 My name is Richard Shear, and this is the Montpelier City Forum, where we're discussing Town Meeting Day and the elections on Town Meeting Day. And today, we're in District 1, and we're in District 1 with Neuma Haas. Neuma, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. It's nice to be here again. Again, you were here before. Well, I had filmed and edited some shots of some plays before, but it's been a few years. You're running for City Council. This is your first time running for City Council. It's my first time running for anything, except maybe jogging. Which isn't, which is running at slow mo. What caused you to run? Good question. I mean, City Council is, most people think, oh, you show up every so often on Wednesday nights, you know, you sit and ask you questions during one of those long marathon meetings, and you make 2,000 at the end of the year. And the reality is, anyone who's an incumbent running again will tell you is it's a lot, it's a lot different. It's a lot more time consuming. What was that decision like for you to run? Well, I'm still not quite sure. It's my first time in more than 30 years I've lived in Montpelier. I've never run for public office for anything, never even thought about it. Well, maybe I have thought about it, but it didn't go very much further than just thinking. And this time I just decided I would like to do something to help the city, to give back to the city in some way. I think it would, I think it's time. Is Montpelier a city or a town? Both. How so? I came here... When year did you come here? 1987. And well, the first time I fell in love with Vermont was back when I had lived in New York City and I came to Vermont and it was summer. And I thought, oh, it's so beautiful and green and I love the mountains. I was staying at a community out in the Green Mountains and I thought it was so wonderful. But I went back to New York City. And then the second time I came was in the fall. And I thought it was even more beautiful with the colors and it was just so nice. And then the third time I came was the winter. And that's when I really fell in love with Vermont. I went out into the woods and seeing the snow and everything being so quiet. It was just wonderful. So things might have been different if you'd come during mud season. I did not come during mud season. When you came 30 years ago in 1987, what was Montpelier like? What was the Montpelier like then compared to the Montpelier that's 31 years later? Well, it's not that different. I mean... Except for we had an extra thousand people around. And storefronts have changed and things look different. But the buildings are still there. I think Montpelier has gotten better over the years. How so? Compared to the people, I think there's more consciousness of things. What does consciousness of things mean to you? Well one thing I see people helping each other a lot. The fact that there's a meal, a free meal every day, Monday through Friday at least, at a different church. In fact, right now I usually help with the one, I volunteer the one on Monday. That's the Unitarian Church. Yeah, at the Unitarian Church. So right after here I'm going back to eat and then help clean up and take the compost to Vermont, compost or somewhere. Was it a community of concern back in 1987 or how was the social fabric different? Well I don't know, it seems just, I'm not sure. It's hard sometimes to remember quite what it was. But I think it's gotten better over the years. More progressive, more conscious of things. And what I like about Montpelier is there's a real sense of community. People know each other. You walk down the streets downtown and you always know people, which you see. It's more of a community spirit and that's what I really like about Montpelier. It's small enough to still be, have this town atmosphere. But it's large enough to be considered a small city. And because it's a state capital, it has all of these services that we need. So it's really nice to be able to walk around town and do everything without driving. When I moved here I had thought, well should I do this? But I came and I just fell in love with Montpelier. Said this is a town like, it's just a wonderful place. And then when I bought a house, I really liked the rivers. The rivers were part of it. And I saw this house resale on Elm Street on the North Branch River. And I always wanted to live on a river. So that's what I did. And it's the only place I've lived in Montpelier. Now in Montpelier, the City Council goes off on retreat. If you're elected in District 1, you will go off on a retreat in March where Council will set its goals and objectives for the next year. And Bill will be there with a whiteboard and the City Councilors will say, I would like to see this brought up as a principal goal this year. I'd like to see this addressed. And the whiteboard will then be translated into a document that goes back to Council that sets the blueprint for what the year will look like. What are one or two items that you would see inserting on that blackboard for the document? What are one or two items that you see really need to be addressed that you would like to champion? Well, I haven't thought about it that much. One of my impressions of City Council is that there's not much time in the Council meetings for people to really discuss anything. And that's the part that's open to the public and televised that everyone knows about. But it goes by very quickly. And I wonder, do the Councilors really have that much input from the people of Montpelier, especially their district, on what people want, except for people who email them or call them or something? Do they really know much about that? Well, that's the campaign is basically, that's why we have districts in the first place, so that people can get out, talk to their neighbors and develop themes that the neighbors care about. Are there things in District 1 that people have been telling you are concerns to them? Not that much. The dog, people have talked to me about dogs. Okay, and