of the effort to balance the student population this green leg is Lee had referred to it was historically part of Ward one for 40 years, and is currently part of the ward eight. So we went there to balance the student populations, we had looked at some other configurations, where it was not part of Ward one and ultimately what ended up happening as we had another top heavy ward, which was predominantly students so that was more about the desire to integrate the students into the community and provide them with a greater voice and the city's decision making process. This is Andy Simon, do you have a recommendation in terms of these eight wards of how many city councilors there'd be. Well we did hear a lot of nostalgia for the folks that like to have two counselors per ward. So if you kind of follow that through that would be 16 counselors which you know, speaking in my view, it makes a lot of sense the city population has increased by about 5000 people over the last three, which is just about enough for an eighth ward so I also think that given the workload of the city council, and in the number of important issues coming down the pike eight counselors would be helpful in the sense that it would distribute the workload a little bit more evenly it would empower the city council's committee system to allow a lot of the work to be done there so you know that's kind of our thought we feel that you know was population increases. I think that the expectation should as well just so that everything remains constant. Well that's all I have for everyone so. So, so what's the next step with with redistricting in terms of what's what how will your input, potentially impact the decisions that are being made. The city map has been forwarded on to the city attorney's office, it's Dan Richardson and Megan title from the planning office are going to be working with the city's mapping specialist and they have accepted a number of maps that have been put forth by the community. So we've asked for this one to be included with that. And then it's going to go on as I understand it to the city council will be making some decisions here within the next few weeks with the ultimate goal of putting a proposal on the November ballot. And then if it passed there would be sent out to the legislature for approval as it would be a charter change. I'd like to expand upon that a little bit. There's city council, and there's a board of civil authority. The board of civil authority is made up of the city councilors, plus the mayor. So apparently the way Burlington is going to do this is that the city council is going to look at maps and they're going to propose a plan, and they're going to submit that to the board of civil authority. The board of civil authority can then make changes in it, and they will approve a plan that will go to the voters. And at that point that is the voters in Burlington don't like that plan, they can vote it down. If they vote for that plan, it then goes on to the legislature for approval, because it's part of our city charter. And because it's part of the city charter that's why residents get to vote on it. And there are people saying, Oh, why bother have to do all this every 10 years let's just not put it in the charter so they don't have to change the city charter. Well, if it's not in the city charter residents will not have an opportunity to vote on it. I see Nancy has her hand up. I just wanted to say for transparency, I'm here as the NPA steering committee member, but I am also the city mapping specialist, and I have perceived your maps, but it's helpful to hear you explain them to awesome. Yeah, I think giving context certainly helps you know you see a map and it's like hey we've reached the final destination but without hitting all the you know the bumps on the way it's on the journey it's sometimes hard to understand so I appreciate that as well. I'm glad to meet you. All right, excellent we are getting a little we are about to hit 750 so I believe we are now going on, although I have the wrong agenda in front of me to the school budget information. I can't hear it. I can't hear it. As you can tell I've to very helpful co host. I'm going to go on mute. Thanks so much. Can you hear me. Oh good. All right. Well I love all the kids here tonight. Chris Chris could you stop sharing your screen so we can go back to the. Thanks. I'm Jeff wick. I'm the south district school commissioner and vice chair of the school board. I'm running this year because I'm not up this year as you know it's it's a word year and I'm district here. Anyway, I'm here to talk briefly about the school budget. I guess we've all received our ballots in the mail, which is wonderful. I've already mailed mine in you probably have to. Who knows. But in any event I'll keep it simple. As you may know. It's a fiscal year current school year's budget is approximately $95 million. And the one we're proposing on the ballot increases by about 3% to 98 million. And the increase is not due to any programs we're adding or that sort of thing. I'm sad to say the natural increase in certain types of costs, such as wage growth health insurance and utilities things like that. We do have some federal funding coven related funding. That does allow us to do some new spending on student well being and things like that but that is not part of our budget that's on the ballot. So also, we estimate that based on a couple of factors as you all know the school budget translated to the tax rates is kind of complicated. It's not just kind of complicated it's definitely complicated. It has to do with different variables but the odd thing is, apparently there's a very large surplus this year that was unexpected in the state's education fund to the tune of about $90 million. And unless the governor and the legislature together decide to use some or all of that 90 million for other purposes, some of which they may we don't know we might not know until March, or maybe later I'm not quite sure. In any event, if they don't use it for other purposes. Our finance department estimates that the tax bills, the school portion of the tax bills the school rate, education rate will actually decrease anywhere from 6 to 8%. Wonderful news, but I'm not going to count my chickens yet until we find out whether the legislature and the governor are going to keep that