what do they say to you about dogs? That was a big issue in the last year. And it's a continuing big issue because the Park Commission has yet to come to a conclusion as to how best dog owners and non-dog owners relate to each other in the parks. What are you hearing on that issue? Well, I go to Hubbard Park every single day, at least once, often twice, with my dog, who, like the other dogs, runs off leash and runs around and generally there's not a problem. In fact, I don't think I've ever even seen, and all the people I have talked to say the same thing. So we've never really encountered any real problem of dogs being off leash in the park. I see on Front porch forum that some people, somebody will write in about some situation that happened. And then everyone else writes in. But I personally have never seen a problem and all of the people I know are there every day never see a problem. We're all conscious about our dogs and if we see somebody that we think might not want to interact, we call our dog over and put the dog on the leash. What do you do about the one owner that you don't know or the two owners or three owners that you don't know whose dogs are not under good voice control as yours is? A person should have the right to walk through a public park on molested? Well, of course. The park belongs to everyone. I feel that we should all use the park. But most of the people I meet in the park, almost all the time when I go to the park, I even started actually last year doing this kind of informal survey of my own, of counting the number of people, not the park employees, but counting the number of people I met in the park. And were they with a dog or were they not with a dog? And very often, every single person I would meet would be with a dog. Is that self-selecting though, Numa? If you're scared of dogs, do you just stay away from the park because you know that that's an area where there's many dogs on leash? Are those people underrepresented out of fear? That's a very good question. And last year after that item was on the ballot about should dogs be required to be on leash in Hubbard Park? So I just started talking to people I knew, not the dog people obviously, and I met in Hubbard Park, but other people I would meet in town, people that I didn't even know that well, just to see, to get some kind of feeling about what other people thought. And a lot of the people that I met voted no because they didn't see any reason. They said, well, that's fine. I've never had a problem with a dog. Some people said they voted yes. So I asked them, why? And we're not talking about many people here. We're just talking about a handful of people that I happened to talk to. And their answers were invariably something like, well, I just would think I'm not that scared of dogs. But if I'm in the park, I would just not particularly like a dog to come running up at me or barking at me and it might scare me. So I voted yes. And so I asked them all, well, how often do you go to the park? And in every single case of the people I asked, the answer was something like, well, let's see. I haven't been at all this year, but I think last year I went once. I said, oh, you don't go often. Is that because you're afraid of the dogs? And they all said, oh, no, that's not the reason I don't go. It just doesn't fit into my life first. What about the leash law, the new leash law on streets? Because the new leash law doesn't deal with the park. That turns it over to the park commission to decide. But dogs have to be on lead when they're walking the streets. What's your feeling on that? Well, I think that generally most of the dogs that I see when I'm walking downtown, just, and I come down here all the time walking my dog and he's on leash. Just, in fact, every dog I've seen downtown has always been on leash. I don't think I've seen people here without them being on leash. What about in the neighborhoods? Well, in the neighborhoods, I don't, I personally don't see the need to pass a law or an ordinance. Again, should people be able to walk through their own neighborhoods? Of course. Without coming to dogs off lead, that you don't even know whether the person has control over or not. I don't want to be misunderstood as saying other things, but I feel it just seems like something that would come down from our federal government right now of this thing of someone who is afraid of, someone who was mugged by a person of a particular race and therefore all of those people are bad or an immigrant that has done bad things. Therefore, we blame all immigrants. To me, why do we want to blame all dogs and all dog owners? Because one dog and that dog's owner didn't follow with what they were supposed to be doing. The dog that killed this cat recently, obviously the owner and dog were not obeying the current ordinance, which was having the dog. The ordinance before this ordinance. Obviously, they were not paying attention to what the ordinance was, so are they going to pay attention to a new ordinance that says the dog must be on leash? Let me shift wildly, but I'll stay in the same theme. Is there a problem with racial profiling in our place in Montpellier? Do you feel? Probably so. How would that manifest itself? I will say I'm very proud of the high school students. Faculty and our school board for having the courage to raise Black Lives Matter flag. And I think that was just really good. If you were on city council, would you have asked the city to raise the flag above city hall? Yes, but I noticed at last Wednesday's meeting when they passed the resolution. Everyone at the council, everyone seemed to be very much in favor and everyone applauded. The people from the high school that were there speaking. So it seemed, my impression was certainly that everyone was in favor of this. Our infrastructure, I think if you go around to all three districts, and I've interviewed all of the council candidates, everyone in this town complains about our streets or water or sewer, the condition. What's your feeling on