money in the Ed fund or whether they're going to decide to put it elsewhere. So, not not bad news on the school tax rate front as of the moment. So good news is we in the Burlington School District are running our seventh consecutive year of a budget surplus. And so, we're actually proposing or our proposed budget. It further limits the impact on taxpayers by applying $2.1 million of our previous year surplus towards this new budget. This does for better or worse I think better. This does include 600,000 of that $2.1 million surplus to support some improvements to the downtown Burlington High School that are needed to make it a better learning environment that it is maybe some sound control, and that sort of thing. So I think that's a good thing as well. What else is important to say here. So I think those are the high points so if anyone has any questions about the budget. I'm happy to do my best to answer those questions. Thank you. I had a question about like something I've been hearing about that's in the legislature that's like changing the people waiting. That's up for debate right now and I was wondering if you could talk to that about like how it's going to impact Burlington and how you see it. Right, so I am not an expert on it and I might guess with this group here some people know more than I do about that, but I'll tell you what I know and then others could certainly chime in. As you all probably know there was some study done at UVM in conjunction with some other expert in the field. And they determined that the current student waiting, you know how not every student is weighted like a one if you will. Some students, I think that has to do with poverty and things like that get more heavily weighted to like a 1.2. And that translates to something called the equalized pupil count, which incidentally I did want to mention this. There is one little trend that's a little concerning to me that our equalized pupil count in Burlington went down this year, maybe just under 5%. And, you know that that that means we don't have as many students effectively as we did last year of the year before so it's interesting demographically, you know whether that's going to level out and go up again we never know but anyway back to the student thing. This UVM study decided that the weights, we don't give enough weight to those who need extra services, and therefore it's really not fair, or equitable the current, the weights what are the weight the weights then tie into the budget formula at the level. They count our weighted pupils they count every district's weighted pupils, and then they crunch that into the formula, and then they send us the money. And really what they're saying is, what this study is saying that we should be. We as a state should be weighting certain categories of people with a higher weight than 1.2 I think it's like 1.4 or something like that. And if that were the case, that would send more money to districts like Burlington, and when new ski, who, you know there's one metric in school district parlance called free and reduced lunch, and that's sort of a, you know that's sort of a proxy for poverty. And I think Burlington School District has 50% free and reduced lunch, you know we in Winooski have some of the most highest free and reduced lunch counts so anyway, so there was this push to switch and the legislature's taken it up I think that last year they put together the law that said okay, this has got to be studied by some group of legislators and then the group comes back and makes the recommendation and as you probably know I'm actually not exactly sure where that is but they didn't really that group did not accept the UVM study, and they instead kind of did something else that we're not sure what they're doing yet so I don't think that I think that's still an open question. As to what they're going to do, but it didn't seem like they were going with the study approach which really would have benefited Burlington substantially, as far as I understand it in terms of more money into the schools. Okay, got it. So it sounds like it's not going to affect, you know, it might take some time to actually implement it. I think it's a work in process. There's Lucia. Hi. Nice to see you Jeff. Good to see you. Good luck with your campaign. Thank you. I didn't see anyone else on the ballot. I think that's a good thing for me. Maybe not for civil discourse but for me. Any other questions related to the budget or schools in general I'd be happy to try to answer them right there. Okay, so when we're off mute. Thank you so much Jeff. Really appreciate that. Winnie wants to introduce the next person who's going to come on this is my daughter who wants to introduce the next person who's coming on so Winnie. Can you say we're having the Great Streets Main Street concept design presentation. Wow. From Olivia, Olivia is going to tell us about it. Can you say hi to Olivia. All right, great. Now I'm going to go try to put this one to bed but thank you so much for for being here Olivia I'm really looking forward to hearing it. Thank you. My colleague Laura Wheelock, who's a big manage the project so give me a moment while I share my screen, have a million tabs open either. Okay, so great. Thank you everybody for having us tonight or really grateful for the opportunity to come and talk to word five about the mean street revitalization project. This project falls under the Great Streets initiative which many of you are likely familiar with the same initiative that I brought you St. Paul Street and City Hall Park so we'll be talking a little bit about the Great Streets framework. Through this meeting, as well as how mean street fits within that framework and kind of compliments the other Great Streets projects. So, we'll start with a welcome and some introductions, provide a little bit of background on the project, as well as context, talk a little bit about the approach that our project team is taking. How this project fits into this description of a functional street a community led street and a beautiful and unique street, and then we'll open it up for some questions and discussion. So let's meet the project team I am Olivia Dries I'm an engineer with the Department of Public Works, and I'm co managing this project with senior public works engineer Laura Wheelock. This project is a highly collaborative effort, among many other city apartments, water resources is deeply involved as there are several underground utility components to this project. So REIB church tree marketplace are all helping a lot with the public in the business outreach components of the project. And of course collaboration with Parks Recreation Waterfront, as well as Burlington City Arts some kind of the aesthetic components of the project as well. We procured a consultant to help guide us through this project. The HB is a multidisciplinary engineering and environmental consulting firm they have offices all up and down the East Coast, but they do have a location right nearby here in south Burlington. So we're kind of tackling the functional engineering components of the design, collecting the survey doing the soil sampling, all that technical stuff. They have teamed up with agency design and landscaping. So we have another consulting firm out of Cambridge, Massachusetts, I believe, who's kind of serving for the survey of the landscape architect on the project so kind of taking those functional components and really, you know, beautifying the beautifying the street. Landscaping items and whatnot. And they're also helping with some of the public outreach component as well. And then they've also teamed up with Brayscale Collaborative who is helping with that outreach component as well. So we held a neighborhood meeting on February 1, in which we introduced the project to the public. And during that meeting we held live questions through Zoom. So we're not holding a live poll tonight. But there will be a survey monkey on the website and I'll provide the website link later on the presentation but on the website we do encourage you to visit and to provide some feedback into that survey that will be there. I have a couple of questions that will be included. What is your relationship to Main Street? Do you live on Main Street? Do you work on Main Street? Do you visit and shop on Main Street? Maybe it's all of the above. And how familiar are you with the Great Streets project and the projects and the overall initiative? Were you involved in the engagement processes on City Hall Park and St. Paul Street? Were you not involved? But maybe you'd like to be involved in this one and we'll tell you how you can do that. So really just trying to get a feel of what everybody's connection to Main Street is and their history with other Great Streets efforts. So project background. So the Great Streets initiative was launched in 2016. City Hall Park, St. Paul Street, Main Street was initially launched in 2016 as well. As well as the development of the downtown street standards. So the street standards were ultimately adopted in April of 2018. And these standards really provide a framework and give guidance on what a Great Street should look like. So it provides guidance on what the street configuration and the intersection composition look like. Everything from sidewalks and bike lanes to maybe how we design and activate intersections. And making again, making really activating those intersections, providing places for people to sit and gather bikeways. Most of you likely know that there are no dedicated bike lane facilities on Main Street. Now this project aims to change that street ecology, rain gardens, street trees. And all of those things that kind of help beautify the street but also serve a function like infiltrating stormwater and keeping pollutants out of Lake Champlain. And then all the kind of functional components, the lighting, the materials, the furnishings, everything from benches to crosscans to bike racks. The Great Street standards also look to really provide a palette of these materials so that we can provide a unified feel among all of our Great Streets projects and kind of ensure that they complement each other but not necessarily a uniform feel that makes everything feel the same. Get into a little bit of that as well. So again, the Great Streets initiative, Food City Hall Park, Main Street, St. Paul Street. So of course City Hall Park and St. Paul Street are complete. Main Street is really looking to provide a strong connection between all of these projects between the downtown core and the waterfront as well as the street heading up to UVM over here. So this project will span between Battery Street and South Union Street. So that's six blocks total, that's seven intersections, six of which are signalized. So pretty big effort and we'll get a little bit into like how we focus on these individual blocks a little bit as well. Project approach. So as mentioned, the Great Streets initiative and Main Street is originally launched in 2016. So in 2016, there was a kind of a basic concept developed and you're looking at it. It's important to note that this is not the final concept. That is still very much in the process of getting designed but this really provides an idea on, you know, how we incorporate those components of the Great Streets design standards. Again, obviously two-way traffic parking on either side of the roadway, rain gardens, dedicated bicycle facilities on either side of the road, tree belts with pervious pavers to help infiltrate stormwater street trees, and soil cells underneath underground to help optimize and promote tree growth and health. If you've been to the St. Paul Street lately, you've probably noticed that the trees there are doing really well, they're thriving. Those use that same soil cell technology. So we are obviously looking to include that on this project as well, as well as wider sidewalks on either side of the street to really ensure that we can serve users of all ages, needs and inabilities. And also pictured here you see those activated intersections, which provide seating, trash cans, things that really just enable people to gather, maybe eat their lunch, wait for a friend, watch the sunset. So kind of making the intersections like activating them to make them more of a destination rather than just like a place that people pass through. And again, this should help kind of support many of those businesses on each block as well. So our consultant has kind of divided the project approach into three main components. We kind of touched on these already, but first you have the functional components, really those engineering type of components, the unique and beautiful