our infrastructure and how best to address it? Well, that's really an interesting question that everybody seems to be addressing. I don't know the answers because I haven't worked with the public works department. I know I see, in fact, one of the things, in fact, you asked me about what other people in my district had said, one of the things several people have said to me is that they think the city should do a better job with cleaning the streets. The machines that come down the sidewalks to plow the sidewalks don't seem to do it very well. I don't know if that's, the machines don't work or we're expecting to do something they're not meant to do or they don't know how to operate. I don't know what the reason is, but I see piles of salt and sand this high, and then you walk along and there's nothing, and then another pile is high, so something's not working. It seems that, I don't know, I mean there's a lot of things, but I don't feel that I should criticize something that I don't know about. Well, in council you would have oversight over it. So it's not quite criticizing, it's that function of how are we doing this and how could it be better? Yeah, well I mean we should be looking to see how it can be done better. City councilors not only sit in the meetings as you know, they sit on committees. Lord knows this town has more committees, commissions, and boards than any other town of 7500 probably, but they also sit on outside agencies. There'll be a council person on the library, there'll be a council person on the public safety board, there'll be a council person on the regional transit authority, there'll be someone on Mount Piliar alive, there'll be someone on the economic development board, the new one. Which board do you see, would you step forward and say, I want to sit on that outside organization? I don't know, I hadn't really thought about it. Are there any that I named that would catch your fancy? I'm not sure what all of the different ones are, but I would have to think about that. But one of the things, some of the things I really feel about Mount Piliar, I really like the rivers. Do you feel we're doing enough on the rivers? No, I think, well I mentioned already that the reason I bought the house that I lived in was because it was on the river, and my children grew up on the river being, we have a strip of land on the river, in fact after the, it was very hard to get to when I bought the house. You had to put a ladder down and go down to get to it. But after the flood of 1992, the bank, the retaining wall was caving in and the rocks had sort of fallen down. So we rebuilt it as a stairway down, and I think it's probably the only river access in downtown Mount Piliar, in fact. That's interesting. And a lot of people have said that there's really not much access. In fact, when I have canoeed down that I would put in at the community garden on Pearl Street, beyond Pearl Street Motors, owned by Dennis Gove, that guy helped with Lauren Kitches. We had helped start that garden the first year, years ago, I think like 25 years ago. And if I put my canoe in, go down the river. Boy, I don't think you can do that anymore. Is there enough river left to canoe in? Occasionally. Yes, sometimes. Sometimes. But when you go down, where would you take your canoe before the lane shops, obviously, because you can't go through them. Exactly. And there wasn't really a good place to do that. And then after the Clarence's house was torn down on Home Street, the one at the end of Summer Street, the little mill park, or whatever the name of it is, something like that. That's a nice place. So I think that's a, I've canoeed down there, and that's a nice place to get to the river. But before that, really, there was not any. Most people don't even think about that park. I know. That's a very, very forgotten park. There's a park over beyond the cemetery, beyond the Creamy Stand, where the freeway is. Oh, yes, I know that park. I have definitely been there. And that's another one of those hidden parks. I think there's a lot of little places that people don't realize. That little hidden park across from the laundromat at Elm and Court Street, that little car vane, that's another one. So I think the one, the mill pond one, was good because it gives you a place to take your canoe out and come through the park. Because I think that was very much needed. But downtown, before we built our stairway, was there any way really to get down? There was one partial set of stairs going somewhat down to the river. And then over by where the farmer's market is, you can climb down that bank by the river bridge. But yeah, there's not much access to the river. Let's go to District 2 and talk about a very large space, green space. Oh. Sabin's pasture. Sabin's pasture. And it almost seems like that fight has been going on for 30 years, though it hasn't. It almost seems as though it has. Seems like it's been being talked about for as long as it's a Taylor Street project. Absolutely. We'll get to the Taylor, you mean back when it was the car lot? Oh, I remember the car lot. Okay, so let's stay in Sabin's. What's your thought on what should happen to the Zorzi property there on Berry Street? Well, before I say anything, I should say that since I live on Elm Street, I go to Hubbard Park all the time. I know the parks on this side of the city. I rarely go over there. I've gone through there and walked around sometimes down the little stream that comes all the way down from Town Hill Road, but I don't know much about it. So I'm not the person to say much about it. But I can say what I think. Oh, absolutely. I think that Montpelier needs green spaces. I think a lot of people use that space. The people who live over there, much like people use Hubbard Park over here. However, I think housing is one of the things that Montpelier really needs, especially affordable housing. So it seems like the idea of developing close to Berry Street, but not too far up the hill, seems like a good idea to me. And then the upper part