aesthetic components and the community led components and we'll dig into each of these little bits. So what makes the street functional. Again, providing facilities and really rebalancing the right of way to serve everybody who uses this street so pedestrians, cyclists, transit riders, vehicle drivers, business and property owners. So we're establishing safe connections, strong crosswalks to serve cyclists and pedestrians and make sure that people can get from A to B safely. And providing sustainable transit options and again really activating these areas for people to wait and promote the use of public transportation, stormwater management, you know, not only upgrades of the existing infrastructure but also how to be really at rain gardens and pervious surfaces to help infiltrate that stormwater and kind of take the burden off from our stormwater system and keep pollutants out of the lake, creating place making. So we talked about a little bit at the intersections, really providing a place for people to gather. Supporting local businesses, purposes, maybe incorporating some flexible spaces along the curb to, you know, maybe some parklets or some outdoor seating to really support those local businesses and again providing amenities that are accessible to people of all ages and abilities. So this is kind of a visual breakdown of those three components as well. So the functional components that we talked about. This is a top to bottom project so been talking a lot about the stuff on the surface but we also have a huge amount of work, we're looking at the underground so that is upgrade of all the underground infrastructure some real utility relocations. The existing water line, the water line existing on a state is the original water lines was about 130 years old so this is a great opportunity to get in there and do some work, make that the most cost and time efficient in the most cost efficient way possible. stormwater management, street lighting again all those things that makes that make the street function. And then you have the other components which we'll get into a little bit here the unique and beautiful components. And then the furnishings. How do we support the beautiful, you know, original architecture along named straight street trees, creative signage, accessible attractive paths for for for everybody to use and then the community led components and this is really like some of the aspects that we're really taking a lot of feedback on how to make the street feel comfortable for for all users. You know, everybody have different abilities. How do we kind of support the the storefronts to make them more vibrant attractive and and yeah how do we kind of just support everybody who's who will be looking to use these facilities. So the unique and beautiful component so we are recognizing that Main Street can almost be divided into a few different sections so you have the waterfront gateway kind of have this middle transition period between that gateway as well as the market and then the hillside gateway. We recognize that each of these different sections kind of has like a little bit something different to offer just based on. Not only their locations their proximity to the lake or the marketplace but also like their, like the topography so for example this middle core right here is the flat section so we can really get creative in here. So how do we compliment, you know, perhaps the perhaps the Flynn and the city hall park and then marketplace and make that maybe a more cohesive area that's, you know, we can host some street performances on or something like that so a really good opportunity to get creative in here. And kind of, you know, use that same type of thinking on each of these different sections. So the community led component. So just to give you an idea of where we're at right now we're in what we're considering phase a of the engagement schedule so we are currently attending. Where we do the, all of the NPA meetings to try to get the word out about the project, different commissions and committees had our held our community meeting. We're also hosting some focus groups for those more smaller like tight knit communities so if you haven't really heard anything, you know about the project yet. And that's not unusual. This is really just, we're really just launching this engagement process and trying to get the word out and either will be many, many more opportunities to engage over the next several months so phase B will include that a more final concept design that will be bringing to a second community meeting to present and eventually more leadership meetings to kind of that for approval. So City Council will need to approve the, the, the final concept design before we can move forward into preliminary and final stages of designs and we'll still be again holding informational meetings throughout this period. And then we'll be doing focus group conversations and such and then phase C will be kind of moving into the construction phase and will will stay actively engaged with the public throughout this phase as well it's very important because a lot of folks, especially businesses will like what they can expect as we approach construction and throughout construction how people be kept in the loop. We're really and we're, we're also starting to collect that that feedback now but that will be really phase C of the engagement process. So focus groups as I mentioned we recognize that are kind of some traditional engagement strategies don't always attract some of the folks from these groups as easily so we're really making an effort to make some targeted focus groups. We've already held a couple of these, but we're really focusing on the youth groups, BIPOC groups, seniors and differently abled immigrants and refugees, businesses and nonprofits so those have been going really well and having some really good conversations with these kind of smaller, more like tight knit communities. If you or anyone, you know would like to participate in any of these focus groups. Please join us I will provide my email and a couple slides and reach out to me if you or anyone you know have any any of these groups. And again just another example of some full questions that will be available on the website to answer we just open in and questions to you, you know what is Main Street to you today and tomorrow what do you want Main Street become we love some of the answers that come out of these questions so. So next steps, kind of a rough project schedule, but refinement of the concepts. Now through may may we hope to get to the city council to that and obtain approval on the concept design and permitting may through summer of 2023 anticipate construction beginning and fall of 2023. I think to last a minimum of two years does depend on whether or not the ravine sewers incorporated into this overall project as well to be could be longer with at least two years and then public and stakeholder engagement you can expect throughout all of these phases so again every step of the way that development of the design concept kind of refinement of the concept as well as it can pre construction and active construction. We're going to be keeping everybody updated and involved. So if you'd like to find out more. There's a website great streets btv.com. You can find a list of future engagement opportunities. You can also also find if you've missed the neighborhood meeting on the first and you'd like to look at that there is a recording from that meeting up and can expect to see many more materials over the next several months on that website. So what makes you most excited about Main Street and what are you most concerned about the redesign with Main Street we want to like to hear that from you now and over the course of the next several months. Again, my name is Olivia here's my email address you can feel free to answer. Contact me with any questions as well after this meeting so. I'm going to leave that up for a second Olivia. Since you guys have touched so much on the ballot question items and things like that tonight. Great streets does have a question on the ballot. Item number four, it relates specifically to the funding that the city is proposing to use to work on this project of this concept. So voting for the concept, it is just voting for the funding to allow the city to continue to develop the concept, along with the community provides for engagement and feedback. And then there are frequently asked questions posted on that election page both about the tip funding, and actually a few, a little bit more also about the project and the concept and what it, it has for its states approval for what it can include. So we'll stop sharing so we can all see each other. We'll open it up for questions. Olivia I have a question this is Andy Simon. In the St. Paul project. I had sort of as a model of a great streets project. One of the things was that really, we came out of it, all that work and really do not have a bike way on that, on that street. And that seemed like a real oversight in terms of, you know, being able to get up up that block without running over pedestrians on the walk on the sidewalk or fighting with cars on on the street. And I don't, I really would like to understand more about how that happened and why. I think that all that work led to know bike way the other thing is that the other question I have I guess based on St. Paul is that St. Paul was closed down for a long time. Is Main Street going to be closed down for a long time you said two years plus. How much of that with the street actually be just completely closed. Thanks. I'll tackle the second question first I'm going to give the first question to Laura because she was really involved in that St. Paul Street process but yes so two years. It's really the minimum amount of time we foresee mainstream being under construction is important to know not all six blocks are going to be under construction is at once. It will be phased one to two blocks at a time, be working with businesses to maintain pedestrian access businesses will be able to remain open, and will be ensuring that, for the most part, vehicular access will be maintained. So if the city tours need to be used. Those will be communicated well ahead of time. So it's, it's not going to be two years of mainstream just being shut down completely as can be kind of constructed in pieces. So and of course that that phasing will be much more well communicated when we get closer to that point. I'm taking feedback on what the construction can look like. The city had made a decision with St. Paul Street to really go and rip the bandaid off. Really large bandaid off, and you know that's one of the conversations that we're having, and do hope to continue to have as we, you know once we figure out what that concept does look like. Our consultants can help us figure out how involved that is to construct in the space that we have. So the bicycle facility question on St. Paul Street. The bike walk master plan that was adopted in 2017 called for shared facilities with vehicles for bicycles and that's what was constructed because that ultimately is an adopted document within the Great Street standards. Does that mean that there would not be dedicated bike lanes on Main Street. That means that there would be dedicated separated bike lanes on Main Street, which is what's the adopted and called for facility for Main Street. So it really would serve as a as the strong East West bicycle connection within our downtown. We lost our moderator so maybe the next question on mute. Thanks. Sorry. So I missed the meeting I had another meeting that night, which could not be rescheduled so I just had a few comments about, I don't know if you have concepts yet, or if they're available I haven't actually gone and explored on the website. It's kind of on my long list of things to do. But, you know, my big priority is, is just getting all the grading right for ADA, because it's a slope and there's a lot of cross streets and just paying a lot of attention to those cross streets and the cross slopes. I don't, you know, I'm really happy that a lot of sidewalks are being rebuilt in Burlington but I, and I know that sometimes it's on the construction documents but it does not make it to the construction site in tact and just ensuring that this project that that does happen as especially as you go around corners and it's icy or rainy or, you know, people who have mobility issues I'm not there yet, but if I do plan to agent place like I would be, or hopefully not for other reasons. But then, and then my other comment is just on St. Paul which I think is just a beautiful, gorgeous, just really attractive