would be green space. What about our downtown? That's another theme is that this is a small town of 75, or a small city, big town of 7,500, and our downtown businesses. It's a struggle to hold on to our downtown business district. How would we improve that in your thinking? How would we improve our downtown, our core downtown? Well, I love downtown Montpelier. It's what made me really fall in love with Montpelier. It's why I chose to live downtown rather than outside, to be able to walk instead of driving. And I think it's wonderful to have locally owned businesses, small businesses. I know it's really hard to have a business and make money at it. I've never tried it, but I know it's difficult. And I think we should help in every way we can. How can the City Council help? What can the City Council do to support their downtown in your thinking? Well, to support our downtown, I think we need to develop. Certainly, everyone's talking about the empty storefronts and with Union River Sports closing. One of the things that I said in my interview with Matt at the bridge was that I would like to see a pedestrian mall on Langton Street. But I just stopped in Krabukirch and asked Yvonne. She reminded me that there would be a lot of logistical things to solve, a lot of businesses that needed somebody to come and pick up things and deliver things because they don't have a back door entrance. No, not at all. And the people who live there that park in those parking lots, and there's no back door. As some cities I've been in that have a mall, but all the businesses have a back door. And if they don't have a back door, then how do you deal with this? So it would require more than I was thinking. The farmers market is moving on to State Street next summer, and I imagine every summer past that. What you thought on that? They've been on that nook by Julios for so long. What you thought on bringing them up? Well, there were some experiments this past summer that we did. It's fine. Personally, I liked it where it was. I thought it was—well, one of the reasons—in fact, I wrote a comment about it—is that when it was moved onto State Street, and I bought some food, some tamales. There was no place—I said, where am I going to sit? There was no place to sit. So I sat on the curb. Whereas there was more space to sit over in the other space. Also, I wound up walking over to Christ Church and sitting there on there. Right. I was just about to say that not only is Christ Church available, but you could have gone to Ward Joyce's pocket park over on Main Street. Yeah. Well, which is what a lot of people do. And I love that park, by the way. Ward did a—and his students did a great job of signing that park, and I really like it. Is there one signature thing that you would like to see in Montpelier that isn't here? Is there something that would make this town better if we had more of it or just had it? I think the thing that I really like about Montpelier is the fact of the people. People that are caring, compassionate people who try to help their neighbors, to help each other, to do things to help each other. And I think bringing people more together, of all walks of life, people of all races, of all backgrounds, from all countries. I know when my wife came here 25 years ago, she's from Mexico, and I think she was the only person from Mexico here. And they weren't that many immigrants. Remember, Judy Chalmer got together, people—I don't know if you remember that—she got together immigrants from different countries to do a theater performance at City Hall. Now you have a—your wife has a performance coming up, yes? Oh, yes. And next, this coming Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Unitarian Church downstairs in the vestry, there will be a stage reading of a play by Inés Martínez. In English or Spanish? Oh, it'll be in English. It was done in English. And it's called Que Noche Buena. What does it translate to? What the Christmas Eve. And it's a play about immigration, about people, in this case, from Guatemala, who came to New Mexico looking—because of safety. Is there an admission charge to this? No, it is absolutely free. And one more time, what time on Saturday? It is 2 o'clock at the Unitarian Church this Saturday. And what's the date going to be? The date of the Saturday. Yes. This is going to be shown over and over. That's the reason I mentioned it. I believe that's the 24th of February. Let me see. What date is today? That's the 24th of February. Oh, it is the 24th. And you're right. It is the 24th of February. It was scheduled for around Christmas time, but it was canceled because of the weather. One more question. And Numa. What does Numa mean? Where did Numa come from? How long have you been Numa? I've been Numa for probably 45, 50 years. I think I did that at the same time as becoming vegetarian and a lot of other things, of transformations internal and social consciousness and spiritual awareness. Is Numa a word from another language? Well, the way I spell it in UMA comes from Latin, but the Latin comes from the Greek, which was with a P. And it was related to pneumatic air, breath. It also means spirit. That's great. Thank you. Thank you so much, Numa. I so appreciate this. But I want to talk to you and I want to make sure that you watch all of these shows. Numa talked about the bridge, which ran all the candidates. And I want you to educate yourself on the issues involved. There's an excellent show on the school budget. There's a good show on the city budget as well as the bond issues for both schools and cities. And the important thing is not only educating yourself, but getting out and vote on town meeting day and making sure your family votes, your friends vote, because that's the vitality of our democracy. Numa's district as well as district two and district one all have contested races. I think that's fantastic. And it's up to you to create the Montpelier that you want and that involves actually engaging. And that means voting on town meeting day. Thank you so very much.