and lush street and I always choose to walk on it. But when I walk on it in like the pouring rain, which we do get a lot. You know, in the summertime, and sometimes in the fall and sometimes in the spring, I think it would be wonderful if the project team stormwater folks spent a lot of time on that street in the rain in the pouring rain and just looking at it because I think the way the water is channeled and the way the barriers are set up on the street the water is directed. They, I feel like there's missed opportunities and also pedestrians end up in more water than they necessarily have to be. So, if they could spend some time looking at that as a case study that would be wonderful. Thanks. Yeah, really helpful feedback actually about the stormwater because there's, there's a lot that we are excited for for what St. Paul Street is able to accomplish. I hadn't heard about kind of the standing water, there are a few places I do know private water runs across the sidewalk and that's that's an active conversation. But really kind of helpful to have that observation. And the mobility on the corner, we are and have asked our consultants to go a reasonable distance through every intersection. So we do hope to mitigate that concern, but I do know we're also out of our time and I see counselor Shannon has undone her camera so we're happy to take questions by email. And then a few of our other forums. I had a question. Oh, I had a constituent ask what was included in the streetscape. And I believe that that was really everything that you see above ground is that I want to make sure I answered his question correctly. Does that include the curbing the green belts, the furniture, the, just everything you see above ground like where the parking is where the bike lanes are that's all streetscape right. Essentially, yeah main street really hasn't been touched in the collective memory of anybody within the city for a substantial project and so really it's every surface every condition every amenity that we receive feedback on and we've used because it says like it said streetscape and then it said utilities it said lighting and so some of the things listed listed after streetscape would be part of the streetscape. So, you're just being inclusive both. It's really everything, kind of like St. Paul Street was. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, thanks. I think having lost our moderator. I think we should go on to the last section but thank you very much, Laura and Olivia. And just encourage everybody to direct questions to them directly about the main street project. We do like to tell people that you know main street is everybody's street you know it's not just the people who live immediately next to it this is Burlington's community street and we do want to make sure we hear from everybody, and they feel that they can be heard. Thank you. Thank you for having us. Joan. Thank you for, thank you for coming and for being willing to talk about these other two ballot items I think we had, you know we had originally a long presentation by REIB and they dropped out of this month and it seemed like a great opportunity to be able to talk to someone about the ballot items, the sort of big ticket ballot items that are that are coming up so you're on. Well thank you for the invitation. I apologize I would have, I like to be here for the whole NPA but I had another Zoom meeting before this so I'm sorry I wasn't here for the rest of the meeting. So you, you just want me to present on the general fund tax increase in the capital bond then correct? That would be great. Yeah. So the general fund tax increase has a lot to do it has a lot to do with COVID revenue shortfalls as well as increased expenses expenses due to a lot of inflation, the same pressures on the workforce that affect all of the private sector where we have seen various businesses shorten their hours because they can't get staff. All of that is of course affecting the city as well and the city is far less nimble than the private sector at adjusting their pay scales and doing all the things that they need to do to attract applicants for the jobs that we have. So, in addition to that there are also colas that are going, the colas are going up faster than that they have in the past because of inflation for all of our all of our city staff. So, the biggest part of the general fund tax increase is for wages and benefits. I thought it might be helpful. I'm sorry that the screen sharing was going to be too complex but I did print out. And you have to tell me which way it goes. Is that right side up. That that is right side up. Excellent. Sorry. You can see where all of our expenditures are here with the with the largest one the get my version here to the subsets. I'm trying to find my version. I can I can read it to you Joan if you'd like. That's okay I know roughly. $5 million for wages and benefits the. Sorry, 1.1.2 five for the REIB staff that was originally funded through COVID funds, but that needs to be reworked into the general fund, as it's an ongoing initiative of the city. And I would just add that we have a lot of open positions in the city. And I would encourage any if you know anybody looking for a job to go to our HR site. Look at our job listings. There are many openings. I know we have a lot of people coming from Afghanistan I've been encouraging people to look there to see if they might have. You know there might be some opportunities with the city there. We have a great benefits package. We have to pay people a fair wage in order to hire people, as well as for all of the reasons of basic human needs. And we are increasing we are making sure that the livable wage is applying now to all workers where it. It hasn't always applied to all workers we're extending that to all workers. So there's a lot of benefits for the workers of the city. But also a lot of benefits to the citizens of the city because obviously we need those workers to provide all of the services that we all enjoy and these are very basic services like they fix the pipes when they freeze in the streets we need people to plow our streets. The residents of Burlington I do think, you know, if we talk about cutting anything, the residents of Burlington don't want us to cut any services. I think that we have, we have done a pretty good job managing our finances, and there's broad agreement on the council for this, regarding this need for general fund increase the do you want to stop on that one or should I go to the next one and take questions. I think that we should see if there are any questions on this one, actually. And he or anybody have questions about this first, first item. If you do, please raise your hand or just unmute and ask your question. I guess not. One thing I will add there that now that I took the paper down I can read it, kind of an interesting thing it's not a big ticket item in there but $150,000 to start paying people for their time, who are volunteering on this city councilors do receive a $5,000 stipend for the work that we do. And so there is going to be a fund so that we can also offer something to people who serve on boards and commissions. I have, honestly, I have some issues with that I think we should be paying our school board members before we pay anybody else when you look at the hours volunteered by various people. The number of hours put in by the school board is tremendous. And I know that they never feel like they can ask the taxpayers for the, for the money because they want that to go to the kids. And there's firewalls you know the city council doesn't control that that would be an issue for the school board but I just want to call that out that our school board members, unlike the city council. They do that job for nothing. And we owe them a huge debt and we are so lucky to have the school board, you know, to really have some great people on our school board doing a wonderful job. So going on to the next one is the capital bond, which it came up, you know, you voted on this in December, it did receive a majority vote citywide as well as in Ward five. But it didn't receive the two thirds necessary to pass a capital bond needs a two thirds vote in order to pass. I did not support the capital bond in December. I didn't like that we were voting on these bonds in December I you know that to me says this is some kind of an emergency to put it on a ballot that's not our regular town meeting ballot, which it was not. And I didn't think that the funds were well enough to find we were expecting federal money we didn't really know. You know, we would know a lot more by March than we did in December about what we're getting for federal money. So we do know more now, we don't know everything. The ask has been tightened up a lot one of the things was the $10 million for Memorial that was on the previous. The previous question that's been pulled back to I think $1 million for Memorial that you know the $10 million we didn't really know what they were going to do with that $10 million. I mean, certainly there's well more than $10 million of work needed on Memorial so. But it just, it wasn't defined in this, the major changes in this current bond. There's more money in the local match for grants category so previously there was 3.5 million in that bucket. There's now 4 million in that bucket, which is great because that is probably the most essential money in here, because it's going to leverage those federal funds. So spending that money saves us a ton of money. There's $2.2 million for fire trucks which is the same amount as was voted on in December. Fire and police emergency radio system they found another way to pay for some of that. So that went from 4.3 million to 4 million. Sidewalks is the same at 2.7 million streets and bridges they were they did identify some other funds for bridge repair so this is the biggest reduction is the streets and bridges went from 3.9 million to $2 million. So it's almost a $2 million cut there almost cut in half. Transportation and safety improvements went from 2.5 million to 1.5 million. So that's that includes traffic calming, bike pedestrian projects. Just some street upgrades. And there's also some of that can come from from federal funding some of the money that has been cut there the hope is that that's going to be made up with the federal funding. So that is, I think the summary of the capital projects bond, there is of course a cost to defer maintenance. So in voting no on this, are we really going to save ourselves money or are we just kicking the can down the road. I am supportive of this bond and very happy with the work that the administration did to get it down to something that's more accurate and more reasonable in my view. That can take questions if anybody has any. Oh, they might want to know what the tax increase is going to be it's a, and I will say on the general fund increase. The amount of the tax increase for that is really offset by the tax decrease in the school, the one we vote on the school budget. The surplus in the Ed fund, even though the budget is increasing the taxes will go down with what's being requested by our schools, and the, if you add the general fund increase to that. We still have an overall tax decrease. The capital bond is added on top of that. And that's estimated to be between on a property valued at $379,000 which is median priced house in Burlington. It's less than medium priced house in word five, but that is between $35 and $88 so it starts FY 23 is $35 and then annually, and then in FY 25 it goes up to 88, and then it starts coming coming down from there. Joan one of the concerns that you expressed back in December was that we should prioritize the high school construction. I remember in your, your message you, you felt like that needed to be prior to prioritized over the, the funds that were being asked for how, how is your, what's your feeling about that and do you feel like a capital fund should be passed this time. Besides the reason that you. That's a great question. Well, I felt I thought that we might have more information by March. So I didn't like that we were having this special vote in December, seeming to rush that ahead of the high school. So we've waited until March, we can't keep waiting, basically, I would say, we need to at least do do basic maintenance, we need to do some things. I'm still nervous about the high school bond. I think that that's going to put a lot of pressure on people, but this being reduced from 40 million to 23 million gets me to a point where I'm willing to say yes. It's not that the, the concern isn't still there I guess it's just how it plays out on the scales. Are there other other questions from people who are here about either the general fund increase or the, or the capital bond. And, Joan, I guess I just have one more question about the capital bond. You mentioned deferred maintenance as, you know, one of the sort of consequences of not passing this bond if it doesn't get it needs to third as well right. It needs a two third vote. If it doesn't get past. What other consequences do you see for the city. One of, if it doesn't get passed, for example, you've got the $4 million of matching funds that's bringing in so much of that federal money. That would be a huge loss to us. Those projects include the rail yard enterprise project. University place. There's matching funds for bridges at North Beach Rock Point and Queen City Park. So there's a lot of important projects that that need those matching funds specifically. We also have a need to replace fire trucks on a regular cycle. So that would be lost. Upgrading our communication systems those those are the kinds of things that, you know, we would be foregoing until we figure out something else but to me the biggest loss would be the matching funds category where really we have to pay a small percentage of a project cost to get the grants to pay the bulk of the project. Great. Thank you. Other questions. So these are on your ballot for town meeting day you have your ballots. And we talked earlier before you came Joan about the various ways that people can vote. Just to reiterate, you, we do have a mail in possibility but the recommendation is that you get it in the mail by this Saturday, February 19. And after that that you take it to drop boxes or bring it to the schools on March 1. Yes, the city clerk's office has had some shortened hours they have people out on medical leave and they're short stopped. So you want to check and make sure they're open I know some days they've only been open like 130 to 430, which is a difficult situation in the clerk's office it's, but nothing anybody can really do about that. So there is a drop box at City Hall right. There is a drop box at City Hall if you needed to register to vote or get a ballot. Oh, okay. Then you had a question. I'll briefly say thanks Joan for the presentation that the parks commissions last meeting they unanimously adopted a resolution recommending that voters vote in favor of the capital bond Joan touched on a number of important items in there but there's some pretty vital pieces in the capital bond for for parks as well. Like resurfacing paths that are necessary to maintain accessibility in our playgrounds. We could dredge our harbor, it's not a flashy item but it's been a long time since we've dredged our harbor the spirit of Ethan Allen fairy is already hitting a silty bottom as it comes in and out of harbor. If we don't dredge the harbor then we could lose a lot of marine traffic and visitors who bring a lot of revenue to the city and renting slips in the harbor every summer. And then there's a drop box as well right along the waterfront is really at risk of failing and there's some important money in the capital bond to begin a feasibility study to ensure that we maintain that building. And it doesn't meet a fate, similar to what we have now a moral auditorium which is an empty building that no one can use and go into it would be really unfortunate if the same fate happened to our population unanimously recommended the folks vote in favor of the capital bond and I'd relay that to this group here. It's a it's a great point then and you know I know a lot of people are not happy with what's happened to Memorial but part of like a main reason that Memorial is no longer functioning is because bonds didn't pass in the past, that didn't have addressed deferred maintenance in the 90s. So the problem with Memorial is a very long standing problem and the results of not passing a bond like this. There's one other thing Andy that you didn't ask me to present on but I wondered if it had been covered and that is question five about the charter change to regulate sex workers. Actually, David Bickenberg came to present at public forum about that in favor of ballot item five and took a few questions that came up from that so I think, I think we've covered that. So I'm assuming you were in favor of that that item. Yeah, I was but I will say it was quite controversial at the city council like people came from all over New England, people actually came from Massachusetts to a city council meeting that was on zoom. I'm more so concerned about this issue. There's a lot of concern about trend towards legalizing prostitution and that this is a first step towards legalizing prostitution. And I will say that for some people in favor of this. That's true. That's ultimately where they would like to go for myself. That's not where I want to go, but I can't. I would use that to justify keeping really awful arcane language in our charter that's not useful to anybody. It, you know, this is not used to to prevent sex trafficking. It's, it's just not needed. I do agree. But just wanted to add that flavor of what we heard from a lot of people who are working with victims of sex trafficking that they did bring forward a lot of concerns. Thank you. David, David when he spoke about it did point out and answer questions about the sex trafficking aspect of it and he made it clear that taking this language out of the city charter does not legalize prostitution and that prostitution is prohibited by state law and that that would, you know, legalizing prostitution. Ultimately, he acknowledged that there were people that wanted to legalize prostitution but that that would be a state decision and not a city decision. Is that your understanding. That is, that is my understanding, we could of course have a charter change that legalizes prostitution. But that is not what this is. I'm just bringing that up. Are there any other questions before we close. Joan, thank you so much for coming in, talking about the ballot items, and anybody who missed part of this meeting. For various reasons, it will be the recording of the meeting will be up on Channel 17 CCTV, and can be reviewed that way. Thank you very much everyone for coming tonight. Our next meeting is the third Thursday in March, which I think is March 21. And, and I hope to see you all there. Thank you very much. Thank you. Bye everyone.